Religion today

Out of the closet

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Fifth Estate # Daily Barbarian Number 1

THE DAILY BARBARIAN supplement
FIFTH ESTATE, #298, June 19, 1979

PSF 6/9/1979—While Pope John Paul II basked in glory as thousands of Polish citizens paid homage to this prominent corpse, a demonstration of minuscule proportions was being held at Hamtramck’s not-so-well-known No Tell Hotel.

Representing the Cincinnati branch of the Priest’s and Nun’s Transitional Society (P.A.N.T.S.), the largest chapter in the nation, the very reverend Reverend Trevor Reverend and his cohort the Sister Mary Masculine protested what the Sister called, “the largest service industry in the world—institutionalized religion.”

“What we’re sick and tired of,” said Trev, “is seeing the big-wigs of this corporation rifling funds for personal use. The closest I’ve ever been to Italy is the Detroit Ethnic Festival and I don’t even know where Poland is!”

But reform isn’t what these two PANTaloons are after. “Yeah. Now get this,” Mary broke in, “We’re not any of ya silly liberals and radicals who think the church can be reformed or, heavens above, be tossed in the garbage bin of history. No. No! What we want, ya see, is just to have some of the corporate profits filter down to the local franchises.”

Ready to work with whatever resources are at hand, many PANTaloons have taken to extreme militant actions to defend their “right to be rich.”

“The head office in Italy has cut our wages back to about fifty thou a year and many P.A.N.T.S. members have resorted to evangelical violence to reach their goal,” commented Trev. “Sister Godfrida (Cecile Bombeek in the real world) is our guardian angel. Last year she killed ten elderly women in her nursing home in Belgium and sold their belongings to support her morphine habit. She’s a real trooper!

But this militant evangelism isn’t restricted just to Europe. It recently made headway in the U.S. when a MASSachusettes minister, Rev. Roy Leo (Robbins Memorial Church) was convicted of “having sex” with a fourteen-year-old girl. Since then priests and nuns have been robbing banks and molesting little kids from one end of the country to the other; just last week a priest was caught

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