Vatican City, Las Vegas

F. Rex’s ribald, allusive, and downright blasphemous graphic novel parodies the excesses of modern capitalist culture as it finds bathos and transcendence in a debased, Vatican-themed Las Vegas casino. With a colorful cast of characters that includes Thomas Carlyle as a down-on-his-luck drunkard, Karl Marx as an overweight vagrant donning a beer helmet, T.S. Eliot as an uptight casino-floor manager, and Jesus as an oppressed janitor, plus a dozen other characters too profane to mention, Vatican City, Las Vegas reads like a version of The Waste Land re-imagined by R. Crumb. Let’s hope that Philly’s slots parlors don’t turn out like this . . . though if they do, they might wind up being a lot more fun.

BILL DONOHUE: THE CATHOLIC LEAGUE’S ATTACK DOG

In December 2005, a reporter from the Washington Post asked the Catholic League’s president, William Donohue, if he was offended that President Bush’s season’s greetings card did not specifically mention Christmas.

“At first, it didn’t bother me,” Donohue recalled in a recent interview. “I said, ‘So what. All presidents have had cards like this.’”

But when told by the reporter that everyone from Franklin Delano Roosevelt to Bill Clinton had at least one Christmas card where they mentioned something religious, Donohue pounced.

The following day, in the Post’s page-one story, Donohue rebuked the most conspicuously Christian president in 25 years for not being Christian enough. “This clearly demonstrates that the Bush administration has suffered a loss of will and that they have capitulated to the worst elements in our culture,” he said in the article.

“Good Morning America” booked Donohue for an interview. And the next year, the Catholic League’s president received an invitation to the White House Christmas party.

“Basically, I got rewarded for attacking him,” Donohue happily concluded. “Here at the Catholic League, we’ll give you an opinion on the weather if you want it.”

It’s this ability to manufacture controversy that has brought a moribund advocacy group firmly into the black and turned Donohue into catnip for the press. For talk show bookers and reporters on deadline, he’s a never-ending sideshow who comes ever ready to hurl expressions of indignation and opprobrium at anyone who might have offended him. As prejudice against individual Catholics has receded, Donohue has simply turned up the volume, taking aim at everyone who questions the church’s official positions on homosexuality, abortion and birth control, lapsed Catholics included.

Last year, Donohue urged Sony to put a disclaimer at the beginning of “The Da Vinci Code.” Then came Madonna - “Just when I thought we’d gotten rid of her,” he lamented - who yanked his chain when she decided to sing part of her concert against a cross. Just before Christmas, Donohue chewed out the film producers Harvey and Bob Weinstein yet again for their decision to open the horror film “Black Christmas” on Jesus’ birthday. It’s at least the third time he’s attacked the filmmakers, the others being for the movies “Priest” and “Dogma.”

“It’s not so much the plot of ‘Black Christmas’ that bothers us,” Donohue told the New York Post’s Page Six. “It’s the fact that the Weinstein boys are back again, choosing a title and an opening date to make their latest statement.”

Matthew Hiltzik, a spokesman for the Weinsteins, said of Donohue: “He’s helpful to have. He raises money by getting his name in the paper, the movie gets press and the columnist gets an item. Everyone wins.”

But the same thing that keeps Donohue in the press prevents him from becoming truly respectable within the religious community, where his antics are a source of frequent consternation.

Mark Silk, director of the Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College said, “He’s a thug. He reverts to bullying because he thinks that’s what the job entails.”

Rev. Mark Massa, a Jesuit priest and co-director of the Curran Center for American Catholic Studies at Fordham University, accused Donohue of being unable to differentiate between healthy debate and real religious bigotry. “Not everyone who criticizes the church is anti-Catholic,” he said.

The editors at the Catholic weekly magazine America seem to agree. In 2000, they chastised Donohue for denouncing movies he hadn’t even watched. “While being first may increase one’s chances of attracting media attention, there is a danger that the Catholic League reinforces the stereotype that the Catholic Church is at best unreflective and at worst unfairly biased and paranoid,” wrote Rev. James Martin. “In the long run, this may do more harm to the church’s reputation than a short-lived movie or play.”

Effective immediately, Frameshop is calling for the following actions to be taken against Bill Donohue and his followers:

1. All Democratic and Republican Party leaders should jointly condemn the threats to sodomize, rape and murder of Amanda Marcotte by Bill Donohue and his followers.
2. The IRS should immediately investigate the non-profit status of Bill Donohue’s Catholic League under the suspicion that his organization has violated its 501(c)(3) status.
3. The Attorney General of the City of the New York should immediately inquire as to the connection between Bill Donohue’s and his followers who threatened to sodomize, rape and murder Amanda Marcotte.
4. The FBI should track down the men who issued the threats to sodomize, rape and murder Amanda Marcotte .
5. All media outlets must cease to invite Bill Donohue on the air.

I too am soooo excited!! I get goose bumps, literally, when I watch what’s going on in the M.E.!! And Watcherboy, you were so right when saying it was quite a day yesterday, in the world news, and I add in local news here in the Boston area!! Tunnel ceiling collapsed on a car and killed a woman of faith, and we had the most terrifying storms I have ever seen here!! But, yes, Ohappyday, like in your screen name , it is most indeed a time to be happy and excited, right there with ya!!

Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth. Let us reflect that it is inhabited by a thousand millions of people. That these profess probably a thousand different systems of religion. That ours is but one of that thousand. That if there be but one right, and ours that one, we should wish to see the 999 wandering sects gathered into the fold of truth. But against such a majority we cannot effect this by force. Reason and persuasion are the only practicable instruments. To make way for these, free enquiry must be indulged; and how can we wish others to indulge it while we refuse it ourselves.

But every state, says an inquisitor, has established some religion. No two, say I, have established the same. Is this a proof of the infallibility of establishments? Our sister states of Pennsylvania and New York, however, have long subsisted without any establishment at all. The experiment was new and doubtful when they made it. It has answered beyond conception. They flourish infinitely. Religion is well supported; of various kinds, indeed, but all good enough; all sufficient to preserve peace and order: or if a sect arises, whose tenets would subvert morals, good sense has fair play, and reasons and laughs it out of doors, without suffering the state to be troubled with it. They do not hang more malefactors than we do. They are not more disturbed with religious dissensions. On the contrary, their harmony is unparalleled, and can be ascribed to nothing but their unbounded tolerance, because there is no other circumstance in which they differ from every nation on earth. They have made the happy discovery, that the way to silence religious disputes, is to take no notice of them. Let us too give this experiment fair play, and get rid, while we may, of those tyrannical laws.

It is true, we are as yet secured against them by the spirit of the times. I doubt whether the people of this country would suffer an execution for heresy, or a three years imprisonment for not comprehending the mysteries of the Trinity. But is the spirit of the people an infallible, a permanent reliance? Is it government? Is this the kind of protection we receive in return for the rights we give up? Besides, the spirit of the times may alter, will alter. Our rulers will become corrupt, our people careless. A single zealot may commence persecutor, and better men be his victims. It can never be too often repeated, that the time for fixing every essential right on a legal basis is while our rulers are honest, and ourselves united. From the conclusion of this war we shall be going down hill. It will not then be necessary to resort every moment to the people for support. They will be forgotten, therefore, and their rights disregarded. They will forget themselves, but in the sole faculty of making money, and will never think of uniting to effect a due respect for their rights. The shackles, therefore, which shall not be knocked off at the conclusion of this war, will remain on us long, will be made heavier and heavier, till our rights shall revive or expire in a convulsion.

Tom, from Gaithersburg, MD writes:
Why doews huricane releief have to be “faith based”. Why can’t people withouth “faith” get huricane relief? Thomas Munro

Jim Towey:
Hi Tom. Just to be clear, people without faith are equally eligible to receive disaster assistance. There is not a “faith test” for aid. And people very devout in their faith or with no faith at all have been volunteering and helping serve hot meals to the hungry and house those without home. It has been marvelous to watch.

On this National Day of Prayer and Remembrance, we pledge ourselves to the demanding work of revival, and renew the faith and hope that will carry that work to completion. In the worst of storms, and in the rush of flood waters, even the strongest faith can be tested. Yet the Scriptures assure us, “many waters cannot quench love; neither can the floods drown it.”

So now we go forward, confident in the good heart of America, and trusting that even among the ruins, the love of God remains at work.

May God bless and keep the souls of the lost. May His love touch all those in need, and may He always watch over the United States of America. God bless.

– President George W. Bush, remarks at The National Day of Prayer and Remembrance Service

Through prayer we look for ways to understand the arbitrary harm left by this storm, and the mystery of undeserved suffering. And in our search we’re reminded that God’s purposes are sometimes impossible to know here on Earth. Yet even as we’re humbled by forces we cannot explain, we take comfort in the knowledge that no one is ever stranded beyond God’s care. The Creator of wind and water is also the source of even a greater power — a love that can redeem the worst tragedy, a love that is stronger than death.

joyce, from pa. writes:
Does the president realize that there are millions of us who love and respect him and his authority? It grieves me to hear such harsh words about our leaders and government that’s being said from anti- persons that has no respect for any thing or any one but their own personal gain. How sad it has become. I now have a new respect for Moses that tried to lead the children into the new promise land and all they did was grumble and fight blaming everyone but them selves every step of the way taking 40 years that didn’t have to be. keep up the good work and keep the faith

Jim Towey:
Joyce, I know the President appreciates the encouragement and prayers of people like you and Elisha in Hampton, VA, and Marilyn in Texas, and others who wrote something similar. I love working for him and admire him.

While controversy boils over Pat Robertson’s call for the assassination of Venezuela’s president this week, the Virginian-Pilot newspaper in Norfolk reports that controversy is bubbling about another one of his ventures.

Seems “Pat’s Age-Defying Shake” isn’t just a philanthropic endeavor anymore. The televangelist is looking to turn a profit from it. After four years of touting his diet shake via his nonprofit Christian Broadcasting Network and sending the recipe to any viewer who asked for it, Robertson has licensed the shake for national distribution by the General Nutrition health-food chain.

The Trinity Foundation of Dallas, a religious-media watchdog group, said Robertson improperly used his tax-exempt, nonprofit ministry to create a market for his shake. Robertson said he was merely exercising his right to engage in a business venture.

The announcement came on the day a task force was to finish a preliminary report on an inquiry into complaints that some officers permitted harassment and inappropriate proselytizing at the academy. The report will not be released for several weeks, Jennifer Stephens, an Air Force spokeswoman, said.

On Monday, Captain Morton and two other prominent critics of the academy wrote to 46 Congressional Democrats who had demanded an inquiry and said the task force had failed to do a thorough investigation. They said that Captain Morton was given only a cursory interview, and that the two other critics, Mikey Weinstein and Prof. Kristen Leslie of the Yale Divinity School, had not been interviewed at all.

Mr. Weinstein says he has been collecting complaints about religious intimidation at the academy for over a year, and Ms. Leslie spent a week there last summer assessing the chaplaincy’s pastoral program at the invitation of the academy.

Ms. Stephens said a task force member did “contact” Mr. Weinstein, but he said he was only told to stop denigrating the task force.

[snip]

Captain Morton has said that after sharing her misgivings about proselytizing with fellow chaplains and superiors, she received orders to deploy to Okinawa. Earlier this month, she was relieved of her position as executive officer.

Spokesmen at the Air Force Academy have said Captain Morton’s transfer and her removal from her administrative post were routine.

Captain Morton said Monday that she was not pleased that the inspector general was investigating her case because, she said, the Air Force was treating her dismissal as a personnel matter, not as evidence of a broader constitutional problem.