Mazomania

“All politics is local,” said Tip O’Neil.

So’s the RCC, that humongous, amorphous institution which bestrides the known and the unknown world. We fancy the RCC as the domed St. Peter’s Basilica lost in that tiny, little conclave in Vatican City-State, small but a gargantuan nation nonetheless, a used to be miniscule lot in the fabulous city of Rome, and now great, greater, greatest – and unique -- larger than it appears to be from the plaza of St. Peter’s while gazing upwards to the floor where the Pope sleeps and eats and has his daily fare. No women allowed.

No. No. No. All religion is local. The RCC is the local parish church, run, not by the Pope, not even the Curia, not even even the CDF and its long list of whip-cracking Cardinals, like the Pope used to be before he got kinder and gentler and began smiling a lot, cuddled in his ermine, tippytoeing on his Prada slippers, red ones, caught up in the endless decision-making on what to wear next from out the wardrobes of predecessors down the labyrinthine years, now pushing relentlessly into yet a third millennium.

No, that’s not local, save in Vatican Ciy. Local Church is the parish on the corner of a downtown street, with a couple of mission church buildings out in the suburbs where the people are. Run by a priest with an assistant or so. What Father says, goes. And Father doesn’t like girls. “They won’t be Altar Boys in MY Church,” bellowed the new pastor in town, “because they ain’t boys.”

And so, we have a new term – a befitting one when one gets used to it – for sexism in the Roman Catholic Church where women, old, middle-aged, young and attractive, and the little girls are despised, used, abused and tossed out the back door, “because they ain’t boys.” Boys, you see, are men, the domineers of civilization, the users, abusers, the deciders and the killers.

The new term for gross abuse of women is MAZOMANIA. From the town of the same name, a little place in Wisconsin, USA. Headlined today.

In passing, note please that the name of the spokesperson for the diocese is Brent King, a/k/a King King, the boy-man who speaks for King Kong, the new pastor. To continue this epiphanic manifestation of the strength of the RCC – its balls, so to speak – the priest’s name is Jared Hood, a/k/a The Jarring Hood, a hood, obviously, the hitman.

A female, not necessarily feminine, spokesperson, chosen obviously for her name, is Ann Cicero, after an old Roman in history who yelled a lot and pounded podims with bare, clenched fists. The RCC chooses remarkably fitting names for those who carry on the deep spiritualities of the Holy Inquisition of times gone by, when they simply burned women at the stake without any public fuss of explanation and justification, “because, well, they just ain’t boys.” You see? "Can't be priests, neither." You see that one too?"

Now, being duly prepped, read the newpaper article and see what the RCC is really like, down in the reality where all religion is local. Then glimpse quickly what is making headlines across the USA about the shenanigans and closures and clusterings of parishes in diocese after diocese as Ordinaries struggle with the extraordinary departures of the faithful out of hypocrisy to the real world, where men are men, women are women, and boys and girls are boys and girls, the future of human kind in the present presence of our children, our only hope for what is yet to come.

There is a God, you see, and God made us, male and female God made us. And loves us. Both. Someone ought to tell the local pastor that. It might, just might, filter upwards as a divine revelation via the Sensus Fidelium, to the whispered corridors and their ancient closets up in the pope's apartments where are stored slippers and copes of absolute power. No women allowed.

MAZOMANIA. Nice new word for what has always been so: Girls ain’t pearls. Give the toys to the boys.

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From a newspaper in Wisconsin. Madison.com is operated by Capital Newspapers, publishers of the Wisconsin State Journal. At: http://www.madison.com/toolbox/index.php?action=printme2&ref=tct&storyURL=%2Ftct%2Fnews%2F293316

Mazomanie church nixes altar girls
Pat Schneider
June 25, 2008

Members of St. Barnabas Parish in Mazomanie say they are stunned to learn that the priests leading their Catholic community will no longer allow their daughters to be servers at Mass.

From now on, only boys will be able to assist priests in the ancient religious rite.

The new policy was announced at a meeting with parents Tuesday by Rev. John Del Priore, who was assigned to the
parish on June 1.

"It's an outrage," said Tammy Parks. "They said it was a
good way for boys to be indoctrinated into being a priest."

After letting her 11-year-old daughter know that she would no longer be allowed on the altar, Del Priore asked her 8-year-old son about his interest in becoming an altar boy, Parks said in an interview.

"Not only is the priest discriminating against my daughter, he's teaching my son that that is appropriate behavior," she said.

Parents at St. Barnabas are so distressed that there is talk of having the boys boycott altar duty.

The Catholic Church broke with centuries of tradition in 1994, when the Vatican said girls would be allowed to join "altar boys" in assisting priests at Mass.

It is up to the local bishop to decide whether to allow lay women, or girls, to serve when needed, said Brent King,
director of communications for the Madison Diocese. Female servers have been allowed in the Madison Diocese, King said, but it is ultimately up to each individual priest to decide whether he needs help at the altar. Priests may ask
whomever they wish to assist them, so long as that person is a Catholic in good standing, King said.

He stressed that servers take on the duties of acolytes, traditionally a low clerical rank. "Neither lay women nor lay men have the right to carry out the function of acolyte," King said.

Altar service is being reserved for boys to promote vocations to the priesthood, Rev. Jared Hood, one of a group of priests that serves the St. Barnabas cluster, said in an interview. Hood said he is a member of the Society of Jesus Christ the Priest, a religious order that ministers to boys to inspire them to become priests. The order offered its services to the Madison Diocese, which is consolidating parishes because of a shortage of priests.
"Very many priests began as altar boys," Hood said. "Without contact with a priest it's difficult for boys to even think about a vocation as a priest." He first learned about the order of which he is now a member as an altar boy in New Jersey, he said.

Four priests from the order now oversee a cluster of five parishes: St. Barnabas, St. Aloysius in Sauk City, St. Norbert in Roxbury, St. John the Baptist in Mill Creek, and St. Mary in Merrimac. Hood said boys only will be servers for each of the parishes.

That's been the case at St. Aloysius for more than a year, and the furor that met the change in policy has evaporated,
said Ann Cicero, a secretary for the parish whose sons serve as altar boys. The commitment by parish boys to altar service is proof that it's right to reserve it for boys, she said. When girls were allowed to be servers, it became less popular among boys. Now that it's a thing for boys only, they revel in it.

Besides, having girls on the altar is misleading about what the church is about, she said. "Women are not ordained," Cicero said.

The boys meet weekly with priests for training, spiritual growth and outings as the group, St. Michael Altar Guild, a practice that strengthens their ties to the church and parish community, she said. Girls, too, meet regularly and do things "more appropriate for girls."

Cicero said several young boys have begun to talk about vocations to the priesthood.

Jim Schmitt of Mazomanie said that for his 11-year-old daughter, being an altar girl was a way to give back to the
church.

Today a Madison firefighter, Schmitt said he was an altar boy at
Queen of Peace parish in Madison. He took pride in that role, but never thought of it as preparation for a vocation as a priest. It was a tradition, though. His father, grandfather and great-grandfather all had served as altar boys.

"If someone has a vocation, how does serving with a girl interfere with that?" Schmitt asked. "I don't see why we're regressing."

Parks, an attorney, said discrimination is significant issue for her personally.

"To have it in my own by parish, by my own priest, is repugnant," she said.