Oh Catholic Church, don't you ever change. Instead, just go away.

I was born at Frankford hospital in Philadelphia and lived on Loney St. in North East Philly until I was 5. My parents moved up into Bucks County after that, and in order to decide whether my sister and I would go to public or parochial schools they sent us each to one of them. My sister got to go to the public school. My parents were quite religious and insisted, over the next 12 years, on church every Sunday and CCD while we attended public school. Do you know why the public school option was chosen after one year as a first grader at a Catholic elementary school? Because they were bat. Shit. Fucking. Crazy.

In my year at Saint So-and-So I saw a kid get hung by his sweater in the coat closet. I saw another be relegated to the hallway because he spilled his crayons and the nun who saw him insisted he "did it on purpose." And multiple kids were reprimanded for coloring outside of the lines in their Phonics book. And just so we're clear, they were reprimanded. Not corrected. There was no teaching, there was yelling because the crayons moved outside of the lines. We were 6.

Fast forward to 2002 and the Archdiocese of Boston is under fire for covering up sexual abuse by their clergy. Fast forward to 2005 and the abuse accusations, and subsequent cover-ups, have made their way down I-95 to Philadelphia. I remember standing in my parents' kitchen when the Phildelphia Inquirer published "all" of the priests who had been accused, where they were shuffled, and where they were now. Standing at the island my mom told me, "you know just because there are bad priests doesn't mean that there isn't a God." I was 23.

Putting things in perspective, yelling at a kid for spilling crayons or coloring outside the lines with them is quite mundane when another option is having a priest that you know and trust try and fondle your junk. It doesn't make either OK, but in the grand scheme, I'd rather get yelled at than molested. Unless it's by a hot chick. Then she can abuse me as she sees fit. (I'm easy like that.)

Anyway, that was really just a long introduction that, 1: helped me rationalize not going to church unless someone gets married or dies and 2: allows me to take a moment to rant about that mother fucking douchebag Raniero Cantalamessa. Excuse me. REV. Raniero Cantalamessa. Cantalamessa, you see, is the Apostolic Preacher in the Vatican. He's essentially the Pope's priest. He also, last night, compared accusations of covering up sexual abuse by priests by Benedict XVI to "more shameful aspects of anti-Semitism." Yup.

In fairness, it has been a long standing contentious battle between Christians and Jews over who it was that killed Christ. Vatican 2 definitively declared that Jews should not be blamed. So basically that jerk off Cantalamessa was, I assume, trying to make the point that accusations of alleged actions levied against the Pope are similar to unfounded allegations that it was the Jews who killed Christ. Here's the thing: kid fucking by priests has been documented and proved over the last several decades. Jesus was crucified almost two thousand years ago. How fucking stupid are people? The depths of how retarded people are astound me on an almost daily basis. This guy is essentially practicing Godwin's Law. His hyperbolic comparison between documented facts about child molestation and attempts to cover it up and accusing an entire group of people of "killing" some dude with a beard two thousand years ago is more retarded than this guy, but not at funny.

Happy Easter. Enjoy your chocolate bunnies and plastic eggs. Jesus would want it that way.