This is NOT the Catholic Church I know and love. (Caution, satire ahead!)

I just watched that terrible video of those Covington Catholic High School students tormenting a Native American veteran at the March for Life rally in D.C. the other day.

A bunch of hooligans in “Make America Great Again” hats harassing a perfectly peaceful man with racist chants. It makes my blood boil! And I just want to state for the record that their despicable behavior is in NO WAY representative of the Catholic Church I know and love.

Period.

I’m so mad I can barely write. If you’ve seen it you know exactly what I’m talking about. So shameful. Aren’t they being told they can burn in Hell for stuff like that? Where are these kids getting such warped authoritarian impulses?

It doesn’t make any sense!

Oh, great. I just saw a video from another angle and there’s a priest standing there just letting it all happen. Am I crazy, or shouldn’t he be back at his parish doing something more productive like imbuing olive oil with the power of the Holy Spirit so he can rub it on teenagers’ foreheads to scare away the Devil?

That might have prevented this whole fiasco in the first place.

Here’s a thought: Why not ax these little field trips altogether? High schoolers are too old for that nonsense. They should be home, at Covington Catholic, learning the practical fundamentals of math and history and the supernatural underworld known as “limbo” where the souls of unbaptized babies, too young to have committed actual sin but not yet cleansed from the filth of original sin, reside for all eternity.

Or maybe their so-called teachers would prefer it if they grew up to be a bunch of psychos.

If some experiential learning is absolutely necessary there are certainly better ways to go about it. Tight down the road from their school, there is, for example, a very educational and scientifically accurate replica of the football-field-sized wooden boat that a 600-year-old man built by himself to house two of every living creature on Earth because a voice in the sky told him to . Just go there, idiots. You’re responsible for these impressionable young minds!

A known pedophile wearing a lot of gold jewelry really ought to smear burnt palm leaves on your face in a marble palace to help you understand how far you’ve strayed from the teachings of Christ.

Maybe then you’ll have the wherewithal to prostrate yourself before the shadow of a robed man in a velvet-upholstered booth and beseech him to intervene on your behalf with the invisible omnipotent father figure in charge of the ghost that lives inside you.

I sure hope that you do. The Catholic Church I know and love doesn’t need any more rogue nuts ruining their good name.

Coleman Larkin is an artist, writer and cook from Pikeville. Tell him he’s going to Hell at colemanlarkin@gmail.com.