Benedict In America

Pope Benedict XVI visited the US and I just have to respond. Send the kids out of the room, please.

First off, the Church is a destructive historical force of war, rape and guilt. As the head of this evil, the Pope is, well, Dr. Evil himself. Second, the Church in the last generation has rigidified its attachment to dogma—after a generation of moving away from Inquisition mentality. No one has been more instrumental in this paranoid rush to the stake than Benedict.

As the Vatican's Top Dogma official under John Paul II, Cardinal Ratzinger yoked Latin American liberal churchmen (whose politics are generally about elevating the poor), calling them commies and terrorists. Ratzinger abetted the sex crimes of North American priests by keeping the toothless investigations secret. Meanwhile, he excommunicated a bishop for dubious politics. The tally: Pedophiles 1, Sedevacantists 0.

So this jerk becomes Pope by, um, running the election for Pope, after a storied career of protecting rapists while strong-arming idealists. Remember, his job was to reaffirm Church doctrine, so you have a record of the doctrine being anti-child and anti-poor, while being pro-crime and pro-Ratzinger. The Right Hand of God was the logical next step. It's where all the great ones are.

So what has he done as Pope? Deplored rationality, substituted it with religion and called it Reason. He condemned consumerism among youth as the "corruption of love." He called Protestants non-Christians, got up in Islam's grill and talked smack, and blew off the Dalai Lama. Bush as Chimp, Ratzinger as Pope... What a world.


Let's say you're Satan, locked in eternal combat for the souls of men. You're pretty tricky and relentless—you'll say and do anything to win. (Because you're Satan.) How would you go about confusing the issues? Tricking people into following your instructions? Decieving the very souls of people through contradiction, guilt, confounding identity? Exactly!—you'd set up a monolith, declare yourself the agent of salvation and call yourself God.

It's a perfect plan, especially when the God you oppose tends to keep himself away from the issue, except to whisper in the ear of some poor guy who delivers the divine message, then is quickly rejected and destroyed. You can't lose. In the short run, anyway.

Well, there's the Pope. The ultimate deceiver. He has the stats to prove it.