Well, you see, Santa and the Tooth Fairy are yarns that we actively release our kids from when they get to a certain age. Let's dispel the somewhat mischievous comparison of those benign fellows with what children are told about God and Jesus. Yes, we have baby Jesus and angels and shepherds and all that lot. Along with them, parenthetically, we have the hymns and the the carols and the Gentle Jesus prayers. Are you released from these images as you grow up, as with Santa and the tooth Fairy? Why no, you are not! The very opposite,in fact! You are soon introduced to the darker concepts of sin, heaven and hell, the prayers get more assertive (and more riddled with certainties) and the whole thing suddenly becomes very grown-up. Unfortunately, the children to whom this stuff is peddled are not grown up. You can't afford to wait until then, of course, as you'll lose them if you're not careful. There's all that indoctrination by prayer, hymn, services and instruction, and those crucifixes to remind you every minute of the club you're in. Now there are enlightened fellows like Joe who debate issues with their kids and let them know they have a penalty-free choice. That is very nice. In Africa and Latin America, millions of Catholic women are suffering from having too many kids, from HIV/Aids, from poverty, from knitting-needle abortions and from gross inequality, and all because they never had a Joe Offer to let them know they had the choice to argue back and escape the shackles of the Church, penalty-free, if they wanted to. Even if they had, the iron grip of the Church would still have stayed their liberation. The real world out there might just not be that of middle-class America after all.