Diddling a 9-year-old

Recently a 9-year-old Brazilian girl had an abortion, which upset the Roman Catholic Church. The Roman Catholic Church disapproves of abortion.

The Archdiocese of Olinda and Recife in northeastern Brazil had its attorney, Marcio Miranda, say that the very young woman should have given birth to her twins by a cesarean section, where the babies would have been surgically removed from her. The Roman Catholic Church pretty much hates abortion.

My grandmother was Roman Catholic, and when I was growing up on the South Side of Chicago, the Catholic school girls were the cream of the crop. A Mercy girl was worth the bus ride.

Celibacy is on the road to insanity, so I wasn’t surprised when the media began to get wind of priests diddling little boys. They were bound to be diddling something.

Although Roman Catholicism is one of the strangest sets of dogma and smegma I’ve run across, some of my best friends are Catholic to the bone. Somehow a person can grow up in the Roman Catholic Church and still not babble. Humans, ya gotta love ’em.

The abortion in Brazil was performed at a public university hospital, and the director said that the childlike woman’s pregnancy was dangerous: “She is very small. Her uterus doesn’t have the ability to hold one, let alone two children.” She weighs only 80 pounds, so that at least sounds reasonable.

The Catholic Church doesn’t care about reasonable, though. The church lawyer said, “It’s the law of God: ‘Do not kill.’ We consider this murder.” Who can argue with the law of God? Anybody.

Mind you, I love Catholics, I just don’t think much of their core beliefs. I’ve never married one, but I don’t think unkindly of anyone who does. They’re good people. A thoroughly crazy system turns out great people, over and over, unlike public schools.

Probably like most pregnant 9-year-olds—although I can’t say I’ve seen any numbers—this one had allegedly been raped by her stepfather, who was then locked up.

In my old neighborhood, there was a little girl whose father wouldn’t let her play outside like other children because she was somehow obviously a woman and beautiful. As adolescents, my buddies and I would ride or walk down her street just in case she was visible. I saw her only once, when she was 9 or 10, and I know why her daddy wouldn’t let her out. If she picked me, it wouldn’t matter how old she was. There must be many, many thousands of 9-year-old women who could surprise both of us, maybe simultaneously.

Archbishop Jose Cardoso Sobrinho excommunicated the young woman’s mother, who had arranged for the surgery. The Church also excommunicated the doctors. The stepfather, presumably, remains in good standing.