Poll results, new poll, and tragedy in Kansas

So, the results of the latest, highly scientific Teapot Atheist poll are in: looks like the overwhelming majority of you are sick of Sarah Palin. How callous of you! A new poll will be up shortly.

Meanwhile, in Kansas, a brainwashed young woman has been deluded into throwing her life away. As the Catholic News Agency reports:

For more than four years, Kathryn Bloomquist has prepared to formalize a life of solitude and prayer. Late last month, she made the final step and was consecrated as a hermitess before Bishop Paul Coakley and a few witnesses.

Now, as Sister Kathryn Ann of the Holy Angels, she will spend her days mostly in solitude, "lived to the praise of God and the salvation of the world," she explains.

In addition to guidance from the bishop, Sister Kathryn drafted her plan of life, which spells out how she will live her vocation.

"It is one of assiduous prayer, silence, solitude and penance. It’s an ascetic endeavor," she said. "I try to live in the utmost simplicity — the idea of poverty of heart, pureness of life. It means a simplicity of living, to gaze toward God so pure that he can commune with the soul. Nothing is loved like God is loved.

"I’m here alone, but everyone is with me because of my prayers. No one prays alone," she added.

Tragic. This poor woman could have actually done something with her life. Instead, she's been fooled into spending the rest of her life working for an organization that says she's inherently too evil to have a position of real authority in the church. Some crusty old Catholic magician looked on with all smiles as this woman promised to never be productive or helpful again. How much would somebody have to hate the world, to despair of their own life, to be so anti-human, that they would think it a blessing to be shut up in prayer for the rest of her solitary life? Horrifying.

And, as we all know, if it were a non-mainstream superstition being indulged in here, we would be calling it a cult and trying to rescue this woman from the jaws of her brainwashing. But, because Catholicism has numbers on its side, this is somehow supposed to be seen as a noble act.

No, wait, she will be doing something helpful:

She supplements her income by making and selling rosaries via the Internet.