The Holiness Code

Maureen and I were trying to be blasphemous though we never got a phone call from the pope.


Neil de la Flor & Maureen Seaton

The Holiness Code

Do not be deceived: neither the immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor sexual perverts, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor robbers will inherit the Kingdom of God. (1 Cor 6:9-10).

I liked saying her name over and over while she read the Encyclical to me in bed at the Atlanta Renaissance Hotel:

Lover Girl, Lover Girl.

Everything holy is in my pants, she said.

There are times when I take positions next to the cross and place my hand on Christ's haunches. Torn from his mother, I think. Mother, Mother of God, Mother May I, Mother, Are You Dreaming, Mother Duck, Motherload. Then I say to him, Jesus, I've sold my bible for sandwich bread.

"'As for acts which are themselves sins (cum iam opera ipsa peccata sunt),' Saint Augustine writes, 'like theft, fornication, blasphemy, who would dare affirm that, by doing them for good motives (causis bonis), they would no longer be sins, or, what is even more absurd, that they would be sins that are justified?'"

—from Veritatis Splendor, Encyclical Regarding Certain Fundamental Questions of the Church's Moral Teaching (His Holiness Pope John Paul II August 6, 1993).

Note: Leviticus x 7 + J.C. = The H.C.

Twinkies? Margaritas? Intrinsece malum?

I've lost my confession card, she said. They were listed and I've forgotten what I've done.

Mind my seat while I sin.

The room was empty except for me and my Lover and the Pope. We had a race to see who could eat the most breakfast and my Lover Girl won hands down. On her lips, the hashbrowns of victory.

The Theory of Relativity - 5 Hail Marys = The H.C.

The smoke of a new Pontiff puffed into the Southern sky.