oh, Jesus!

As longtime and faithful (ahem) readers of DAMMIT JANET! know, I have a strange fascination with Mary, allegedly the mother of Jesus whilst still a Virgin. I've blogged The virgin, the angel and choice as well as The Incarnating Game in this regard.

My co-blogger has bestowed a most delightfully seasonal gift upon me: this.

The large poster outside St Matthew's in the City, a prominent Anglican church in Auckland, was designed by an advertising agency and depicts Mary in the style of a classical Renaissance painting.

A caption competition on the church's website has already drawn some questionable responses.

Suggestions include "Yay! I hope it's a girl," "Now, which way to the abortion clinic?" and "If I say I'm a virgin, mum and dad won't kill me."

A densely written comment that reads as though it was written by a kiwi John "Vatican Taliban & TubeSox Holocaust" Pacheco captures in a nutshell why fundamentalist right-wing religious zealots reject rationality and science.

UPDATE (fh): You knew this was going to happen. Nutbar attacks poster with scissors. Montreal Simon has the story.

To Hell in a hand basket ... ?

Once again, scientific research smacks down RightWing NutJob alarmists' shrieeek and claims that our children are threatened and endangered by the evuls of an "open" society.

In recent years, high-profile cases in which teenagers were arrested for forwarding nude pictures of other minors have attracted nationwide attention. Despite sexting’s reputation as a teenage pastime, surveys now suggest that it is actually more common among young adults than children.

“It only takes one or two cases to make people think this is very prevalent behavior,” said Janis Wolak, an author of the new paper and a senior researcher at the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire. “This has been reported as if it were something that everyone was doing, not just in the teen population, but in the young adult population. It’s really not the case.”

Over all, the new report found, 149 youths interviewed for the study, or 9.6 percent, said they had sent or received images that included full or partial nudity in the previous year. Just over 2 percent of those who engaged in sexting said they had appeared in the pictures or had taken them themselves, and 7.1 percent said they received sexual images from someone else.

In most cases, the motivations for sending or forwarding sexual texts were not malicious. Most of the youths who sent such messages said that they did so with someone they were involved in a relationship with, or that their messages were flirtatious gestures to someone they had a romantic interest in.

In fact, the best example of behaviour that can corrupt children's and adolescents' moral compass might be found in the bald-faced self-justified Nixonian dirty tricks used by the Cons.

But, but, but ... Harper's MASSIVE Hard-On Crime Bill C-10 should fix all that, according to Contempt Party members ... ^NOT.

Un grand merci to Rick's tweet.

This is how the Pope's declarations harm women and children.

This needs to be said: the Pope's declarations harm women and children. An African mother who is a practicing Catholic faces the following dilemna: If she requests that her husband use a condom when having conjugal relations, she is going against the Pope's edict, even if she is trying to protect herself and any potential child that she might carry to term from HIV infection. If her husband is a devout Catholic, he may refuse to use a condom.

If this woman decides to not allow sexual intercourse, her husband may beat her, sexually assault her or abandon her and their children. Her priest, if he obeys the Pope's edict, will consider that she sinned.

But if she becomes infected with HIV because she submitted to sex without protection, who will care and take responsibility for her children when she dies of AIDS? The Catholic Church?

Some countries were quick to take action, in response to the Pope's medieval ideology.

Spain said Wednesday it will send one million condoms to Africa to fight the spread of AIDS, one day after Pope Benedict XVI's controversial remarks that they aggravated efforts to battle the disease. "The objective is to advance the prevention of this epidemic, which affects 33 million people all over the world, two-thirds of them in Africa," the health ministry said in a statement. "Condoms have been demonstrated to be a necessary element in prevention policies and an efficient barrier against the virus, according to laboratory studies," it added.

Good for Spain, I hope that other Catholic countries follow its lead in demonstrating compassion for Africans as well as support for medical science.

The virgin, the angel and choice

A childhood and early adolescence spent under the vigilant eyes of teachers of the order of Grey Nuns has been my cross to bear. Pun intended. Nonetheless, it has given me the advantage of knowing that the art of creative exegesis should not be confined within the dusty walls of the Vatican. This riff is inspired by everything the nuns taught me about what happened between Mary, Gabriel and the Holy Spirit.

The angel Gabriel had been sent to earth to find a virgin willing to become the mother of God’s son. (Yes, yes, the Royal House of Windsor borrowed the idea and went looking for Diana or someone like her.)

It seemed like a good plan at the time but Gabriel was amazed at the number of young women who did not share his enthusiasm for the project. He decided to try once more before flying home to heaven.

He appeared before Mary and said to her: “Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women.” Mary was surprised and a bit suspicious about this greeting and asked for an explanation. So the angel gave her an elaborate and grandiose description of what awaited her, should she accept this holy mission.

Mary however saw a glitch in the plan. “How can this happen? I’m a virgin, you know.” Gabriel countered: “The Holy Spirit will take care of it, therefore that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.” Then he added: “By the way, God helped your cousin Elizabeth get pregnant and she’s six months along.”

Mary cried out: “Elizabeth? She must be at least 148 years old. She has wanted a baby for so long. That’s pretty amazing. Alright, I’ll play on God’s team, I’ll do it.”

This is the part that the nuns impressed upon our teenage minds. The Angel was sent to ask Mary if she would become pregnant and give birth to the Son of God. Mary said yes. She could have refused. She consented. She accepted the offer.

Now if you believe in the absolute power of God, who according to the Bible created the Universe in six days, you’d wonder why he didn’t simply wait for Mary’s wedding day, then seed her through the Holy Spirit without the bother of asking. Nine months later, it would have been revealed to her that, by the way, this bundle of joy was also the Son of God.

But God sent the angel to ask her. Mary said yes to her pregnancy.

Perhaps God, in his infinite wisdom, knows something that the anti-choice criminalizers do not acknowledge. Women do have the power to give life … or not. From the fusion of two cells, something develops that a woman’s spirit, mind, heart and body can choose to grow. Or refuse. God awaited Mary’s decision. He did not impregnate her and force her to carry a pregnancy to term. She was not an empty vessel for him to use. He respected her will, her choice. And that is what I learned at Catholic school.

First posted at Birth Pangs.

Update, March 2014: It seems that inspired exegesis of the gospel of St Luke is not that unusual. Here's a recent interpretation of Mary's conscious, affirmative acquiescence.