If you thought the woke Episcopalians with their silent disco at the famed Canterbury cathedral couldn't get any lower on the desecration front, get a load of what the Catholics have come up with to go them one better.

According to the New York Times:

The pews of St. Patrick’s Cathedral were packed on Thursday for an event with no likely precedent in Catholic history: the funeral of Cecilia Gentili, a transgender activist and actress, former sex worker and self-professed atheist whose memorial functioned as both a celebration of her life and an exuberant piece of political theater.

Over 1,000 mourners, several hundred of whom were transgender, arrived in daring outfits — glittery miniskirts and halter tops, fishnet stockings, sumptuous fur stoles and at least one boa sewed from what appeared to be $100 bills. Mass cards and a picture near the altar showed a haloed Ms. Gentili surrounded by the Spanish words for “transvestite,” “whore,” “blessed” and “mother” above the text of Psalm 25.

Daring? I think the word they were looking for was "sleazy." 

Oooh, feather boas with $100 bills. What could be more reverent?

And it was far more repellent than just that.

When one of the musically trained soloists from the cathedral came forward to sing the sacred song, "Ave Maria," some jackass jumped forward to upstage him and got the crowd in a pep-rally style chant-song to make it "Ave Cecilia" before dancing down the aisle "twirling" a red scarf, as the press noted.

Oooh, sexy. Oooh, ironic!

I see a lot of cheering in the video. I see a lot of chanting and pep-rally crap for various political causes such as "gender-affirming health care."

But what I don't see here is any authentic mourning for the soul of someone who died.

I don't see any intense praying for this person's soul, that he get into Heaven somehow despite everything, as might happen in a normal case when someone really outside the Church somehow gets a Church funeral.

I see dancing around amid revolting talk from the front.

Which probably isn't surprising. This deceased person who was chanted about from the pulpit of the cathedral as "the mother of all whores," like that was a good thing, probably didn't have any serious relationships. That's a sad byproduct of prostitution by its very nature and like a lot of transgender activists, this person spent a lot of time as a prostitute and prostitution advocate.

As for the real St. Cecilia, she died a virgin and martyr for her faith around the year 230 A.D.

But there clearly was a political agenda beyond "access to transgender health care" and the Church was dragooned into becoming the perfect vehicle for it.

The transgender activists wanted to demonstrate that they had taken over.

Rah, rah, we won. See it in the pep rally.

Priests, sacred scriptures and songs, the cathedral itself which has been the setting for countless sacraments -- and baptisms, weddings, and funerals -- was just a prop for their burlesque. 

Nothing's sacred when everything's "inclusive."

Oh, but the New York Times emphasized that the funeral was a Historic First.

Yet it went beyond that.

As transgenders, who are mostly males posing as women, they seemed to demonstrate their idea of 'winning' with the same old special hatred for women seen in other incidents, desecrating the Virgin Mary and St. Cecilia in particular.

And they made a solemn occasion into a trashy party scene just like all their others, celebrating their libertine promiscuous values in order to wave the whole specter into the faces of the faithful. God wasn't part of this, but the cathedral sure was: 

Ceyenne Doroshow, who organized the funeral, said friends of Ms. Gentili — who died on Feb. 6 at 52 — had wanted the service to be at St. Patrick’s because “it is an icon, just like her.”  

Not a holy place. An 'icon,' and not in the religious sense but the current sense, which is to say 'famous.' 

The reaction among the faithful apparently was very negative because the Church has since backtracked on the event, saying they were hookwinked by the group into putting on the specter.

I wonder if they were hearing from a Catholic version of Bill Ackman or the Harvard alumni vowing to pull funding if the institution doesn't clean up its act?

The backtracking was unexpectedly fierce.

Even the gay-focused priest, Rev. James Martin, S.J., hastened to distance himself from the mess, too, stating that he made his comments to the Times before the funeral, and he wasn't aware of how it would turn out. He decried the absence of reverence.

While I'm not going to accuse him of orchestrating this fiasco as some are, I do wonder about the leaders of the cathedral itself who permitted this and who said they had no idea they were in for this travesty.

After all, St. Patrick's Cathedral probably is the country's most famous Catholic Church. Is it easy to get a wedding or funeral there? At high-profile churches, my experience has been that you'd better be a registered parishioner there or no event for you. 

Nobody in this person's circle seemed to be, and the person himself certainly wasn't, being an atheist and at odds with the Catholic Church during his entire life. How'd he get a funeral?

The people who arranged this funeral did all had high political profiles, however, the activist organizer and the activist who was deceased.

Sound like some political strings were pulled? I wonder which longtime parishioner they bumped to have this "historic first" instead?

The move came just as the Vatican itself put out a document giving the green light for Church blessings on gays in "couples" relationships, and harshly repressed traditionally oriented bishops and cardinals, as well as fans of the traditional Latin Mass.

That sent a signal to all that this is what they reward, so it doesn't surprise me to think that maybe the cathedral wanted to get some brownie points with the leftists in the Vatican.

Now it's blown up in their faces, all this 'welcoming everyone' nonsense, resulting in a scandalized flock, a mass of reparation, and lots of egg on their faces. What's it's very likely to do is make the Catholic public more resolute in demanding minimum standards in preserving that which is sacred and keeping out riffraff who hate the Church and whose only interest is in its desecration. Their minds were so 'open' their brains fell out, and the bad reaction is exactly what they deserve. They should quit defending wokedom and start defending the Church.

Image: Twitter screen shot