As a Sky News newscaster so aptly remarked “this is like a scene straight from The Da Vinci Code“.
The trial of sallow-faced Paolo Gabriele, the man accused of stealing secret documents from the Pope and leaking their contents to the press, started a few days ago in the Vatican City. This is high drama indeed. Eat your heart out, Lassange! Shocking facts have already emerged, and more will no doubt emerge, in the days to come (unless the Church manages to keep a lid on things)!
In the first place, most people didn’t realise, until now, that the Pope even had a butler. Why, is he too holy to make up his own bed? In the second place, most people didn’t realise the Pope had secrets. What for, isn’t he supposed to be utterly trustworthy, totally noble and God-fearing, the very edifice of goodness? In the third place, how come the Pope, who supposedly has a direct line to aforementioned God, did not realise his butler was betraying him? He saw this bloke every day of his life, yet he couldn’t see into his soul? Why didn’t God warn him? Why didn’t an angel appear to him in his dream to tell him: “Fear not, o Benedict XVI, but thy butler is about to fuck thee over mightily!”
I know this article is not very respectful of Roman Catholicism, and I realise that if I’d poked fun at Islam there’d be several burning embassies within the following week, so let’s start with the good things. Firstly, I like the fact that the Church won’t kill me for not liking them. At least these guys have a vague (if theoretical) inkling of the principle of free speech. In the second place, I quite like the Pope’s dress sense. I’ve always admired men who wear dresses, who are not afraid to show their feminine sides. Some of my best friends are cross-dressers, just like the Pope!
But here’s where the praise ends. During the last couple of years the Roman Catholic Church has fallen from grace in a big way, not only in my opinion, but in the opinion of millions of disillusioned Catholics across the world. It actually started long before, when Nostradamus predicted the fall of the Vatican Empire centuries ago. He said it would happen round about now, if I’m interpreting his quatrains correctly (not that I’m an expert on Nostradamus, I frankly think he was overrated but that’s what the scholars say he said).
Then there was the terrible thing with the choir boys. Good heavens! Who would have dreamt there could be so many naughty priests around! Who would have thought so much evil could lurk in the candle-lit corridors and pews of those fungus-covered buildings? What ghastly seductive schemes waxed so wickedly in the ritually obsessive brains of those heavily-robed, Latin-speaking predators? And why were so many of them guilty of this deviant behaviour?
Now, alas, one man holds the key to finally toppling the entire heap of relics and dusty bones called Catholicism. A sallow-faced, morbid-looking, middle-aged man by the name of Paolo. With a face straight from the twilight zone and a crumpled dark suit that would have made any vampire proud, this eerie figure stands accused of undermining the authority of Rome, just like his namesake the equally morbid Apostle Paul stood accused before the Roman Empire in the first century.
It’s perhaps more like a scene from Agatha Christie than Dan Brown, if you ask me. I will never be able to play a game of Cluedo with my kids again without thinking of ol’ Paolo. And secretly admiring him.
The cunning it must have took, the timing, the admirable sense of vile purpose that drove this man to do this deed! The very nerve! To grope beneath the Pope’s underwear to retrieve all these ghastly secrets that had been stacked away there for years!
One thing stands out like a rotten steeple: it’s not really Paolo who’s on trial here. It’s the Catholic Church. The organisation which, for almost 2 000 years, have claimed, on the flimsiest of Biblical evidence, to be the true heirs of the socio-spiritual movement started all those years ago by that truly nice man with his seamless robe and friendly eyes who walked the streets (and lakes, if we could believe that bit) of Palestine all those years ago.
To tell you the truth, if I ever needed a second-hand car, or donkey, or whatever, I wouldn’t buy it from Pope Benedict. I’d rather ask Jesus any day. And not just because he knows lots of donkeys or even because he can do interesting tricks with loaves of bread and stuff. But just because, unlike most Popes I’ve known, everything he said way back then, and everything he did, carried such a wonderful ring of truth.
The real question here isn’t about who’s right, or who stole what, or who was born of a virgin or not, but this: is the trial of this man in his dark suit and combed-back gelled hair, this man who resembles a cross between an ageing Elvis and an undertaker, the final straw that will break the back of the 2 000-year-old Vatican Empire? Is this where Roman Catholicism as an institution will lose the last shred of credibility in the minds of the public?
One day, when my children grow up and I take them on a tour of Europe to show them all the magnificent cathedrals — I’ve always wanted to do that, because I really love stained-glass windows — and they ask me what those huge empty buildings were originally built for, I will tell them they were designed and commissioned by the practitioners of a mighty and monstrous religion, now extinct.
And, if they ask me how a monstrous and mighty religion that could build such remarkable buildings could simply disappear into thin air, I will simply shrug and say: “The butler did it.”
And then I shall tell them the beautiful and true parable of Saint Paolo Gabriele, the last and greatest martyr of the Holy Vatican Empire.
I feel pleased with your observation that you can actually publish this article because you do not have to fear that your Muslim neighbors set you house alight…or your city or any other city if that comes in handy.
It shows the tolerance of the Roman Catholics. “If someone hits your face, show him the other cheek” Jesus said (so I have been told).
Muslims still have to learn this. But then, their religion started some decades later.
The Roman Catholics were equally a very intolerant lot some centuries ago. The Spanish inquisition and the burning of some scientists who promoted the idea that the world was round and the earth moved around the sun are testimony of their intolerance.
As a not so fanatic Roman Catholic, I enjoyed your lighthearted take on this subject. The pope could have forgiven him after a serious confession and punished him by letting him say three holy fathers and three hail Mary’s. Would be a lot quicker than a court case. The money saved could be donated to the poor.
enjoyed reading that
There’s Catholicism, and there’s the structures of the Church. (Remember the Vatican banking scam and the mysterious deaths which followed?)
The Pope can forgive venial or even mortal sins (not that dear Dr. Ratzinger seems a very forgiving person) but not someone undermining the structures of the Church’s power or money. Do that and you end up hanging from a bridge, if you’re lucky.
Oh, and neener neener neener Mohammed, and knickers to Moses as well. See? Can be done.
What’s that smell of smoke?
The servants have the power overall.
Amusing article and am glad that you will be safe from a fatwa and a Papal Bull in a green field. Agree that it is a shame this could not have been resolved by a confession, a few Hail Marys, etc…. But I suppose the thing had now gone public (yet another blot on the RC copybook), so something more public had to be done.
It is a pity that all religions seem to be so blighted from the top which reflects so badly on the rank and file ordinary members of whatever faith…
Like the almost biblical comment on MLH at 10.04 am….. sort of like the least shall be first.
Ha, Ha, Ha. Ja, ne. Qiute funny and thougt provoking.
Neat one Koos, made my day.
As Bernpm also implied, if you had penned this a few centuries ago, you would likely have been steak on stake.
@ntozakhona: Glad to see we share some funny bones!
No Pope or Priest can forgive sins of any kind – the Bible makes it very clear that this is the sole perogative of God on Judgement Day. Accordingly the opposite is also true – they can not condemn either, whether scientists who believe the earth revolves around the sun, or people whom they call “heretics”.
And Jesus was a Jew who said his Church devolved, like the Jewish Priesthood Class, down the bloodline of his family, starting with his brother, James, also known as Joseph of Arimathea.
funnyness. i could actually see the skelm baby faced priests running around all cloak and daggery with their sub agendas. you should make this on into a book
Lyndall, your last sentence is not only irrelevant to the blog, as are many of your responses to blogs on various web sites, it is also factually incorrect. Christ’s brother James and Joseph of Arimathea were two individuals, not one and the same person.
John Collins
No they were not – that is one of the many Roman Catholic myths set about by the aptly named College of Propaganda for centuries. Arimathea was a title not a place. If there is such a place where is it?
Nor was Peter the first Bishop of Rome. When Peter was in Rome he was not the Bishop – who was a British Prince, son of an English Tribal Chief, well recorded by historians.
The butler did it, nice one
Reminds me of the butler in Richie Rich or was it Archie?
Damn, I’m getting old
Heaven forefend, Lyndall, that I should get into a debate with ever-tireless you about something so irrelevant to Koos’s blog that he is liable to choke with laughter over his stove. I must, however, inform you that Arimathea is the New Testament version of the Old Testament place name, Ramathaim Zophim, a town that was located about nine kilometres north of Jerusalem. Joseph was a rich member of the Sanhedrin who, nevertheless, became a disciple of Jesus. Why would anyone want to declare that Jesus’s brother James and Joseph were one and the same person? Oops, that’s a rhetorical question, Lyndall. For mercy’s sake, don’t answer it.
John Collins
That is the theory of Laurence Gardner, who gives his research to back it up in his books.
But more relevant is that Jesus Christ, as the Jewish Messiah, said the Leadership should pass through the Levis and Cohens in the New Church, as it had in the Old – and Peter was neither, nor was Paul, who was actually a Roman by birth.
@stubble,
Richie Rich, the “poor little rich boy” is the juvenile version of George Bush, only smarter.
Richie’s butler was Cadbury, who uncannily resembles Jerry Sandusky.
Even worse, the Rich estate carpenter was Mr. Woody….what more can I say?
The burning question remains:
Betty or Veronica?
The Jews had Bloodline Priests and Bloodline Kings. The Romans suppressed the Bloodline Priests to stop them interfering with the power of the Emperor. Curbing State power is exactly what Priests are supposed to do.
The Christian New Testament starts with the Book of Matthew as follows:
“The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Abraham begat Isaac……. and Jacob begat Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ.”
So either the father of Jesus Christ was Joseph, or Jesus Christ is not the Messiah.
The Romans, after persecuting Christians for a few hundred years, adopted Christianity as a State Religion to prop up a failing Empire, and turned Jesus Christ, the Jewish Messiah, into a Roman God.
Roman soldiers would never have fought for a man, especially a Jewish man from a despised and defeated race. They made Jesus Christ a copycat of the Roman God of Soldiers, Mithrias, even giving him the same birthday, 25th December, and also making Jesus half Man-half God!
Jesus Christ railed against the abuse of State Power and came for the poor, the marginalised and the abused. The last thing he represented was Emperors, Kings and Princes!
The Roman Emperors, the Caesars, were regarded as Gods.
This was normal in many civilisations. The Egyptian Pharoahs descended from the Sun God, Ra, which was why brother married sister, to keep the bloodline. The Japanese Emperor and the Emperors of the Inca and Aztecs were also descendants of the Sun God. The Chinese Emperor was a Celestial being of a Celestial Kingdom.