It's okay, Catholics, we can laugh

"The Book of Catholic Jokes,"

by Deacon Tom Sheridan

Did you know that they had automobiles in Jesus' time?

Yes, the Bible says that the disciples were all of one Accord.

Yeah, you may have heard some of them before.

And yes, Tom Sheridan admits that some of these may have been jokes to which a Catholic angle has been added to make them churchy.

But Sheridan, who was a writer and editor for the Chicago Sun-Times before he was a deacon, has nicely selected jokes that folks with decent moral standards can tell in polite company, and Acta Publications has packaged them well as a handy little and inexpensive paperback.

Did you hear the one about the man who opened a dry-cleaning business next door to the convent? He knocked on the door and asked the Mother Superior if she had any dirty habits.

To be sure there are some clinkers in the bunch, and some moldy oldies. And I don't know why every priest in a joke has to have an Irish surname; hell0 -- you don't have to be Irish to be a priest, or to be funny.

With most of the quips you don't have to be an "insider," so to speak, although I'm not sure the jokes that take off on the differences between, say, the Franciscans and the Jesuits, aren't going to have some Catholics scratching their heads. But maybe not.

For the most part the collection is good stuff -- good enough to make you crack a smile even though you may have heard them before.

There's at least one great priest golf joke, a cute one about a rabbi and a priest, a funny Pope Benedict XVI joke and a clever atheist joke. And as someone who can rarely remember a joke, what a good resource; I'm sure "The Book of Catholic Jokes" will end up on a number of reference shelves in rectories. -- bz

One Sunday morning a priest saw a little boy staring intently at the large plaque on the church wall. The plaque was covered with names, and flags hung on either side of it.

"Father," asked the boy, "what's this?"

He replied, "It's a memorial to all the men and women who died in the service."

They stood together in silence for a moment. Finally, the boy asked with genuine concern: "Was it at the eight or the ten-thirty Mass?"

'The Shack': Interesting novel/catechism turns hateful

'The Shack,'

by Wm. Paul Young

Wm. Paul Young had me for 178 pages.

Through 178 pages the author of this New York Times bestseller offered a creative approach to teaching readers about all kinds of elements of Christian faith.

In the paperback version of this "catechism-as-dramatic-novel/fantasy," the first 178 pages are a painless way to be forced to think about our -- yours and mine -- relationship with God.

Through a hurting father's meeting with the triune God, the first 178 pages of "The Shack" present convincing explanations about the concept of free will, unconditional love, good and evil, human frailties, the Trinity and more.

For 178 pages Young, the child of missionary parents, makes us reflect about our image and understanding of God, reinforcing the idea that God is always with us, always loves us, even as we stumble and fall.

Then comes page 179.

Religion one of 'trinity of terrors'?

That's where Young's Jesus starts a diatribe against organized religion, using the kind of language Catholics used to see only in the hate pamphlets that carried drawings of the pope as the devil -- horns and tail included.

The character of Jesus who inhabits Young's fanciful "shack" says he's "not too big on religion," and lumps religion in with politics and economics in a way most Christians would describe as, well, unchristian.

Religion, politics and economics, this Jesus claims, "are the man-created trinity of terrors that ravages the earth and deceives those I care about. What mental turmoil and anxiety does any human face that is not related to one of those three?"

But there's more.

Young's Jesus says, "Put simply, these terrors are tools that many use to prop up their illusions of security and control. People are afraid of uncertainty, afraid of the future. These institutions, these structures and ideologies, are all a vain effort to create some sense of certainty and security where there isn't any. It's all false!"

But wait, there's more.

Two pages later it is all the world's systems that are the problem. Jesus of "The Shack" says,

"Institutions, systems, ideologies, and all the vain, futile efforts of humanity that go with them are everywhere, and interaction with all of it is unavoidable. But I can give you freedom to overcome any system of power in which you find yourself, be it religious, economic, social, or political. You will grow in the freedom to be inside or outside all kinds of systems and to move freely between and among them. Together, you and I can be in it and not of it."

So, none of what humanity -- created in the image and likeness of God -- has developed through the centuries does any good? It's "well-intentioned" but evil? Hard to believe. And, if you're like me, those last couple of sentences in the quote above sound similar to the Catholic Church's advice that its members are to be counter cultural, in the world but not of it, part of society but not caught up in its less noble pursuits. But you don't hear Young's Jesus acknowledging that.

Now who's being judgmental?

Perhaps the attack on organized religion wouldn't come off as so hypocritical if it hadn't come after a whole chapter in which Mackenzie -- the book's main character -- goes through an agonizing trial that teaches him not to be judgmental.

Far be it for any Catholic to ignore the failings of our church -- its members and its leaders -- throughout history and even to the present day. But any author does readers an enormous disservice by ignoring the positive motives, positive actions and positive results that organized religions have brought to the world throughout history and continue to bring today.

Our churches -- of many denominations -- deserve credit for upholding moral standards that easily go by the wayside in a laissez-faire society.

The Catholic Church in particular has earned the admiration of many for creating the concept of higher education.

People -- organized through their church affiliations -- feed the hungry, care for the sick, shelter the homeless -- in a better way when they do so in organized ways.

The list could go on. Sadly, Wm. Paul Young has chosen to ignore the good and instead judge others in a way he tells his readers not to.

Sad, too, is that it took 179 pages for him to show his true colors. -- bz

Sex and a 17th century pope? More innuendo than facts, but lots of interesting facts, too

"MISTRESS OF THE VATICAN,"
by Eleanor Herman

When I'm at the bookstore or library I tend to pick up anything that has "Vatican" in the title, so I couldn't pass up something as titillating as "Mistress of the Vatican" when publisher William Morrow offered a review copy.

The jacket cover suggested hanky-panky with the bare-shouldered portrait of a beautiful woman with a painting of St. Peter's Basilica and Square covering her, uh, feminine charms, and a subtitle, "The True Story of Olimpia Maidalchini: The Secret Female Pope."

The adage that you can't judge a book by its cover still applies.

Author Eleanor Herman offers no real evidence that 17th century Pope Innocent X had a sexual relationship with Olimpia, his sister-in-law, as the term "mistress" would suggest.

She offers no facts that Olimpia was pope, although she apparently was extremely influential in papal decisions.

Even the cover artwork is misleading: You'd think that the beautiful woman depicted is Olimpia, but no; the jacket painting is of "Venus at the Mirror," by Tiziano.

Despite that, this book was hard to put down.

She's done the research

Herman has culled the diaries and papers of Vatican officials of the period and the works of commentators during the mid 1600s, and what she's come up with are some things about our church at the time that today we'd consider unthinkable. The nepotism, the bribery, the selling of church offices, the misuse of church funds -- they saturate these 419 pages, and that's without the bibliography and index.

Even those of us who love our church ought to know that at times in the past some pretty ridiculous things have been done in the name of our faith. Herman points out the silliness of some of the practices surrounding relics, for one thing. An Italian church claimed to have preserved the umbilical cord of Jesus, another drops of the Virgin Mary's breast milk.

What gets tiresome, though, is the author's tendency to slip into extended "filler" -- background information that seemingly has little or nothing to do with the story of Donna Olimpia and her brother-in-law the pope.

Early on she extrapolates the cultural mores of the era and presumes much. While there is no factual evidence that Olimpia did this or that, women of the times did things this way, so Olimpia must have as well, she posits. It's a bit too much innudendo for my taste.

Evidence shows Olimpia's influence

There seems to be little doubt, though, that the widow of Pope Innocent X's brother was extremely influential in day-to-day decisions concerning the Papal States. The evidence author Herman brings to light shows that Olimpia's fingerprints are on the appointments of cardinals, on the finances of the church, on the church's relationship with the governments and royalty of nations such as France and Spain, among others, and much, much more.

Be ready to read a boatload of language pointing out how anti-woman the Catholic Church is and has been through the ages. And the author uses some misleading descriptions that makes you wonder if she made this stuff up or is actually quoting some 17th century theologian or document.

Take Holy Orders: She writes that priestly ordination was "a sacrament that was thought to tattoo the human soul with an invisible but ineradicable seal that prevented marriage."

Tattoo the soul?

I hadn't heard that one before. But then, I really hadn't been up on some of the less-flattering history of our church, like the regular elevation of papal nephews to rank of cardinal although they might still be in their teens, the regular practice of popes to appoint their relatives to jobs in the Vatican, the fawning of European royalty to curry the pope's favor with expensive gifts, etc.

The saving grace is that at some point Innocent did have a crisis of conscience and put the dignity and integrity of the church first, and that many of the laughable practices of those times are long gone.

So read this. It's not sexy. It promises one thing and delivers another, but it's still a good read. -- bz