Normally, when a priest wants to proselytize about their religion without any invitation to do so, we immediately tune out. That said, we’re also on record at The A.V. Club as big fans of looking at, listening to, or reading about goats and so we’ve reached a bit of an impasse with what we’re about to present: The seven deadly sins presented by a Catholic priest via goat photos.
Father Cassidy Stinson gets right to our Achilles heel (hoof?) with this first picture, which shows a ridiculous baby goat looking into the distance with an arrogant expression on its adorable goaty face. We see him and internalize one Deadly Sin, Pride.
Fr. Stinson doesn’t relent here. He follows up the first picture with another pair that show a slothful kid and two goats headbutting in a somewhat abstract depiction of Envy.
By the time we’ve scrolled down to Greed and Wrath—a goat in a sparkly tiara and necklace and another one with mouth open in a furious “baaah!”—it’s too late. The trick has worked and we’re forced to accept a message we might otherwise have ignored.
Just look at these fucking guys. Whether portraying Lust with a disturbing, tongue-out goat face or munching on shrubs with a contented, gluttonous face, they’re impossible to ignore.
This isn’t to say that Fr. Stinson’s short Twitter sermon really delivers the message he was going for. Even though it makes us think about the Seven Deadly Sins, @Melissavandew replied to the thread with the accurate observation that “Sin is adorable!” This is a point we can get behind and something that Fr. Stinson writes “wasn’t really the message I wanted to get across.”
Too bad, we say. Although using goats as metaphors for sin worked well enough in the past, modern people aren’t buying that association anymore. We celebrate the goat and, if the goat is used to make us think of evil, then we’re all heading straight to hell right alongside our goofy-looking goat pals.
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