Illini Secular Student Alliance: 4 Last-Minute Lent Suggestions for the Catholic Church

A pad like this might be worth lifelong virginity...

For a week now, the Catholic world has been in the period of Lent between Mardi Gras and Easter Sunday. This means that all over the globe, upwards of a billion Catholics are reflecting on their faith and giving up vices in the name of piety. Now, knowing the Pope and his buddies, in the rush of trying to find a caterer for the midnight Mardi Gras bash in Saint Peter’s Square and organizing volunteers to staff the Ash Wednesday altar boy spelling bee, right about now they’re slapping themselves on the head at how they totally blanked on picking something to give up for Lent. As an outside observer, I thought it might be constructive to offer a few humble suggestions:

Protecting child molesters- While it is somewhat understandable that in a worldwide institution there are bound to be a few bad eggs on the payroll, it’s pretty unacceptable to actively seek to ensure that those who diddle children escape punishment. Especially when it seems to be corporate policy.

Holding massive wealth - The Pope and his posse live richly, adorned in finery unprecedented even amongst world leaders of the modern age, and Vatican City’s chambers would make an average episode of MTV’s “Cribs” look like it was filmed in one of the more poverty-stricken regions of Detroit. And then there are further church holdings the world over. All as individual Catholics struggle to pay the tithe under the weight of the global economic crisis. Who was it that said, "It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven"? And besides, the robe and pointy hat look is so 17th century.

Homophobia - Everyone has their personal prejudices, but few are as institutionalized as the religious world’s stance against homosexual relationships. Come on guys, we went through this with slavery and you just had to fess up later after everyone else had realized how backwards of a practice it was. You’re dangerously approaching the time past which it is no longer acceptable to claim you were shooting for being fashionably late to the gay love party.

Fear mongering against reproductive health - Though anti-scientific rhetoric has been kept on the down-low in the Western world (recently, if not historically), in Africa where the tide of the HIV/AIDS epidemic might be stemmed with the application of cheap latex, Church officials have sought to discredit the effectiveness of condoms. It's situations like this where the Church has to learn to differentiate between centuries-old superstitions and the moral good of saving lives which condoms represent.
If someone has Pope Benedict's Skype handle or maybe could whisper him on World of Warcraft about this list, I feel these changes might be beneficial to the Church's lifestyle, and perhaps if the Lenten trial period works out they could be put into practice on a more permanent basis.