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We have had 307 mass shootings so far (four kills or more) in 2017, including the last one in Sutherland Springs, Texas, where 26 mortals aged 18 months to 77 years attending church were blasted into Heaven and 20 were sent to hospitals by assault rifle fire. I am pleased to learn from certain voices that God is going to celebrate a Firearm Resurrection Day, where the 33,000 mortals killed by firearms this year will appear on earth whole-- except with bullet holes intact. It will be soon, just like the Rapture. The thousands of thoughts and prayers uttered by politicians for decades over the bodies of millions killed and wounded by firearms have finally been answered. God has entered the fray, The Best Congress Money Can Buy can continue to do nothing but bleat thoughts and prayers. But the Firearm Resurrection Day will only cover the firearm deaths of this year. God has figured it would be too disturbing to the U.S. economy to resurrect those killed prior to 2017. Jobs, you know.   

There will be a tremendous cosmetic-plus for the 46 killed and wounded in Texas. As they are raised from the dead and hospitals, all of the bullet holes will be removed by heavenly decree. This will be quite pleasing to the parents of the five-year-old who had five bullet holes in his little carcass repaired by surgeons. The autopsy of the 18-month old has not been released yet. To the Best Congress Money and Guns Can Buy: Keep those thoughts and prayers coming! The shooter fired off 30 rounds from each of 15 magazines, accounting for 450 bullets making holes in something. Now they have to demolish the church! Maybe each of the 435 members of the House of Representatives will think a little bit about their responsibility toward the one bullet they placed in one of those magazines. What did it hit? To the Senate: A private K-12 Florida school has private security which is advising parents to buy $120 bulletproof panels to insert in children’s backpacks in case of mass shootings. Even thick books don’t stop assault rifle bullets. Is this the kind of country you want?   

Are You A Member Of The NRA—The Nonsensical Rifle Addiction?     

Europeans just cannot understand why we in the United States put up with an average of 33,000 firearm deaths and over 100,000 wouindings each year. Many are too polite to call us dumb or insane. As a citizen, I think we are both. The Dutch version of our satirical show Last Week Tonight says our love of guns is so bad it should be called the Nonsensical Rifle Addiction instead of the National Rifle Association—a reference to the gun lobby that owns Congress. They call it a “terrible epidemic” and that the NRA “is a constitutional disorder caused by a dysfunction of the prefrontal Second Amendment in the nonsensical cortex, causing patients to shoot people. It starts with an innocent Colt but soon patients will show signs of shotguns, sniper rifles, and M16s even. Often patients use silencers to hide their condition.”

Their message is: if you have a problem with guns, then you should deal with the guns directly. That’s what other nations have done. The Sutherland Springs church possesses a seven-minute video of the blood bath inside the church. I hate to ask families, relatives, and parents of the killed and wounded, but I think they should sacrifice their privacy and give permission to show the video on national television. Perhaps a showing now or after the State of the Union address so the country and Congress can see the carnage and the obscene reality of the shooter blasting crying children in the head execution style while yelling “Everyone dies (expletive)!” might force Congress to act. This country needs to confront the bloody and insane reality of American mass murder. At the end of World War II our General Eisenhower forced German citizens to march through the Holocaust death camps for a good reason. The Texas video might get the do-nothing Congress off its butt. The Tribune cartoonist Sack has Congress in his sights. Reporters are asking a Congressman to discuss and respond to the Texas mass killing. He responds: “Too soon! We still haven’t finished not doing anything after the last massacre!”  

And Now Back To The Other Issues Of The Day: Politics, Religion, And Sex     

As a young farm boy I observed all kinds of sexual hanky-panky going on around our farmstead among the horses cattle, pigs, geese, chickens, rabbits—and occasionally among neighbors who would take backseat breaks during barn and town hall dances. It was a good lesson on the power of sex among living breathing animals. Then I remember being instructed in the Catholic catechism by Father LaMotte, who blushed while discussing venial and mortal sins—mostly about sex. So after my “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned” in the confessional, I would mumble about my “impure thoughts” and my “meanderings off the chosen path” until the shadowed icon behind the screen agreed I had said enough and I was cleansed with a few-or many-Hail Marys.   

About a thousand years ago, although numerous popes had discovered that sex is wonderful even while counting their children, that orgasms are a real distinct pleasure (even animals fight for those pleasures in captivity or in the freedom of the plains), that intimacy between beings is increased by sex, they and their friends in the Vatican decided that celibacy would be the salvation of the church that they knew. What an absolute disaster it has been. The idea of celibacy for priests was an economic one, not a religious one. Popes and the Vatican decided it would be a lot cheaper for the church if priests did not have wives and children to support—or to inherit money, other assets, and property, that would go to the family, not the church. Now the Vatican has a backlog of 2,000 sex abuse cases around the world to adjudicate.  

Pope Gregory: “All Sexual Desire Is Sinful”     

I admit as a teenager I was not a very good student of Roman Catholic theology. I sang in the adult choir because the church had a choir loft and I could read books or fool around during the sermon out of the view of the priest. But I have done some work in understanding the Vatican since I left the church after 27 years. There is not much doubt that the Roman Catholic Church has spent about the last 1,600 years dominated by the thoughts of sex and how it affects human beings. First, the idea that procreation had to be in the mind every time a Catholic couple had sex goes against what I saw in the barnyard and in the backseats. Testosterone, estrogen, and pleasure does flow from almost everyone.

But Pope Gregory in the 6th Century decreed that all sexual desire is sinful in itself and may be “intrinsically evil.” As popes married until the 15th Century I guess some of them were really evil. I don’t know who said “Life is a predicament that precedes death,” but we do live under that definition all the time. What if the Eleventh Commandment is “ Ðon’t have sex with anyone who doesn’t want to--and “don’t have sex if you are not going to produce a child.” Catholic theologians are always talking about natural law. What is natural? In the decades following 1720 it is estimated that about 4,000 boys were castrated annually so they could sing the alto and soprano parts in European Catholic choirs. Many of the boys came from very poor homes and were castrated by their parents, expecting that the Vatican would lift them from poverty. Is that considered “natural?”  

Harvey Not Only Wrecked Houston, Another Harvey Lit Up Sexual Harassment     

We all know that men have sexually harassed women since the Garden of Eden, but Harvey Weinstein, the Hollywood sexual predator extraordinaire who tried to hump on the bones of any woman trying to make it in the movies, has created such an uproar even the international news is filled with oversexed perpetrators and innocent victims every day. It probably will never be over. Many men have been forced to resign, many have cost their businesses millions in payoffs to lawsuits, many have gone into hiding and have lost jobs. Kevin Spacey’s house of cards has come tumbling down around his private parts as his record of being a sexual predator of boys and young men catches up with him.   

Some insist that it is a sickness so they are going to some exclusive treatment center to be “cured.” This is astonishing. The growth of sex treatment centers has exploded at warp speed. Weinstein is now facing rape charges and could end up in a cell, pleasuring himself until he goes blind. Almost 90% of working women report they have been harassed by their bosses. It gets much worse during periods of income inequality. Women are afraid to lose their jobs. Kelly Grace Smith of Fayetteville, New York writes: “Sexual harassment is a big deal. Those experiences affected essential aspects of my life—my sexuality, my creativity, my health and well-being, not to mention my self worth. Ten years ago I chose to heal those wounds—sharing my experiences with other women.”   

We are now finding out how many religions are not “religious” because they continue to support the sexual predator in the White House who has bragged about grabbing many women by the pussy. Maybe Albert Einstein was right. He said: “More people are driven insane through religious hysteria than by drinking alcohol.” I would suggest that the superrich might pay some attention to what Napoleon said after the French Revolution when many wealthy aristocratic heads were rolling into baskets beneath the French Razor: “Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich.” The billionaires on the Forbes list should know that the largest “religious” group left in the United States is composed of ex-Roman Catholics.  

The Guardian: “Pope Francis Is One Of The Most Hated Men In The World Today”  

   This rather shocking statement led off a Guardian newspaper article about Pope Francis who is attempting to reform the Vatican and the Roman Catholic Church. And it’s mainly about sex. Conservative theologians in the Vatican structure and around the world are opposed to his attempt to change church marriage rules, the ban on contraception, and almost anything else in the area of sex. He wants to change the rule that if a Catholic marriage fails the participants may never have sex again in their entire lives. Feelings are so strong that this comment by a conservative English priest has been widely circulated: “We can’t wait for him to die. It’s unprintable what we say in public. Whenever two priests meet, they talk about how awful Bergoglio is …he’s like Caligula: if he had a horse, he’d make him cardinal.” And it’s all about marriage rules, divorce, annulments, contraception, homosexuality, same sex marriage and the 60 different gender identities, and anything else about sex—the marvelous act that religious wars have been fought over.