Bad Catholics...

A female cousin once looked at my sketchbooks and claimed they were too edgy, too seedy and not appropriate for her kids to view. Of course, at the time, she had converted from her Catholic upbringing to a kinder, gentler "Kumbaya Christian"...a feel-good version of Christianity based on the New Testament with an egalitarian, all-embracing, loving Christ.

Every year, Claro's Italian Deli gives our family an Italian calendar that highlights the ungodly number of Saint's Days and always features a soft-focus painting of Jesus of Nazareth in a pasture, holding a fluffy lamb and surrounded by attentive children. It's like they've scrapped the Old Testament altogether, everything has a soft, frosty glow. And Christ has this chiseled, Nordic look with long blond hair and manicured beard. So squeaky clean and wholesome.

Whatever became of the duality of good and evil? Of sin and redemption? I admit that I'm a bad Catholic...a lapsed Catholic, but the things I admire about the religion are being scrubbed away to make it palpable to this fuzzy, touchy-feely Christianity.

I'm channeling Michelangelo these days...I'm very consumed by Renaissance histories and biographies and I'm very much in tune with his art and his spirituality and his poetry. He held a very pragmatic approach to his religion and he held his own against the papal censors and even the pope himself to interpret scripture without the pretense of halos, or wings upon angels, or embellished robes and jewelled garments. The poor and the humble of the Bible were depicted as being poor and humble; those that were tormented and anguished tore their clothing or writhed in pain; those that were larger-than-life became Titans in the heavenly realm.

I like the disparity between Michelangelo's Jesus as the central figure in the Last Judgement, with his rippling, bulging ab's and gargantuan thighs and the lean, sorrowful, lithe Jesus in the Pieta. No comfortable, Hallmark card versions of Christianity here.

So, even if I don't agree with the Catholic Church's stance on abortion, gay marriage, the marriage of priests, bishops and cardinals, women's ordination, the fallibility of the Pope, the Holocaust denials, teaching sensible reproductive practices instead of just abstinence, and a host of other modern social issues...I'll take the oppressive guilt of original sin and Catholic suffrage over the pastoral lamb and the cute, cuddly singing congregation of happy Christians.

Guitars and the singing of "Kumbaya" should never be allowed in church.