Get one while you can...!

This in today's N.Y. Times:

ITALY: PIN-UP PRIESTS A calendar of handsome young priests posing in front of famous Rome landmarks has gone on sale. The priests are featured in "Calendario Romano 2004," intended to promote tourism in Rome. It is not affiliated with the Vatican, although January's picture, left, promotes St. Peter's Square. The black-and-white photographs were by Piero Pazzi. "I usually photograph gondoliers for Venetian calendars, but this time I wanted to do something Roman, and what better than priests?" he said. "The priests are young and good-looking, but that doesn't make them sex symbols. That depends on the imagination of the viewer." (Reuters)

Indeed it does...!

Let's give the photographer the benefit of the doubt that the priestly pedophile scandal, so unavoidable here, has yet to arouse widespread public condemnation in Italy. I still can't believe that the Vatican isn't going to come down on this calendar like a ton of moldy communion wafers.

As a lapsed Catholic, survivor of 5 years of Catholic grammar-school, I'd wager that otherwise, the calendar will sell better than papal dispensations at a bigamists' convention. All that Catholic guilt, you know.