A Second Miracle for John Paul II?

Being Pope has to be the best job in the world. Unlike the position of a football coach or a corporate middle manager, or any other job you can name where your success depends on achieving positive results to improve the institution that is paying your salary, the job of being a Catholic Pope means you never have to do anything that makes any difference. It’s like being an absolute monarch or an emperor, but with less accountability. If you spout a papal utterance of some kind that condemns birth control and unplanned teen pregnancy at one and the same time, nobody will differ with your convoluted logic because implausible double-speak has always been an integral part of Catholic dogma. Or maybe you denounce homosexuality but totally ignore that same trait in your worldwide clergy. Everything is window dressing because that’s the main part of your job. And when your career finally comes to an end, maybe you can become a saint. As Dana Carvey’s church-lady used to say on SNL, “Isn’t that special?”

All the Vatican needs to make sainthood happen is a miracle or two. No problem. The process employed by the Vatican to find miracles is identical to the process used in the early George W. Bush administration to find reasons for invading Iraq. What’s required is a commitment to the ultimate goal, and nothing more. Then the necessary facts and data are simply manufactured to gain public support for that goal. This process works particularly well with Catholics and miracles because a person who can believe in the virginity of Mary will pretty much believe anything. In the case of John Paul II, the bar is set especially low because of his immense popularity and lifetime celebrity status. He could have taken the path that Pope Benedict has taken and done everything in his power to stop the Catholic priests from molesting little children. That would have been a true miracle. But he didn’t do that. Window dressing was easier for him. And when he needs that second miracle to gain sainthood, the Church can say that he once boiled a potato which came out of the scalding water looking like the face of Jesus.

What Do You Get When You Marginalize Women?

More than ever, I’m now convinced that the fable about “The Emperor’s New Clothes” was actually meant to be a metaphorical jab at the Catholic Church. Growing up Catholic in the 1950s, I was taught that the Pope spoke with infallibility when he spoke “ex cathedra” on matters of faith and morals, so I assumed that his recent comments about condom use carried some substantive weight on the subject. I know now that, what I wasn’t taught in the 1950s, is that papal infallibility is subject to a vetting process by the Vatican PR machine, whereby an infallible comment by a Pope can be “clarified” so that the pontiff doesn’t come off looking like a befuddled old fool. It was in this spirit of Vatican “clarification” that I learned today that condom use hasn’t received a green light after all (see my blog of 11/23). What was I thinking??

This “clarification” comes on the same day that the archdiocese of Phoenix, Arizona severed its affiliation with a (formerly) Catholic hospital because a nun at the hospital chose to end an 11 week pregnancy to save the life of the mother. If you’ve ever wondered which life is valued most highly by the Catholic Church— the life of an adult woman or the life of an unborn fetus— the Bishop of Phoenix has answered the question. Incidentally, the Bishop excommunicated the nun at the hospital who made the life-saving decision. By contrast, priests who sodomize and molest young children are NOT excommunicated.

The global scandal over priestly pedophilia, by grabbing all the media attention, has masked the fact that the Roman Catholic Church is dysfunctional and morally bankrupt in many other ways that have nothing to do with children. What we see in Catholicism is an example of an institution that, by marginalizing women, has denied for itself the civilizing and soothing influence that women bring into every aspect of human affairs where they’re allowed to participate. For the life of me, I’ll never understand why any woman would freely choose to be Catholic when they have so many better options.

Vatican Gives Green Light To Concom Use

This week, Pope Benedict issued new guidelines for the use of condoms. I'm surprised at this for two reasons. First, I'm surprised that old "Nazi Ratzi" even knows what condoms are. Who would have thought. Second, I'm always surprised that there are people who consider these Papal announcements to be important. I suppose that these are the same people whose lives would blossom and whose hearts would flutter if some old airline chef gave out his obsolete recipes for in-flight meals.

The Vatican announcement about condoms comes on the same day that a Catholic Priest in Texas, John Fiala, was arrested for plotting the murder of a teenager whom he had been sexually molesting. Fiala said he wanted to silence the teen to "prevent embarrassment for The Church." I believe that the Catholic trolley jumped the track back when the definition of "Hail Mary" was changed to mean a last ditch attempt to win a football game with a a long, desperate pass to the end zone. Maybe Benedict's relaxed views on condom use are his "Hail Mary" attempt to regain some respect for his troubled and tarnished Catholic Church.

A Love Song for Papa Ratzi

Papa Ratzi (short for Ratzinger), otherwise known as Pope Benedict, is visiting the U.K. this week, and the advance media report states that sometime during his visit, he will be serenaded by the lovely voice of a winsome homegrown lass from the British Isles. It turns out that the singer will be Susan Boyle. Too bad. I was hoping it would be Sinead O’Connor.

Not As Long As I’m Alive

Following the holy week troubles for Pope Benedict over the issue of sexual depravity (I refuse to minimize it by calling it priestly abuse), a friend of mine observed, “The Pope is his own worst enemy.” I immediately responded, “Not as long as I’m alive.”

Today, April 9th 2010, a letter written in 1985 surfaced in which old Joe Ratzinger (now the beloved Pope Benedict) refused to defrock a California child-molesting pervert (he tied child victims to the bed while he sodomized them) priest for, quote, “the good of The Universal Church.” Thank God, Ratzinger was wrong about this too, Catholicism is NOT universal.

No sooner was this letter exposed to the world than the Vatican issued an edict to the world’s Catholic dioceses to be completely transparent and compliant with local criminal law when local child abuse is found to be perpetrated by local priests. Sorry, “Papa Ratzi.” Too little, too late. This is like the teenager without a valid driver’s license who kills a pedestrian with a stolen car, and then agrees to take driver’s training class. But here’s the kicker. For faithful Catholics, this wipes the slate clean, and all is forgiven. Belief is a crippling attribute.

The Vatican Lays an Easter Egg

It’s Easter Sunday, a day that celebrates the historic occasion when the body of Jesus Christ was misplaced or stolen from the grave. Exploiting the media attention covering this holy event, a key Vatican official compared the criticism of The Church and the Pope over the sadistic sex abuse of children to anti-Semitism. As the public remarks were televised, the Pope sat nearby, looking comatose in what appeared to be a drug induced stupor. The video filming crew made sure he was on camera. So now it’s out in the open. In the mind of the Vatican, the reality of indulging in sexually perverted child molesting sodomy and the reality of being Jewish are equally offensive to would-be critics. Can it get any more pathetic?

This is what happens when 21st Century investigative media zeal meets up with a 14th Century mindset of unquestioned authority lacking any modern competent public relations expertise. Here’s my little Easter present to The Catholic Church in the form of some free and unsolicited advice to the Vatican— in a power struggle between The Church and the world’s secular media, The Church will come in second. Quite simply, the Vatican isn’t smart enough to compete with the probing intellectual capability of media professionals around the world who want to save innocent children from abuse by bringing down the Pope. Moreover, there are probably a thousand journalists who now recognize that this current religious crisis facing the most arrogant institution on earth is actually another potential Watergate, and whoever finds the true “smoking gun” will be the next Bob Woodward. In his Easter homily to the world, the Pope made no apology for anything, but he said that the coming year would bring “anguish” for The Church. He has no idea.

Good Friday? Not at the Vatican

Bristling at the fact that they no longer have the power to burn non-believers at the stake, the Cardinals and other honchos in the Vatican are mounting an all out push-back against the world’s media for questioning the sanctity of Pope Benedict. As more allegations of priestly abuse (a quaint little Catholic euphemism for pedophile sodomy) pour in from various nations, implicating the Pope himself in the cover-up of sexual misconduct, the Vatican is responding with indignation and outright anger. Whatever happened to that admonition we were given in the confessional, “Now make a good act of contrition”? Clearly, contrition is something expected from all of the everyday sinners like me, and it’s beneath the dignity of someone as lofty as the Pope.

I left The Catholic Church forty years ago. I knew back then that the whole thing was a fraud.

Weirded-Out About Sex

It’s Holy Week again as we count down to the day that Jesus got himself whacked, and as usual we’re treated to televised images of Pope Benedict reading words from a sheet of paper with all the inflection and passion of a lobotomized automaton. Putting the Pope up there on his little balcony during a week dedicated to holiness is symbolically like putting Bernie Madoff out front as the poster boy for a week celebrating financial security, and that’s especially true this year when revelations of sex abuse are pouring in from around the world that clearly demonstrate the depth of Vatican sexual depravity. The Catholic Church is increasingly seen as a vast child molestation machine, and it’s a sure bet that every victim who comes forward is speaking for ten victims of past abuse who prefer to carry their secret to the grave. Given that Catholic priestly sexual perversion has probably been in place for more than a thousand years, the number of violated innocents must be in the hundreds of thousands. Maybe millions.

Here’s what I don’t understand. Humans have been copulating for a couple million years, and while none of us ever get the sex thing totally figured out, still, as a species, we’ve pretty much been able to form institutions that were normal and mentally healthy about human sexuality. Catholicism stands alone in its category as the one global religion that can’t comprehend the mysteries of normal sex. From masturbation to homosexuality to female equality to birth control to mastering the multitasking capability that makes a career and family both possible for the average man— The Catholic Church is simply weirded-out about every aspect of sexuality. And this is being extremely kind. I’m sure that if I'd been sodomized by a priest, I’d see Catholicism as the epitome of pure evil. For the life of me, I don’t understand why Catholics put up with it.

Vatican Stands by Bishop in Holocaust Denial

As a blogger trying to write something new every day or two, I just need to say how thankful I am for the Vatican. If I’m at a loss for words, I simply Google “Vatican” and a door miraculously opens to show me the way. Sometimes it’s a Papal utterance of some kind that condemns birth control and unplanned teen pregnancy at one and the same time. Or maybe it’s a scathing denouncement of homosexuality, timed to coincide with a secular report documenting a level of homosexual orientation in the Catholic priesthood much higher than in any other observable male population. Even when the Church talks about money, it’s usually in the context of sex, as when American Archdioceses are forced to close parishes because they’ve been bankrupted by payouts to victims of priestly pedophilia. Catholicism has just never been able to get its arms around the issue of human sex, and the Church looks dysfunctional whenever the subject comes up.

Sex isn’t the only topic perplexing to the Vatican, however. There’s also the Holocaust and the broader issue of German Nazism. Pius XII, a gaunt Germanophile of dubious piousness, has been dubbed by several WWII historians as, “Hitler’s Pope.” There’s disagreement about whether his relationship with Der Fuhrer was one of appeasement or collaboration, but there’s no denying that Pius XII knew about trains to the death camps and said nothing to diminish or impede the slaughter of European Jews. The modern Vatican now seeks to reward this by making Pius XII into a saint. Go figure.

Then there’s Joseph Ratzinger. This man is the reason for my blog, today, since he’s currently making news around the world. He started WWII as a Hitler Youth, and by war’s end he was shooting anti-aircraft at Allied bombers. In 2005, he changed his name to Pope Benedict XVI, but I just call him, “PappaRatzi.” This former Nazi is now standing by one of his underlings, Bishop Richard Williamson, as Williamson makes headline news asserting that no Jews ever died in Nazi gas chambers. The Vatican is standing firm on a decision that Williamson can be rehabilitated, evidently viewing Holocaust denial as something in the same class with other inadvertent misdemeanors (actually the Church calls them venial sins) like pedophilia. The Church puts a lot of stock in rehabilitation, and much less in responsibility. What probably is beyond rehabilitation is a trusting relationship between the Vatican and Israel,

I love the Vatican. I could never be creative enough to make this stuff up.