The Wonder: A Review - If You Hate the Irish, You'll Love This Film

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 2.25 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT/SEE IT. Some solid performances and beautiful cinematography are tainted by the film’s Hollywood narrative and truly ugly anti-Irish ideology.

The Wonder, directed by Sebastian Lelio and written by Alice Birch and Emma Donoghue based on Donoghue’s novel of the same name, is a new Netflix film that tells the story of an English nurse sent to a rural Irish town in 1862 to investigate the supposed miracle of a young girl who hasn’t eaten in four months.

The nurse, Elizabeth “Lib” Wright (Florence Pugh), must struggle against patriarchal forces, local custom, and deeply-ingrained religious belief to try and find the truth about what exactly is happening to Anna O’Donnell (Kila Lord Kassidy), the allegedly miraculous young girl.

The Wonder has a lot of things going for it in attempting to keep me interested. First of all, the film stars Florence Pugh, an actress of great talent and skill who thus far has never failed to impress me. Even in the recent cinematic disaster that was Don’t Worry Darling, Pugh delivered a worthy performance. No small feat in such a bad movie.

Secondly, my grandfather grew up in an impossibly tiny, rural village in County Mayo in the West of Ireland which was very close to the town of Knock. Knock, for those who don’t know, is a religious shrine and place of pilgrimage because in 1879 apparitions of the Virgin Mary, St. Joseph and St. John the Baptist all appeared to a group of villagers.

The Catholic Church has long since put its stamp of approval on the Knock incident and such notables as Pope John Paul II, Pope Francis, Mother Teresa and arguably the most Holy and most notable Catholic of all, me, have visited the shrine.

The Wonder reminds of the mystery at Knock because of the question of religious validity at the heart of its narrative as well as the rural and somewhat foreboding and forbidding nature of the setting.

All of this is to say that The Wonder had me intrigued simply from its premise, but unfortunately it makes certain choices, some odd, some predictable, some rather vicious and ignorant, that greatly diminishes its value.

For example, the film opens with the shot of a movie soundstage accompanied by a voice-over telling viewers “This is the beginning of a film called The Wonder. The people you are about to meet, the characters, believe in their stories with complete devotion. We are nothing without stories. And so we invite you to believe in this one.”

The camera then turns its attention to a movie set populated by actors, and through voice-over the narrator sets the scene telling us that its 1862 and English nurse Elizabeth Wright is headed to Ireland and the story begins…but not without a small comment that speaks volumes about the film’s ugly ideology – but more on that later.

I found this attempt at an unorthodox artistic opening to be painfully patronizing and distracting as it needlessly creates a hurdle to suspending disbelief while speaking down to its audience. The detached narrator later resurfaces in the film but not enough for it to be profound or to make any sort of narrative or artistic sense.

Once the actual story begins, we are treated to two positive things, firstly, Florence Pugh once again proves her worth as she gives a very solid performance as the lead “Lib”.

The rest of the cast all do solid work as well, with Brian F. O’Byrne, Ciaran Hinds, and Toby Jones doing dutiful work in supporting roles. Kila Lord Cassidy is also good as the young girl in question, Anna.

In addition to the acting, the film is beautifully shot by cinematographer Ari Wegner, who makes the most of the Irish setting and the candlelit era. Wegner scored an Oscar nomination for her work on The Power of the Dog last year and I wouldn’t be surprised if she snags another this year with The Wonder.

The problem though is that the window dressing of Wegner’s crisp and luscious cinematography and Pugh’s pointed performance are overshadowed by the smug, deplorable politics of the film and the pedestrian nature of its narrative, which ultimately spirals into preposterousness and banality.  

I’ll refrain from going too much further into the plot of The Wonder so as to avoid spoilers and conserve the viewing experience for those interested, but I will say that the Hollywood nature of the narrative ultimately fails to live up to the artistry of Pugh and Wegner.

The surface politics of the film are predictably trite with the usual misandry and anti-religious (more accurately anti-Catholic) sentiments of our vacuous era front and center. Pugh’s “Lib”, like every female protagonist nowadays, struggles against the all-powerful patriarchy which infects the entirety of the world with its singular evil. Yawn.

To give an indication of the film’s intellectual vapidity and political crudeness, “Lib” is the female “liberator” – how subtle - trying to free a young woman, Anna, from the grips of backwards Irish-Catholicism and bring her to a progressive utopia. Eye roll.

As formulaic as the ‘patriarchy as villain’ storyline is, the thing that really repulses is the unabashed anti-Irishness of the film.

Now for that small but revealing voice-over comment I referred to earlier. It was made by the narrator at the tail end of the unorthodox opening to the film. The narrator explains that “Lib” is an Englishwoman traveling to Ireland while the potato famine of the previous decade is tapering off, and then we are told with a seemingly straight face that “The Irish hold the English responsible for that devastation.” Ummm…No shit. “The Irish hold the English responsible for that devastation” BECAUSE THE ENGLISH WERE RESPONSIBLE FOR THAT DEVASTATION!

What makes it even worse is that the narrative of the film is such that it doesn’t just minimize The Great Hunger, which killed a million Irish and displaced twice as many, its sub-text is that the famine was the fault of the Irish – to the point of being their choice. I mean, this is a story about a girl who doesn’t eat – and thus may be starving herself for ulterior motives. That’s pretty explicitly saying the Irish are liars responsible for their own starvation – which is obviously historically wholly inaccurate.

Imagine if a film about Jews in Europe in 1948 opened with a voice-over stating that in regards to the Holocaust “Jews hold Nazis responsible for that devastation” and then dramatized how Jews were actually the ones who caused the Holocaust, and the protagonist is a Nazi sent to liberate a Jew from other Jews. Or a film about former slaves in the American South in the wake of the Civil War describing slavery with “blacks hold white southerners responsible for that devastation”, and then dramatized that blacks were actually responsible for slavery and a white Southerner is the intelligent protagonist trying to free a black man from stupid and backward black people.

People in our current culture of outrage would be apoplectic at such an insidious and insipid twisting of history being imposed on those two groups that are officially-approved as victims. But with the Irish no one bats an eye at their attempted extermination first being downplayed and then actually blamed on them.

The Netflix show The Crown is currently getting some heat because Queen Elizabeth II recently died and they aren’t being adequately respectful to her or something, but The Wonder minimizes and Brit-washes the genocide of the Irish, and then blames the Irish for it, and no one says a word. Yes, let’s respect the Queen, symbol of British colonialism that murdered millions not just in Ireland but across the globe, and let’s portray these victims of the British Empire, like the Irish, as the true brutal monsters who brought the horrors upon themselves. Insane.

The Wonder maintains this aggressive anti-Irish attitude throughout, portraying the Irish as a cruel, backwards, barbaric and utterly savage people with Lib being the English voice of reason/saviour.

The film, not surprisingly, does the same with Catholicism. Of course, audiences are so conditioned to hate the Catholic Church in modern film (and culture) that I doubt anyone will care. And to be clear, it’s not like the Catholic Church over the years hasn’t dutifully earned the scorn it receives. It’s just that singling out a specific religion as an abominable institution, while whitewashing the evils of the British Empire, is a bit much and feels ever so slightly hypocritical.

Director Sebastian Lelio, a Chilean, may very well be ignorant of the history of Ireland, the British responsibility for the genocide of The Great Hunger and for centuries of violence and oppression across the globe. But if you’re going to make a movie about Ireland you might want to read up a bit on the place and the people. Lelio’s ignorance is on him. And if it isn’t ignorance, and if he really thinks this way, then that says more about his moral and ethical depravity than it does about the Irish and Catholicism.

The film’s co-writer Emma Donoghue, who authored the book it’s based upon, is an Irish woman. Her take on Ireland, the Great Hunger, and the relationship with the English is stunning for its imbecility. Donoghue’s Irish self-loathing is no doubt fueled by her having grown up a lesbian in Ireland, which at the time was a robust Catholic country. I assume that wasn’t easy, but hating Catholicism for its sins is still no excuse to ignore history and reflexively lick English boots.

It's fascinating to see Lelio and Donoghue’s hierarchy of beliefs play out in real time in their movie. I’ve no doubt both are devout liberals and believe they are profoundly expressing those beliefs with this story. But their blind spot is that they’ve placed anti-Catholicism, and by extension anti-Irishness, higher on their hierarchy than anti-British colonialism, which is both astonishing and revealing. This choice speaks to the current tortured state of the bourgeois, capitalism-addicted liberal mind and its accompanying depraved and trans-actional morals and ethics.

Despite the rancid ideology of the film, The Wonder is bursting with cinematic possibilities, but unfortunately the potential complexity of the premise is scuttled on the rocks of simplicity due to acute artistic vacuity and story-telling conventionality.

To the film’s credit, it did keep me captivated for a good portion of its 103-minute run time, but ultimately left me deeply dramatically and narratively unsatisfied at the end. In addition, it’s aggressive anti-Irishness left me aggravated and agitated.

The Irish have been through a lot through the years, from conquest to occupation to subjugation to discrimination to genocide to civil war to terrorism and all the rest. We’ve survived it all, and goodness knows we’ll survive some rather forgettable anti-Irish movie streaming on Netflix too.

©2022

The Existential Catholic Crisis

Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes 66 seconds

I was born and raised a Catholic. I am of that particular guilt-ridden strain of Catholicism known as Irish Catholicism. I wouldn't say I am a devout Catholic or even a good one, in fact, I am a pretty terrible Catholic...but I am still a Catholic. I have had a tumultuous and often-times tenuous relationship with the church throughout my adult life, an example of which is that I would often, in a futile attempt to be witty, tell people I was raised Catholic but that it was in remission.

In 2002, the revelations of priests buggering boys in Boston (my home parish at one point in time - I even met Cardinal Law once...he was a pompous ass and his breath smelled demonic...I am not kidding) erupted as a cataclysmic scandal, but having grown up in the church I knew for a long time something was seriously amiss, and thus that sex abuse scandal came not as a shock to me but as confirmation of my hunches.

SYMPTOMS

Why did I suspect that something was deeply wrong in the Catholic church? Well, for starters, nearly every priest I ever met was a horrible human being. I don't mean they were bad priests, which they were, but bad people.

An example, in my Catholic high school the lone priest there among the nuns was Father Hughes. Father Hughes was a flamboyantly gay man who obviously joined the priesthood in order to escape the perceived demon of his sexuality. How do I know Father Hughes was gay? Well...there were some dead giveaways...for one he was a walking stereotype to the point of caricature of a gay man most signified by his pronounced and audacious lisp and mannered style of speech. Another sign was that he often wore a satin black cape with a pink interior and described this signature fashion choice as being "understated elegance". Another solid clue was that he had a schoolboy crush on the star of the basketball team...so much so that he bought the young man, who was a very devout Catholic and a genuinely good guy, a car for graduation. Yes...you read that right...Father Hughes, who wasn't exactly rolling in dough as a priest at a Catholic high school, bought a male student a car for his graduation. Part of how I knew something was terribly amiss in the Catholic church is that no one, not a single person, said anything about this oddity at all. There were quizzical glances exchanged, but no one dare say aloud what they were really thinking if they even let themselves think it.

The thing that really struck me most about Father Hughes was that he was a vicious and mean spirited man. As stated, it was obvious Hughes was gay, but he would go out of his way to torment and torture the boys in school who seemed effeminate. This was the late 80's, so no one was "out" as gay at my school, but there were plenty of kids who "seemed" gay and sure enough in later years came out as gay, but in high school they were just struggling to survive being different. Father Hughes would constantly and brutally belittle them and mock their masculinity. It was a glaring case of the pot calling the kettle black...but no one said or did anything...most especially the coterie of nuns, many of whom had their own glaring issues...like the principle of the school who took a vow of poverty but bought a new Cadillac, earning her the well-earned and accurate nickname of Sister Anna Cadillac.

After Father Hughes left my school he went to another parish and proceeded to either overspend or steal, depending on who you believe, to the tune of nearly a million dollars....like I said, a good guy. After Hughes was abruptly replaced, the Church claimed that there were no criminal acts committed in this financial debacle, but as we know the Church never likes to admit scandal when it can be swept under the rug.

Father Hughes wasn't alone though, as the vast majority of priests I have known have been total sons of bitches and not even remotely resembling good ambassadors of Christ here on earth. They were all petty, vindictive and arrogant bastards who were the antithesis of Christ's teachings. The exceptions are the ones who have stood out, men like Father Ken, Father LeRoy and Father Felipe, all kindhearted and genuinely decent men...the rest of the priests I have known have all carved out a special place in hell for themselves.

Besides being terrible people, the majority of priests I have met are also more than likely gay...now that doesn't mean they are terrible because they are gay, just that they are simultaneously terrible and gay. Which brings us back to the scandals. The thing that is often muddied in regards to the Catholic church sex abuse scandals is that the majority of the incidents are not pedophilia where priests are abusing little children. The majority of sex abuse has been perpetrated upon males (81%) and the overwhelming majority of those abused boys have been older (adolescent/pre-teen) boys. The fact that most victims of abuse are adolescent boys is a terribly uncomfortable one for more liberal Catholics (and liberal people in general) who are disposed to view any question of a priest's homosexuality as a homophobic attack and who reflexively defend gay people for instinctual identity/tribal reasons.

DISEASE

I consider myself a Thomas Merton/Dorothy Day/Anthony DeMello Catholic, and so for years I have been lumped in as a "liberal Catholic". But after years and years of these scandals from Boston to Baltimore to Ireland, Australia and Mexico and everywhere in between, I think that the labels liberal and conservative Catholic no longer apply...there are only Catholics who are brave enough to see the truth and do something about it, or there are Catholics who prefer the warm embrace of their own self-satisfying and often self-righteous echo chamber.

I greatly disliked Pope John Paul II and found his canonization to be a repugnant public relations move because he was, in fact, an accomplice to sex abuse when he turned a blind eye to it, just as he did with the sins of American capitalism. John Paul II's vehement anti-communism forced him to be blind to the spiritual cancer of American capitalism and also caused him to accept the atrocities committed at the behest of America (El Salvador/Nicaragua etc.) even against his own priests and nuns, in order to be stalwart against the Soviet Union.

I also disliked Pope Benedict, as I found him to be little more than a garish hypocrite as he, like Father Hughes, was obviously as gay as Liberace but was vehemently opposed to homosexuality in the world.

I like Pope Francis, at least in theory. When Pope Francis came to the U.S. in 2015 and spoke at the Capitol building, he mentioned four people, two of which were Thomas Merton and Dorothy Day (the others were Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr.), two people that some American Catholics consider at best unworthy and at worst heretics, but that I greatly admire. Pope Francis seemed to bring a new energy and light into the Vatican upon his arrival and I welcomed that breath of fresh air.

But now more revelations of sex abuse and scandal are coming into the light and Pope Francis's reaction to them and complicity in them is genuinely disheartening and demoralizing.

The first story to break was the rampant, career long sexual abuse by Cardinal "Uncle Teddy" McCarrick, who sexually abused both adolescent boys and seminarians. McCarrick was eventually forced to resign, but since the Vatican has known about his shenanigans for decades, this was little salve for the wound. It has also come to light that Pope Francis went above and beyond to protect McCarrick even though he was well aware of his depravity.

The other story was the grand jury report in Pittsburgh which revealed rampant and systematic sexual abuse and cover-up by the Diocese for decades. Sadly, Pittsburgh, like Boston and Ireland and Australia and countless other places, was rife with sexual predators and Bishops who aided and abetted their predation. I am willing to bet that if you look hard enough at any Diocese in the world, you will find the same level of depravity as has been proven to exist in Boston and Pittsburgh.

The most disheartening part about the Pittsburgh revelations was that the Church in response basically said..."oh well". The Bishop who was integral to the Pittsburgh scandal is now Cardinal Wuertz, and sure enough he is still a Cardinal and will face no recriminations. Pope Francis has paid lip service by asking for forgiveness...but not demanding accountability or making genuine change.

Pope Francis seemed as though he may very well be the man to turn the church around and root out the abusers and enablers but with the McCarrick and Pittsburgh scandals has proven himself to be a feckless charlatan...which pains my heart to say. 

This current crop of scandals has hit me where I live as just this past spring, after much strenuous soul searching, I decided, in no small part because of my optimism regarding Pope Francis, to have my son baptized in the Catholic church. I realize that most readers will find this decision at best misguided and at worst insane, I understand the sentiment, but for me at this time, after going through the greatest battle of my life in which I found great solace, guidance and strength in prayer and was on the receiving end of some outright miracles (a word I don't use hyperbolically), I felt a great spiritual and religious renaissance in my spirit. I wanted to share with my son the same connection to the God who, through his infinite mercy, had given us the glorious life we now share.

As more and more of the cancer on the soul of the Church and on St. Peter's throne in the Vatican has been revealed in the last few weeks, I have grown to regret ever more deeply my decision to have my son baptized a Catholic. Even after all the scandals that is a difficult thing for me to admit to myself. As an Irish Catholic, my Catholicism isn't just religious but cultural. In my lifetime fellow Irishmen and women were murdered simply for being Catholic and breaking my solidarity with those Irish martyrs is gut-wrenching.

DIAGNOSIS

The reason the Church is in such decline amidst the turmoil is because it has lost touch with the masculine. Yes, I know most liberal Catholics will be angry with that statement, claiming the Church is in decline because of the Patriarchy...but I vehemently disagree. The Church has been overrun in its ranks by self-loathing gay men who are trying to hide from the truth of their sexuality. These gay men are more in touch with the feminine than the masculine, which certainly isn't a crime but it is the truth. The lack of true masculinity in the Church has led to a feminization of Catholicism that is speeding its decline. The closeted gay men who make up the vast majority of the priesthood are not able to speak to the masculine needs of the men in their flock and so men have stopped going to church.

These gay priests are also, it seems, less able to contain their sexuality than their heterosexual counterparts, or at least less able to contain them around adolescents. This is not only unfortunate in terms of the scandals it creates for the Church but also that it feeds into the stereotypes used for decades by homophobes to discriminate against and punish gay people. But with that said, as much as I dislike coming to this conclusion, the evidence certainly supports it. To be clear, I am not repeating the old homophobic trope that all gay men are predators, but what I am saying is that most of the predator priests are gay...or to be more precise...these predator priests are distorted, contorted and tortured versions of gay men. It pains me to come to this conclusion because frankly, I support gay rights and gay marriage and wish the reality of the Church sex abuse scandals isn't what it is...but it is what it is.

There has long been talk of a Lavender Mafia within the Church and as the sex abuse scandals have come to light that belief has only strengthened as Bishops, Archbishops and Cardinals all sided with predatory priests over the children in the pews. One can only assume that these priests, Bishops, Archbishops and Cardinals were looking out for one another because they all had a secret that they believed to be so terrible that they couldn't come clean about anyone else for fear of their secret being revealed.

The conundrum for the Church is that their own teaching on homosexuality no doubt led to the scapegoating of homosexuals which in turn led some to want to hide their sexuality in the closet to try and escape the "wickedness" of their sexuality and found a way to do that by becoming celibate priests. Sadly, many of these closeted gay men were so emotionally, sexually and psychologically stunted that they were unable to abide by their vow of celibacy and instead have used their positions as priests to prey upon young men and boys.

There are those, like Father James Martin, who claim that the Church should modernize in regards to homosexuality and he blames the scandals on the Church's archaic view of homosexuality. I think Martin is blinded by his own plight (and sexuality) and therefore refuses to the see truth that is staring him in the face.

TREATMENT

As previously stated, I consider myself a Thomas Merton/Dorothy Day type of Catholic, which most would label as being a "liberal Catholic", but my response to the sex scandals will probably alienate both liberal Catholics and conservatives alike. If the Church is to survive in any relevant form, people must put aside the politics of religion and instead look for the Truth and solutions.

Unlike my liberal Catholic cohorts, I do not think allowing women to be priests will help, as I believe that it is a lack of genuine masculinity that has caused this scandal in the first place.  I think women are vital to the Church's survival and success, but I think the role of nuns should be expanded rather than women being allowed to become priests. I can see my dearest friend Sheila cringing as she reads this...my apologies Sheila...but I think at this time the addition of female priests would end up being catastrophic to the church in the long run. I think the Church needs to do less watering down of masculinity and more bulking up.

The solution to the Catholic Church's existential crisis will not come about by liberals defeating conservatives or vice versa...both sides have legitimate grievances and insights. Here is a list of things that I think not only should happen but need to happen for the Catholic Church to have any chance to survive and maybe even be relevant again, in a post-Christian era.

1. All offending priests AND Bishops, Archbishops and Cardinals who aided and abetted them, should be held accountable and jailed either by the jurisdiction where the crimes took place or by the Vatican itself (yes, the Vatican has a jail, albeit a tiny one). At the end of their prison terms they should be at a minimum defrocked and at a maximum ex-communicated, depending on the level of their contrition and penance.

2. The U.S. government and/or any local communities, should use the RICO statute to prosecute sexual offenders and those in power who cover up for them. The use of RICO (the statue used against organized crime to bring down mafia dons) will be accompanied by threat of a loss of tax exempt status for the Church if their is not cooperation from the hierarchy up to and including The Vatican. If you want to make the Vatican jump, you threaten their tax exempt status and they'll do whatever you tell them to.

3. All new priest hires must be heterosexual. These new priests are eligible to marry and in fact the best route for the Church to take is to hire men who are already married. Doing this will expand the ranks of priesthood tremendously and will in short order revitalize the priesthood and seminaries. The moratorium on hiring gay priests will not be permanent, but is a necessary ill right now in order to bring more balance back into the priesthood/church in terms of masculinity. Eventually in the future openly gay priests will be hired but again they must swear to be celibate in order to keep with Catholic doctrine. Heterosexual priests not already married must remain celibate until marriage.

4. The Church must compel any active priests who are gay to come forward and be open about their sexuality. These priests will retain their positions and will not be discriminated against in anyway. By compelling gay priests to come forward, the Church will be taking a giant step toward minimizing the stigma of being gay in a Catholic community, which is what has led to the aberrant behavior by so many gay priests. The Church will still uphold its current teaching on homosexuality, but it will be recognizing, embracing and protecting the dignity of gay people. The Church will not allow gay priests to marry and will not allow gay parishioners to marry in keeping with Church doctrine. Gay priests will also have to take and keep a vow of celibacy.

5. Any violation of sexual oaths or vows by any priest, regardless of sexual orientation, will result in a review by a board of lay people not connected to that particular parish. The same will be true for Bishops and Cardinals, who if they are accused will be vigorously investigated by an outside panel of independent lay investigators who will have the Church equivalent of subpoena power.

6. The Catholic Church must clean out clericalism thoroughly or burn the place to the ground. The Church can still be salvaged but it requires a complete overhaul...it must both simultaneously modernize and yet embrace its traditionalism. Modernize by allowing heterosexual priests to marry and homosexual priests to be openly gay but celibate in keeping with church doctrine and dogma. Also...a return to the Traditional Latin Mass in all parishes on Sundays where half the masses should be in Latin. Why a partial return to the Latin Mass? Well, because it brings a cohesiveness to the Church across the globe, where you could walk into any Church anywhere in the world on any given Sunday and hear the Mass in the same language. Again, this is not a total return, but partial...maybe the 8 AM mass in Latin and the 11 in the native language of the parish. A return to the Latin Mass will also reconnect Catholicism with mystery and sacredness.

7. And finally...a return to a vigorous embrace of education of Catholic values and history. I was raised Catholic and went to Catholic high school and yet my religious education was abominable. The paucity of true Catholic religious teaching is a scandal in and of itself. The Church should embark on a rigorous campaign to educate not only children but ADULTS on the substance of Catholic teaching. Ironically the Church needs to make it harder rather than easier, which will give the Church and Catholic teaching back its value. If Catholicism asks its adherents to make a strenuous commitment to the faith, it will become a sanctuary from the world where easy choices sap the spiritual strength of more and more people everyday. The Church has become little more than another bit of soft white noise in a chaotic world. By making itself into an antidote to the world, being in it but not of it, the Church can once again find its sea legs and be a pillar upon which the suffering, the downtrodden, the frightened and the alone can find strength and community.

CONCLUSION

Sadly, it is highly unlikely that the Church will do even one never mind all of these things. The Church has grown fat and decadent, not unlike America, and just like America it too will crumble under the weight of its own hubris. Clericalism is devouring the Church as the Pharisees are alive and well and living in rectories in every parish in the world.

The Catholic Church must remove its satin cape with the pink interior, toss away its elegance, understated or otherwise, and get some men with chests among its ranks in order to save itself. If it doesn't do this the Church will fade into oblivion among the plethora of feel good capitalist, faux-Christian/New Age alternatives.

My hope is that after the purging and cleansing of the toxic elements in the church that a more Mertonesque and spiritually serious type of church can grow in its wake. A Church built on service not clericalism, humility not arrogance, for the poor and not the wealthy. The Catholic church needs to be a church of the gutter instead of being a Church with gutter values. The Catholic church at its best is a church of skid row, not wall street, in other words...a church that reflects Christ.

The Church will either drastically change or it will die. The church has alienated true masculinity, and if it doesn't change course, it will reap the whirlwind and collapse in upon itself into the void created by that lack of masculinity.

As for me, these recent scandals have me so furious I am tempted to go to all of my local parishes and pull a Jesus and toss the money changers and the asshole priests out of the temple. The truth is though that I have little hope or faith in the Catholic hierarchy to change things and do the right thing because the rot is so deep, but as I can attest, miracles do occur. You never know, maybe I will be named Pope Mickey in 2019, I've gotten some bumper stickers made up in English and Italian just in case an election takes place (fingers crossed!). But if my run for the Papacy falls through, I have found a Coptic church and an Orthodox church near where I live, and they are in very serious contention to be my new religious home.

©2018