The Pope Is To Vegetable As God Is To Potato

Glossy-eyed vacancy courtesy of Jeebus H. Christ.

As long as I live, I'm not sure I'll ever understand polls like these. 78% of practicing American Catholics favor making it ok for Catholics to use birth control, 63% would allow priests to marry, 59% would make church doctrine on stem cell research less strict, and 55% would allow women to become priests.

The way I understand it, most of your MSR (Mainstream Religeons) have an 'all or nothing' rule. This ain't no Hometown Buffet where you can just stroll down and pick and choose what you want. If you believe God said 'such and such' and/or Jesus is the son of God and God spoke through him and he said 'such and such', then you can't exactly belive that occasionally one or both of them said something that was bullshit.

Let's say, purely for sake of argument, that God is represented by potatoes. If you're not religeous at all, then you can order your potatoes any way you want them. Hash browns, homefries, criss-cut curlies, it's up to you. The only person you could possibly be inconveniencing would be the line cook. But if you profess to believe that one way of eating potatoes (let's say Au Gratin) means you spend eternity with a heart full of joy with all your dead pets and relatives in a super happy sky-fairy cloudy place, and another way (e.g. twice-baked with sour cream and bacon) means you'll spend the rest of time lifting smoldering boulders, eating naught but hot coals, drinking naught but hot cola and getting poked in the hiney by some goofy lookin' pixie with a pitchfork, then it seems silly that you would casually order the twice-baked potato. That is, if you actually BELIEVE in that wacky shit to begin with.

I don't think anyone's that casual with decisions like that (except perhaps the incapacitatedly retarded), so I'm forced to assume that up to 78% of catholics fall into one of the following categories; Either they are lying about their faith to avoid confrontation with their family or loved ones, they're shit scared of 'pop culture' and fear without strong religeous convictions that they or their kids will turn black, or finally, they enjoy the 'get out of jail free' card that the Catholic church provides by way of confessional. A convenient and easy way to ignore the guilt you should probably feel for the horrible things you did to that Vegas streetwalker.

The one thing I will tip my hat to catholics for is that, unlike evangelicals, they're not constantly trying to convert me. If anything, they're fairly exclusionary and find the idea of someone not dunked in water sharing their crackers and wine to be horrifying. So good for you, 22% of Catholic Americans going to heaven, I'm sure you'll have fun learning to play the harp. As for the rest of you, try to die in shorts and a tank top.

Poll via His Puppiness, N-Biz