Giant poster of Pope Paul II at Vatican
As many of you know, I was in Italy with family recently, and happened to be at the Vatican while they were gearing up for the heavily anticipated beatification ceremony of Pope John Paul II.
What a spectacle!
Beatification is the last stage before canonization, which is when a particular holy-person is recognized as a saint. To be beatified, the Holy-Person-in-Question (HPQ) must have performed a Vatican-approved, posthumous miracle. Then the HPQ must perform a second miracle to be canonized.
The first miracle has already happened. A Parkinson’s beleaguered nun prayed directly to Deucey (my pet name for Paul II) and lo, was her disease promptly cured. The alleged miracle was investigated by the Vatican’s top theological and, ahem, medical experts and approved by current pope Benedict XVI, leaving Deucey to perform only one more miracle—which explains why your devout Catholic grandmother constantly keeps checking the back of her tortillas.
It is important to note that this process does not make the HPQ a saint. It merely recognizes that they have always been one, that God deemed them a saint a looong time ago, before they were born probably, and I gotta say, if I were an un-canonized saint—chilling beside the pool at God’s palace, trying to enjoy my ambrosia margarita while all these Vatican assworms were demanding I show them a second miracle, I would jump down onto the dome of St. Peter’s and say, “Listen up pissants! I’ll show you as many miracles as I freaking feel like showing!”
Unsurprisingly, there is a lot of controversy surrounding Deucey’s canonization, largely because Pope Benedict is rushing the process. He waived the traditional five-year waiting period and pushed the rest of the phases through so quickly, the beatification of Deucey is now on record as being the fastest in papal history. Which makes me wonder, when Deucey is canonized, of what will he be a patron?
As you probably know, there is a patron saint for just about anything you can think of. There is a patron saint of train travel, a patron saint for financial success, a patron saint against shipwrecks, a patron saint against witchcraft, a patron saint for bankers, bakers, bikers, beggars, bruises, butchers, butlers, beekeepers and babies. There is a patron saint for blackbirds, blacksmiths, blackheads and black people (the patron saint of Negroes is Benedict the Black). There – is a patron saint of bartenders (my man, Saint Amand of Maastricht). There is a patron saint for greeting card manufacturers (St. Valentine) because, you know, blessed are the greeting card manufacturers! There are also highly silly or embarrassing patronages, such as patron saint against scabies, warts, hernias and hydrophobia and I hope, when Deucey is canonized, he’s assigned one of those embarrassing patronages, something like, “patron saint of fromunda”—because the whole thing stinks!
That’s why Benedict is rushing Deucey through the process. Because any discussion of his potential sainthood must include the fact that it’s largely his fault that The Lord’s Church became such an enormous smoking and sparking engine of sexual molestation. (Talk about a Deus ex machina!). So, the instant some miracle-hungry Bible clutcher finds a grease-stained tortilla that vaguely resembles a man’s face, Benedict and his Vatican experts will rubber stamp it as a miracle faster than anyone can say, “Hey! That taco stain looks like Lady Gaga!”
They’ll canonize Deucey even though any clear-thinking person (who, um, happens to believe in saints, angels, praying and miracles and stuff) knows no real saint would’ve let the abuse scandal happen. Any clear-thinking person (who believes in holy dead people who return to Earth in the form of magical ethnic foods) knows that not only is the former pontifex maximus not a saint, but that he’s the exact opposite: He’s an Aint: as in, the Patron Aint of Letting Children get Systematically Sexually Abused (oh, and also, of diarrhea and dingleberries).
And he let it happen alright. Consider the case of Father Marcial Degollado, who continued to receive Deucey’s protection even after a guilty verdict. Consider assface Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston, whom the former pontiff scuttled out of town (moments before his arrest) and rewarded with the ultra-cushy job of Archpriest in charge of Basilica Maggiore in Rome—instead of granting Law the more appropriate title of, Arch-Pederast in Charge of Lava Pit 36 in Hell.
Arch Assface
Deucey did not punish a single child-raping scumbag or any of the high-ranking scumbags who shielded child-raping scumbags. Because he either didn’t know what was going on (which means “The Holy See,” didn’t see shit) or he knew and kept oiling and gassing the engine—the Rapus ex Machina—anyway. So it will take more than your standard, Cure-One-Case-of-Parkinson’s kind of miracle to make me believe that asshead was a saint. Admittedly, I’m a bit of a miracle snob but, c’mon—curing Parkinson’s? Cancer? That shit don’t impress me. Diseases go into remission. It’s rare, but it happens; and it’s just plain silly to confuse our ignorance about disease with divine intervention.
I was talking about this with my wife’s parents. We pondered the age-old question, “How come God never heals amputees?” I’m sure lots of people throughout the centuries have prayed for their limbs to be returned, so why has that type of miracle never happened? Because that type of miracle would be a freaking miracle! The real deal! It’s the kind of thaumaturgy Deucey would need to show me in order to even consider canonizing him. Here are a few other miracles I’d accept from Paul II:
- Replace every gun on the planet with a toy bang-flag gun.
- Instead of frogs, make jalapeno poppers fall from the sky.
- Make NFL players and owners suddenly realize their greed and agree to reduce everyone’s salaries enough that parents can bring some of their kids to a game without having to pawn the others.
- Make all traffic-control video cameras also record the bedrooms of the City Council members who voted for them.
- Make Fox News self-aware.
- Make a strip club ATM that doesn’t charge more than the amount you’re trying to withdraw.
- Make the CEO of every oil company suddenly realize his greed and—actually, just smite all the oil company CEOs.
- Turn Newt Gingrich into a newt.
- Sara Palin / Michelle Bachman lesbian sex tape—free download!
- On your next taco appearance, turn the guacamole back into an avocado.
Are you hearing these prayers, Deucey? Screw this Curing-One-Person-At-A-Time, noise! How about curing everyone who got AIDS because of your medieval, anti-condom crusade? Or, if you really want to impress me, go back in time and un-molest all those kids whose lives were destroyed on your watch. Now that’s a miracle I could rubber-stamp.
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My man, Saint Amand of bartenders
