A Hail Mary, in Time for Easter

Recently, Scaley and the Supremes in DC decided not to entertain a constitutional challenge to the hip Latin (but not the J-Lo's Marc Anthony Latin) version of the Hail Mary, called "Ave Maria", often confused with West Side Story Boulevard, a back alley off Broadway.  A high school in Washington State banned the hit single from a 2006 commencement ceremony.  And it was an instrumental, which would put the audience to sleep anyway.

The leader of the string-only group, Kathryn Nurre, sued the school district, claiming her Constitutionally guaranteed rights to free speech and banjo playing were being violated.  (I'm just guessing at the banjo, but it would give the song a nice boing and it has strings, right?)

After the usual steps of court decisions, Kathryn was at the figurative front door of the Supreme Court of the United States, banjo and sheet music in hand.  Aside from Justice Sam Alito, the Court had no interest in hearing either her case or her banjo.

Apparently, Kathryn's version was composed by a German guy named Franz Biebl for a Munich suburb's firemen's choral group a while back.  Surely, Kathryn figured a bunch of firemen were pretty secular and she only wanted to do the musical part.

All of which begs the question...

Wasn't Ave Maria secularized long ago by the use of the Hail Mary pass.  Nobody thought Mary had ever actually laid a finger on a pigskin let alone heaved it straight heavenward, since barely anyone did that before, I think, Doug Flutie.  You've heard the expression "Hail Mary Pass" at every football game from midget leagues to the NFL for ages.  When atheists use it most Sundays with their eyes and clenched hands directed ceilingward, how religious can a top-ten football cliche be?

Can't the same be wondered about Mary herself?  She was born Jewish, of course, as was her son, but that doesn't really count.  Most of us were born something.  Mary got more use out of angels than a Country singer, but they--the angels--were not into religion in those days; they mostly carried swords and God's voice mail.  As far as Gospel students can determine, Mary never considered being born again, maybe because  muddy river water can really irritate your sinuses. That is almost secular humanist-level indifference.

Mary never sang Kathryn's controversial song, but she was the fist to hear part of the lyrics.  It began with Gabriel's angelic, if incomplete, greeting:  "Hail, Full of Grace, the Lord is with Thee".  Which is how Jesus could have been called Grace had he been a girl.  Close call, that.

It does not appear that Mary encouraged Jesus to be born all over again, either, one virgin birth having been embarrassing enough.  Not to mention crowded and nearly as fatal to Jesus as it was to all the other male infants within hailing distance, now known to be about sixty yards of so, with the wind.

Jesus had to wait for the then-fashionable baptism until he was an adult.  Had he asked, Mary would have told him it was a messy waste of time, since she had no Original Sin in her mitochondrial DNA to be washed away.  As it happened, it took Jesus 40 days of serious hiking to clear the Jordan's silt from his sinuses.

It's beginning to look like the whole Hail Mary/Ave Maria bit is just another hummable salute to a secular-leaning Jewish mother, however famous.  Who's to complain about the playing of a sports anthem with no words, addressed to a religiously equivocal minority?

But Kathryn, here's the suggestion Sam Ailio should have made to you:  Get Weird Al Yankovic ("Eat It") or Cledus T. Judd ("Cletus Take the Wheel") to write some funny new lyrics for your song--ones that you won't use, so don't pay them a lot--and dream up a catchy and slightly bawdy football title for it.  Anything with the words "Big", "Ben" and "Score" in it will do, since you already have your lawyer.

Even though you graduated a few years ago, type up the new lyrics you don't intend to use and resubmit your program for 2010, with a short music sample, say one with a hip hop arrangement, which you wont' use either.  He'll turn that off right away and just approve it.

And you're home free.  Truly, proudly free.

Except the lawyer and lyricist payment plans.