The Scathing Atheist

by Noah Lugeons

Sometimes, I only wish I was kidding.

Next Sunday you will have the option of purchasing the decapitated head of Saint Vitalis of Assissi at auction.  As if this wasn’t macabre enough, the head belongs to the patron saint of genital diseases.

Instead of focusing on what a post-mortem “fuck you” it is to be posthumously associated with genital warts, I’d rather take the angle that I don’t think the Catholic Church can really afford to be giving up that relic. Given the ever-expanding scope of the sexual abuse scandal, it’s only a matter of time before they really need this guy. Or, at the very least, their victims might.

Apparently St. Vitalis of Assisi was something of a player in his life (and with a name like “Vitalis”, how could he not be?). He spent the first half of his days fucking everything he could hold down and the last half atoning for those sins. No word on how many venereal diseases he managed to collect in his lifetime, but clearly it was enough that “genital disease” was the first thing that popped to mind when people thought about him after death.

But now, centuries later, his mortal remains have become something of a ghastly souvenir. The auction house expects his skull to sell for somewhere between $1200 and $1800 according to published reports. I can only imagine how bad your syphilis has to get before you’re willing to spend $1800 on a pagan relic to get rid of it, but that’s beside the point.

What is the point?

Well, that’s hard to answer and it’s even harder to answer without the use of a dick-joke, but I’ll try:

There is a worldwide institution with about 1.1 billion members that thinks that the skull of some Lothario has the magical powers to rid them of their pubic lice. Nevermind that the same institution is guilty of a worldwide child-rape cover-up and continues to depress the availability of condoms in AIDS ravaged Africa. Nevermind that they illegally influence the sovereignty of other nations. Nevermind the fact that they suppress the truth about their perverse and demonic history. The pertinent fact remains that these are people that think a 700 year old skull has super powers, and there are a billion of them.

Just keep this in mind next time someone accuses you of being “disrespectful” to their faith. Does a group that worships the remains of a 14th century philanderer really deserve anyone’s respect?