This is a good portrait of the vile group to which a local LA bishop urged us to respond only with “dialogue”— at least until the outcry from the Faithful embarrassed the USCCB into bestirring itself to call for a day of reparation. No protest that might be visible to the world, of course; too confrontational.
Now, prayer is a very good and necessary thing. But it isn’t a substitute for effective action within the natural order. If we don’t oppose evil ourselves in the ways He has made available to us, why should He think we’re serious when we ask for His help?
This reply is belated, but I want to affirm your thought. Dialogue does not have the magical healing qualities a lot of people give it. Many Catholic churchmen like to dialogue only with those who disagree with Church teachings. And when they do, they end up sympathetic to the other side, more open to justifying immorality because of poignantly appealing hard cases. Such as: What about the gay son kicked out by his parents? But wait, what about the parents who can't agree that the son's cross dressing and bringing home seedy characters and letting himself be used by older gay men is a good thing and there are constant fights and finally the son runs away and tells everyone that his parents threw him out. I know a man whose parents dumped him in the Castro district, true, but what he put them through before that moment was intolerable.
Tom, It's good that Fred Brungard helped you get excited about film and brought you to liberal Masses when you were apparently not willing to assist at any other kind of Mass.
Unfortunately, men with the proclivities he manifests often seek out vulnerable young men and groom them. I hope that isn't the untold part of your story.
I can't imagine why it warmed your heart that your benefactor started that troupe of blasphemous anti-Catholic fake religious sisters called The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. Whether or not he was generous to you and your friends while recruiting for illicit reasons, it is still reprehensible that he and his cohorts mock the Catholic Church and perform lewd and blasphemous acts. May God turn his life around and show him the way to true happiness. And may God bless you too. Let us pray for one another, and may God's truth win out in all of our hearts.
I get a lot more comments in my email box than I get here. Here is an email discussion resulting from this post. Even though this piece is not about homosexuality or the transgender controversy but a description of the outrageous, lewd, and crude things the SPI does to mock the Catholic Church, I received this from a friend who had a daughter and then a son. The daughter from toddlerhood refused to wear a dress or do anything typically feminine. Now my friend in her holiday letter talks about her "two boys." I have no idea how far the transition has gone with her child formerly known as a girl, except she now has a beard. But anyway, my friend first sent this to me: "Know and understand before printing and making judgement," and she included a blurb from the https://www.thesisters.org/ about their charity work. I replied: "Thanks for reading my post about the SPI. You sent me what they claim to be doing. I simply recorded what they admit they are doing. For example, the man whose religious name refers to coming in your ass (Sister Cuminja Wrasse), said this, “
"Sister Cuminja Wrasse and I were talking about the common accusation that the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence mock Roman Catholic nuns. ‘What’s your response?’ I asked. ‘I say, “You’re absolutely right,’"
She replied,
"This is a much longer conversation about how the church treats and encourages it's members to treat the LGBTQ community. So "mocking" means to show the LGBTQ community that unlike their religious family, the sisters support the LGBTQ youth and adults to be who they are and not feel they are slime as the church makes them feel, with the side effects of being kicked out of their homes by religious families and having to live homeless. The Sisters are using an outrageous form to prove the point that people can be individuals in any way they want as long as they don't hurt anyone. They are saying, we support you and offer you food and love to be who you are, and who you were meant to be. Jesus would have accepted them, as many interpretations of the Bibles show that Jesus was gay. [Disgusting slander! ED.]
"More to follow if you are interested, and yet I've had too many of these conversations where both sides are strong about their point and it does not get to any better understanding leading to the problems with our nation, today. I fear for my children."
I wrote back, "The Church does not hate the sinner but the sin. The Church does not encourage its members to treat people with same-sex attractions as slime. But really in all human beings, there is a normal ick factor. I’ve heard young people of any religion wonder what do male homosexuals do, bump their penises together? And what do women do?
"I always think of the story of how the Native American father took his son to the hardware store and pointed out the differences between the nut and the bolt. The nut fits into the bolt, You can’t have two nuts or two bolts working together to build anything.
"M*: Should we be mocking the people we don’t agree with?
"The Church does not make them feel like slime. It’s like the old Irish priest said, “It’s not the hetero- or the homo-, it’s the sex outside of marriage that God has forbidden." For our own good.
"Not everyone can express their sexual feelings. If you are married and are attracted to another person than your spouse, you may suffer but you have to have self-control. Same for single people like me.
"Since the [function of the ]sexual organs are [is] intrinsically linked with reproduction, any use of the organs outside of that is a perversion. Sex belongs in marriage and to deny its procreative aspect is also a perversion, like vomiting after a meal to thwart the nourishing function of food.
"Jesus loves everyone, but He told sinners Go and sin no more. It is a disgusting falsehood made up by a sick mind to say that Jesus Christ, son of God was homosexual and acted on it. Whoever did that interpretation should wash his mind out with soap.
"Are both your children practicing homosexuality? I’m sorry.
"I fear for a world where doctors make a living cutting off the healthy breasts of young women and making Frankenstein penises that don’t work, and constructing silicon breasts for healthy young men and creating Frankenstein gashes with the surgical rearrangement of pieces of their penis, making vaginas that go nowhere, when their patients would benefit more from mental health counseling. Suicide rates after such interventions are higher than when they aren’t performed.
"No I don’t want more. I know the arguments. I used to be on your side of that and other questions. Then I realized how harmful the redefinition of morality really is to everyone. It’s done in the name of compassion, but it’s false compassion."
She seems to have missed the part where I wrote I didn't want more. And wants to continue the conversation. We'll have to see how it goes.
I kew Sister Sensible Shoes back in 1980 when I moved to San Francisco. His real name was Damien, and he was the nicest guy you would ever meet. When I got married and my wife and I moved to Marin, we lost track of him. I have not thought about him in 40 years now, except for ocasionally telling my kids stories about the SPI and Danien. Thanks for the memories, and Damien, if you're still out there somewher, i hope you are doing well.
Sister Missionary Position, in a previous incarnation as Fred Brungard, managed a “cultural center” at a reform scool in Freeville, NY around 1969 - 1972.
As one of the denizens of that well-meaning “school” I, and a lucky group of ungovernables were blessed to have Brungard’s influence on our adolescent miscreant lives. I still have valued friendships developed in that place, and we feel his enlightened inluence today, ~50 years later.
Imagine a bunch of reform school inmates becoming enthralled into a “film society” where we became critics versed in all aspects of film production (who does what? Terminology; script development; DW Griffith to Akira Kurosawa; The Great Dictator to Woman In the Dunes) and critiqueed 20th century cinema in open forums. A University is unlikely to have anything like it in 2025.
When he became aware that I refused to go to church on Sundays, something that was punishable in that place, he would come and pick me up and drive me to Cornell University for a progressive Catholic service every Sunday so that I would not be punished for skipping church. I still remember hot cider and fried cakes in the basement with the fellowship community.
Fred had a huge impact on our lives when he was still a young man. Knowing that he was one of the people that established The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence has always warmed my heart.
The only Sound of Music connection was that the gay guys in Iowa got the discarded habits from some religious sisters on the pretext they were going to put on a performance of the Sound of Music. Not the Broadway musical or the play.
This is a good portrait of the vile group to which a local LA bishop urged us to respond only with “dialogue”— at least until the outcry from the Faithful embarrassed the USCCB into bestirring itself to call for a day of reparation. No protest that might be visible to the world, of course; too confrontational.
Now, prayer is a very good and necessary thing. But it isn’t a substitute for effective action within the natural order. If we don’t oppose evil ourselves in the ways He has made available to us, why should He think we’re serious when we ask for His help?
This reply is belated, but I want to affirm your thought. Dialogue does not have the magical healing qualities a lot of people give it. Many Catholic churchmen like to dialogue only with those who disagree with Church teachings. And when they do, they end up sympathetic to the other side, more open to justifying immorality because of poignantly appealing hard cases. Such as: What about the gay son kicked out by his parents? But wait, what about the parents who can't agree that the son's cross dressing and bringing home seedy characters and letting himself be used by older gay men is a good thing and there are constant fights and finally the son runs away and tells everyone that his parents threw him out. I know a man whose parents dumped him in the Castro district, true, but what he put them through before that moment was intolerable.
Tom, It's good that Fred Brungard helped you get excited about film and brought you to liberal Masses when you were apparently not willing to assist at any other kind of Mass.
Unfortunately, men with the proclivities he manifests often seek out vulnerable young men and groom them. I hope that isn't the untold part of your story.
I can't imagine why it warmed your heart that your benefactor started that troupe of blasphemous anti-Catholic fake religious sisters called The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. Whether or not he was generous to you and your friends while recruiting for illicit reasons, it is still reprehensible that he and his cohorts mock the Catholic Church and perform lewd and blasphemous acts. May God turn his life around and show him the way to true happiness. And may God bless you too. Let us pray for one another, and may God's truth win out in all of our hearts.
I get a lot more comments in my email box than I get here. Here is an email discussion resulting from this post. Even though this piece is not about homosexuality or the transgender controversy but a description of the outrageous, lewd, and crude things the SPI does to mock the Catholic Church, I received this from a friend who had a daughter and then a son. The daughter from toddlerhood refused to wear a dress or do anything typically feminine. Now my friend in her holiday letter talks about her "two boys." I have no idea how far the transition has gone with her child formerly known as a girl, except she now has a beard. But anyway, my friend first sent this to me: "Know and understand before printing and making judgement," and she included a blurb from the https://www.thesisters.org/ about their charity work. I replied: "Thanks for reading my post about the SPI. You sent me what they claim to be doing. I simply recorded what they admit they are doing. For example, the man whose religious name refers to coming in your ass (Sister Cuminja Wrasse), said this, “
"Sister Cuminja Wrasse and I were talking about the common accusation that the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence mock Roman Catholic nuns. ‘What’s your response?’ I asked. ‘I say, “You’re absolutely right,’"
She replied,
"This is a much longer conversation about how the church treats and encourages it's members to treat the LGBTQ community. So "mocking" means to show the LGBTQ community that unlike their religious family, the sisters support the LGBTQ youth and adults to be who they are and not feel they are slime as the church makes them feel, with the side effects of being kicked out of their homes by religious families and having to live homeless. The Sisters are using an outrageous form to prove the point that people can be individuals in any way they want as long as they don't hurt anyone. They are saying, we support you and offer you food and love to be who you are, and who you were meant to be. Jesus would have accepted them, as many interpretations of the Bibles show that Jesus was gay. [Disgusting slander! ED.]
"More to follow if you are interested, and yet I've had too many of these conversations where both sides are strong about their point and it does not get to any better understanding leading to the problems with our nation, today. I fear for my children."
I wrote back, "The Church does not hate the sinner but the sin. The Church does not encourage its members to treat people with same-sex attractions as slime. But really in all human beings, there is a normal ick factor. I’ve heard young people of any religion wonder what do male homosexuals do, bump their penises together? And what do women do?
"I always think of the story of how the Native American father took his son to the hardware store and pointed out the differences between the nut and the bolt. The nut fits into the bolt, You can’t have two nuts or two bolts working together to build anything.
"M*: Should we be mocking the people we don’t agree with?
"The Church does not make them feel like slime. It’s like the old Irish priest said, “It’s not the hetero- or the homo-, it’s the sex outside of marriage that God has forbidden." For our own good.
"Not everyone can express their sexual feelings. If you are married and are attracted to another person than your spouse, you may suffer but you have to have self-control. Same for single people like me.
"Since the [function of the ]sexual organs are [is] intrinsically linked with reproduction, any use of the organs outside of that is a perversion. Sex belongs in marriage and to deny its procreative aspect is also a perversion, like vomiting after a meal to thwart the nourishing function of food.
"Jesus loves everyone, but He told sinners Go and sin no more. It is a disgusting falsehood made up by a sick mind to say that Jesus Christ, son of God was homosexual and acted on it. Whoever did that interpretation should wash his mind out with soap.
"Are both your children practicing homosexuality? I’m sorry.
"I fear for a world where doctors make a living cutting off the healthy breasts of young women and making Frankenstein penises that don’t work, and constructing silicon breasts for healthy young men and creating Frankenstein gashes with the surgical rearrangement of pieces of their penis, making vaginas that go nowhere, when their patients would benefit more from mental health counseling. Suicide rates after such interventions are higher than when they aren’t performed.
"No I don’t want more. I know the arguments. I used to be on your side of that and other questions. Then I realized how harmful the redefinition of morality really is to everyone. It’s done in the name of compassion, but it’s false compassion."
She seems to have missed the part where I wrote I didn't want more. And wants to continue the conversation. We'll have to see how it goes.
I kew Sister Sensible Shoes back in 1980 when I moved to San Francisco. His real name was Damien, and he was the nicest guy you would ever meet. When I got married and my wife and I moved to Marin, we lost track of him. I have not thought about him in 40 years now, except for ocasionally telling my kids stories about the SPI and Danien. Thanks for the memories, and Damien, if you're still out there somewher, i hope you are doing well.
Sister Missionary Position, in a previous incarnation as Fred Brungard, managed a “cultural center” at a reform scool in Freeville, NY around 1969 - 1972.
As one of the denizens of that well-meaning “school” I, and a lucky group of ungovernables were blessed to have Brungard’s influence on our adolescent miscreant lives. I still have valued friendships developed in that place, and we feel his enlightened inluence today, ~50 years later.
Imagine a bunch of reform school inmates becoming enthralled into a “film society” where we became critics versed in all aspects of film production (who does what? Terminology; script development; DW Griffith to Akira Kurosawa; The Great Dictator to Woman In the Dunes) and critiqueed 20th century cinema in open forums. A University is unlikely to have anything like it in 2025.
When he became aware that I refused to go to church on Sundays, something that was punishable in that place, he would come and pick me up and drive me to Cornell University for a progressive Catholic service every Sunday so that I would not be punished for skipping church. I still remember hot cider and fried cakes in the basement with the fellowship community.
Fred had a huge impact on our lives when he was still a young man. Knowing that he was one of the people that established The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence has always warmed my heart.
Thank you for writing this. I never knew they had something to do with The Sound Of Music and don't know why they would.
The only Sound of Music connection was that the gay guys in Iowa got the discarded habits from some religious sisters on the pretext they were going to put on a performance of the Sound of Music. Not the Broadway musical or the play.