Up with virginity...

I'm Catholic. By choice at the age of 22. I have to say that I don't understand a lot of the traditions that my denomination promotes. Instead, I blindly accept what I'm supposed to do. So, I don't eat meat on Fridays during Lent (except when the archbishop proclaims it's ok on St. Patty's Day), and I...let's see...hmm...that's about it. I give up meat on Fridays during Lent. I give up some other junk too, but mainly because I feel like it's the only way I can stick to a diet. I guess I'm a pretty bad Catholic.

But so many other rituals and rites in Catholicism just totally blow me away, especially when you stop and consider what century we are living in. Here is a link to an article I recently read in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Miss Cathy Maley decided to become a consecrated virgin via a very rare ceremony held in St. Louis over the weekend. There are only 175 consecrated virgins in the United States. These are women who "commit themselves to a life of chastity, prayer, and contemplation." Sounds decent enough, right? Well, in order to become one of these CVs, you have a ceremony in which you wear an actual wedding dress and veil and pretty much...marry Jesus. Um, what?

Here are some of my favorite lines from the article:

1. Maley knelt at the altar, two women friends by her side, and spent much of the ceremony gazing over Burke's shoulder at an image of her bridegroom.

2. "Jesus was a secular person, he was out there with people," Maley said after the ceremony, as her friends nibbled on sandwiches and cookies at the reception.

3. Maley wasn't nervous before the ceremony but spent much of Friday night worried about details of the ceremony and whether the buttons on the back of her dress were right.

4. After the reception, Maley planned to celebrate with a glass of champagne at a hotel where some of her out-of-town friends were staying.

The benefits of becoming a consecrated virgin versus a nun is that you get to live and interact in the regular world. Also, the Church does not offer its CVs any form of monetary aid. They must work and earn an income like the rest of us sex-having scoundrels who have already signed our tickets straight to Hades.

Let me wrap up this portion of the post by reiterating the fact that I am Catholic, which gives me the ultimate right to poke fun at this ancient ritual. If you weren't Catholic, and you made fun of it, I would want to hurt you.

In other virgin news...

There is a growing trend in plastic surgery called hymenoplasty that actually constructs a new hymen for women looking to present their boyfriends/husbands with the gift of defloweration later in life. How fun. The procedure costs thousands of dollars, and it makes the sexual experience feel like it's happening for the very first time. Winces and tears of pain are free.

TYPING IN ALL CAPS DOESN'T EVEN COME CLOSE TO REPRESENTING MY THOUGHTS ON THIS ASININE PROCEDURE. This might be even more ridiculous than marrying Jesus. If this really makes women feel better about losing it to Billy Bigman under the bleachers after he screwed the pooch at the championship game earlier that evening, then these ladies need to think a little harder about what really matters in life. Take that $5000 and send your kids to college. Donate to a charity. Donate to the Catholic Church.