The Rev. Thomas Williams, a moral theologian and prominent American author, lecturer and television personality, said in a statement he was “deeply sorry for this grave transgression” against his vows of celibacy.

Williams, the author of such books as 2008’s “Knowing Right From Wrong: A Christian Guide to Conscience,” was the superior of the Legion’s general directorate in Rome in the late 1990s and early 2000s. More recently, he taught theology, promoted his books and lectured widely.

I don’t know why its so complicated for these men! If they simply described the pregnancy using ownership words like ‘I fathered a child’ then we could stop pretending like we don’t know what the hell their saying.

I’m not surprised by this and I think its safe to say the public stopped being shocked and awed years ago but for a few very gullible people that prefer to deny this pattern or those with an interest in keeping their secrets in tact.

The Legion has been beset by scandal following revelations that its late founder, the Rev. Marciel Maciel, fathered three children with two women and sexually abused his seminarians. Maciel died in 2008, and in 2009 the Legion admitted to his crimes.

The Maciel scandal has been particularly sensational given that the Mexican-born priest was held up by Pope John Paul II as a model for the faithful, with his priests admired for their orthodoxy and ability to bring in money and attract new seminarians.

Just last week, the Legion admitted that seven of its priests were under investigation by the Vatican for allegedly sexually abusing minors — suggesting that the same culture of secrecy and silence that Maciel used to cover his crimes enabled other priests to abuse children.

THE LEGION OF CHRIST *blank stare* are the latest culprit in this week’s headlines. As usual, there is no direct admission of guilt by the hypocritical upper echelon gaggle of man sandals and the organization as a whole shows evidence that it is willing to cover up discrepancies for the sake of revenue and power.  How typical.

Honestly, if this is the type of behavior religious followers prescribe to then I say its high time to disassemble these bastards sect by sect for the betterment of civilized society. If a group of guys want to live together in harmony then they should support gay marriage rights. If a group of men want to live in the hills and have wild outlandish sex with their apprentices then they should present themselves as such, because I know of plenty of people that are into that sort of thing, they’re called ‘subs’ in the kink circle.

And while others would spin their wheels discussing nuances of faith and salvation, I would rather get to the heart of the matter, which seems to be that religious organizations do women and children more harm than good for the sake of money and power.

Secret sex, lies, bastard children, unwed mothers, questions of financial support, abuse of power, and money.

Women, babies, church resources, questions of financial obligations, and YOU ARE THE FATHER..exactly the reason why the Vatican restricted marriage among members, who is going to take care of all these dam babies!?

The church is very rich, and its resources should be protected, like any other tool of exploitation. This isn’t rocket science.

Either way, all the drama sounds like the makings of a Good Book to me, though I’m eager to find out how this ends, I worry about what the masses will do once their ‘moral’ yardstick is taken away. What would Jesus Do…? My guess is…he’d run screaming away from these ‘religious leaders’ but I”m an atheist so what do I know?

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In all my efforts to ignore the Steve Harvey and Michael Baisden nonsense, I was recently directed to the recent advice of a (yes, male) Pastor Jomo K. Johnson’s upcoming book “Call Tyrone: Why Black Women Should Remain Single Or…”:

On its face, “Call Tyrone” is a call for women to embrace being single since, according to Johnson, the Bible condones being single. Even according to the website, the book seeks to offer an alternative to women unable to find a suitable mate of the same race within the church — which is problematic in my mind because of queer erasure and the unspoken cultural mandate that Black women should only date within the community. Pastor Johnson says in an interview, “I know that African-American women make up such a large number of the African-American church, and they’re not finding how to hold relationships, how to hold husbands.”

Admittedly, I’ve not read the book (and will likely not read it); however, quotes like that make the Pastors purported advice and support seem as though he is urging Black women to remain single because we are the problem. Even as confusing is the idea that the Bible speaks fondly of being single; but in another quote, Pastor Johnson says that Jesus, too, was single and was able to embrace such a life in order to serve others. And while the book’s conclusion is supposed to serve as some sort of “wake-up call” to Black (Christian, heterosexual) men in America who are not handling their business, it is heavily marketed toward the single Black (heterosexual and assumed desperate) woman in the church.

Another thing I found interesting in my research of the book are the titles of the chapters, which are posted proudly on the book’s promo website. They are:

Introduction – Poem of Apology
1. Dear Mama

2. Potent Impotence: The Castration of the Black Man

3. The Traditional Broken Home

4. Designing Women: The Rise of the Professional Independent Sister

5. Exodus Into Egypt: Probation, Parole, or Prison

6. Self Lynching: What Commercial Rap is Doing to Our Children

7. Mandingo – The Appeal of the Successful Black Man to White Women

8. A Woman’s Worth – Understanding Self Value

9. A Call To Singleness

10. Asalam Alaykum? Marrying A Muslim Man

11. Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner: Interracial Relationships in the 21st Century

12. A New Frontier: Missionary Relationships

13. A Change Gonna Come: A Revival of the Black Man

I’m not really sure about you all, but I can almost predict the content of each chapter in this book. They are things that have been spoken in the Black Christian community for ages, and it is no surprise to me that the old school (wrong) teachings of our foremorthers and forefathers would be used as positive advice. More problems with this obviously fall in my understanding of the Bible as a former member of the religious group. While Jesus may have been single (or maybe not, in the name of Mary Magdalene), the book seems to be clear about the place of a woman: her worth may be determined in bearing children, and her direction comes from a man as head of the household. Even more than that, because I know that many people will say that the book is written in parables and far too complex for my wee unbelieving mind, the attitudes of (some, not all) church-goers develop a certain attitude about women, especially older and unwed ones, at a certain point. And so, Black women stay losing.

Additionally, what is with all the outside “experts” rushing in to push all of these stomach turning, problematic remedies on Black women for..whatever they find to be our problem? Does Pastor Jomo seem to be doing something innovative, or playing the same old song in a different key? I’m not any more interested in a male-preacher’s advice to call Tyrone and stay single than I am thinking like a man and acting as Steve Harvey defines a woman. (Note: I hear that this entails instituting a 90-day-rule for sex. Puh.)

The post Pastor Jomo K. Johnson’s “Call Tyrone”: Not-so Helpful Dating Advice From the Black Pulpit? appeared first on THE INTERSECTION | MADNESS & REALITY.

Yet, the message of black inferiority is still something being transmitted today. Like air, water, and high-fructose corn syrup, it simply permeates the culture. We take no more notice of it than we do inhaling the carbon-monoxide air of our car-driven country.

Television news constantly feeds us reports of black criminality, black underachievement, black addiction. Our entertainment industry gives us a steady diet of black depravity, shoveling pimps and hustlers and playas and thugs down our throats. We can watch them on our televisions, in our movies; listen to them on our radios, iPods, and smart phones; we can read about them on our Kindles and Nooks and even—heaven forbid—actual books and thrill to their tales of violence, greed, and penicillin-resistant promiscuity.

Even science gets into the act. Phrenology may be dead, but so-called studies and statistics thrive. They tell us black kids can’t keep up academically. Drugs consume the ghetto. Jails are overflowing with black misery. Over 60 percent of black men without a high school diploma will wind up in prison. Some even say there are more black men in prison today than were enslaved in 1850. On top of all that, black men are even the least hirable demographic in these here post-racial United States.

Hell, with all these problems, no wonder we are constantly assaulted by those images I mentioned earlier. That we are just as likely to see black thuggery on our TV screens as we were the token black friend in a ‘90s sitcom (whatever happened to those?). That hip-pop (what I like to call ironically “commercial” rap) still pounds us with talk of pimping, hustling, dealing, murdering, and misogynating. That 80 percent of the books published for, by, and/or about blacks is urban or “ghetto” literature. After all, all these portrayals reflect the culture, mirror the reality of life in African-America.

Except, of course, they don’t.

As has been noted, 80 percent of African-American books published today are what some call ghetto lit. One would think that a corresponding percentage of black folk actually live in the ghetto. Well … according to the 2010 Census, only 30 percent of African-Americans today live in majority-minority neighborhoods.

Educationally, the good folks at Freakanomics (and other studies back them up on this) have found that achievement is not race-based—but class-based. Middle- and upper-class blacks score just as well as any other child of their socioeconomic background no matter their race. Conversely, poor kids of all races score equally poorly. Studies have also found that the rates of triflinity (n. the act of being or the moral structure that leads one to actually be triflin’) are the same across the races.

On the crime front, data have shown that rates of criminality between whites and blacks are also the same. Black men make up about 40.2 percent of the prison population with roughly 846,000 of us in the system, and, in 2003, the Bureau of Justice Statistics predicted that 32 percent of black men born in 2001 will be spending time in prison (I guess the Justice Department had just unrolled their 30-year business plan, or something). Still, out of a population of some 18 million black males, 846,000 is hardly representative. And, with all due respect to Ice Cube, there may be more niggers in the pen than in college (I can’t particularly speak on that one), but there are actually more black men in college (919,000) than in prison. And all due respect to Dr. Michelle Alexander, who claimed that there are more black men in prison today than were enslaved in 1850; there were only about 1.8 million black men in America in 1850. To compare the black population of that time with today’s, which is 10 times larger, is a bit disingenuous. Less than five percent of black men are imprisoned today. In 1850, less than five percent of black men were free.

Now, I’m not saying that everything in our black communities is honky-dory and that we’re living in the Days of Ripple and Roses. What I am saying is that we African-Americans continue to be treated by the dominant culture (as well as our own) as a monolithic whole and that treatment is overwhelmingly negative.

How can 80 percent of our books be ghetto lit when only 30 percent of us live in majority-minority neighborhoods—ghetto or otherwise? How can so much of our music celebrate thugging, pimping, robbing, and stealing, when such a small percentage of us live such a life?

Now, I’m a satirist. I write novels. I understand the role of fantasy in entertainment. I personally do not get into “conscious” vs. “unconscious” (or whatever the term), “positive” vs. “negative” debates. Life’s more complicated than that. Besides, a good story needs both heroes and villains. A really good story muddies up the distinction. But, as a writer, I also respect the image. I believe that images have power, can move people, and, if repeated enough, affect the way people think.

Does the persistent image of black inferiority have power? Judge for yourself. It has power enough to allow Gingrich and Santorum to say what they did and be taken seriously. In some quarters, people believed Limbaugh when he suggested Obama got into Harvard due to affirmative action.

As stated before, black men are the least hirable demographic. When an employer sees a “black” name on a resumé or application, do thoughts of criminal behavior, drug abuse, and/or intellectual inferiority dance like watermelons through their heads? Do they subconsciously check their wallets or purses when that black applicant walks through the door? Wonder if they speak Jive? When they look at that applicant’s credentials, do they think, “Affirmative action”?

Recently, the National Education Policy Center found that, though black and white school kids are equally trifling, 28 percent of African-American middle school boys are suspended or expelled as opposed to only 10 percent of their white counterparts. This is apparently due to the discretionary behavior of the disciplining adults and not the individual child’s actual offense. Could that disciplinarian be looking at that little black boy and be thinking of his future thuggery? That that boy isn’t going to amount to anything, anyway, and they might as well nip whatever it is in the bud?

From what I understand, the “justice” system treats black teens much the same way. After all, blacks and whites commit the same rates of crimes. Yet, black men are six and a half times more likely to see jail time than any white man ever would. What could be going through the arresting officers’ minds? The judges’? The jailers’? Could it be the same thing that passed Dr. Walter Quijano’s lips when he testified in the Duane Buck trial that black men possess a little known gene called “future dangerousness”? (It’s apparently found in the melanin.)

Is the disproportionately punative treatment black men receive in this country due to the fact that T.I. and Lil Wayne rap? Of course not. Should it? Well … there is a price to pay for those two’s existences. But that is artistic.

Seriously though, ever since the first master complained about the first nigra slave stealing his chickens, African-Americans have been dealing with negative portrayals of themselves. And those negative images have often been racist in nature and used to reinforce and justify African-Americans’ oppression and dehumanization. Do these images serve the same function today? I would be the last one to say that. As I said, today, even the Grand Wizard of Aryan Nation United States (A.N.U.S.) would be screaming, “Who you callin’ ‘racist,’ nigger?!” So, I’ll leave that up to you.

Meanwhile, as a satirist, it is up to me to examine those images, poke and prod them, take my incisive “wit” and twisted “humor” and slap them up, flip them, and rub them down, to slice them open and start pulling until the chitlins come pouring out into the light of day. That is why I wrote Koontown Killing Kaper with all its offensive language, grotesque imagery, and absurd humor. ‘Cause, if you ask me (and Lord knows, you didn’t) today’s pimp, gangsta, playa who’s movin’ weight, bodyin’ niggas, and runnin’ this here pimp game is about as representative of today’s African-Americans as the happy coon on the plantation just a-pickin’ and a-grinnin’ on his banjo and doin’ the cake walk and singin’ his Africanized Irish ballads fo’ massa was representative of the dusky Ethiopians of the 1850s. And, if I can make fun of those Amos ‘N’ Andy portrayals of yesteryear, I most definitely need to make fun of their modern equivalent. ‘Cause boy, to tell de troof, there do be times when I’se utterly and completely regusted.

Click link to purchase Koontown Killing Kaper.

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