Jonathan Kieran

Doubt not the intensity of my stance as a longtime Recovering Catholic, friends, especially when I see stories like THIS ONE. Oh, Hell’s Bells, we’ve heard this hogwash before in a number of different manifestations, usually with precious little variety, originality, or pizzazz:

There’s the Virgin Mary who shows up in vague form as an old wart on the side of an oak tree (Watsonville, CA)

There’s the Virgin Mary who “appears” in classic “Full O’ Grace”-mode in water stains and condensation formations on underpasses, across hospital windows, or on old ladies’ leaky ceilings.

There’s the Virgin Mary who inserts her outline into various foods: tortillas, cinnamon buns, potato chips, polenta, and bowls of Fruit Loops, etc.

And finally there’s the most prolific Miracle Mary—the one who makes ghastly frickin’ garish statues of HERSELF start to weep tears without explanation.

Because, you know, if the Almighty or One of His key agents/reps (MOM!) is going to produce and channel actual, genuine, honest-to-goodness supernatural MIRACLE POWER upon the Earth, why bother using that power to heal a cancer-stricken child in distress when you can make a tacky plaster statue of a painted lady drip-drop Tears of Maudlin Morbidity and titillate old Mexican abuelitas as they rattle their rosary beads in religious awe?!?

Yeah, that’s a much more judicious use of MIRACLE POWER … if the All-Merciful is going to make the decision to allocate any such power in the first place. Big decision, you know.

Well, we’ve got another weeping Mary in a church, this time in Mexico. She’s big, she’s got a face like a bloodless farm horse, her fish-like painted eyeballs are upturned in heavenly supplication, and she is ON A JAG, people. Tears flowing like mad. Waterworks galore. Hundreds of the gullible are packing this church to have a sacred looky-loo.

Of course, these occurrences have nothing to do whatsoever with divine activity. Brainless-but-desperate priests and nuns have been exposed time and again for secretly stuffing water sprinkler systems up the asses of various statues to get a saint blubbering and draw a crowd of the desperate and obsessed, thereby increasing the money that gets dropped in the offering plate in order to fund those nighttime rectory orgies.

Sometimes deceptive clerics actually dab chicken grease on the eyes of their images so that, when the church gets warm, the grease will melt and flow like particularly savory tears. (“Hey, these tears taste SALTY! They must be sent from heaven!”). Rose oil is also dabbed about the peepers in efforts to portray the Blessed Virgin as sniffling through a haze of her own fave fragrance.

The most reprehensible chicanery of this oeuvre is represented by those who rig their Mary-Dollies to drip actual blood from their eyes. Chicken blood, cow’s blood, goat’s blood, and actual human blood have all been documented.

Why do Roman Catholic priests and nutjobs do this? Because they are—in general, not to the man—the weirdest set of social misfit motherfuckers ever dropped on the face of this planet. Don’t get me started on the dangers of legislated charisms: we’d be here for days and Thanksgiving beckons. I have some bird grease of my own to manage.

Also, the Roman Catholic Church is desperate for pew-fillers, any pew-fillers. Things haven’t been going so swell for the Vatican since, oh, I don’t know … THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION?

Let me give it to you straight: a genuinely good, compassionate, educated, and scrupulous Catholic priest is a hard-working, admirable, vital member of any community. A lazy, socially maladjusted, or perverted one is no better than a village idiot. A Macaque monkey could be taught to go through the motions of the liturgy.

And we all know that, for better or worse, Excessive Mary-Fascination is rife among a significant subset of Catholics.

Put all of these things together and you’ve got yourself a carnival show, friends.

Still, things could be worse. The faithful could always wrangle rattlesnakes and speak in tongues. Kick the can down the street in this on, il Papa.

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[A scintillating new shocker-of-a-novel by Jonathan Kieran is slated for major release in Spring 2024 so clear your calendars, book lovers. This one is built for speed. Stay tuned for more … ]

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