Virgin - Jennifer Baljko

The Roman Catholic institution, hereby known as The Church That Messed Up My Head (TCTMUMH) would, with due cause, call me a lapsed Catholic. I think leg warmers were still fashionable when I knowingly stopped practicing my baptized faith. I don’t know where to even start with that whole thing, this thing I’ll call my faith separation, the thing my family refuses to accept. They believe a little confession would clear up my obvious confusion. To keep this short, let’s just say I worked in a rectory during some of my formative teenage years, and learned pretty quickly that many priests did not take vow to live with modest wealth or within their means.

Even still, even as I dwell in my world of liberal ideas, as my family so aptly puts it, and find it hard to follow any string of logic written in that great old holy book of theirs, I got to say, I think the Virgin Mary is a pretty cool lady. It’s not really the story I care for. I like the divine feminine, maternal power she exudes in her flowing blue robes. For an organization that normally squanders equality, or twists it to fit it own purposes, and refuses to allow women to be “servants of God” in any real authoritative way, I like seeing Mary up there on a pedestal in every church you ever enter. The spectacle is even grander in third-world countries where everything is done for the love of God, including beating your wife. In the world according to me, it’s a bit of sweet justice that she has goddess status and is worshipped as such. I always chuckle at the hypocrisy of it all, what us lapsed Catholics see that the loyal blind sheep don’t. Go Mary!