I hate being alcoholic…I mean, Catholic.  Sorry, wrong weekend get-together. 

Actually, we all know it’s the same damn thing.  Don’t believe me?   Research shows that 85% of Irish Catholics worldwide will still be celebrating St. Patrick’s Day well into November.  (Research also shows that 75% of them think the day is in honor of the man who invented the cure for sleeping with ugly people, but that’s another matter entirely.  Like that disorderly conduct conviction, and the tattoo of Boy George on my dick.)  Where the hell was I going with this?  Oh yeah…Mom, I fucked the cat.

By now you are no doubt saying to yourself, Paul, you can’t possibly paint all Catholics as drunks based on the lovable, Guinness-fueled antics of those happy-go-lucky, car-bombin’ Irish!  But you, my friend, are forgetting the Golden Rule:  everything written on the Internet must be true.  Which reminds me—honey, I only rented those three hookers in Vegas because I was lonely and they reminded me of you.  Besides, we just cuddled all night and, well, one of them turned out to be a guy so under the Marquis of Queensbury rules that doesn’t even count, right?

Let’s look at this in a logical, civilized manner.  What are the most important ceremonies in the Catholic Church?  First off, there’s weekly Mass—the focal point of which is communion, or the partaking of the body and blood of Christ.  Well folks, our Lord and Savior must’ve had a truly heroic tolerance because the blood of Christ is actually a $2.99 bottle of Merlot that was distilled in Guam.  We Catholics are supposed to believe it turns into the blood of Christ during Mass.  Trust me on this one, I was an altar boy for 5 years.  That, and I once got kicked out of parochial school for asking Fr. Jalbert, “So what you’re saying is that I could chug a couple gallons of the blood of Christ and still be good to tell the cops that I hadn’t been drinking?  Bitchin’!!!”

The next most important event for the Church is matrimony—the holy joining of a man and woman in the presence of a whole lotta drunk people looking to have one night stands with the more attractive members of the wedding party.  Need I say more?  Trust me, even Rob will one day realize that marriage is a very small price to pay for an all day open bar.

Thanks Cardinal O’Connor, because it’s really a bitch when, after spending an entire day drinking three dozen beers pumped so full of green dye that my next shit will speak Gaelic, I feel so goddamned guilty about eating all that corned beef just before I take that complete stranger home for one and a half minutes of freaky, unprotected sex.

And lastly, there is that most final of sacred ceremonies—the funeral.  Catholics may not have invented them but we sure as hell knew to make ‘em as early in the day as possible.  No other religion has done so much to erase the stigma of getting completely plastered before noon:  “Doug, I’m so sorry about your wife passing away.  If there’s anything I can do to…hey, is that a case of Schlitz over there?  Goddammit, Doug, YOU FUCKING RULE!!” 

Actually, I like the fact that my religious brethren have a higher blood alcohol content per capita than anybody else.  I just can’t stand Lent.  For the less knowledgeable, Lent is the 40 days right before Easter when all good, devout Catholics are supposed to abstain from eating meat on Fridays and, on top of that, give up doing something they really, really like (for example, eating ice cream, or hunting, or running for president). 

It’s the meat part that drives me nuts.  I LOVE MEAT.  Without meat in my diet, I am a peaceful, well-balanced, upstanding member of society and we just can’t have that. 

But seriously, Lent requires that I actually think ahead as to what I will make for dinner on Friday when I am grocery shopping on Sunday.  You may be thinking to yourself, Paul, that’s just not that hard a thing to do.  And to you I give a hearty, “May a pitchfork fuck you sideways.” 

You have to understand that my planning skills went out the fucking window with that first empty bottle of Jack Daniels.  (My planning skills, however, were not aimed at the elderly.)  It took me five years to plan my wedding.  And while many people have since remarked that they had never seen a Taco Bell decked out in such a wonderful horse racing motif, that ain’t exactly testament to my organizational prowess.  But even worse than the planning thing is the fact that I have to actually go out at lunch on Fridays and search around for some meatless food product like some low-life vegetarian:

“Excuse me, does this have meat in it?”

“Oh are you a vegetarian, sir?  We have a special section for you located over…mmglklgumff…”

[Insert sounds of gunplay.]

{Over loudspeaker} “Clean up to the front of the Deli.  Can we get a mop and bucket to Deli, please.”  

"You can eat meat... but no dick!"

Now, many people have tried to point out to me that this year has been easier than most years thanks to Cardinal O’Connor.  In case you hadn’t heard, he single-handedly lifted the ban on meat for Catholics countrywide a couple Fridays ago so that no one would feel guilty about eating corned beef on St. Patrick’s Day.  Oh yeah, that made me proud to be a Catholic.  Thanks Cardinal O’Connor, because it’s really a bitch when, after spending an entire day drinking three dozen beers pumped so full of green dye that my next shit will speak Gaelic, I feel so goddamned guilty about eating all that corned beef just before I take that complete stranger home for one and a half minutes of freaky, unprotected sex.

Not that I’m surprised by the hypocrisy of it all.  After all, we are talking about a tradition started by the apostles—you know, those 12 wacky fishermen—as a means for devout followers to express their deep love of Jesus.  And, you know, help prop up a failing regional fishing industry.  When I die, I hope I get at least one minute with St. Peter so I can tell him, “I’M SORRY YOU WERE SHITTY FISHERMEN.  But perhaps you should have stopped trolling the Dead Sea and tried going to, I don’t know, the FUCKING MEDITERRANEAN????”

Let’s face it…this is the same Church that in the Middle Ages came up with the idea of “Indulgences.”  For those who did not have 16 years of Catholic schooling like yours truly, Indulgences were like a debit card for iniquities.  You pre-paid the Church to absolve you of a sin that you hadn’t gotten around to committing yet. 

Since there is no modern equivalent for this, let me be crystal clear about it:  you went into a dark box to meet with an anonymous guy in a dark robe and tell him that you’d really like to screw your neighbor’s wife.  And, instead of going on about the Ten Commandments forbidding impure thoughts yadda yadda yadda, he would pause dramatically and say something like, “God says he could be okay wit dat for 500 big ones.” 

You gotta love the Catholic Church.  Only Italians could make God into a fuckin’ Don.