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The Mayor asked the anti-Catholic group to join her following their removal from the LA Dodgers’ Pride Night.
Anaheim Mayor Ashleigh Aitken invited anti-Catholic group “Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence,” a group of drag queens that dress up as nuns to mock the Catholic church, to join her at Angels Stadium after the Los Angeles Dodgers disinvited them to their own Pride Night.
“I'm inviting the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence to join me for @Angels Pride Night at Anaheim Stadium on June 7,” Aitken said on Twitter. “Pride should be inclusive and like many, I was disappointed in the Dodgers decision.”
For the past decade the LA Dodgers have hosted a Pride Night, which they say is meant to highlight “not only the diversity and resilience within our fanbase, but also the impactful work of extraordinary community groups.” As part of the night’s events, the LA Dodgers invited pride groups to be recognized for their charitable work.
The event however, has erupted into controversy. Among the honorees was the anti-Catholic hate group “The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence,”(SPI) a group of people dressed in drag as nuns.
In a letter to Robert D. Manfred, Jr. Commissioner of Major League Baseball, Brian Burch, President of CatholicVote explained the extent of the offense, and asked for the Catholic-mocking group to be uninvited.
“The SPI mock Catholics by taking on vulgar names such as “Sister GladAss of the Joyous Reserectum”. They dress in sexualized perversions of religious garb, taunting the women religious who serve the poor in Southern California and throughout the world. In one infamous stunt, they tricked an archbishop into giving them the Eucharist – the most important sacrament of the Catholic faith – so they could defile it.
He continued, “This past Easter Sunday, the SPI put on an exhibition in San Francisco in which a performer dressed as Jesus carried a cross up a hill and then performed a pole dance on it. These are just a few examples of the SPI’s vile and diabolical actions which go far beyond parody or satire – they are blasphemous and deeply offensive to Christians everywhere.”
The group routinely perform shows in a distorted version of the black and white habit worn by Catholic nuns, in an effort to mock them.
In the book “The Habit” by Elizabeth Kuhns, the author explains that “Clothing is a uniquely human characteristic, a silent but powerful medium from which we learn who we are and what we value…It touches on human history, psychology, sociology, economics, aesthetics, technology, customs, laws attitudes and values.”
“From this clothing we immediately recognize a woman who has decided to commit her life fully to God, to renounce the possibility of bearing children, and to work within the boundaries of a community for some specific sacred purpose, frequently in neglected or controversial areas,” Kuhns said.
Nuns who wear a habit often go through a religious clothing ceremony. Each aspect of the habit is steeped in symbolism. “The habit is a metaphor for the catholic church itself,” she explains.
Following the letter, the LA Dodgers uninvited SPI. The action drew outrage from LA Pride, The American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California and The San Francisco Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence as well as Mayor Aitken.
After the outrage, the LA Dodgers have since re-invited Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, to the dismay of Catholics saying their religion is being mocked.
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