Cardinal Dolan of the Archdiocese of New York prepares to hostilely subjugate a Latina (!) to the Church’s oppressive patriarchy, as told by MoDo.

For those of you unschooled in Latin, this post’s title roughly translates to “Hey, shoemaker! Just worry about the sandals!”  In other words, don’t offer opinions on that which you know nothing about.

This phrast lept to ‘Puter’s enfeebled mind this afternoon whilst reading MoDo, the PoMo Ho’s latest showcase of bad faith and ignorance.

We’ve all seen Maureen Dowd’s inexplicable hostility to her allegedly beloved church, the Roman Catholic Church.  And those links are just a sampling of Ms. Dowd’s “love” of Catholicism, as debunked by your Gormogons. 

Heck, if Ms. Dowd loved the Church any more, the Church would be in the emergency room claiming it had walked into a door.  Again.  And that the cops just don’t understand Ms. Dowd.  Ms. Dowd really, really loves the Church and didn’t mean to hit the Church.  The Church just did something to upset Ms. Dowd, and she’s not usually like this, except when she drinks.  Which is all day on weekends.  And from the time she gets up until the time she passes out on days ending in “y.”

What’s got ‘Puter’s undies in a bunch this time, you ask?  This:

She refuses to fall in line with a Vatican rigidly clinging to an inbred, illusory world where men rule with no backtalk from women, gays are deviants, the divorced can’t remarry, men and women can’t use contraception, masturbation is a grave disorder and celibacy is enshrined, even as a global pedophilia scandal rages.

The “she” in Ms. Dowd’s diatribe is one Sister Margaret Farley, recently censured by the Vatican for her doctrinally non-compliant book Just Love: A Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics, published in 2006.

Unfortunately for Ms. Dowd, and even more unfortunately for the good Sister Farley (of the misnamed Sisters of Mercy persuasion), despite their mutual desire, the Church still teaches homosexual acts are morally wrong, remarrying after divorce is adultery, contraception violates the right to life, masturbation is morally wrong and celibacy is the norm.  If Ms. Dowd and the good Sister Farley don’t like Church teachings, they can leave the Church.  But what they cannot do is mislead others, faithful Catholics and non-Catholics alike, as to what the Church actually teaches.

Back to the good Sister Farley.  Commonweal reports:

The Notification casts judgment on Sr. Farley’s book in five specific areas: masturbation; homosexual acts; homosexual unions; indissolubility of marriage; and divorce and remarriage. It also accuses the book of these “general problems”: “Sr. Farley either ignores the constant teaching of the Magisterium or, where it is occasionally mentioned, treats it as one opinion among others. … Sr. Farley also manifests a defective understanding of the objective nature of the natural moral law, choosing instead to argue on the basis of conclusions selected from certain philosophical currents or from her own understanding of ‘contemporary experience.’”

In the end, the Notification concludes that the book “is not in conformity with the teaching of the Church. Consequently it cannot be used as a valid expression of Catholic teaching, either in counseling and formation, or in ecumenical and interreligious dialogue.”

And the good Sister Farley takes it upon herself to again challenge the Vatican, according to Commonweal, saying:

In her response to today’s Notification about the book, Sr. Farley does “not dispute the judgment that some of the positions contained within it are not in accord with current official Catholic teaching.” She explains that “the book was not intended to be an expression of current official Catholic teaching, nor was it aimed specifically against this teaching. It is of a different genre altogether.”

“Growing out of my work as a Professor of Christian Ethics at Yale University Divinity School,” she writes, “this book was designed to help people, especially Christians but also others, to think through their questions about human sexuality. It suggests the importance of moving from what frequently functions as a taboo morality to a morality and sexual ethics based on the discernment of what counts as wise, truthful, and recognizably just loves. Although my responses to some particular sexual ethical questions do depart from some traditional Christian responses, I have tried to show that they nonetheless reflect a deep coherence with the central aims and insights of these theological and moral traditions. Whether through interpretation of biblical texts, or through an attempt to understand ‘concrete reality’ (an approach at the heart of ‘natural law’), the fact that Christians (and others) have achieved new knowledge and deeper understanding of human embodiment and sexuality seems to require that we at least examine the possibility of development in sexual ethics. This is what my book, Just Love, is about.”

Basically, Sister Farley responds to the Vatican with the one-fingered salute. The good Sister’s argument is, in essence, “The Catholic Church is full of shit on all things sexual, as I, a liberal Yale theology professor who is forsaking her vows to obey Church teaching, am here to tell you based on my 77 year perspective, as opposed to the Church’s 2,000 year perspective, Aquinas, Anselm and Augustine be damned.”  Oh.  Well, then.  That’s a whole different story then, Sister Farley.  You’ve obviously given this issue a lot of thought.  Ms. Dowd’s right.  Your word should be the end of the story, because it allows Ms. Dowd to go about her sexual predations guilt-free.  Thanks!

‘Puter finds it sad that Ms. Dowd views everything through the lens of sex, from politics to religion.  Note each of Ms. Dowd’s examples, and her defense of her position.  Ms. Dowd blasts the Church because she apparently want to have gay sex while masturbating with a divorced man and woman wearing condoms and an IUD, respectively.  Ms. Dowd defends her priapic worldview with another sexual claim, the claim that the Church’s teachings are wrong because a tiny fraction of priests committed horrible sexual crimes against children.

If Ms. Dowd wants to run amok and f*ck a duck, ‘Puter doesn’t care.  But Ms. Dowd should quit trying to square her support of hedonism with Church teaching.  Get on with your debauchery, Ms. Dowd.  There’s nothing stopping you.  Not the government.  Not a religion with unquestioned temporal power. Not a husband.  Not the New York Times.  And surer than Hell your liberal fellow travelers aren’t stopping you. So go out and f*ck yourself blind.  Find some random man/woman/barely legal marsupial and get your freak on. Complete your STD Bingo card. (“Finally! HPV! Bingo! I got feline AIDS!W00t!”).  Whatever makes you happy.  It’s a free country, as you’re so fond of reminding us. Nihil obstat, “lady.”

Just leave ‘Puter and his Church out of your shenanigans.  And don’t expect to receive an imprimatur, whether from the Holy Mother Church or from ‘Puter.

'Puter

Always right, unless he isn’t, the infallible Ghettoputer F. X. Gormogons claims to be an in-law of the Volgi, although no one really believes this.

’Puter carefully follows economic and financial trends, legal affairs, and serves as the Gormogons’ financial and legal advisor. He successfully defended us against a lawsuit from a liquor distributor worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid deliveries of bootleg shandies.

The Geep has an IQ so high it is untestable and attempts to measure it have resulted in dangerously unstable results as well as injuries to researchers. Coincidentally, he publishes intelligence tests as a side gig.

His sarcasm is so highly developed it borders on the psychic, and he is often able to insult a person even before meeting them. ’Puter enjoys hunting small game with 000 slugs and punt guns, correcting homilies in real time at Mass, and undermining unions. ’Puter likes to wear a hockey mask and carry an axe into public campgrounds, where he bursts into people’s tents and screams. As you might expect, he has been shot several times but remains completely undeterred.

He assures us that his obsessive fawning over news stories involving women teachers sleeping with young students is not Freudian in any way, although he admits something similar once happened to him. Uniquely, ’Puter is unable to speak, read, or write Russian, but he is able to sing it fluently.

Geep joined the order in the mid-1980s. He arrived at the Castle door with dozens of steamer trunks and an inarticulate hissing creature of astonishingly low intelligence he calls “Sleestak.” Ghettoputer appears to make his wishes known to Sleestak, although no one is sure whether this is the result of complex sign language, expert body posture reading, or simply beating Sleestak with a rubber mallet.

‘Puter suggests the Czar suck it.