I think we need a new screening program at Catholic Schools and CCD classes. This one directed towards students. This screening test would actually be targeted towards Catholic girls. I propose a Future Pop Star (FPS) screening quiz should be implemented immediately. The reason the FPS is needed immediately and really should have been implemented years ago is because of the antics of Catholic girls like Madonna, Christina Aguilera, Gwen Stefani, Lady Gaga, etc. Somehow Catholic girls make for the biggest pop stars and those like Madonna and Lady Gaga go beyond just the immodest strutting into using the Catholic faith as something to mock while symbols associated with the Church are used as part of their shows. On Lady Gaga’s latest video:

The pop princess, real name Stefani Germanotta, recently released the music video for her single “Alejandro” and has sparked quite the outcry given its saturation of controversial imagery, including her swallowing rosary beads in a latex-version of a nun’s habit, holding the crucifix in front of her crotch and simulating group sex with a bunch of beefed-up men, who are nearly naked save for underwear and high heels.

Before you get annoyed by this – don’t worry it is nothing negative don’t you know.

And “Alejandro” director Steven Klein told MTV that the video wasn’t meant to “denote anything negative, but represents the character’s battle between the dark forces of this world and the spiritual salvation of the Soul. She chooses to be a nun, and the reason her mouth and eyes disappear is because she is withdrawing her senses from the world of evil and going inward toward prayer and contemplation.”

I really need to work on my music video symbolism since I didn’t get any of that from it.

While all children deserve a real Catholic education where the truth is fully taught, the Future Pop Star (FPS) screening quiz could be used to identify future pop stars so that teachers and their parents could give these students some extra tutoring in scripture, Church history, theology and especially the Theology of the Body as taught by Pope John Paul II. Right now they got the Theology of the Bawdy down pat. Imagine if these talented Catholic women actually knew their faith instead instead of just being culturally attached to it? Just imagine if Sinéad O’Connor kissed a picture of the Pope instead of all the strange angry turns her relationship with the Church has taken?

Though at least the Church has given these pop stars a rich history of symbols to mock. You have to feel sorry for the pop singer raised Unitarian – where there are no real symbols to latch on and mock as part of their stage shows.

There has been a term of derision used recently to describe these women singers – Pop Tarts. While I am all for almost any pun I don’t much like this term. I do have to wonder though if the Catholic variety should be known as Pope Tarts?

At the upcoming Catholic Theological Society  of America.

Hispanic/Latin@ Consultation
Alimento para la lucha: Retrieving a Prophetic Voice from Latina AmÈrica

Convener & Moderator:
Carmen Nanko-Fernandez, Catholic Theological Union
Presenter:   Neomi DeAnda, Loyola University, Chicago

“Transgendered Images of Breast Milk: Recovering the Voice of MarÌa Anna ¡gueda de San Ignacio”

Leaders of religious orders of men and women throughout church history have used the image of breast milk. This presentation will retrieve the specific contribution of MarÌa Ana Egueda de San Ignacio’s (1695-1756), a Mexican Dominican nun. Her development of this image set in the backdrop of Latin American Catholicism expands the canon of creative and prophetic perspectives emerging from Latina America.
Respondent:  Pamela Kirk Rappaport, St. John’s University, New York

I wonder what the Catholic parallel to Jumping the shark is? Oh yeah, heresy. Via Dawn Eden

Somehow I wonder if this is connected with this story.

Rehoboth Beach in Delaware isn’t a topless beach – but a few transgender men caused a stir by treating it like one.

Police say passers-by complained after the men removed their tops and revealed their surgically enhanced breasts over Memorial Day weekend. A lifeguard asked them to put their tops back on. The men initially refused, but covered up before police arrived.

Even if they hadn’t, though, Police Chief Keith Banks notes the men were doing nothing illegal. Since they have male genitalia, they can’t be charged with indecent exposure for showing their breasts. Banks says there’s no need for a specific law to address the issue.

Via Creative Minority Report

Jimmy Akin on President Obama’s proclamation that June 2010 is Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month.

So there you have it. President Obama taking credit for all he has done to normalize the open practice of sexual deviancy in our society, as well as measures he’d like to take in the future to further normalize it, including “creat[ing] safer schools so all our children may learn in a supportive environment.”

I wonder if he’d like to require private schools to be “safer” in this way?

And I wonder where all this is going and how long it will be until gets there.

Tolerance and “safe environments” will continue to become the blunt records used against anybody who does not believe that sexual deviancy is a right that must be normalized. Not accepting this behavior will get you labeled in oh so many ways and no doubt with words that end in ‘phobe.’  How long before the travesties that have occurred in Canada and England come our way is a good question.  The real tragedy is that those who are afflicted with same-sex attraction or other disordered desires are confirmed in their sin instead of being helped.

So what month is Adultery Pride month?

Nicolaus Copernicus, the 16th-century astronomer whose findings were condemned by the Roman Catholic Church as heretical, was reburied by Polish priests as a hero on Saturday, nearly 500 years after he was laid to rest in an unmarked grave. [Ref]

I saw the headline for this story on the weekend and growled in its general direction. Seeing what AP story actually said annoys me any more. Usually it is the Galileo story that gets misrepresented as “Eviiilll ignorant Catholic Church against science.” You have to wonder what a reporter workflow is?

1. Hear story about Copernicus being moved into a new tomb.
2. Make Church vs. Science connection in thought process
3. Decide it must be because Copernicus got into trouble.
4. His work being called heretical by the Church must have happened.
5. His previous tomb must not have been worthy and no doubt denied a Catholic burial.
6. Write story using this narrative.

Factchecking is obviously not part of most reporters work flow or so it also seems for editors.  After all it is so plausible from the secular point of view.

• He published De Revolutionbus at the end of his life because of the worry about what other scholars would say.
• No evidence he worried about Church reaction and De Revolutionibus was published under the auspices of a Catholic bishop and dedicated to Pope Paul III.
• At the time he died the no Church official had anything negative to say about his work, in fact it met praise. Cardinal Schonberg urged him to publish his discovery.
• He was buried in Frombork cathedral and there was a plaque saying he was buried there – but not the exact location he was buried.
• He was reburied in the exact same spot he was originally buried 500 years ago.

So I guess the accurate part of the story is that they spelled his name right.

Catholic Culture has an excellent article on this , which I liberally stole from, where they also mention:

There is a grain of truth to the notion that Church authorities were suspicious of Copernicus during his lifetime. At one point he was suspected of keeping a mistress; later he was suspected of Lutheran sympathies. But his scientific work never caused him any conflict with the Church.

Copernicus Catholic background is rather interesting in that his family was rather devout and he got his degree in Canon Law, but went on to practice medicine while serving the poor gratis. There is no documentary evidence that he ever received Holy Orders, but his name was found on a list of candidates for bishop and at one time became administrator of the diocese after the bishop died. His more accurate observations were sent to Paul III and were later used in the Gregorian Calendar reform. The opposition to Copernicus’s work first started among a Protestant pamphleteer.

Last year the new Element 112 was name Copernicium.

Update: I am not of course surprised by ignorant secular reporters and I guess I should not be surprised at the equally ignorant National Catholic Reporter.  Eventually, we get it right: burying Copernicus.  Tom Roberts uses his “Church got it wrong” narrative to advance dissident theology.  Sorry Tom, you got it wrong.

Diogenes puts it succinctly.

So the Knights of Columbus won’t go further than the bishops go. If the bishop hasn’t excommunicated Senator Mengele, the Knights won’t suspend his membership. If the bishops say it’s OK, it’s OK with the Knights.

So if the K of C had been active in England in the 1530s, following the same policies, would they have followed their bishops’ lead in accepting the title of King Henry VIII as legitimate head of the Church in England? Or would they have supported a lonely layman who rejected that claim?

Thomas More, you will recall, was a Knight– although not of Columbus. Today he’s generally known by another title, having gained membership in a still more elite fraternity