original: a catholic's guide to blasphemy (don't worry, you can always repent)
original. Agnes met Louise long before she met God.
notes: blasphemy pretty much covers it. I started trying to write something for this picture for Janie's birthday. In February. And I have completed it just in time for S' birthday. (Happy birthday to you both. S, if you wanted a timely present, you should have specified.) Yay me. This is not what I meant to write. The current form is pretty much me writing down whatever thoughts I had about the religion I grew up with. Quite possibly one massive in joke, but here it is.
Before women were nuns they were young nuns, and before that they were young girls.
The punch line is this: I’ve been where you are. I can help you.
Sister Caroline is especially good at giving this speech. She folds her hands in her lap, tilts her head to the left, and the smile is pure sugarcoated understanding.
In a different life, Sister Caroline was a politician. You see how bullshitting comes easily.
But oh, we forget, this is Catholicism; none of that reincarnation shit applies.
Maybe nuns are just the best liars in the world.
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Sister Agnes really was born Agnes, the word spread out on the dotted line of her birth certificate and no, her parents didn’t hate her, they were just tragically misguided.
Not that there’s anything particularly wrong with the name. There’s just quite a bit wrong with it when paired with a set of black Mary Jane’s, two braids down the sides of her head, and the small gold crucifix hung around her neck (the message-Jesus died for us, now watch him swing back and forth just above the breasts you’re never going to see).
The convent was a forgone conclusion.
There’s just one minor difficulty. Agnes met Louise long before she met God.
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You should know upfront, Louise believes in God, whole-heartedly. Completely. Forever.
Louise believes in God the way that some people believe in gravity and that if you stand in front of a moving train it will run you over. Louise does things the way others do them, but never quite with the same intentions. And that’s the thing, that’s the heart of the issue, the crux of it, the foundation.
Louise believes in God and maybe she believes he is good and maybe she believes he isn’t. Sister Louise doesn’t believe in the Catholic Church.
On the other hand you have Agnes. Agnes believes in the Catholic Church, in the Pope, in her vows. But the nineteenth century provided us with some of the greatest advancements in human thought, chief among them-God is dead.
Shame really, between them they make one perfectly decent nun.
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A truth: all nuns were once young girls. Mostly the sort of girls who wore their virginity with a hint of undeserved pride, like they were somehow responsible for the biological evolution of the hymen.
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Agnes met Louise in the third grade. They shared a box of crayons and were the only two people who did not eat the paste.
By high school the communal box was filled with cigarettes, not crayons, and they spoke quite rarely while in each other’s company but always with the underlining message-we are better than you. You have no hope in understanding this.
They fought regularly, they still do. Once it resulted in hair pulling on the front lawn, to the general amusement of boys’ lacrosse team that was passing at the time.
The boys’ lacrosse team suffered a sudden out-break of stomach flu that year, which was never satisfactorily explained.
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The boys’ lacrosse team also had a member named Joshua that year. Josh, to his friends. Louise did not call him Josh and Agnes did not call him Josh.
As it turns out, he is important to this story.
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An aside: God does not approve of threesomes. (Except for, you know, that one. But it doesn’t count, they’re one.)
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It came as no surprise when Agnes joined the Convent of Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrow (no, it isn’t called that. But it’s a nice joke) no one is surprised.
When Louise joins the convent no is really surprised either. By this point the two have become a matched set.
You see, people have become complacent.
(Hint: that’s a bad idea.)
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There are two primary tenants to Catholic theology.
1) God delivers.
2) And God forgives.
Actually, there’s only really the one- do what we tell you and you’ll be happy. But that doesn’t sound nearly as much like an advertisement for a pizza parlor.
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Life in a convent does not differ greatly from life outside a convent. There is a lot more praying, but talking silently to no one is not much more difficult than talking aloud to no one.
There are also a lot more good works. But we’ll get to those in a minute.
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In the interest of conservation of time, let us briefly summarize the life of our dear friend Joshua.
Like a wide variety of other young men, Joshua attended Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrow’s (still a funny joke, amazing how that works) School for Youths. He ate paste in the third grade, learned long division in the fourth, grew by several inches, grew by several more inches, learned to comb his hair, picked up smoking, learned to comb his hair in such a way that made him look like James Dean, stopped smoking, realized that he wasn’t going to look like James Dean no matter how he combed his hair, graduated from high school.
Then he went away to a secular school for several years and in the process ended up an accountant. Joshua is an exceptionally stupid boy. This is illustrated by the fact that upon running into Louise on a side street of the town in which they grew up, he promptly propositioned her. (Yes, she was wearing the habit.)
In defense of Louise, stupid and not-James Dean he may be, but Joshua is certainly pretty as well.
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To be a Catholic there are three things one must have:
1) Faith in God, the Church, Jesus and a few other things (for a detailed list please see-Nicene Creed).
2) Forgiveness of sins. One does not strictly speaking need this; it is just something that you get.
3) Good works.
The second and third are where you find the distinction between Catholics and your garden-variety Protestants. The latter’s superiority stems from their constant references to the inherent hypocrisy of any bad works being cancelled out by the forgiveness.
Nevertheless, this lack of hypocrisy still leaves Protestants without anything but faith to barter for their entrance into heaven. So get off the fucking horse Luther, you don’t win anything. (Henry VIII, you can stay up on yours, with regards to the poor bastard who had to get you up there in the first place.)
Anyway, the point is nuns do good works. Or rather, nuns spend a lot of time outside the convent, outside the view of other nuns.
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Some observations-
Louise likes sex, of any sort really. Agnes likes to watch.
Joshua makes them leaves the habits on because he had this reoccurring wet dream when he was sixteen and he still hasn’t outgrown it. (The moral here is Catholic school fucks you up. Forever.)
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Agnes has loved Louise since they were thirteen. Louise has loved Agnes since the day they met.
The above isn’t their story. It’s just how they pass the time.