Fondly Rememembering Marshal Petain

Fr. Vicente A. Griego
St. Mary's Academy

Dear Father Griego,

I've been in a bit of a funk lately over the lack of progress we've made privatizing the schools. It looked like we were on the verge of making it happen eight years ago when the People wisely chose a man of great faith and intellect, George W. Bush, to rule us as Our Leader. Vouchers, which at the very least are a back-door attempt at privatization, were all the rage and high on Our Leader's list of priorities. Then all of a sudden, talk about vouchers seemed to cease.

I didn't know why it happened. I thought maybe it was because we were distracted by World War IV, the existential battle between good and evil that began on Sept. 11, 2001, or perhaps it was the wholesale destruction of American culture that resulted from the bad reviews written about The Passion of the Christ. But those were only guesses, and I found the lack of clarity to be very unsettling.

Then today, as I read about your referee incident, it struck me. The voucher movement didn't market privatization in the right way. In order to avoid silly arguments over the Constitution's Establishment Clause, they understated the importance pf religious schools in this new educational system, and by doing so failed to employ it's best selling point.

Let's take a look at the referee issue. You were right to refuse to allow a woman to referee a basketball game. As you noted, it would be wrong for a woman to exercise authority over boys, because ladies can't properly provide "training for the battlefield of life where the boys will need to fight at times through great difficulties."

Think of how that would have played as a marketing point for vouchers. Heck, we wouldn't even need to lay any groundwork for it. Rush, Dr. Laura, Phyllis Schlafly , Beverly Lehaye, James Dobson, and the whole Southern Baptist Convention are already marketing the same basic idea as a response to femislamunistofascism. It wouldn't take much to layer vouchers onto that.

The same goes for your curriculum. I'm sure many parents want their children to learn the things you teach in your 12th grade Catholic Social Principles class--that is if I'm correctly assuming that you are teaching Catholic doctrine as it is understood by the Society of St. Pius X, the priestly society that runs your school. Specifically, I'm referring to such beliefs as:

• Chinese Communists brainwashed dissenters by forcing them to study evolution in re-education camps.
• The rhythm method "constitute[s] a highway to hell."
• The only problem with the Inquisition was "that it did not repress heresy severely enough."
• "If the unrepentant Jewish people are disposed by God to be a theological enemy, the status of this opposition must be universal, inevitable, and terrible."
• and the liberation of France by allied forces in WWII was a "victory of Freemasonry against the Catholic order of Petain. It was the invasion of the barbarians without faith or law!"

I think most Americans--those I know, anyway--would love to see their taxes, in the form of vouchers going to pay for this kind of education. It's a pity the voucher movement doesn't seem to understand this.

Heterosexually yours,

Gen. JC Christian, patriot