Catholicism and Carnival

I don't get the (official?) Catholic non-opposition and outright support for Carnival. I really don't. Does anyone know a sound rationale for it? How can a church with such a strong and apparently consistent sexual ethic not condemn the hypersexualised carnivals of the Caribbean? Perhaps it will help if I sketch the evangelical opposition to the practice. Maybe someone can identify where a Catholic worldview would identify a failure in our reasoning and show me why it differs on this. But before I do that, I'll try to outline my understanding of the supporters' position. (Maybe someone can also point out where I'm wrong in this.)

As any apologist who enjoys Carnival will tell you, Carnival is about culture and fun. It's about cultural expression that fuses the region's Christian and European traditions with its African and tribal traditions. It's about creativity. It's about having a good time. It's about social commentary -- airing the societies' problems in songs about poverty, gender inequalities, abuses and politics in creative ways. It's about showcasing women's beauty, talent and (lack of) knowledge.

But it's also a festival of and to the flesh. In the 'original' form that we still see in Trinidad and Tobago and Dominica, it's about a farewell to the flesh before the 40-day Lenten period. It's the time you free up and forget your inhibitions. It's the time we bend the rules of fidelity and make exceptions to our codes of integrity and decency.

And we can go further. As the Christian and other prudential opponents to Carnival say, it's also about excess. It's about sex, sex and more sex -- sex with (barely any) clothes on, protected sex, unprotected sex, sex between people who don't know each other, sex between unmarried people, and sex between a married woman and a man she isn't married to (yuh woman butting me!). It's about alcohol (the only thing better than rum is more rum!). And it's not about alcohol in moderation. It's about getting so drunk that you're brave enough to wind on that woman or sleep with that man. It's about those nights you hope you'll never remember with the friends you may very well forget.

With all this in mind, it's hard for me to imagine a coherent Catholic (or Anglican or Methodist or any other orthodoxish Christian) apology for Carnival. So, what's the reason? What're the arguments? What's excuse? Does anyone know?

And oh, I'm talking about the official (or semi-official or de-facto official) reasoned and/or revealed position of the church or the majority of its clergy here. We all know that in every denomination of Christianity the practice of the laity (and even the clergy) can differ widely from the church's official doctrine or accepted norm. This isn't about the hypocrisy of the young evangelical pastors who preach about abstinence and preach against carnival and end up drunk and wasted J'Ouvert morning. (Yes, that's a major issue, but it isn't the issue I want to deal with here.) This is about the pastors and priests and deacons and churches that don't see anything intrinsically or otherwise wrong with Carnival.