Remember kids: Be good, say your prayers and, uh, never be alone with a priest. Praise!
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2007/12/12/notes121207.DTL&nl=fixPrintable:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/g/a/2007/12/12/notes121207.DTL&type=printableThis is how you know. This is one more of the beautiful bizarre myriad ways the Great Shift signals its imminent arrival, in fits and spurts and wayward sidelong slaps, weird cultural burps and from unexpected places that make you go, wow.
Take the Archdiocese of New York. It has apparently just released new coloring book for kids, all about how to be safe in an age of fear and predation. It is full of nice pictures of kids being sweet and virginal and right, engaging in happy activities that praise Almighty God while protecting themselves from, say, online predators and vegans and atheists. It is about awareness, about listening to your parents and saying your prayers and never, ever being alone with a priest and being nice to animals and never hitting your sister and ...
Wait, what? What was that, about the priests? Oh right. Um, the pedophilia. The sexual molestation and the lawsuits and the hints of deep ongoing perversion for the past, oh, 2,000 years. Yes.
Be sure to use your darkest red crayon of bewildered dread when you color this particular page, kids, because there it is, the pedophilia threat, the church's appalling multimillion-dollar sexual abuse scandal, right there on the page in the form of two sweet-looking, grinning (female) angels hovering around an innocent virgin altar boy and warning him — and by extension, you, the innocent virgin coloring book aficionado — to never, not ever, be alone in a room with an adult you do not know. Much like Jesus intended. ...