What "Religious Educators" REALLY Learn in L.A.
Smoke of Satan Alert!!!

Liturgical Pole DancingAt the L.A. Edjumacation Congress, is Liturgical Pole Dancing one of the subjects taught? Possibly this is just a flashback to my beer drenched younger days in The Corps, but I'm all of a sudden gettin' a hankerin' to whip out a handful of dollar bills. Is it just me, or does this chick look about ready to start sliding up and down those poles strategically placed around her? Spiked heels, a sexy shirt and tight pants... the only thing missing is a heavy bass guitar beat.

But anyhow, here's a rather interesting story on what's being passed off as Catholic catechitical instruction in La-La Land. Here's a wee bit;

The Archdiocese of Los Angeles is encouraging its full-time employees (with a 35% discount off tuition) to take the graduate religious studies courses to be offered at Holy Family parish in Pasadena next fall, according to the Archdiocesan Catholic Center’s Feb. 23 Newsbriefs.

The courses will be offered by the Graduate Religious Studies Department of Mount St. Mary’s College in Los Angeles. A required text “places the ethics of sex and gender relations within an illuminating context informed by feminist theory, contemporary biblical scholarship, Catholic moral theology, and social-scientific findings.”

It is uncertain what faculty will lead the classes at Holy Family. But if the Religious Studies Department’s Dr. Laurie Wright-Garry will among them, students will sit at the feet of one who specializes in systematic theology “with a concentration on Feminist Liberation Theologies” and “whose dissertation focused on the Woman's Ordination Conference between 1975-1994,” according to a Mount St. Mary’s faculty guide.

In Fall 2006, Wright-Garry taught a “Sexual Ethics” class at Mount St. Mary’s. Lisa Sowle Cahill’s Sex, Gender and Christian Ethics was required reading for the class. A 1997 Christian Century review of the book says it “places the ethics of sex and gender relations within an illuminating context informed by feminist theory, contemporary biblical scholarship, Catholic moral theology, and social-scientific findings.” Cahill, says the review, argues against the notion of gender as “simply a social construct” but is “equally critical of the notion that moral judgments are timeless maxims of natural law.” Cahill argues “that the central moral norm of the New Testament is the building of an inclusive community of the marginalized ... The church should interpret biblical passages on homosexuality, divorce, virginity and other issues of sexuality and gender in ways that promote such a community.”

Wright-Garry’s other required book is James Nelson and Sandra Longfellow’s Sexuality and the Sacred: Sources for Theological Reform. Nelson, a United Church of Christ minister, has argued for full acceptance of homosexuality as a moral good.

The director of Graduate Religious Studies is the Rev. Guillermo Garcia, who has been involved in pastoral ministry in the archdiocese. (He also is pastor of St. Gertrude’s in Los Angeles.) A systematic theologian, Garcia’s “current fields of interest,” according to Mount St. Mary’s, “are Pastoral Theology, Hispanic Pastoral Ministry, (Hispanic) LBGT Studies and Latino Studies.”

An announcement for the Holy Family classes notes that the program’s graduate level curriculum fulfills the requirements to become a pastoral associate, parish life director, youth ministry director, religious education coordinator, and a religious studies teacher at the elementary and secondary levels.

Sheesh, and I thought I had it bad here when I went for my Diocesan Catechitical Certificate, and I had to fight against the "Our Father and Mother, who art in heaven..." nonsense.