“I Did Not Come To Praise The Pope…”
…but to, er, drool on myself.
Courtesy of Arthur Chrenkoff is this wonderful essay by a professor of ‘cultural theory’ at Manchester University.
My favorite bit is this:
The Catholic church had lived through its own brand of flower power in the 60s, known as the Second Vatican Council; and the time was now ripe to rein in leftist monks, clap-happy nuns and Latin American Catholic Marxists. All of this had been set in train by a pope – John XIII – whom the Catholic conservatives regarded as at best wacky and at worst a Soviet agent.
Amazingly devious, these Catholics, no? Wacky John XIII was a closet Soviet agent 900 years before the birth of Marx.
Humanity...or the Lack Thereof | Mr. Bingley | 
April 5, 2005 3:01 pm
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DAMN!! You beat me to it. Noticed immediately, having graduated from the XXIII’s high school and wondering if it we were an ‘X’ too many and never knew. The author graduated from a better hoch Schule than I, obviously.
Naturally, Mr. Eagleton meant John XXIII, who opened the Second Vatican Council 1000 years after Mr. 13 was in the chair of Peter. But he may as well have said John 3.14159, the Pope of Saturn, for all the relation to reality shown in the rest of the column. The Pope was so reactionary he took the name of John Paul in honor of the two Popes who presided over Vatican II. Oooh scary.
Some Spanish tool convinces his gullible seminarians that the Pope gave him permission to be evil, and that’s JPII’s fault? I suppose if I convinced the pet shop that Terry Eagleton gave me permission to eat their puppies, they could sue the Guardian.
I also enjoyed the bit about the battle for the soul of the Polish people between two nigh-indistinguishable apparatchiks: Karol Wojtyla and Josef Stalin. This may be as close as the Guardian ever gets to calling Communists evil – they compare them to Catholics!
I’m still working on that line about “clap-happy nuns”. Who knew nuns would get the clap and be happy?
Well, you know what they say about nuns: they sold their souls to support their habits…
The Pope was responsible for AIDS?
This is the dumbest thing I have read in months: The greatest crime of his papacy, however, was neither his part in this cover up nor his neanderthal attitude to women. It was the grotesque irony by which the Vatican…
But he may as well have said John 3.14159, the Pope of Saturn,
Sorry, Nightfly, but I think you mean Pope Pius?
OMIGAWD, what an awful, screeching bitter screed that was! Was that Sinead O’Conner or just another religion-hater on the loose.
I hope the Guardian feels good now, having THAT nasty little package get their rocks off…
SHEESH.
Didn’t you read “The Da Vinci Code”? Those crazy albino Opus Dei (or was it Illuminati?) can do ANYTHING, I tell you! Time-travel is the LEAST of it!
/betting that nobody at the Guardian knows how to read Roman numerals
Heh, exactly Sonetka. Those crafty conspiring Papists, why they planned all of it! Them and, and, why you know the Zionists are involved too! Yes, of course! It all is so much clearer now…
It’s a mind-control drug we sneak into all those room fresheners… we Catholics like to call it Popery…
:::ducking:::
“Popery”
– snort –
Heheh!