[BREAK] Give me that Old Time Religion! Okay, I'm no biblical scholar here. However, if the nuns and brothers who were so forceful in their teachings of religion were not putting me on, Christ had 2 women who held a special place in his heart. Coincidentally, both were named Mary. His mom, Mary, an unmarried teenage mom of whom I've heard tell was a virgin, and would therefore qualify to be hired at the Pope's television studio, where she would be demeaned, underpaid and victimized. And there was Mary Magdalene, a woman loved by Christ and a Mary whom I've heard was not so much of the virginity persuasion. (Of course, according to the stories/Gospels/books written by a few of Christ's friends, long after he had departed, he didn't seem to spend much time dating. So, I guess he might not have realized that virginity is a pre-existing condition that, unless quickly cured, can make prostitution a very poor career choice for a woman looking to earn a living.) This Mary would not be welcome to suffer under the Pope's TV execs.

An unholy row has broken out at the Pope's television station, with accusations flying that it paid derisory salaries, imposed demeaning conditions, victimised women employees - and even tried to hold a staff meeting to find out if some were virgins.

In keeping with the "God knows all" theme, the powers-that-be seemed to take such care of their employees that they even heard their complaints when the employees might well have thought no one was listening:

The director of Telepace (Peace TV), Monsignor Guido Todeschini, is to appear before the council of the Italian journalists' professional body in the next few days to answer claims by employees and the journalists' union. Union representatives will be seeking to find out if he has fulfilled earlier undertakings, given in February, not to monitor employees' telephone calls and to end the practice of requiring journalists to stamp a card at the start and end of work.

Also, it seems that for a very old church, they've kept up with even Wal*Mart's latest business practices:

- - - SNIP The source said women journalists working full-time were kept on part-time contracts with take-home pay of less than £11,000 a year. No one at Telepace was available for comment. - - - End of SNIPPET

No matter where you look today, from the uber-Christians justifying war, torture and more . . . in the name of Christ, to some in the Catholic hierarchy who believe that Christ should have been more condemning than compassionate to the Mary not his mom, you find that at least some branches of the followers of Christ have allowed their understanding of his teachings to evolve . . . while, interestingly, insisting that "understanding" is the only way in which anything involved with their species has ever evolved! The stories report of how a group may "hold a staff" anything [meeting] in search of virgin divining sounds like hymen dousing and seems a bit weird to me . . . but having a group of men try to justify the mistreatment of women based on whether they had ever had sex [or rode a rough horse?] makes the word "weird" seem a gross understatement. Especially when we have so recently read that other men of power at the Vatican are accused of harboring/hiding perverts who traveled around America like itinerant miners . . . only the ore they sought was trusting, faithful young boys. If one were a skeptic, one might look on the whole as being proof of a real fear of women in the hearts of powerful old men in robes. I'm only sayin' . . . [/BREAK]