For those of us who are fucking annoyed with the enormous and nauseating catholic-suck-ass media coverage since the death of the pope to the mega-secret pope selection process (where we all wait with breathless anticipation for a white-smoke-two-thirds-majority-vote), I found this nice piece from The Revealer:
My contention here is that the schizophrenic character of the media is a reflection of the culture it serves, and that this culture typifies an adolescent stage of political development. In other words, I am contending that reverence and rudeness are signs of, and compensation for, a lack of real power and intellectual freedom. […] A free media fit to serve a free people will have little need of either reverence or scurrility. It will know how to remove its hat in a basilica and how to keep its head at the death of a pope. It will not provide a breast to every voyeur who drools for one; neither will it be overly sidetracked by the alleged “obscenity” of Janet Jackson’s breast. It will not disport itself like the schoolyard apestrut who bruises an arm whenever he can get away with it and then displays a few tears for the sake of the girls who find sensitivity appealing in a thug.
Worth a read.
The whole pope-and-pony-show they’ve got going over there in Rome is only to be expected. Our media regularly covers a groundhog’s activities on one day of the year, so for something that affects millions of Catholics and hasn’t happened in 25 years, this is a good news story from the perspective of the media mongers. It’s got pageantry, secret cabals, false floors with anti-bugging devices, colored smoke, guys in robes converging from the 4 corners of the globe…what’s not to love if you are a news director for a cheesey TV news show? It’s like the DaVinci code but in our present day midst.
I would have an eerie “something is very wrong here” feeling if the news weren’t covering the Opoe Search 2005 with the zeal they are–it would be Twilight Zonish to expect them to suddenly express that what we are witnessing are the arbitrary and laughable machinations of an ancient and silly cult. Still, despite expecting it, I can’t help but feel the same fundamental disappointment in things when I see some “special correspondent to the Vatican” jabbering on about a sacred process or who are the front runners for Head Wackjob.
Not that I mean any disrespect…
Well, it’s official: Ratzinger is now the pope. I actually feel a little sorry for the catholics, because the majority of them were waiting for JPII to die, optimistically hoping for a more progressive successor. Sadly, Ratzinger is more conservative than JPII, and all hopes for a lift on the contraceptive ban will be dashed. Maybe catholics will finally use their heads, and let their religion go the way of the dodo. I really do feel badly for all the sane people who follow this religion out of fear. It’s sad when a religion offers spooky bullshit and fear tactics, instead of offering hope to its followers. Oh well, Ratzinger is 78. With any luck, he’ll die soon.
I am not in the know. However, I wonder what the sense of north american catholic voters for pope might have been? I suspect our media carried so much about the last pope’s death and the show about choosing the next was related to their expectation that the next pope would be conservative, and their expectation that any religious news is good religious news. The media goes with this because the only people who are listening to them these days are on the right, and possibly the religious. They figure they have already lost the thinking left.
I think it’s silly that the institution of the pope has survived to this day. Not content with scaring the catholic masses with the wrath of some big beard in the sky and eternal damnation, they had to go and appoint a dude (no sissys and/or girls allowed please) as HIS voice. What’s the deal with the papal election anyway? You would think that with the post of God’s sole sales rep on His good green earth in question the omnipotent Dude would bother to send a shaft of light, blaring trumpets, and maybe a few spare saints who weren’t too busy drinking and shagging heavenly virgins (oops, wrong religion…) to finger the geezer. Instead they’ve got a system where a bunch of old blokes (who were hardly representative of the opinion of the vast majority of catholics, after all the previous Pope DID personally appoint most of them) sat around in a secret meeting to appoint one of THEM to be the Lord’s muppet, thereby ensuring that:
a) The bloke they elected would NOT be God’s choice. It is THEIR choice (thank goodness for free will). Anyone sent by the lord could not possibly survive Vatican politics. And I personally doubt that the Lord would allow the continued existence of contraceptives if the concept so offends his heavenly being. If He, in His infinite wisdom, smote Sodom and Gomorrah for their sins, why not smite the condom factories? After all, they are masss manufacturers of sin in convenient little packets.
b) Anyone they elected would be OLD and has outdated ideas, because they want to give themselves a shot at the seat someday and being the old geezers that they are they can’t get their collective heads around the newfangled notions of progress and enlightenment (We are, after all, ranting about an institution that insisted the Sun and stars revolved around the Earth. Hey what a major boo-boo that must’ve been for the man who claims to speak for God)
I personally doubt that the Lord would allow his pet monkeys to scientifically progress to the 21st century and still furnish them with a 2000 year old set of ideas and beliefs. After all, the Son of God Himself proposed ideas so revolutionary that they nailed him to two pieces of wood. Having said that, the second coming had probably come and gone, in this cynical day and age any man that comes along and claims to be the Messenger of God would either be confined to the loony bin or be snubbed by mainstream society so often that he would go and start his own cult on a mountaintop in disgust.
Now they have a former Hitler Youth as their Pope. That was all in the distant past they say, he’s a different sort of bloke now….. and a bloody good job too we say because Joe himself does not believe in allowing conversions into the Catholic faith, once a rat always a rat as he says.
(sung to tune of My Favorite Things)
Men in red dresses all met at the Vatican
Giddy with pleasure “We get to be bad again!”
Wining and dining with others in frocks
Hoping to brush against each others….socks.