Miami Herald offends all non-Catholic Christians

And even me, who practices nothing. Full story here by Myriam Marquez. This is so vicious. (What would Jesus say?) And what's with calling Cutié's girlfriend a "gal"? How demeaning, to say the least. (Is Marquez calling her a "slut"?)

I wrote the writer an email objecting to her story. Her email address is mmarquez@MiamiHerald.com.

Cutié's actions hurt many of his followers

Alberto Cutié took his collar off and walked away from the Roman Catholic Church. Snap of the fingers, that easy. Adios, muchachos!

He didn't wait for the pope to annul his ''marriage'' to the church and his vow to lead a celibate life. Heck, he didn't even give South Florida's Catholic archbishop the courtesy of a phone call to tell him he had made up his mind to head to Catholic-lite.

He just read a prepared statement amid the clicking cameras Thursday after a small ceremony at Trinity Cathedral, where he was accepted as a member of the Episcopal Church.

He seemed happy with his honey at his side.

At 40, he's now a convert to the Episcopal faith, no longer expected to choose between the Catholic pope's call for celibacy and his girlfriend's itch for marriage.

On Sunday, he will preach as an Episcopalian lay minister at the Church of The Resurrection in Biscayne Park. He's not an Episcopal priest yet, but he will take the required tests to become one, and plans to marry Ruhama Buni Canellis, the beach gal he has been not-so-secretly seeing for two -- count them, two! -- years.

(I'm still puzzled why a 35-year-old divorced mother who professes her love for a 40-year-old priest would not have steered him to come clean to his bishop before heading out to the beach and bars to snuggle, and imbibe in public. A mature woman who hung out with paparazzi, which they claim she did, surely knew the public-relations mess that would be created by a wildly popular media priest, known throughout Latin America, being caught in compromising positions.) . . .

Henry VIII started it all when he separated the Church of England from papal authority circa 1500s. Six wives and two beheadings later (yes, two of them got the ax), Henry left his mark on the U.S. version of his church, known as the Episcopal Church. Let that be a lesson to el padrecito -- keep those machetes at bay unless Cuban spies come at you. . . . [Is this some kind of thuggish threat?]

But to excuse Cutié's lies for two years because he was in love -- lust? -- with a gal gives him a pass on his responsibility as a spiritual leader. He had choices to make and he sure took his sweet time to make them.

And the way the Episcopal Church moved at warp speed to get Cutié, a charismatic moneymaker for the Catholic diocese, in front of the Episcopal pulpit this Sunday has dollar signs all over it. Catholic Archbishop John C. Favalora called it a "serious setback for ecumenical relations and cooperation between us.'' . . .

It should be noted that Henry VIII was a staunch Catholic all his life. The Catholic Church was involved in most of those marriages (and you could also say, by inference, the beheadings--not uncommon back then for any manner of offenses against the Church and State, which were seriously intertwined). Henry's disagreement with the Pope was all about the geopolitics of the day, in which the Church in Rome was a big player.

Anyway, the break from Rome (both in England and in Germany by Martin Luther) did away with celibacy for the priests, which wasn't an original feature of the Church anyway. Celibacy was mandated later on to ensure that any property owned by priests would become the property of the Roman Church upon their death. (Property couldn't be conveyed to the bastard children of priests.)

Although I have no use for organized religion myself (it's all a bitch for gays, and who believes a lot of that stuff anyway?), I have the utmost sympathy for Cutié in his decision to seek out a faith that doesn't deny matrimony to its priests. What would Jesus say about calling it "Catholic-lite"? Jesus never told anybody to be celibate.