The Red Dragon continues to be disappointed

Further to yesterday's long, long, long post: ewwwwww! They're digging up Padre Pio! Can someone not fucking reign Ratzinger in? Was it not enough grossitude for him to spend two decades enforcing molestation cover-ups, now he's got to start up the corpse worship again? Fuck, man! But it's to be expected, isn't it? The Vatican assumed control of the shrine due to its 'over-commercialization' and now they're carrying out what could be the marketing coup of the decade in Italy - I can't really explain how big Padre Pio is there, his image is all over the place; he's bigger than a soccer player.

Will people flock to see his poor dead body? I'd like to think not, that if someone is going to believe in a saint they won't automatically believe the power of that saint will get a helping hand if the cadaver's out, traumatizing the family and frightening the children. But I don't know. Anyways, I'm getting the feeling Vatican II was just some sort of sneeze - a disappointment of Ratzinger's youth that he's fixing now. If I got to be pope someday I wonder what I'd fix. Fuckin' everything, maybe? That church has been a constant bubbling wellspring of disappointment to me for the last 16 years.

The thing is, I know so many great Catholics. And I know there are institutions in the church that are indispensable to some people, and ideas in the church that are beautiful, and it's like fuckin' Ratzinger is trying to wield all that indispensability and all that beauty like a club. He's been getting bad reviews from the Catholics of my acquaintance - could be doctrinal, could be because he's German and they're all Italian, I don't know - but the hierarchy still elected him, didn't it? Were they trying to compete with the evangelicals in developing countries by bringing back a little old-fashioned hocus pocus? Frankly this shit is making evangelicals look like the vanguard of progress. Offer free baby-sitting for the working poor, you fat fucks, that'll help you compete more than any exhumations. Oh, except no sensible people will trust you with their children anymore. There is that.

Anyways. That Britney Spears, eh? Did anyone else think those pictures of her grinning in the ambulance were the best she's been looking for years? Admit it.