Dear Lord, please stop those naughty choir boys from tempting me...

Well, it looks like I came to this - and to the new year it seems - rather late. I bet there were literally millions (plus or minus 6 orders of magnitude, probably minus) of people hanging on the fate of this plucky little blog (I'm not the plucky blogger, I'm the plucky blogger's son?). Or, as is more likely in fact, not.

Either way, I can always rely on one church or another to provide me with a laugh every now and then. And this time it's the Catholics. You'd think they'd need a license for all that dogma, but I digress. Apparently, they have a small problem with priests fiddling with the choir boys. I know, I know, it comes as a shock to you too dear reader, but strengthen your resolve and press on. Somehow we'll make it through these trying times.

So, here's the bottom line: (no pun intended, although people only say that when there is) The good old Catholic Church has found a new way of dealing with this perennial problem (I think that's in the thesaurus next to "institutionalised abuse" if you look carefully) and it involves that always-successful, never-fails, better-than-science, you-can't-prove-it-but-you-know-it's-there, the master of mediocrity, purveyor of promises that don't deliver, ladies and gentlemen please put your hands together for...

Prayer?

Apparently if a bunch of old men, some of whom allegedly (and some of whom actually) fondle young children for fun, gets down on its knees and prays to the Lawd Gawd Jeserhaus H. Christ, those of them that enjoy the fondling will stop doing it. But that's probablt not what they're being told to pray for is it? If I know anything about rich organisations made up of morally and actually corrupt (allegedly, just in case...) old people it's that they know how to bend the law to suit them. What they're actually praying for is probably for those despicable satan-sent little children to stop being so gosh-darn tempting. Perhaps even that new rules be enacted requiring young boys to cover themselves from head to toe in order to reduce temptation? Although they might not do that, and not because it'd be a bad idea, but only really because they'd look a bit like they were copying Islam. And nobody likes a copy-cat.

Call me cynical if you like, but I'd have thought actually trying to do something about the problem would be more effective. Rather than just getting down on your knees and praying to an imaginary misogynistic old bastard, why don't the actual misogynistic old bastards (allegedly) do something concrete about it?

Oh, and todays word of the day is Jeserhaus. I've decided that it's german (or perhaps some form of scandinavian) for a church, as in "hey Klaus, let's go to the jeserhaus and pray a little."