The Great Ontological Circle Jerk: Michaelangelo, St. Anselm, and the Divine

Separation of Light from Darkness,
by Michaelangelo

On this Sunday in New Zealand, the Rev. Reginald Barjesus is pleased yet humbled to have been chosen by the Lord to announce a theological development of some significance.  By the grace of God, he has been given a deep insight into the character of the Trinity and has been allowed to share it with the world.

But before elucidating this insight more clearly, and indeed to underscore its significance, I wish briefly to treat the nature of theological study and progress. Unlike virtually every other form of human understanding, theological innovation is precious. And it is all the more rare to have a new insight into the nature of God. Indeed, the greatest theological innovations over many hundreds of years have pertained to Mary, who is merely a vessel -- unsoiled, to be sure, but still nothing more than a vessel.

In fact, the doctrinal developments regarding Mary are held up as "an example of the Church's growth in understanding of Christian doctrine." And by studying the case of Mary, we can learn the methods by which theological progress is achieved. We've pretty much always known, for instance, that Mary was a virgin when our Lord Jesus was conceived. But it was the Lateran Council in 649 that advanced our knowledge one step further, affirming that Mary conceived the baby Jesus "without any detriment to her virginity, which remains inviolate even after his birth." Mary's perpetual virginity was reaffirmed during Vatican II (1962-1965), which stated that the Lord's birth "did not diminish His mother's virginal integrity but sanctified it." I don't know exactly how this works, but my guess is that Jesus was born out the virgin's ass. My proposal for Vatican III is that we start referring to the virgin birth as the rectal birth, a term which might meet less resistance from skeptics. Given the Vatican's efforts to reach out to atheists, this may very well be the way to go. I don't believe it will violate any existing dogma, and in some ways it has clear advantages, for "rectal birth" tells us what happened: Mary squeezed Jesus out through her anus; she pinched a divine loaf. "Virgin birth" only tells us what did not happen: Jesus' birth did not diminish his mother's virginal integrity, which isn't saying much because his birth didn't diminish her eyesight either.

The Assumption of Mary,
by Peter Paul Rubens, ca. 1620
Not food for worms, this one!

Any doubts that arise due to misguided biblical literalism have also been banished. While the virgin birth mentioned in the Gospels is to be taken literally, we are not to be fooled by biblical references to Jesus as Mary's first-born (which might imply that there was at least a second-born). No, Jesus is the first-born of one; he was Mary's oldest son, but he was her youngest son, too. Neither are we to be misled by Gospel references to Jesus' brothers -- James, Joseph, Simon, and Judas (Matthew 13:55; Mark 6:3). We are told that they may have been step-brothers or cousins -- apparently, there is no specific Hebrew or Aramaic word for "cousin," so they might have used the term "brother" quite broadly. This may very well be true. Of course, we'll need to reconsider the nature of social life in ancient Palestine, for it would seem that Jewish men must have been fucking each other's wives left and right (from the Alpha to the Omega, so to speak) for them not to even have the words to express the difference between a brother and a cousin. But that is small price to pay for the integrity of the Bible.

Moreover, building on Mary's perpetual virginity (together with the dogma of Mary's own immaculate conception, which leaves her untainted with original sin), we proceed to the declaration in 1950 by Pope Pius XII of the infallible dogma regarding the Assumption of Mary:

By the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ, of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, and by our own authority, we pronounce, declare, and define it to be a divinely revealed dogma: that the Immaculate Mother of God, the ever Virgin Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory.

Pope Pius poses piously -- this the
last of XII pious Piuses was described
by the British Foreign Office as the
"greatest moral coward of our age" for
his flirtations with Ante Pavelić, the
fascist leader of Croatia during WWII.

Now, we don't know for certain whether or not Mary actually died (that knowledge will no doubt come with further theological study); but at the very least we know that she didn't stink.

Sadly, in contrast to the fruitful developments within the theological sub-discipline of Mariology, in other areas of the faith our theology has been impoverished over time rather than enriched. Limbo, for instance, while never an official dogma was exceptionally popular for many centuries. But since 2007 it has fallen out of favor. It seems likely at this point that dead unbaptized infants do not suffer the exquisite punishment of limbo. They may get to go straight to heaven. Of course, they're just as likely to go straight to hell -- we need more study to know for certain. By the way, please do not confuse limbo with purgatory, which is a different place and is a dogmatic certainty. Purgatory has served the Catholics very well in the past, underpinning a healthy revenue stream by making possible the sale of indulgences. Reviving that revenue stream may be crucial in light of recent sex-scandal lawsuits, so purgatory is not likely to be shut down any time soon. Meanwhile, the notion of hell is also under vicious assault by many liberal Churches, including the not-so-liberal Church of England. This is really going to disappoint many of those Christians who are denying themselves joy in this life for the pleasure of witnessing the torture of their enemies in the life to come. According to my calculations based on the most recent scientific data, allowing the traditionally damned to enter New Jerusalem will increase the population by 400% -- I pity the poor self-righteous Christian bastard who has to share a one-bedroom apartment with a smirking David Hume, who got so much pleasure out of tormenting Christians in this life and will no doubt have just as much pleasure tormenting them in the next.

Be that as it may. My purpose thus far has been to draw attention to the nature of theological innovation, to underscore how painfully it is won. Indeed, in many respects the richness of Christian theology has suffered over time -- in the hands of modern liberals, it is being reduced to an insipid broth. And sadly, the most exciting theological progress has been with respect to Mary. Let's face it, she's a sexually dissatisfied woman, a mere sidekick.

St. Anselm of Canterbury,
1033-1109.
Rumor has it that when St. Anselm
was hungry, he would use the
ontological argument to summon the
best of all possible meals.
He weighed 67 lbs. when
he died.

But now we will talk about real progress, for our new insights pertain to the nature of God Himself. And we achieved them by imagining God masturbating. Does God masturbate? Of course he does. It follows from the time-honored ontological proof of the existence of God, most commonly associated with St. Anselm:

1. The masturbating Greatest Being (God) exists in our minds.

2. Existence in reality is greater than non-existence in reality.

3. Suppose the masturbating Greatest Being exists only in our minds and not in reality.

4. This would mean that the masturbating Greatest Being is a Being that admits of a Greater masturbating Being, namely one that exists in reality -- which is a contradiction.

5. Therefore, in order for the masturbating Greatest Being to exist in our minds, it must also exist in reality.

Now, if we build upon this insight and take into consideration the Trinitarian nature of God, it follows that when God masturbates he is actually fucking himself in a threesome. Moreover, it is a homosexual threesome -- Father, Son, and Holy Ghost (we'll leave the incestuous nature of the relationship alone).

I must admit that out of a sinful sense of human pride I would like to take personal credit for this theological discovery. But in all honesty, I can at most lay claim to rediscovering this truth, for there is evidence that in certain exclusive circles this theological truth has or had been known for a very long time.

Recent observations by two neuroscientists who studied paintings in the Vatican have observed interesting outlines in the throat of God as depicted by Michaelangelo in the fresco "The Separation of Light and Darkness." Of course, with brainstems on their minds, what they see is a brainstem (even though the brainstem is located nowhere near the throat). But one the Reverand's learned associates -- a widely-read Renaissance woman with a husband and two adolescent sons, none of whom are circumcised (I'm establishing her credentials; hers are far better than the ever virgin Mary's) -- thinks about quite different things. And she immediately recognized the distinctive shape for what it actually is: the outline of an impressive incarnation of masculine sexual machinery. There is little doubt that Michaelangelo, who is an icon of the modern gay community, was thinking along those same lines too. It is truly wonderful when interdisciplinary efforts produce such fruitful results (though I should say some art historians have distanced themselves these interpretations for reasons I don't quite understand since they have an inclination to believe almost anything and issue bountiful opinions through the same orifice by which Mary delivered Jesus -- but that's merely an aside).

Clearly, what we have here is an image of God playing with himself, with the genitals of the Son rammed down the throat of the Father, who's being taken from behind by the Holy Ghost (whom we can't see because, naturally, he's invisible). Perhaps if the Vatican would allow us to scrape away some of the paint that makes up the white cloud in the background, we might get a glimpse of Jesus' face (we could compare it to Shroud of Turin for authenticity). But until then we'll have to speculate as to whether Jesus at this point in the history of the world was a man with a big prick or just a big prick. Theologically, however, it makes little difference.

What is significant, though, is that the painting is a depiction of the act of Creation (which explains why the Son isn't circumcised, for that ritual develops later) and it is a reaffirmation of the Gospel of John:

In the beginning the Word already existed. He was with God, and he was God. He was in the beginning with God. He created everything there is. Nothing exists that he didn't make. Life itself was in him, and this life gives life to everyone. (John 1:1-4)

Creation was a fecund orgy of male sexual energy. The scientists are wrong -- there wasn't one big bang, but series of bangs in close succession, orgasmic eruptions of divinely masculine solids, liquids, and gases that issued forth from within God and spewed into the void. God fucked and sucked himself for six days straight -- no wonder he was so tired on the seventh, no wonder he needed a rest. In Genesis we read that "God looked over all he had made, and he saw that it was excellent in every way." But those us who have flipped ahead know that he was deceiving himself; it was merely a case of post-orgasmic bliss. It wouldn't take him very long to figure out that he'd created an incredible mess, something that needed to be washed away in a Flood. But the disillusionment would come later in the story. For the time being we should be celebrating with God his homosexual joy, perhaps to the tune of Beethovan's Ninth.

Of course, the recognition of God's homosexuality not only helps us better understand the process of Creation, it also sheds light on the biblical condemnation of homosexuals: "Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is an abomination." (Lev. 18:22) It helps us understand why God was so eager to "rain down fire and burning sulfur" upon Sodom and Gomorrah. The sin is not homosexuality itself, but the aspiration to be like God. Nothing angers him more. Indeed, this is pretty much the same reason that God tossed Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden: "Then the Lord God said, 'The people have become as we are ... So the Lord banished Adam and his wife from the Garden." (Genesis 3:22-23)

Likewise, recognizing that God is a homosexual Being should help us understand the plight of the Catholic clergy. Dedicated as they are to serving the Lord, they take the spirit of the divine deep into their hearts. Is it any wonder that they wish to emulate in the flesh with their altar boys the divine relationship between the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost?