Ving Rhames in Pulp Fiction

My two favorite Catholics recently weighed in regarding American bishops opposed to the use of contraceptives. First comedian Stephen Colbert warned that American Catholic women who are unopposed — i.e., the majority of those who are sexually active — are “cock-blocking the Almighty.” Then Garry Wills, a veteran journalist who is also a historian and classical scholar, wrote a reminder that what the bishops think of contraception is irrelevant to Catholics and doubly irrelevant to the rest of the population:

Contraception is not even a religious matter. Nowhere in Scripture or the Creed is it forbidden…

…Catholics who do not accept the [bishops’] phony argument over contraception are said to be “going against the teachings of their church.” That is nonsense. They are their church. The Second Vatican Council defines the church as “the people of God.” Thinking that the pope is the church is a relic of the days when a monarch was said to be his realm. The king was “Denmark.” Catholics have long realized that their own grasp of certain things, especially sex, has a validity that is lost on the celibate male hierarchy. This is particularly true where celibacy is concerned…

I’m guessing the only reason Wills wrote the piece was to remind non-Catholics that the “nice smiley fanatic” Rick Santorum speaks not for the vast majority of Catholics, but rather for a contingent of yahoo Christians who want to “get medieval” on our ass, to paraphrase Ving Rhames in Pulp Fiction.

It’s a pretty sad commentary on American culture that the medieval contingent still wields so much power in one of our major political parties.