I'd be pretty devoted to fucking married men, too, but I was raised by lapsed Catholics.

They DO fuck married men?? I'm suddenly more interested in Catholicism!

Sorry, that was an entertaining typo.

"...they do fuck married men..." You may want to fix that one, Dan.

I DO share your disgust with this claim of Callista Gingrich's devout Catholicism. This attempted whitewashing of Gingrich's sin-stained ways is an insult to the devout everywhere. And this is coming from a strident Protestant.

BTW, why aren't all of those officious Catholic bishops rushing to the cameras to deny communion to the fornicating, adulterous Gingriches?

another one of the many gingrich hypocrisies...nice job pointing it out. too bad the rest of the press doesnt do their job.

@3 Calling Dr. Freud! Calling Dr. Freud!

I bet she went to confession and did her penance; *poof* instant re-devotion.

Oh, and they actually DO fuck married men, it's usually just their own husbands, though.

go, Callista, and sin no more.

Really? We're reduced now to quantifying other people's religious devotion? Who the fuck cares, ESPECIALLY when it comes to Catholics, whose highest representatives on Earth only stop spewing anti-gay hatred and lies when they're asleep.

You may know devout Catholics, but you didn't go to Archbishop Molloy.

Uh, is it just me, or does Calista look like a carbon-copy of Cindy McCain? There has to be some kind of factory where they manufacture these creepy robotic ice queens, programmed, I suppose, for their willingness to fuck otherwise heinously repulsive GOP douchebags. *shudder*

But she's confessed her sins and been FORGIVEN, Dan! That is the one redeeming grace (so to speak) of Christianity: You can have adulterous premarital sex and use birth control -- not to mention murder grannies and rape children -- and still get into heaven with nothing more than a sincere, "Oops. Sorry about that, God. Praise Jesus!"

#12 - I believe the factory is in Stepford, Connecticut.

Thanks for bringing this up, Dan. I also want to point out Newt's comment about being a "68-year-old grandfather" after his mentioning his mending his ways and asking forgiveness, blah, blah, blah. Like being old and a grandfather disqualifies him from ever being a horny adulterer again. Right. Sure, Newt.

She's no Jack Kennedy.

@10: When the GOP postures itself as the party for the religious, I'd say it's fair game to point out their religious hypocrisy. Just like the hypocrisy in their claim to being the party that's more fiscally responsible and stronger on defense. If they don't want religion to be a topic of politics, then they need to stop banging that drum.

She sounds like she is blind to her own failings, like most humans she had succeeded in putting her actions, behaviors, choices in a benign light. On one hand you want people to learn from their failings, and the Catholic church should consider this a failing, and move foreword with their lives, but on the other hand you don't want them to manage the intellectual gymnastics to be a hypocrite about their failings. Forgiveness is not forgetting. Maybe she feels that she fell off of the devout wagon for a spell, and now considers herself having climbed back on it? Then again, I haven't found any group like Chistianity that is so quick to accept statements of repentance and whitewash the behavior of those they like and bullying condemn those they don't like. Despite how cynical it may sound, it really has been my observation throughout the years.

@15: he probably is too old to bother with adultery, so now he gets to claim jesus' forgiveness. convenient.

the bigger issue for me is his advanced age. 68, prob. 69 by the time the election rolls around, IS TOO FUCKING OLD. reagan was nearly 70, and increasingly, obviously senile as his terms wore on. too fucking old.

Devout Catholic women are not only allowed to fuck married men but they are also required to fuck married men. They just have to marry the one they are fucking first.

Actually, most U.S. Catholics use birth control, and many of them are quite devout.

Devout Catholic is such a subjective term. I thought it meant you liked to fuck children but then I was raised in a household that didn't have any religious involvement so what do I know.

I do think this is a little bit of a stretch by Dan though. The Catholic church is one of the most vehemently anti gay organizations in the world, seems a little strange to call out this person for not being devout enough IMO. Who cares what fucked up, archaic, anti gay, women hating gang she wants to be associated with, she married Newt, she must be fucked in the head!

Who the hell are you to define what a "devout Catholic" thinks or does?

They tried like hell to brainwash me. But every time they opened their mouths I had a new question. I finally realized I could never have anything to do with a religion that had commited the crimes against humanity that the Catholic Church commited and continues to commit today.

"[D]evout Catholics do not have premarital sex, they do not fuck married men, they do not use birth control, they do not commit adultery."

Oh my God! I'm not doing any of those things right now: I've turned devout Catholic just like Mrs. Gingrich.

[Like old-school devout: I'm not even eating meat on a Friday right now.]

I was raised by Catholics too, and most of my family is still Catholic. In my experience, hypocrisy is part of being a "devout Catholic."

This is not necessarily the Catholic's fault, though. Again in my experience, Catholicism is designed to be impossible to follow. This ensures that everyone will commit multiple sins, instilling a ton of guilt into the congregation. This in turn makes it easier to control them and to get them to donate to the Church. And since everyone is continuously breaking the Catholic rules, hypocrisy becomes a way of life.

People who feel good about themselves are not as easily fooled.

I think it's ironic that the Bishops and Cardinals are all buddy-buddy with a couple of whores like Mr & Mrs Gingrich, but when Teddy Kennedy died, they made a big point of saying he couldn't be buried out of a Cathedral.

(Of course, if Teddy Kennedy WANTED to have his funeral mass at a Cathedral, it would have happened. The Kennedy's have given too much money and know where too many bodies are buried for the church to deny them anything)

@12 - I thought Calista WAS Cindy McCain at first and was confused. Where do they get these robo-blondes? Her hair looks like a helmet and I thought that went out the '60s.

I'll bet she makes him beg.

@12, 14, et al: You look at her and see a soulless automaton, but when I first laid eyes on her all I could think was "She looks like Newt! EEEEWW!"

Dan, do you think maybe Republicans re-defined "devout" (kinda like you and your readers re-defined "Santorum") so it means "insufferably self-righteous but leading the very double life that you publicly condemn?" (Ted Haggard) or "Using the appearance of religiosity to pander to voter blocks"? If so, kudos to them on a very successful campaign! It's like people think it's the original definition now....

@16 gud jawb son

are there any stories waiting to pop about newt getting some on the side? his constant chirping about how faithful he is make me think hes trying to hide something.

Silly me, I had been misreading all of those articles, so you can understand how it made perfect sense to me when I read about Calista being a devoid Catholic.

I thought we stopped letting Catholics in the Whitehouse? Let's get all of our prejudices in order here.

Anything is possible when you're a devout hypocrite.

@19(Kim in Portland), that has also been my observation. Not only with Christians, though, but with a number of other groups of people. It's apparently part of our human foibles that it is so easy for us to forgive-and-forget the sins of those we, for some pre-existing reason, already like; those who we don't like tend to get the letter of the law instead.

It is indeed curious: Christians read the bible, in which Jesus clearly says that it's easy to love those who love us, and much more difficult (and therefore more praiseworthy) to love those who don't love us. He says even 'bad' people can love those who love them, so if this is all you do, how much better are you then? And yet they never seem to see that this might actually apply to them.

There certainly is a reason -- a psychological one -- why there were, are, and probably always will be Pharisees. Self-righteousness is a drug, and one can indeed become addicted.