Warning: The images and text contained in this article may offend some readers.
"The Sin" or "Copulation between former Cardinal Cesare Borgia and a prostitute, 30 October 1501" and other titles, by Heinrich Lossow (1843-1897).
Heinrich Lossow was a German-born genre painter, illustrator, and pornographer who specialized in depictions of analingus and other non-mainstream sexual proclivities, especially those practiced amongst religious leaders and society's "betters"; hardly shocking by today's standards but outstanding in the context of art history. The vast majority of classical artists, at least until World War I after which time art jettisoned its earlier commitment to aestheticism in favour of nihilism and ugliness, lusted after fat commissions for religious works contracted mainly by the Catholic Church. Lossow, however, thumbed his nose at propriety in favour of exposing the clergy as fallible, corrupt, and, frankly, disgusting. He would be hailed as a social crusader today.
When Shakespear's Hamlet advised Ophelia to "Get thee to a nunnery," he surely realized that such venues were hotbeds for lesbianism, gay sex, drunkenness and debauchery, and pretty much every purloined pleasure in between. These were the places where gender-challenged Baccus went after Rome fell and Christianity decided how and when its cisgender clients might fornicate. Since the Bogia and Medici popes ascended the Throne of Peter, only their money and military power, augmented by the papal police (think: ISIS), silenced public criticism of widespread sexual molestion prevalent throughout the network of churches, convents, and monasteries scattered throughout the Papal States and across the colonial world.
The fact that today's Roman Catholic Church, as well as some lesser institutions, have been compelled to pay out hundreds of millions in child sexual abuse lawsuit settlements is evidence that, at least in the opinion of civil courts, sexual abuse by clergy exists on a very broad scale. Nonetheless, under the Paycheck Protection Program in the USA, the Biden administration repayed some $3 billion to the American Catholic Church, more than covering fines levied by the courts as settlements to victims of clergy sexual abuse. In other words, the American taxpayer absorbed the penalty for clergy abusing its own children. Few if any clerics have served jail time for their offenses.
Like the banks, Boeing, automakers, and the weapons industry, the big corporate churches are deemed too big to allow to fail.
Are they really happier?
Jordan Peterson, among other pop psycologists, tells us that people who have religion in their lives are, as a rule, happier than those without any faith. A faith-based world view puts a lot of throny questions to rest so that its adherents can focus on the nitty-gritty of putting bread on the table which has always been a prerequisite for everything that follows. While this may be true as per opinion polls and anecdotal evidence proffered by aspiring right-wing political leaders like J.D. Vance, it fails to take into account millions of so-called Recovering Catholics, persons whose experience of religion has been so grating as to consider themselves as genuine victims of crime. The ranks of "fallen away" Catholics are numerically larger than all the Protestant sects combined, evidencing a rather impressive inflow and outflow of clientele.
Like Islam, and practically all other cults, the Christian sects rely on indoctrinating children from day one. In Latin countries, the first blurry image a newborn perceives while emerging from the vaginal canal is a black-clad figure, either priest or nun, waving a crucifix in its face. Crucifixion is not a joyous experience, but a painful and gruesome form of execution. Like newly hatched ducks imprinting on and following the first thing they see, we follow the cross or, perhaps, the crescent.
A guilt complex is then instilled in the growing child. His/her sins put Jesus on that cross, therefore he/she must spend a lifetime atoning for that outrage. It's called Original Sin, alluding to the sins of the fathers visited on the sons. From here springs the classical definition of injustice and from it the intergenerational aspect of atonement and revenge.
Of course, going against the system has had its consequences throughout the ages.
In the words of American economist Thomas Sowell, "There are no solutions, only tradeoffs." The tradeoff here involves a lifelong commitment to an insurance policy that only pays out in the Afterlife, a rather sketchy proposition at best. Keep paying into the system, then see if you are rewarded by looking into the face of God for all eternity (which could get really boring, especially toward the end), or else roasting on a spit while being basted with shit. Miss a payment and, well, God isn't nearly as mercilful as one might think. Try to explain that to a newly hatched fetus as its furry head emerges from the vaginal canal.
Islam is hardly more congenial. It offers its male adherents the option of blowing themselves into millions of miniscule bits of greasy protoplasm on the promise of a reward of 72 virgins which the martyr will endeavour to deflower 100 times each morning for eternity. Go ahead and do the math. It doesn't add up but what about Islam does add up? Islam has been labelled "The motherlode of bad ideas" for good reason.
“It was narrated by Abu Nu’aym in Sifatul-Jannah (the description of Paradise), and by Adh-Dhiyaa’ in Sifatul-Jannah as well, from At-Tabaraani with a chain of narrators from Husayn ibn ‘Ali al-Ju’fi, from Zaa'idah, from Hishaam ibn Hassaan, from Muhammed ibn Seereen, from Abu Hurayrah that he said, ‘The Messenger of Allah was asked, ‘Will we have sexual intercourse with our wives in Jannat (Paradise)..?’
“He answered, ‘Yes, by the One in Whose Hand my soul is, a man will have sexual intercourse with 100 virgins in one morning.’” – (Reference: As-Silsilah As-Saheehah, no. 367)
For women martyrs, however, like everything else in Islam, it's a zero-sum game.
What is evident is that Islamists put the Catholic clergy to shame when it comes to sexual abuse of girls, women, and, yes, boys. Dramatic displays of public outrage hardly cover the fact that all fundamentalist Islamic movements from Hezbollah to Hamas to ISIS are homocentric and homoerotic in nature.
The Snake Charmer (1880) by Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824–1904). Clark Art Institute collection.
In the Islamic world, one is invited to indulge their homoerotic fantasies only within certain prescribed boundaries and venues; otherwise, anyone caught engaged in what Heinrich Lossow depicted in his paintings is advised to take out sudden fall insurance.
Queers for Palestine? Good luck with that!
Unverified images posted online by ISIS supporters of a man accused of homosexuality being tossed from a building in Fallujah, Iraq, on November 23, 2015. (Source: CBS News). Over three dozen men in Syria and Iraq are known to have been executed by ISIS militants on charges of sodomy.
Now if Israeli forces don't quit taking out Hamas and Hezbollah leaders esconced in Afterlife-quality luxury suites in Beirut, Qatar, and Tehran, homoeroticism may go out of Islam and all that pent-up, testosterone-driven angst will have nowhere to focus. Might something even worse take its place? Would peace in the Middle East then become a possibility?
If any reader has ever been sexually and/or violently abused by clergy of any religious persuasion, they likely have little sympathy for these deviants. I know that I don't. Internet Archive recently sent me an email alert that it had some scanned high school yearbooks in its vault and invited me to peruse them.
And suddenly, there he was: my former Honors English teacher who introduced me to systematized torture. The drill was to bend face down over a wooden desk while he paddled your arse (caning is considered cruel and unusual punishment in Western countries), all the while grinning and dribbling saliva all over his starched white "Quaker" bib. There were many other perverts in that institution while his favourite punishment - usually inflicted for missing points on pop quizes that he'd engineered to garner maximum errors - was relatively mild by comparison. Three whacks for arriving late for class.
Image source: Internet Archive and Loadmaster (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0 Licence
Heck, I'd seriously consider joining ISIS if they'd allow me to throw that cassocked pervert from the rooftop of our old school, or any school. Or maybe the Eiffel Tower, the way that France is going these days.
Details of what may have transpired amongst these sanctified pedophiles back in their communal residence would have delighted Heinrich Lossow. The mystery is: how was it they managed to pull the wool over our parents' eyes for so long? If it's any comfort, which to me it isn't, the Christian Brothers went bankrupt over sexual abuse lawsuit payouts, both in Ireland and North America. My old school closed its doors without explanation in the late 1960s when the shitstorm over child sexual abuse began to gather steam.
"Nine other brothers and two laymen also are named in the suit: Dennis Bonebreak, Robert Brouillette, Edmund Corrigan, Thomas Duffin, C.B. Irwin, Daniel McDonnough, Paul Reycraft, Michael Trujillo and Pillip Vorlick. The suit also named football coach Joe Johnston and wrestling coach Rober Cachor. Johnston died in 1987. Cachor retired in 1998 [he denied the allegations]" - Source: Chicago Tribune via Jeff Anderson & Associates
These two scorpions slapped my bare arse with gusto, but were not named in the sexual abuse lawsuits cited herein, and therefore shall remain unidentified. Perhaps some elderly readers recognize their faces, having experienced their stings.
Envision a school locker room filled with some thirty raucous 14-year old boys changing out of their gym shorts back into the de rigueur school uniform (slacks, shirt, tie), daisy fresh and glistening from the showers, some sporting the inevitable hard-on typical of adolescent males. The above coaches forbade all talking in the locker room, a ploy designed to impose their version of homoerotic discipline. At least once each week, we were stripped naked and ordered to bend over double (arse in the air) in a line while one or both of these perverts whacked our bare arses with a thick hardwood paddle or, at other times, their bare hands. It's impossible to walk or even move without agony after each session. The individual on the left has since died. The one on the right was the school wresting coach.
From our high school yearbook.
Why are physical education classes, and especially wrestling, such a magnet for sexual deviants? For the answer, go ask Representative Jim Jordan (R-Ohio).
What do all religions have in common?
That's a no-brainer. What all religions have in common is the institutionalized mistreatment of women, girls, and boys, and the promotion of deviants to positions of authority and power. Oh sure, there might be one or two small sects with clean hands out there, but I'd love to see the proof.
Pope Francis's predecessor, Benedict XVI, quit the papacy in the midst of a world-wide sexual abuse of children scandal over which he, in a previous posting, had presided. To ass-u-me that things inside the Vatican are any different today would be complicity in what most decent human beings consider a gross outrage. But hey, are we going to pratter on forever about such mundane matters while the world tetters on the brink of thermonuclear Armageddon?
So, let's pose another question or, rather, just a what-if.
What if Pope Francis called a world summit at the Vatican and invited Hezbollah, Hamas, the Islamic Brotherhood, ISIS, and every other radical Islamist group listed in the telephone book, and invited them to make peace in the Middle East? What if he invited Presidents Zelensky and Putin to his gold and gemstone encrusted table? Backed by the enormous financial clout of the Catholic Church, how could anyone refuse to cooperate? Remember those Borgia and Medici popes with their mercenary armies and concubines? The Church may need to armour-up and acquire a few thousand drones of its own, but WTF; it's not like the Vatican doesn't have the money.
After all, the USA repaid all those child sexual abuse lawsuit settlements. Sadly, I didn't see a single penny of it. I hope those who suffered the worst have found a measure of comfort in those monetary settlements, although they couldn't pay me enough to forgive that degree of sin.
Some readers will surely call the foregoing homophobic or even Islamophobic. I really don't care.
To witness a priest abusing women and children, please click on this link.
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