Donohue does not have a grievance, but an agenda. His organization is funded and directed by the right wing of the United States. It is as politically neutral as Karl Rove’s fountain pen. There are no moderates on the Catholic League’s board, none. All wingers, every last one, in contradiction to the U.S. Catholic population that is mostly moderate and more liberal than you would think, abortion notwithstanding.

Donohue and the Catholic League are engaging in fake grass-roots work, what Josh Marshall called “astroturfing” under religious cover; the word for today is “SACROTURF.” What Donohue and the Catholic League say in their sacroturfing efforts are unimportant as moral arguments; we need not hear their words. His budget is $2.5 million a year, of which he gets paid about 14% of the money. Add Midtown Manhattan brutal rent, and you are starting to see that this organization is tiny, but well placed for sacroturf appearances at the Midtown media studios.

Donohue is paid to be a right-wing media assassin; that’s his job, like driving a bus is for a busdriver. He earned his pay this week, one can say safely.

I’ve had it explained to me that they were also kids from Joseph’s previous marriage, can anyone else speak to that? I haven’t read the Bible in years and I really don’t want to go back.

Though I don’t understand how a man who’s relatively “young* can go the rest of his life without sex with his wife. Did God make him swear an oath to be a monk?

…I think in the original language the word that is translated as “brother” is one that generally means “kinsmen”.

Whatever, its not the biggest deal in the book.

Its like the debate over whether or not Jesus was married (I don’t think he was…but who really knows). My high school kids were talking about it in my class the other day and one finally piped up and said “Miss — ——, does it really MATTER if Jesus was married or not?” Bingo! The answer is no, Virginia. Jesus and Mary’s marital/sexual status have absolutely no bearing on whether or not he was the incarnate second person of the Trinity who rose from the dead so we too could rise and who preached love and dignity for every human person, which is the entire #$&*ing point of Christianity, not anyones hymenal status.

I’m sure the Catholic League through a coniption fit over the “Jesus is Married” overtones of certain recent books and films, too, though, as did Crisis Magazine and all the other usuals. Because, unlike throwing nasty polemics at others and sanctimonious manly Christian cheast-beating, practicing what you preach and advocating for the poor and oppressed would actually require a *real* sacrifice of personal time and ego that these people just are not willing to make.

There is just nothing that seems more perverse than a religion that was founded with gender equality (“there is neither male nor female in Christ”), love of the poor and socially outcast, and the dignity of the fleshy, physical human body became the religion of the misogynist, the wealthy, the powerful, the “perfect people” and the “pharasees”, and those who fear and hate the body (especially the female body), and people like BD and the Catholic League. That is what makes me go “WTF???” every day.

Oh, the wierd, dark world of Conservative Catholicism / Christianity. It’s bottomless.

Jesus, please come again soon and save us from your “followers.” Marana tha!

Can they not bear to let women have *anything*, is that it?

And I’m sure my bible said that Jesus had brothers by the time he started his ministry. Do I even want to know how they’re dealing with that one?