So this happened: they gave the Pope an iPad and he went and signed up for Twitter. For his very first tweet, he sent a picture of his junk to that cute altar boy from Thursday’s Mass. He can’t deny it’s his penis because the tip looks like one of those funny hats he wears.

Papa Ratzi has been keeping a pretty low profile for a while, but he’s back in dutch once again over a couple of problems: first, one of his personal attendants was discovered to be buying services from a gay prostitution ring inside the Vatican being run by a Vatican choir singer. The attendant, who is also a prominent construction contractor in Rome, was being investigated for corrupt business practices, when investigators discovered him “ordering for delivery”.

And while that’s embarrassing, it’s the second item that puts those red-soled feet on the fire: the Pope’s own brother admits beating young boys in his church in Germany over a period of 30 years, and it appears that the Pope himself (during his tenure as Archbishop) played an important role in covering up the abuse along with a number of incidents of sexual assaults on boys by German priests.

You know things have gotten pretty bad, because the Vatican’s “Chief Exorcist” has publicly stated that “the Devil lives in the Vatican”. Of course, he also says that Harry Potter is the work of the devil, so he *might* be given to hyperbole, you never know.

Christopher Hitchens, always on the lookout for new ways to badmouth the Catholics, weighed in today with this fine screed at Slate. Money quote follows:

Very much more serious is the role of Joseph Ratzinger, before the church decided to make him supreme leader, in obstructing justice on a global scale. After his promotion to cardinal, he was put in charge of the so-called “Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith” (formerly known as the Inquisition). In 2001, Pope John Paul II placed this department in charge of the investigation of child rape and torture by Catholic priests. In May of that year, Ratzinger issued a confidential letter to every bishop. In it, he reminded them of the extreme gravity of a certain crime. But that crime was the reporting of the rape and torture. The accusations, intoned Ratzinger, were only treatable within the church’s own exclusive jurisdiction. Any sharing of the evidence with legal authorities or the press was utterly forbidden. Charges were to be investigated “in the most secretive way … restrained by a perpetual silence … and everyone … is to observe the strictest secret which is commonly regarded as a secret of the Holy Office … under the penalty of excommunication.” (My italics). Nobody has yet been excommunicated for the rape and torture of children, but exposing the offense could get you into serious trouble. And this is the church that warns us against moral relativism!

ADDENDUM: Here is a less charged, more thoughtful, yet nevertheless very critical piece about this Pope from the British newspaper The Independent which I came across after writing this post. I think it puts Ratzinger into the broader context of the struggle with modernity that the RCC has faced since the mid-20th century, and even in the big picture finds him wanting.

ADDENDUM TO THE ADDENDUM: Here’s Jon Stewart’s version on “The Daily Show”

He must have been there for the All-You-Can-Eat Friday Night Fish Fry.

If you can’t dazzle ‘em with brilliance, baffle ‘em with bullshit, eh, Ratzi?

I’ll let this post at Dangerous Intersection handle the pope-bashing today.

Every time I think Papa Ratzi can’t put his slippered foot in his mouth again, he goes right out and proves me wrong.

He’s not even done screwing up with that bit about reinstating the Holocaust-denying bishop, when he’s managed to make George W. Bush look like a management genius by appointing a new bishop for the Diocese of New Orleans who publicly declared Hurricane Katrina “divine retribution” on the city and believes that the Harry Potter books “spread Satanism”.

There are really a couple of things about all of these blunders and insults that I have to say are disturbing. The biggest one is that despite all the pretty new wallpaper and paint that the Catholic Church tried to cover itself with in the form of Vatican II, it’s becoming more and more obvious that the church is still filled with powerful people who think it’s 1509 instead of 2009. The Jew-baiting alone is jaw-droppingly awful, but the degree to which the Pope has been going out of his way to bring previously-marginalized loonies back into the fold speaks volumes about the direction of their church. And that doesn’t even take into account the systemic child molestation and other abuses that have defined the church in the last couple of decades…on top of centuries of evil.

The other thing is covered pretty nicely in this Daily Beast article by Carl Bernstein (yes THAT Carl Bernstein), Bernstein points out that from a theological and administrative standpoint, Pope Benedict isn’t really all that different than his predecessor, the universally-loved John Paul II. Indeed, Ratzi was JPII’s consigiliere and Number One Enforcer, and a lot of the positions take publicly by the previous Pope were authored by Ratzinger. It’s just that Karol Wotyla was really “one of the people” as a priest and as a church official in Poland, and his ability to humanize the rarefied throne of the Catholic Church overshadowed and even moderated his conservative bent. Benedict, being truer to the aristocratic mien of European Catholic hierarchy, utterly fails on the charisma front. But what that really implies is that John Paul II was basically selling snake oil by peddling his own cult of personality to disguise a church riddled with corruption, hatred, and evil. We’re only getting to see it because Ratzi’s the George W. Bush of popes, while JPII was like Ronald Reagan.

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1. Denying that the Holocaust ever happened is perfectly okay, as long as you say it in Latin.

2. Being a drug smuggler, on the other hand, will get you kicked out on your ass. But, don’t worry, because our secret tribunal really isn’t a torture chamber…any more…

3. Only His Holiness will determine which pieces of toast REALLY have pictures of Jesus on them, and which ones are fake. Plus, we want a 5% finder’s fee on anything you sell on eBay that even remotely looks like anyone.

4. Facebook is bad…really, really bad. But YouTube is where the action is, kids, so come watch my videos and vote them up-up-UP!

In Nomine Patri et Fili et Spiritu Sanctu, Amen.

Unwilling to take his hand-tailored Italian slipper out of his mouth even for Christmas, That Darn Ratzi managed to say that homosexuality was a bigger threat to the world than global warming, and that the “blurring of genders” was a danger to us all. Apparently the tranny priest standing next to him did not get the memo BEFORE the press conference, as he is wearing one of his lacy unmentionables on top of his bright red dress.

Meanwhile, he’s STILL pissing off the scientific community by trying to “rehabilitate” Galileo by “forgiving” him for his “crimes”. The Vatican has finally scrapped plans to co-opt Galileo by putting up a statue of him, but their party line is still based on the “you can be a scientist AND a Catholic” argument, even though it’s generally recognized that a majority of scientists either consider themselves atheists or express “no religious preference”. At any rate, the statue had people on both sides of that argument pretty steamed.

Apparently, though, That Darn Ratzi is a piker compared to his illustrious forebears. There have been 265 popes from St. Peter up to Herman The German, and today Oddee has a “Top Ten Worst Popes” list to help you understand why today’s Catholics think Ratzi’s not so bad.

Let’s see what that zany infallible-spiritual-leader-of-a-billion-people is up to now!

Proving that you can’t teach an old Pope new tricks, the former Hitler Youth has once again publicly praised Pope Pius XII, who has been accused of collaborating with the Nazis during World War II to turn over Italy’s Jews to the concentration camps. His remarks were delivered in the context of delaying the beatification to sainthood of Pius XII, which has been a rather divisive issue among Catholics. Rather than dropping the beatification process altogether, Papa Ratzi agreed to postpone it for several years while “further research” was done to determine the extent of Pius XII’s role in the Holocaust.

Pius XII, seen here with Adolf Hitler during his tenure as Papal Nuncio to the Third Reich, had associations with the Nazis dating back to the 1920s and Hitler’s “Beerhall Putsch”. The Roman Catholic Church of that time was virulently anti-Semitic, and Hitler, who was raised as a Catholic and considered himself to be Catholic throughout his life, signed a treaty with the Vatican, negotiated by then-Cardinal Pacelli, that granted the Catholic Church in Germany special privileges that allowed them to continue holding Masses, while other churches were shut down. As Pope during the war, Pius XII was well-informed about Nazi concentration camps, Jewish deportations, and other atrocities. His inconsistent response — sometimes aiding Jews, sometimes not — and ties to Hitler have earned him much scorn and denunciation. The beatification of Pius XII along with a concurrent beatification of Pope John XXIII has been seen as a way to engender detente between the “conservative” and “liberal” wings of the Vatican, sort of like Barack Obama naming Hillary Clinton AND Robert Gates to his cabinet.

But wait, there’s more!

Over and over again, Papa Ratzi has made it clear that he doesn’t cotton to Jews and Muslims all that much. He’s paid some lip service to improving understanding between religious groups, but there’ll be no more of that nonsense, buster, not while he’s on the beat. Ecumenism, my pasty, pimpled, silk-covered ass!

He’s apparently not too fond of that Intarweb thing-a-ma-jig either. In fact, it seems like the Catholic hierarchy in general isn’t too fond of letting the proles learn how to read. The Bishop of Lancaster, England calls education a “sickness” responsible for virtually every evil of the modern age.

And politics? Fuhgeddaboutit! Former South Daktoa Senator Tom Daschle, who is about to join the incoming Obama Administration as Secrety of Health and Human Services, has practically been ex-communicated from his church by his local bishop after a nasty public dispute about abortion rights based on a doctrinal note written by Benedict while he was still a cardinal, forbidding Catholics from voting for candidates or issues that oppose basic Catholic values. (You’ll recall that this was also the rationalization used by the priest who wanted to forbid communion to anyone who voted for Obama).

It should come as no surprise, then, that the Catholic Church in the United States is beginning to look a lot more like the Republican Party now that Karl Rove and Sarah Palin have had their way with it: fewer members, skewing older and more rural, and with the highest disapproval rating of any religious group in the country. But not to worry, because they’ll make him a saint when he’s dead anyway!

But who would have expected that among those spreading the hate would be Catholic priests?

One priest, Father Jay Scott Newman of Greenville, SC has told his parishioners that they’d better not stand up to receive Holy Communion in his church if they voted for Obama. He even posted this in an open letter to his parish on the church’s website.

Another priest, Father Sebastian Mayer of Fairfield, CA, publicly humiliated one of his parishioners in front of the assembled congregation at Mass for having Obama campaign signs on her vehicle, which was parked in the church parking lot. Then, on Wednesday morning, when contacted by a newspaper reporter about the story, the priest became verbally and physically abusive with the reporter.

Niiiiiiiiiice.

Oh, wait, I just remembered who would be all for this kind of bullying behavior from his minions…

…Alan Greenspan, who coined the phrase “irrational exuberance” and then spent the better part of a decade enabling it to continue, says this is “the worst economy he’s ever seen” (and he’s VERY, VERY OLD, so you know he’s seen a LOT)

…Karl Rove thinks your campaign ads lie too much.

…wearing a hand-tailored ermine-trimmed gown, Gucci sunglasses, and Prada loafers that were even more expensive than John McCain’s, Emperor Palpatine Pope Benedict XVI once again denounces materialism as “evil” in front of a stadium crowd of 250,000 believers, then returns to his marble palace filled with the world’s most expensive artworks to count his $5 billion fortune.

…your GOP campaign flacks are so full of shit that even FOX News tears them a new asshole live on television.