Samhain: A Prayer for the Dead

This is my favourite time of year here: the veil is so thin Faerie flickers in the corner of vision, one finds pennies in peculiar places, things go a little sideways and all that is concrete gives playful way to the amorphous and abstract. Everything – trees, cars, junk mail – is transubstantiated, its hypostasis relocated from the materia to the mythic realm. As Gnostics, as Witches, we're good at exploring this interstitial space. Did you really see that cat just now? Is that woman across the street... really human? Mortal? The masquerade that the mythic wears in the mundane is somehow just a little less convincing. Borders, boundaries, prose transmuted into poetry. And so to the Dead, the crossers of the border, those who are transported into memory; we remember and pray for you, our spells bolt you to our skin, if only for a little while.

Blessings be on the Dead that are; Blessings be on the Dead that know.

Nick, Robin and Sylvia
Violet and Sidney
Frank
Dave
and those unmet and yet not unloved

May you return safely to that infinite shore at night's ending, and find peace in the dissolution of the Pleroma.

Buddhism and Gnosticism

More good bits from The Allure of Gnosticism, this time an article by Edward Conze on the similarities between Mahayana Buddhism and Gnosticism on a few key points;

1) Salvation takes place through gnosis or jnana; ignorance is the root of evil, and gnosis is the result of personal revelation.

2) There are levels of spiritual attainment; in Gnosticism we see the hylic (material), psychic (soul) and pneumatic (spiritual) natures, just as in Mahayana Buddhism we see those destined for salvation, or destruction, or those whose destinies are not predetermined.

3) The role of Wisdom as both Goddess and Mother, ultimately responsible for (but not directly involved in) the created world.

4) The emphasis on participatory, relevant myth over historical fact.

5) Antinomianism, the idea that spiritual enlightenment either negates or trumps social convention and norms, include mundane laws and restrictions.

6) The distinction between the godhead and the creator god, who is perceived as either malicious or ignorant.

7) An elitist and esoteric posture. Attainment is seen as difficult, salvation not for the masses.

8) Both are ultimately monistic, advocating a re-union with the One.

Now personally I see strong parallels not only in Mahayana generally but Vajrayana specifically, particularly in its esoteric, almost Hermetic aspects.

There's also an excellent article on Buddhism and Gnosticism by Herbert Christian Merillat here.

The parallels are striking, and it seems improbable that both religions came to such conclusions independently (although my money is still on Kemet for the source-religion of Gnosticism).

Now, back to the punkins...

What I Actually Look Like

Despite the weird, stunned, unkempt "About Me" pic on the sidebar, above is a closer semblance to my weird, stunned, unkempt self, "platinum highlights" (grey hairs), crows feet and all. This is my new "work bio" shot, courtesy of the brilliant Hélene Cyr – and next week we're shooting the "back o' the book" shot, with me in ecclesiastical drag.

You're Writing a What?

St. Mary Magdalene, Leonardo Da Vinci

A Gnostic response to the Da Vinci Code phenomenon.

Please understand that I had many issues with the novel, for the most part I found the writing horribly mangled and in desperate need of an editor, or a Grade 9 English teacher. Brown has muddied the waters tremendously, and I think done a disservice to both the Tradition and to the maligned Roman Church, which is too easy a target. Is there really an Opus Dei hit-squad out to eliminate all 20 million readers of Holy Blood, Holy Grail? If there is, I'm not worried: given Rome's HR crisis I don't think they could put more than a dozen guys on it, and it'd take a while for them to get around to the "S"s.

That being said, the book is a fun read, a weekend of disposable guilty-pleasure fiction – plus we come off pretty good in the whole thing. We're vilified as the evil bad guys forever, and one trashy novel comes along and WHAMMO! It's super-Gnostics to the rescue!

The purpose of my book is not to correct the myriad of factual errors in Brown's novel – this has been done to death by an entire industry of "Decoder" books – but rather to explore the core myths of the Magdalene and the Templars from a Gnostic perspective.

Millions of people put down Brown's book with a headful of questions: Who was the Magdalene, really? Was she married to Jesus? Did they have kids? Did they escape to France? Are the Merovingians Jesus's grandkids? Is the Holy Grail the bones and documents of Mary Magdalene? Was Da Vinci a Grand Master of the Priory of Sion?

While the short answer to all these questions is "No" I don't think that a one word book is an overly compelling read – nor would it address the real question at hand: what does all this stuff mean?

What we Gnostics are really, really good at, is extracting personally relevant meaning from myth. So for all those people who, despite the barrage of literalism and misinformation, still feel a tug towards an exploration of MM, the Western Mystery Tradition, the Cathars, the Templars, the Grail and the Divine Feminine, well I truly feel we have some light to shed on these subjects. And all the while not obsessing over what happened but rather what is happening: encoded signals from our mythic subconscious lighting our path to gnosis, and the way home.

Gnostic Map Revisited

Requires audience participation: the map is here, let's see how quickly we can spread the word and max out that 200 flags limit. Jeremy? Pauline? Jesse? Scott? A little help here please.

(Ideally shamelessly stolen from Ben of the AGCA, who made an AGCA-only map, but clearly the need is for something more ecumenical, no?)

Apologies for light posting and late RGIA missives, I've been up to my elbows in the manuscript (I'm writing a Gnostic response to The Da Vinci Code phenomenon, for a looming publication deadline).

Blessings all,

J+

Halloween Costume

If you have a spare hundred bucks, give it to the Red Cross or St. John's Ambulance by clicking on the button in the sidebar. If you have a hundred bucks after that, buy the entire series of Gnostic Alan Moore's Promethea, a course in Hermetic initiation disguised as a comic book. Speaking of disguises, I've redec'd the halls around here to reflect the Halloween season, and as I've never heard of anyone making a Samhain costume for their blog, I've tarted up the old girl as Promethea herself. I do delve into some pretty serious territory around here, and some occasional levity is I think medicinal.

Magna Mater

Magna Mater, Katherine Maltwood, 1911
"Now, Eve is the first virgin, the one who without a husband bore her first offspring. It is she who served as her own midwife. For this reason she is held to have said:

It is I who am the part of my mother; and it is I who am the mother.
It is I who am the wife; it is I who am the virgin.
It is I who am pregnant; it is I who am the midwife.
It is I who am the one that comforts pains of labor.
It is my husband who bore me; and it is I who am his mother.
And it is he who is my father.
It is he who is my force; What he desires, he says with reason.
I am in the process of becoming; yet I have borne a man."

– The Origin of the World

But He Made Too Many Enemies...

©Jeffrey Wall, used without permission, sorry

Friday I was interviewed by four Religious Studies students from Simon Fraser University, and one of them was kind enough to fly me over to Vancouver for the meeting.

About once a month, as an alternative to the lengthy ferry ride, I escape the Island via floatplane from Victoria's Inner Harbour to downtown Vancouver, over the San Juan and Gulf Islands, across the Strait of Juan de Fuca, over the UBC Endowment Lands and the forest of Stanley Park, to do a sharp descending bank into Coal Harbour and Burrard Inlet. From 2500 feet, the history of Nova Albion – its hidden harbours and rawness, its mists and gulls and ravens – is laid out like a storybook. It is part of the tremendous gift of living in this part of the world, where daily I see deer and eagles, and where I am never five minutes from the smell of the ocean.

So in a diner-style organic café in Coal Harbour, I drank a bucket of coffee and ranted ecclesiology and the Western Mystery Tradition until they all went a little cross-eyed and I had my return flight to catch. I was impressed at how prepared and serious they were, and I was only mildly appalled at being second choice behind an interview-declining Scientologist.

Anyway, during a prolonged tangent on the theme of the Royal Sacrifice, of the Fisher King and the Slain God, I neglected to mention XTC's Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead, which is a great exploration of the topic, and I think apropos given the season;

Peter Pumpkinhead came to town
Spreading wisdom and cash around
Fed the starving and housed the poor
Showed the Vatican what gold’s for

But he made too many enemies
Of the people who would keep us on our knees
Hooray for Peter Pumpkin
Who’ll pray for Peter Pumpkinhead?

Peter Pumpkinhead was too good
Had him nailed to a chunk of wood
He died grinning on live TV
Hanging there he looked a lot like you
And an awful lot like me...

– Andy Partridge

On the Day of the Martyrdom of the Holy Templars

Friday the Thirteenth of October, 1307: Acting in the name of the Pope, the brutal agents of Philippe IV le Bel of France arrested, tortured and later executed nearly all the Knights of the Order of the Temple in France. Philippe's motives were avarice and jealousy of the Order's temporal power, but he was aided and sanctioned in this totalitarian savagery by Rome on the pretext that the Templars were universally embracing heresy. Later however a cowed Clement V pardoned the Templars of any wrongdoing, but the murders had been committed, the Order broken, and the surviving members cast to the furthest borders of Christendom.

In kingdoms defiant of Rome, particularly Scotland and Portugal, the Order continued for decades if not centuries. In other regions, it merely changed its name or clothed itself in the trappings of other Orders, such as the Knights Hospitaller. But the two centuries of Templar corporate might and unchecked wealth had come to an end.

The Knights Templar were for the most part homicidal thugs, for the lesser part obedient, orthodox Catholics, and for the least part Initiates of the Johannite Mysteries. Despite the hylic nature of Order (obtaining, occupying, owning and killing things) it also served secretly as a repository for Gnostic Wisdom, with the Grand Masters ensuring the continuity of Johannite Tradition and thought. However rough the cup, it bore the wine that is the blood of the Logos. The Templars stand as icons of chivalry, nobility, sacrifice, honour, and service to the Truth:

"in turn lions of war and lambs at the hearth; rough knights on the battlefield, pious monks in the chapel; formidable to the enemies of Christ, gentleness itself towards His friends."

Under torture, some Knights confessed to the adoration of an icon of a severed head – remeniscent of the head of John the Baptist – known as "Baphomet", and encoded name for Sophia, Goddess of Wisdom.

The lesson is that no measure of secular power that we can possess – military, financial, political – can withstand the onslaught of Archonic forces should they choose to exert themselves, regardless of either our innocence or ignorance on one hand or our spiritual gifts on the other. There is no physical castle we can erect against greed, against totalitarian megalomania. Only with gnosis, with Wisdom, with compassion, can we erect the citadel of the heart.

The weeks between today and All Hallow's Eve is known as Umbers, and it marks a period of reflection and detachment from the outer world, a time of turning inward to fortify the heart's chapel and its battlements. It is an invitation to visualize the private Sanctuary of heart's Wisdom – mine is of stone and candles and stained glass, it smells of oak and dust and leather and sandalwood.

May all those cruelly and unjustly suffering find peace and dissolution in the Pleroma.

Freedom of Religion Must Mean Freedom FROM Religion

I don't like the word religion. Despite my propensity for etymological judo and HumptyDumptyism (of course words mean what we want them to mean, that's what words are for, sheesh), the word still gives me the heebie jeebies.

Originally of course the word meant re-linking, re-reading, and that's all very good and wonderful. But my mastery of my own neural system remains unattained, and I still reflexively associate "religion" with conformity, coercion, and anti-intellectualism. I think tyranny, Taliban and televangelists. I'm not alone in this, which is why millions of deeply committed people, with abiding faith and daily prayer, prefer the term "spiritual" rather than "religious". It's unfortunate, but there you are.

Of course many people quite rightly would describe me as a religious person. My religion is a central part of my identity, along with being a writer, husband, father, epileptic, bibliophile, Buffy fan and aspiring wino. The difference being that my religion, Gnosticism, is distinct from many others in that it is individualistic – no one else has or is going to save me, and I have a personal responsibility to recognize and honour my relationship with the Divine. I have no mission or desire to "convert" anyone, nor do I believe that one can convert another to Gnosticism. My role as a Priest is that of sherpa – you're climbing the mountain, I can just point out trails and help carry stuff.

One could easily be accused of opinionism: that this is my view, and not necessarily one which I would espouse for universal adoption. I am equally open to allowing another their view, however orthodox or innovative or seemingly bizarre. I prefer to think of myself not as a relativist but rather responsible, and religiously self-reliant to the point of libertarianism (though not politically, puh-lease). This would seem to be a fundamental difference between liberalism and conservatism; liberalism is about allowing: I'll do my thing over here, you do your thing over there. Conservatism has been described as the creeping fear that someone, somewhere, is having a good time. But really the problem arises when your opinion – read religion here – necessitates harm or restriction on mine. Banning publication or ownership of religious materials, display of symbols, practice of rites etc.

Now because I live in a secular society*, we have rules about this sort of thing. And it's pretty obvious that secular societies are superior to religious societies (Think EU and Canada vs. America and Saudi Arabia) in every metric: life expectancy, literacy, infant mortality, violent crime, AIDS infection, teen pregnancy, incarceration rate, economic health, technical innovation, etc.

*Caveat: I live in a country with an official state religion (Anglicanism), no separation of Church and state, and an unspoken rule that our Prime Ministers are always supposed to be nominally Catholic. But we're still a secular, inclusive, multi-poly-everything society.

What this means is, you can have your Mormon enclave in the hills, and we promise that Hindus won't come and burn down your trailer park. If they do, we will arrest them. Likewise you're not allowed to torch a shul or krylon 666 on the cathedral doors. I'm not saying this doesn't happen, I'm saying it's illegal and it bugs everybody on the other end of a camera lens and a microphone. We work very hard to make sure every Muslim, Buddhist, Seventh Day Adventist and Raelian feel safe, tolerated, and even accepted by our secular, inclusive, multi-poly-everything society.

Ah, but there are Those People, the puppy-kickers on the other end of their precious Hate War, who cry "political correctness!" every time any kind of tolerance is exhibited. These are, yes,religious people; by no means all the religious people, but they like to think they're speaking for all of them. All of us in fact – not a lot of atheists read this blog. "They've outlawed Christmas!" they cry, despite my son's school Christmas pageant (in which he played Joseph, and admirably, despite hauling the baby Jesus offstage by the ankle), and despite the word "Christmas" in the sappy deluge of network TV specials that begin airing an hour after Thanksgiving. One "Seasons Greetings" readograph at the mall makes these people apoplectic. How dare we include Jews and Muslims in our precious mall signage! You see where I'm going with this. Those People annoy the hell out of me, crypto-racist book-burning whackjobs that they are, and the worst thing anyone can do is give them ammunition.

Recently, a Council office in the UK instituted a ban, on the complaint of one Muslim employee, of the depiction of pigs in the office. Yes, a porcelain Piglet coffee mug so offended this one idiot, that she utilized the idiocy of non-Muslim idiots to ban Piglet from the office. So let's hand the microphone to Those People, and let the hysteria begin...

"This is what being tolerant leads to!" they rage. "We're tolerating the intolerant! Why, Muslims can't even tolerate coffee mugs! They're coming to take Piglet away from us, and they're bringing the Politically Correct Police! Lepanto! Lepanto!"

Now of course the Council idiots should be dragged to the outskirts of town and pelted with stale TimBits: not so much for banning Piglet, but for giving Those People yet another soapbox, and for making them sound reasonable. Why, they're only objecting to the banning of Piglet, that's a perfectly reasonable stand to take. Gee, maybe these Muslims are just trying to exterminate Western culture after all! I bet ole' Mrs. Habib in apartment 4 is working for Al Qaeda! Let's go put bacon on her doorknob!

Shame on the Council idiots for giving cause – and just cause at that – for religious conservatives to pour fuel on the fire, a task for which they are well-funded and well-armed. And shame, too, for allowing them to now co-opt Piglet, poor sweet naive Piglet of my childhood, into a symbol for "the futility of co-existence" and "resisting Muslim incursion".

Oh bother.

Jean Cocteau on Myth

"The re-interpretation of myths is essential if they are to survive. They are handed down from one generation to another like certain stories that are transmitted orally. In the process, they are constantly embellished or they lose their meaning. In any case, they are altered by every narrator. The great myths are not very many in number. Racine, Gethe, Shakespeare, knew very well why their use was so effective: myth is like a key that opens the most unsympathetic soul to writing (or visual art). I have always preferred myth to history, because history consists of truths which turn into lies, while myth consists of lies which turn into truths!"

– Jean Cocteau

St. Wonder Woman

"Compare and contrast for a moment the freeing, empowering influence of Wonder Woman with what women have historically received from the Virgin Mary. Mary's power was never direct, it was always secondary--like girls, it was said, were supposed to be. The Virgin Mary's power was that of intercession, a kind of "divine pillow talk." She was so pure and so gentle that she was thought to be able to move with her requests the father God or the judging Son Jesus, both of whom had the real power.

[...] Is this a feminine role model that today's young women will or should follow? Hardly. Yes, Mary was a woman, but she was both de-sexed and dehumanized by a condescending and patriarchal hierarchy before she was finally said to have been lifted into God. The clear message of Mary was that both the body and the sexuality of a woman were evil. The ideal woman was not a flesh-and-blood woman—no, she was portrayed as sweet, passive, docile, compliant, obedient, virginal, and unreal, hardly the qualities that would empower young women to break out of their stereotypical expectations.

[...] Today, one cannot help but note that in the nations of the Western world that most honor the Virgin Mary, the status of woman remains low. She has not been an asset in the quest for the emancipation of women. If I were holding before my daughters or my granddaughters a model for their lives, and my choices were the Virgin Mary or Wonder Woman, Wonder Woman would win hands down.

If the goal of organized religion is to call people to the fullness of their humanity, as I believe it is, then perhaps church leaders ought to look at those they hold up as role models. Both Wonder Woman and the Virgin Mary are mythological figures. The church does not like to admit that, but it is true. Neither woman, as we have come to know them, ever lived in history. Only one of them pretends to be historical, the other freely admits she is not.

But Wonder Woman has done more to break the culturally imposed boundaries on women than the Virgin Mary ever did. Wonder Woman has shaped, freed, and transformed more women’s limits than the Virgin Mary has done in 2000 years. If it were possible to do so, I would nominate her for sainthood."

– ECUSA Bishop +John Shelby Spong

I can see why Spong drives Pistic, Nicene literalists crazy. They keep dragging him up on heresy charges, and he keeps beaming his heart and intellect at them until they go away. How Gnostic is that? If not for the vocal minority of rampant gay-bashers and Sunday School literalists, I'd consider ECUSA the largest Gnostic Christian Church in the world.

There's an interesting response to his article here

"Offering her virginity to bear the God-man hardly was a passive, joyless exercise for Mary - even if one believes the event to be mythical rather than historical. Opening the door to salvation, despite personal risk and dishonor, despite the ire of a fiancé who had the power to stone her, seems incredibly brave. Letting a child walk the path marked out for him and watching him die as a criminal, while standing at the Cross, sounds courageous. Uttering a resounding "Let it be" so that the Creator might enter the world indicates power. Surrendering one's soul and body, one's will, so that the divine nature that lived in Jesus Christ might live in all human beings, sounds, well, heroic. Wonder Woman fought political battles, but the Mother of God fought in the battleground of the human heart. She serves as an example not just to women, but to all human beings."

– Deborah Belonick

And On The Third Day He Rose From The Dead

[Today is the feast of He, represented by the vine, slain cruely for the "blasphemy of claiming to be the Son of G@d", who on the third day rose from the dead.]

"With milk and wine and streams of luscious honey flows the earth, and Syrian incense smokes. While the Bacchante holding in his hand a blazing torch of pine uplifted on his wand waves it, as he speeds along, rousing wandering votaries, and as he waves it cries aloud with wanton tresses tossing in the breeze; and thus to crown the revelry, he raises loud his voice, "On, on, ye Bacchanals, pride of Tmolus with its rills of gold I to the sound of the booming drum, chanting in joyous strains the praises of your joyous god with Phrygian accents lifted high, what time the holy lute with sweet complaining note, invites you to your hallowed sport, according well with feet that hurry wildly to the hills; like a colt that gambols at its mother's side in the pasture, with gladsome heart each Bacchante bounds along."

Leonardo Disses NeoPlatonists

da Vinci, being something of a self-taught garage-genius, was contemporarily contrasted by the Renaissance NeoPlatonists, all of whom read Latin and Greek and poured over Plato at length, who were for the most part academic snobs. While they valued Plato's gnosis, they (perhaps inadvertently, to be fair) neglected their own, and of course that of Leonardo.

"I am fully conscious that, not being a literary man, certain presumptuous persons will think that they may reasonable blame me; alleging that I am not a man of letters. Foolish folks! do they not know that I might retort ... that they, who deck themselves out in the labors of others will not allow me my own ... they do not know that my subjects are to be dealt with by experience rather than words, and experience has been the mistress of those who wrote well."

- Leonardo da Vinci

Stonelifter: Tools for Gnostic Teens

"I am the light that is over all things. I am all: from me all came forth, and to me all attained. Split a piece of wood; I am there. Lift up the stone, and you will find me there."

- Gospel of Thomas 77

[I correspond with a number of young people, 15-17 or so, who are attracted to Gnostic ideas but who are routinely shut down by Fundamentalist parents on one side, and cynics on the other side. I've tried to put some language together that's not too hifalutin' to help them explain part of what's going on to the people in their lives.]

Coming Out
"Mom, Dad, I'm not saying I'm not going to Church anymore. I'm just saying I don't necessarily identify with just ONE way of looking at God. It seems to me that a lot of very smart early Christians had ideas about God and about Christ which don't fit in to what the Church later became. And I'm new to this, but I think some of those voices need listening to."

"I'm not shaving my head or joining a cult, I'm reading and asking questions about a view of divinity and people that includes Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Philosophers and Christians – traditions that have placed 'being good' and being spiritual at the center of our lives. I'm not saying their isn't room in Gnosticism for Christianity, I'm just saying it doesn't end there. Gnosticism believes in God, and honours prayer and the Eucharist."

So what's the Gnosticism about?
"Gnosticism has existed alongside Christianity from the beginning. It's about personal responsibility, creativity, education, intuition, and developing a personal relationship with God, and the spark of God within myself. It's about honouring the Holy Spirit and how it manifests in the world and in my life."

So how is this different from Christianity?
"Christianity teaches that we don't exist until conception. Gnosticism says that who we really are was created by God at the beginning of time, and that we're all immortal sparks of the Holy Spirit. Christianity teaches that we're saved by the Crucifixion, and by accepting Jesus' sacrifice. Gnosticism says we're saved by the message of Christ, the Logos, and only after realizing our own relationship with God. It seems to me that accepting Christ without taking responsibility and being true to yourself doesn't save you from anything."

"If you bring forth what is within you, what you have will save you. If you do not have that within you, what you do not have within you will destroy you."

– Gospel of Thomas 70

On the Bible:
"I respect your Faith, but the idea that the Bible contains ALL the truth isn't supported in the Bible. The idea is called "Sola Scriptura" and is not something serious theologians support. Isn't there something to prayer, to listening to God? My conversations with God are not in the Bible, but they're real and I have a responsibility to honour that."

"Most of what Jesus says is from the Old Testament, and quotes of Socrates. To me that means that other, older ideas have some good points, too."

The Gnostic "Gospels" were rejected a long time ago! They were written 100 years after Jesus!
"Well, most scholars say that the Gnostic Gospels were written around the same time as Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. John was written in two chunks, and the first part of it was written when the community was largely Gnostic. The last part of it was written later to criticize Gnostics who had left the community, either because they were too Jewish or too Greek."

"For almost four hundred years, the Gnostic Gospels were an important part of the worship of early Christians."

But they're so weird!
Revelations is pretty weird to a lot of people, and all he's doing is expressing a spiritual vision, just like the Gnostics. Of course it's going to seem bizarre to somebody who hasn't had that experience. The Gnostics weren't writing news stories, they were making poetry, using metaphors that people could understand. I've had some pretty crazy dreams, but when I've thought about them, they've meant something to me personally."

To Atheists:
"Listen, I don't believe in blind faith either. Maybe what you're rejecting isn't religion, but the way that religion has been presented to you. Of course I don't believe that God is some old guy with a beard, bossing us around from some cloud somewhere. That's a cartoon, not an idea. In fact that character is denounced by Gnosticism as the problem-guy, not the solution-guy. I respect your choice about how you see religion, but to me that our need to make art, poetry, love, this brings us closer to who we're supposed to be. Just because there's some smiting in the Old Testament doesn't mean a Buddhist is an idiot for meditating, and just because you thing your Pastor is a creep doesn't mean that all religion is bullshit."

"Look, I'm not trying to convert you, we don't do that. Gnosticism respects that everybody is divine and finds their own way back to the source. It's about personal responsibility. It's the tag-you're-it religion. You have to figure it out for yourself, I'm not going to force anything down your throat."

To Friends:
"I'm a Gnostic. It means I'm figuring out how who I truly am fits with the Divine Everything. It looks pretty Catholic on the outside, but the core ideas and practices are actually very Buddhist, with a little Judaism on the side. It's very inclusive, and talks about the Holy Spirit as Sophia, the Queen of Heaven, and there's a lot of stuff about Mary Magdalene."

"I realize it's not for everybody, and may seem a little complicated, but I'm learning about all of this history and ideas and it'll take some time before I can share it in a way that makes sense."

The Onion: Gay Clergyman

The Vatican has announced that it will prevent homosexuals from entering the priesthood. What do you think?

John Benito,
Dentist
"But I can keep the outfit, right?"

Casey Lincoln,
Chiropractor
"So...They're just going to promote them all to bishop?"

– The Onion