Pope Goes Out, Guns Blazing: Seven Cardinals Dead.

Top ‘O The Word Ma!


Well that was disrespectful.

The Pope was The Pope for a long, long time. And then The Pope got sick. And sicker. And then he arrived at that place where the system starts to crash, and the end came quickly after that. Anybody with older relatives knows how this rapid, downward spiral works.

In the Pope Business far longer that Franklin Roosevelt was President and, as my Mom once explained to me, when FDR died, so many people of a certain age had only ever known (Roosevelt = President) that they had no idea who else would ever do the job. So I sort of understand how Catholics are very attached to him, and might feel unmoored by this loss.

So good on the Primate of the Church for stomping up and down on Stalin’s long-dead-but-still-very-deadly-corpus from inside the Vatican. Very Good For Him for focusing a bright, relentless spotlight on Solidarity and Poland. For standing for Peace, and opposing the death penalty. For militating against economic arrangements that lavish further wealth on the already immeasurably wealthy and bulldoze the poor into the ground.

In other words, for opposing pretty much the entire Bush Agenda.

And damn him for treating Vatican II like an Etch-A-Sketch left behind by his predecessor. Pick it up, shake it up and Boom! Hello, 14th Century! Kiss any idea that women are anything but ornamental breeders Good-bye. Menstruators saying Mass? Heaven Forbid...literally. Condoms, even for preventing the Modern Black Death? Sorry, no, but we have some lovely parting gifts for you.

And if “Massive, Multi-Million Dollar Cover Up of Priestly Child Molestation” isn’t the title of the chapter of the definitive Future History of the Vatican in the late 20th Century I’d be shocked.

But you know, I can’t really work up any kind of idolatrous adoration or Lutherian rage against the Vicar of Christ or the Church he CEO-ed since October of 1978.

Reruns of movies with Jimmy Cagney (Yes, the picture had a purpose) and Pat O’Brien and Spencer Tracy were a lot of what little I knew about Catholicism growing up. And legends of Nuns in Black beating the left-handedness out of kids my age. And, later, a highly focused interest in the awesome Plaid Skirts and Knee Socks in which they packaged adolescent Catholic girls. At that time, the Jesuits were still in my future.

As seen from the outside (Well, halfway outside. My Dad was also Catholic, but in the background, although we often doubled-down on the Holiday churching with Mom’s Protestantism) it has always been blindingly obvious to me that Catholicism is basically just Roman Paganism re-purposed for re-branded for political and imperial reasons 17 centuries ago, and tarted up in the Robe Of Christ.

With better music.

(BTW, if you want a brilliant One Stop Shopping history of Catholicism, and how it morphed into Protestantism, and the virulent and schizophrenic through-line of anti-semitism of Christianity led straight from the Early Church to the First Crusade to Auschwitz, pick up “The Sword of Constantine” by James Carroll.)

So what? In a different age, in a different land, when the Catholicism was The Church, and The Church was The State, maybe I could manage a good angry. But we’re five years into the 21st century and so make any argument you like about being a lifetime Catholic, or “give me your child until the age of nine” or whatever...being a Catholic is still voluntary.

The idea that anyone would tale moral instruction or fear Excommunication from a faith where Frocked Child Rapists are forgiven and smuggled into New, Target-Rich Parishes, while wearing a condom to prevent AIDS can get you exiled and condemned to Hell strikes me as just plain ridiculous.

Come on! Celibate old men? Stomping around in dresses? Lecturing educated grown-ups on exactly who/what/when/where/why certain touching is Godly and certain touching is Bad and will land you in an Eternal Lake of Fire?

Laughable. Hysterically so...and completely non-mandatory, which is why I can’t really stoke up a good head of Steaming Anger against the now-deceased Servant of God’s Servants. Believe what you’d like -- this is still America, and that's still your perogative -- but For Jesus’ Sake, if your faith has a history of coming out Very Strong against things like Germ Theory and Heliocentricity, and takes 359 years to let Galileo out of God’s Penalty Box for the unpardonable sin of being Absolutely Correct, maybe you might want to shop around for something a little more roomy and Enlightenment Friendly.

Or, as another Fictional Religious Leader – Obi-Wan Kenobe – says, “Who's the bigger fool, the fool, or the fool who follows him?"

So, good-bye John Paul. I know you tried to do your level best, even though your level best often bulwarked the Worst and most Medieval impulses of your faith.

Tell God I said “hey”.