--- I hate to say

--- I hate to say it, but John Paul II had better bite the big one soon
or the Roman Catholic Church is going to completely fall apart. No Altar Girls, eh?
No applause during mass? (Actually, that’s one I can get behind) No
dancing? (I don’t mind that one either, but who am I to say a
Catholic in Africa can’t be filled with the Holy Spirit and
spontaneously start dancing to celebrate?) What are they going to
outlaw next? Speaking in tongues? Turning water into wine? Oh, whoops.
They allegedly don’t want the average Catholic to take the Blood of
Christ at communion already. Before you know it women will be back to
wearing little scraps of lace over their head to prevent the unseemly
lust in male congregants St. Paul (sexist bastard---saint or not)
thought needed to be guarded against. We might even start having Mass
in Latin again! Woohoo! I know that excites my faith beyond belief. I
think we’re really beginning to see the Curia and the Conservative
movement within the Vatican start taking advantage of the Pope’s
ailing health. Put simply: it’s a coup d’etat. And these arepriests, folks. Makes you feel all warm and fuzzy toward the rulers of the Church, doesn’t it? I know it does it for me. Mmmmhmmm!
You’d think the Medicis and Borgias were still around if you didn’t
know better. John Paul has been pope for most of my lifetime. I
remember the first John Paul’s short tenure, vaguely. I remember
watching the TV on a sunny, fall Saturday morning (they’d interrupted
my Looney Toons) as white smoke rose from the Sistine Chapel’s
chimneys. I remember my father saying we needed to say a prayer of
thanks that they’d found another pope and that we needed to pray for
his successful leadership of the Church. I remember my
one-generation-removed-from-the-boat Polish father being delighted that
they’d chosen a Polish
pope. I remember, a few years later, when the principal of my Catholic
grade school came over the loudspeaker instructing us all to pray as
the Pope had been shot and they didn’t know if he was going to live.
He lived, but I think he was shaken a wee bit too much to go forth and
do something with his papacy, and that’s only if you assume he wanted
to do something with his papacy in the first place, which, depending
upon whom you talk to, might or might not have been the case. On the
whole, I think he’s been a decent pope. Not great and not radical,
but not evil, either. While he hasn’t really done all that much to
bring the Church into the 21st century, and has avoided many of the
same problems that many popes before him avoided, he also did help to
bring down Communism, which earns him points in my book. On the whole,
he’s been a caretaker pope: he’s kept everything pretty much the
same as it was in 1978, when he was elected. The church is stuck in a
time warp; it’s still 1978 as far as the Pope is concerned. He
hasn’t been groundbreaking, but neither has he been completely
reactionary, as some would have you believe. If you have a passing
familiarity with the Polish Church, you’ll know what I’m talking
about: they get the most piety points of any nationality. The Irish and
Italians don’t have anything on the Poles in this regard. John Paul
II---caretaker pope, and if you look at his record as a whole, rather
than just at certain points of contention, it’s easy to see this.
That’s why these distinct moves to the right we keep seeing make it
so easy to discern that something’s not quite right over at Peter’s
crib. John Paul II, yes, gives frequent reminder homilies about Church
policies, but he hasn’t ever really made any radical policy changes.
Everything’s still pretty much the same as it was back when he was
elected. But just in the past year you have Cardinal Ratzinger, the
head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (that charming
institution within the Church that used to be called the Congregation
for the Sacred Inquisition…talk about spin, eh?) issuing a teaching
instructing bishops worldwide to tell politicians who declare
themselves pro-choice to stop calling themselves Catholics. No similar
decree was simultaneously issued instructing bishops about pro-death
penalty politicians, despite what John Paul II has said about the
horrors of the death penalty. The gay marriage debate heats up this
summer and the Vatican comes out in full---vehement---force about how wrong the idea of gay marriage is, when the Pope, while obviously not for it, has never said anything but love the sinner, but hate the sin;
and there are several homilies delivered by a visibly weakened Pope at
how horrid this idea is. Now we have the no altar girls, no dancing, no
applause during mass, no Blood of Christ delivered to congregants at
Mass. These things are just enough in line with what the pope
has said in the past, but are also just incongruous enough with the
entire papacy of John Paul II to make a Catholic wonder precisely
who is pulling the strings in the Vatican, because it’s certainly not
the Pope. I think the critical mass of the pedophilia scandal took it
out of the guy. He just doesn’t have the strength to keep up with all
of the pressures—internal and external---anymore. A friend of mine is
a neuropsychologist. What precisely that job description entails, I
don’t really know---it’s got something to do with how the brain
works, I know that much and I also know she deals with the therapy of a
lot of Alzheimer’s patients, but the specifics are beyond me. She has
a PhD---she’s smarter than I am. She also happens to be Catholic. She
has said that John Paul’s Parkinson’s, to her trained eye, appears
to be so advanced she doesn’t believe he has the full control of his
faculties anymore. I have to agree and the evidence at hand seems to
back up this conclusion. As much as I don’t think John Paul II needs
to be made a martyr, I think it would be best for everyone involved if
he just fell on his holy sword sooner rather than later. Obligatory
moment of Catholic co-dependency and guilt: It’s official: I’m now
going to hell. Do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars---go
straight toward the flames and roast in them.
---Oh, my. It’s a sad day. The Big Guy has passed away.

--- Hypocrisy alert
So, Ben Affleck campaigns for Gore in 2000---who was part of an
administration who pretty much tried to outlaw guns altogether---and
yet, it’s all right for Ben to go out and get a gun permit? Hmmm. To
be fair, I did some research and I could find nothing that said he held
the same position as say, Rosie O’Donnell, on this issue, but I did
find this.
He admits he wants stronger gun control, although he wonders at the
intelligence of such an action because he doesn’t know if it will
solve anything. But it’s pretty obvious that he doesn’t think heshould be
part of that group that needs to be watched, eh? I’m going to make a
leap here and say he wants to have one, but he probably doesn’t think
you’re stable enough to deserve a permit.

Especially not if you voted for Bush in 2000.

But---somehow---playing house with JLo means he’s stable.

How? Precisely.

--- Proof That Cats Are Evil!
The husband, who is deathly allergic to the wee beasts, will soon be
jumping up and down for joy at having his suspicions about the alleged
evilness of cats confirmed. --- Ok, here’s a bone
from me to make you feel better about yourself. At least you have a
life (probably not much of one if you’re reading this in the first
place, eh?). Apparently, this guy does not have one and if he keeps going down this road it’s likely he will never have one.

--- I forgot to mention yesterday that the Cake Eater City workers did not
show up over the weekend to finish paving. Hence, yesterday, I finally
caved and cleaned the Cake Eater Apartment. Sigh.
I just couldn’t take it anymore. Five hours of effort and a
thrown-out-back later, the dustbunnies have been shoved back into their
refugee camp underneath the bed and the apartment is gorgeous. The
apartment has the interesting and fragrant mix of Clorox Clean-Up, Zep
window cleaner and Scott’s Liquid Gold perfuming it. I also called
the Cake Eater City Public Works department to ask them when, if ever,
they were going to finish up with the paving. The lady sounded
surprised that the second layer hadn’t been put down, but that she
would have one of the supervisors call me back because they were all out working.

Hmmph.

They still haven’t shown up.