What's wrong with this picture?

With each fresh outrage, one always thinks one has seen the very worst that the conciliar church can throw at our holy Catholic faith. But, as inevitably as day follows night, there is always some new pathology capable of plumbing still deeper depths just waiting around the corner.

This story may not be either as wacky or as sacrilegious as the Dutch Dominicans with their priestless “Masses” celebrated by non-ordained practicing homosexuals of either sex, but it is nonetheless equally conciliar in its inspiration, and hence offensive to the piety of the faithful.

From Yahoo! News:

Poster nuns to vie for 'Miss Sister Italy' title

ROME (AFP) - The first beauty pageant for nuns debuts next month with the advent of "Miss Sister Italy," aimed at erasing a stereotype of nuns as being old and sad, a newspaper reported Sunday.

"Nuns are above all women and beauty is a gift from God," priest Antonio Rungi of the southern Italian diocese of Modragone told the daily Corriere della Sera [Melancholicus wonders what Fr. Rungi's bishop thinks of this nonsense].

"This contest will be a way to show there isn't just the beauty we see on television but also a more discrete charm," he added [perhaps Fr. Rungi is here referring to interior beauty, i.e. beauty of the soul, or such beauty as would be pleasing to God who looks at the heart and not at the outward seeming. But such beauty is not readily apparent to the gaze of the human viewer, nor is it revealed by glamour photography either. So what is the point?].

Nuns wishing to participate in the contest should send their picture to Rungi, who will publish it on his blog [Melancholicus fears for the state of the vocation of any female religious thoughtless or reckless enough to participate in this mockery]. Internet surfers can then vote for their favorite nun online [based, of course, on her physical attractiveness. Regardless of what Rungi may say or believe about "discrete charm" (what is that, anyway?) he will find that most internet users actually prepared to cast a vote in this sacrilegious charade are conditioned to rate his nuns by the same criteria whereby they would rate their favourite FHM babes].

"You really think all nuns are old, stunted and sad? [what an outrageous insult to older religious women who have spent a life consecrated in service to God and who have faithfully observed their vows even amidst the devastation and the wreckage of the conciliar church. Does this man have even the slightest idea what he is saying?] This isn't the case any more, thanks to the arrival in our country of young and vital nuns," notably from Africa and Latin America, Father Rungi added [Here the foolish priest equates youth and vitality, as though they were synonymous. This is all of a piece with western secular culture, in which youth and beauty are exalted and age is disparaged. The man has no Catholic sense at all].

The idea of organising a beauty pageant had been pushed by the nuns themselves, he said, adding he expected roughly 1,000 candidates [Melancholicus wonders what kind of inverted, lop-sided view such women must have of their religious vocation, and what kind of rubbish they have been reading in their convents, if they are prepared to degrade themselves and their vows to this extent.].

"I hope the next (pageant) won't just take place online but that we can organise a real show that can take place during the Miss Italy contest," Rungi said [Holy God forfend. The spectacle of consecrated religious participating in this kind of thing would be to say the least embarrassing for the Church, even if it were not a sacrilege. If events such as "Miss Italy" and the like are, as is so often alleged, degrading to the dignity of women, how much more degrading must they be to the dignity of religious women?].

Talk about dragging the vocations of religious women through the mud, exhibiting these nuns to the public as though they were glamour models.

To put the most charitable possible interpretation on Rungi’s antics, we might surmise that what he is attempting to do here is to show that there are in fact young nuns, that the religious life is far from dead and that there are young, thriving orders with a plentiful supply of vocations.

But if such be the case, could he not have chosen some means of broadcasting the fact without stooping to such a tawdry and tacky stunt as this?

Melancholicus has been unable to locate this priest’s blog, but as he hardly expects it to be an upstanding model of Catholic orthodoxy, perhaps that is just as well.