THE POPE'S NEW BOOK

Catholic World News has announced the publication of a new book by the current Roman Catholic pope.  In The Infancy Narratives, Benedict "dwells on the details of the Nativity story, including the poverty into which Jesus is born and the homage offered first by lowly shepherds, in a sign of God's special care for the poor."

I am not sure why "shepherds" have to be "lowly," except from the condescending perspective of the rich.  And if God has a "special care for the poor," nobody in the Vatican has paid any attention to it for about the last eighteen centuries--since the Catholic Church got rich.

The Catholic Church is the richest corporation on earth.  Its current CEO sits atop a large mountain of gold, an art collection which if sold would feed all the starving poor in the world for the next twenty years, and real estate worth more than the combined national budgets of  all the member states of the United Nations.

If God has a "special care for the poor," the Catholic Church and God have very different values.  And if God is going to judge us humans when this world comes to an end, surely he will condemn the Catholic Church and its leaders to burn forever in what the Cathlic Church calls "hell."

That simple bit of logic having been stated, I want to say one thing more. 

I read about Benedict's new book on something called "Catholic Culture.org"--which came to me courtesy of Google.  I would have responded to the news item from Catholic World News via "Catholic Culture.org" except that I couldn't.  "Only donors are allowed to Sound Off," I read.  "If you are a donor, log in."

The bona fides of the Catholic Church are always dependable.   When I was a young man, my grandfather was invalided for a long time.  The parish priest visited him, occasionally.  I remember one afternoon my younger sister's friend asking, innocently. "How much does he charge for a house call?"

It's not just a myth that in the middle ages clever monks in southern Europe sold Jesus's foreskin more than 1500 times. . . .

                                                                    Bert Hornback

Impriposter

Nihil Bonum