The Last Pope?

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That sound you hear is the bottom of the Fiction Writers Think Tank being scraped for the last residue of an original idea. An author who came up short when he did the scraping was Portuguese author Luis Miguel Rocha, who had to rely instead on the old, discredited canard that Pope John Paul I was murdered before he could shovel out the stables of the Vatican Bank.

"Portuguese author and scriptwriter Luis Miguel Rocha said he based The Last Pope on documents he obtained through an undisclosed Vatican source, which he will make public when the novel is published in April.

"The novel puts the theory that John Paul I had become a threat because he was aware of money-laundering involving the Vatican Bank and also because of his plans to liberalise aspects of centuries-old church doctrine.

"’He wanted to be the last wealthy pope. John Paul I wanted to redistribute the riches of the church, open the church to women and authorise the use of contraceptives,’ said Rocha, 29, in a weekend interview.

"The novel depicts the assassination of John Paul I as the result of a conspiracy involving top financial officials, several European governments and a Mafia group that counted top officials of the Roman Curia, including the pontiff’s personal secretary, among its members."

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GET THE REAL STORY ON JPI’S DEATH.

Archbishop Fulton Sheen once told the story of being approached by a young priest who demanded to know why the Church was so rich. Archbishop Sheen gave him the standard answer to this common question but the priest wasn’t satisfied. He kept pounding on the question until finally Sheen took him aside and asked him bluntly, "Father, how much have you stolen from the collection plate?" Sheen’s guess was on-target: The young priest was skimming from the parish funds and rationalizing his behavior by convincing himself that the Church was too rich anyway.

I’m no Archbishop Sheen, but my guess is that we can trace Luis Miguel Rocha’s dissatisfaction with the Church not to the alleged "murder" of Pope John Paul I, who Rocha claims would have liquidated the Church’s material assets, but instead to Rocha’s desire for women priests and contraceptives.

Christmas Day, All Secure

Michelle here.

A local radio station has been playing round-the-clock Christmas music for the past week, and one of my favorites is "A Soldier’s Silent Night," performed by Fr. Ted Berndt, a Catholic priest, former Marine, and Purple Heart recipient. Curious about the origins of the song, I did some searching on Google. There must have been some controversy over the poem’s authorship because the urban-legend debunker Snopes took on the case and verified the claim that it was written by a U.S. serviceman. The author is another former Marine, James M. Schmidt.

This part of the poem always makes me puddle up:

"I didn’t want to leave him so quiet in the night,
this guardian of honor so willing to fight.
But half asleep he rolled over, and in a voice clean and pure,
said ‘Carry on, Santa, it’s Christmas Day, all secure.’
One look at my watch and I knew he was right,
Merry Christmas my friend, Semper Fi and goodnight."

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NOTE: I couldn’t find a recording of the performance for sale online. If you find it, please post a link in the combox. Thanks!

The Santa Wars

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When I saw the following news story on a Santa contest turned ugly, I thought I had clicked on the satire news site The Onion by mistake. No such luck. There actually are people out there who take Santa contests so seriously that they darkly suspect fellow competitors of dirty play.

"The British Father Christmas who lost his Santa of the Year world crown has lashed out, citing a suspected campaign to stop him from winning again that has damaged ‘Santa morale.’

"Ron Horniblew, 70, has been authorised by the Master Santa in Greenland and is part of the elite international Santa circuit who compete at the Santa Winter Games, where up to 50 Father Christmases compete for the world title.

"Estonian accordionist Aare Rebban grabbed the crown ‘amid dark mutterings of political voting, professional jealousy and backbiting,’ The Mail on Sunday newspaper said."

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I don’t know about you, but if one of these bickering Santas is assigned to visit my home on Christmas Eve, he’s going to find set out for him a lump of coal rather than a glass of milk and a plate of cookies.

Here Comes Scary Santa

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Christmas has evolved a great deal over the centuries. It gone from being a sacred holiday to a secular vacation to a political football. What is the next logical step? Perhaps what we might call a winter Halloween. Halloween has long been a time for satirizing popular culture, but one New York couple has decided to move that Halloween custom to Christmas by decking their halls with a Serial Killer Santa, all in the name of decrying the commercialization of the holiday.

"Joel Krupnik and Mildred Castellanos decked the front of their Manhattan mansion this year with a scene that includes a knife-wielding 5-foot-tall St. Nick and a tree full of decapitated Barbie dolls. Hidden partly behind a tree, the merry old elf grasps a disembodied doll’s head with fake blood streaming from its eye sockets.

"In a telephone interview Wednesday, Krupnik explained that his family thought it would be a fun way to make a comment about the commercialization and secularization of Christmas.

"’It is a religious holiday, but they have turned it into a business. And it shouldn’t be,’ he said. ‘We didn’t put it up to offend anybody. It was just something that came out of our imagination.’

[…]

"Walter Garofalo, a musician from Brooklyn who wandered by wearing a black bandanna covered in skulls, was awe-struck.

"’I wonder if these people would let me use this as our next album cover,’ he said. ‘It’s perfect!’"

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I can the album now. Coming soon to a music store near you: "The Silence of the Elves."

That does it. I’ve had about enough of the cultural Christmas spirit for one year, thank you very much.

The Beat Goes On

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Michelle here.

Unlike Mark Shea, who has confessed to his Northern European squeamishness over relics, I happen to love them and to enjoy a lot of the folk piety of Catholics throughout history. But even I have to admit that a report of a Polish Dominican friar trying to obtain a recording of John Paul II’s heartbeat for playback at a Christmas Mass is just, uhm, how shall I say it gently … weird.

"A Polish Dominican monk [sic] has asked the Rome clinic that treated John Paul II to give him recordings of the late pope’s heartbeat, which he hopes to play to ardent Catholics at Christmas midnight mass.

"’For years, our hearts beat for him. Today, we want to symbolically listen to his heart,’ Brother Jan Gora was quoted by the Glos Wielkopolski daily as saying.

"’We have taken the first steps’ to obtaining recordings of the heartbeat of John Paul II, who died on April 2 in his private apartment at the Vatican, after being hospitalised at the Gemelli Clinic, he said.

"If Brother Gora obtains the recording, the late Polish-born pope’s heartbeat will be played back during the Agnus Dei at midnight mass in Lednica, in southwestern Poland."

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(Nod to Mark and to Amy Welborn for the link. Be sure to see the discussion of the story over at Amy’s.)

My guess is that John Paul II would be flattered but insist that the sound of his heartbeat is not an appropriate liturgical hymn and that the congregation’s focus ought really to be directed to the Eucharist.

Just Say No To Condom Machines

Muslim groups in India are speaking out against a proposed plan to install five hundred condom distribution machines in one of the Indian states most plagued by HIV/AIDS. They argue that fighting AIDS is a good thing but that the machines promote sex, degrade women, and contribute to the corruption of youngsters.

"Plans to install 500 condom vending machines in the capital of one of India’s worst HIV/AIDS-affected states have angered Muslim groups so much they have taken to the streets to protest a ‘condom culture.’

"Critics of the plan by the Tamil Nadu government and India’s National Aids Control Organisation to put 500 machines in the capital of Chennai and 1000 more across the state later said it would degrade women and corrupt the young.

"’We must fight AIDS, but these machines at public places will only promote sex outside marriage among the younger generation,’ said MH Jawahirullah, who heads Tamil Nadu’s largest Muslim group, the Muslim Munnetra Kazhagam (Muslim Progressive Party).

"Over 200 Muslim women, many in veils, hit the streets of Chennai waving placards denouncing the plan and shouting: ‘Don’t ruin our culture, Remove these machines.’"

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As you may know, the late John Paul II was not granted the Nobel Peace Prize in part because of his determined defense of the Church’s traditional teaching against artificial contraception (source, scroll to item 6). By not allowing condoms as a "protection" against disease, the Pope killed millions, or so went the chatter from ideologues (source).

I wonder if those same ideologues will now turn their wagging fingers to the Indian Muslims protesting condom machines and denounce them for killing AIDS sufferers by their opposition to the "condom culture."

The Incarnate Pope?

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In a new twist on the old routine of men not elected to the office claiming to be pope, one Puerta Rican man has claimed to be the incarnation of the late John Paul II.  According to CNN, he has now been excommunicated by Mayaguez Bishop Ulises Casiano Vargas.

"A Roman Catholic bishop here has excommunicated members of a communal sect whose leader allegedly claims to be a manifestation of the late Pope John Paul II.

"Sect leader Edwin Gonzalez Concepcion and his followers can no longer receive communion or participate in [C]hurch activities, according to the order issued by Mayaguez Bishop Ulises Casiano Vargas.

"Gonzalez, a former firefighter in the town of Aguada, has told his followers that he became a manifestation of John Paul when the pope died in April and that Pope Benedict XVI is the ‘antichrist,’ according to the order, which priests in the diocese read to their congregations Sunday."

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You’d think that someone claiming to be a "manifestation" of John Paul II would have done enough research into his role to know that the real JPII would never denounce Joseph Ratzinger as "the Antichrist."

NOTE:  The image accompanying this post was chosen because it reminded me of an old This Rock cover image of a Mr. Potato Head Pope that illustrated an article on "Do-It-Yourself Popes."

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Time Capsule

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I consider a time capsule to be a box or tube. Some people in 1957 thought a great time capsule would be a 1957 Plymouth Belvedere, so they filled it with souvenirs of the time period and buried in a concrete vault. When the time capsule is opened in 2007, the person or his heirs who most accurately guessed Tulsa, Oklahoma’s 2007 population will win the capsule and a bank account that is now worth approximately $1200. … If the account can be found, that is.

"The 1957 Belvedere is underground next to the Tulsa County Courthouse. Also buried with it were five gallons of gas and a case of beer.

"Old news reports indicate the gas was buried in case internal combustion engines became obsolete by 2007 and no fuel was available. Other buried items include the contents of a woman’s purse: 14 bobby pins, a lipstick, a pack of gum, tissues, a pack of cigarettes and matches and $2.43.

"There was also an unpaid parking ticket, a bottle of tranquilizers and a spool of microfilm, which records the entries of a contest held to determine the winner of the car. The person to guess Tulsa’s population in 2007 or the heirs of that person were to win the car and a $100 savings account.

"Assuming an average annual interest of 5 percent compounded quarterly, such an account would be worth almost $1,200 today, if the account could be found.

"The account was set up at a savings and loan that was taken over by Sooner Federal, which was liquidated during the savings and loan bust of the early 1990s. The committee has been trying to find the account, so far without success."

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It’s interesting that the capsule’s creators thought that gas might no longer be available in 2007. The way things are going these days with laws created by Big Nanny and legions of agitated activists lobbying Big Nanny for more legislation, my guess would be that the product in the capsule most likely to be obsolete in two years would be the cigarettes.

St. Megachurch Parish Community

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You thought "megachurches" were a Protestant phenomenon, didn’t you? You were right, until now. In the attempt to find solutions to reported priest shortages, some dioceses have lifted an idea from their Protestant brethren and decided to form Catholic "megachurches."

"Catholic churches are joining their Protestant counterparts across the country in creating megachurches — where thousands, sometimes tens of thousands, of parishioners worship together. But unlike the Protestant churches that use high-profile, evangelistic campaigns to grow, dioceses say it is too few priests and too many worshippers that drives their expansion.

"While the number of worshippers per parish nationwide has grown by nearly 35 percent in almost three decades, the number of priests dropped 26 percent, said Mary Gautier with the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University, which tracks U.S. Catholic Church growth patterns.

[…]

"Dioceses in the South and West — the hot spots for new jobs and suburban sprawl — are primarily the ones building larger parishes that are increasingly filled with Hispanic Catholics, many of whom are immigrants, Gautier said."

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To Speak To A Live Person, Press…

You’ve called some company and have found yourself lost in a veritable maze of voice mail instructions, none of which gives you the number to press to speak to a real live human being who can answer your question or fix your problem quickly and easily. Have you ever wondered if there is some way to break through the system and be routed to the human being to whom you need to talk? There is! One enterprising individual has put together some crib notes to keep on hand the next time you’re winding your way through Voice Mail Purgatory.

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(Nod to Some Have Hats for the link.)