Wednesday, February 11, 2009

The Return of Super Pope

Well Mom, good news. I found your next Christmas gift for me. Finally you can stop buying my soul masses with those monks in New York, and get me something really useful:

Pope Brings Back Plenary Indulgences

"There are partial indulgences, which reduce purgatorial time by a certain number of days or years, and plenary indulgences, which eliminate all of it, until another sin is committed. You can get one for yourself, or for someone who is dead. You cannot buy one — the church outlawed the sale of indulgences in 1567 — but charitable contributions, combined with other acts, can help you earn one. There is a limit of one plenary indulgence per sinner per day."


Well, that should be especially good for those of you insisting that the Holocaust didn't happen.

Of course, the article also mentions that most people under 80 have no idea what an indulgence is, a fact that underscores why you should really get to know your religion a bit better. Also, guess what your grandparents want when they die? This is totally the new trend gift. I wonder how much in "charitable contributions" you have to give before you get one?

Oh wait, here's a site that tells you all the ways to get one for free! It's easier than you think! You can get one for going to the Basilica, or just for listening to a Pope speech on the radio! Now this is more of the Catholicism I remember, where you're forgiven just by doing what you're told.

In a way, I think Pope Benedict is doing something admirable in trying to bring back the ancient Church. The real Catholic Church is the one where the Vatican holds the power, the mass is said in Latin, the Jews are going to hell, and you'd better not eat anything before Communion. Its all the hell and fury and mysterious threatening rules that made it so popular and powerful, and anyone claiming to be Catholic today should at the very least know what an indulgence is. I mean, I knew before I was 12. I took this shit seriously for most of my childhood, which is why when it came time for Confirmation, I put up such a hissy fit and only did it because my mom insisted. If you know you don't believe in God at 14, but you spent your formative years being respectfully terrified of the Church, you don't want to go messing around with committments you don't mean.

Just going to mass every holiday and singing hippie instrumental guitar hymns does not a Catholic make. There a thousand rules and rites you go through to be a real one. All these divorcees and gays and people having sex before marriage should evaluate whether or not they are really Catholic. You can't get an indulgence unless you know, in your soul, that what you did was evil and wrong. So you can't fake this for forgiveness. If you don't really believe abortion is wrong, well you're just wasting your time in church dude. There is no liberal Catholic Church. There is only THE Roman Catholic Church. Get with it or leave.

To be clear, I recommend the leaving part.

On the upside, the Pope recently acknowledged Darwin and Evolution.

So to summarize: Nazis are okay, evolution is okay, and it doesn't matter how you sin, listening to the pope will get you out of it. Also, Catholics need to man up, cause Pope Bennie is kickin it old school. He's not going to let Islam have all the fun.

First person to name me all Seven Sacraments wins a secret prize...

1 comment:

  1. baptism, communion, confession, confirmation, marriage, that sexist one...holy orders, last rites.

    blowjob plz




    no shit, the word verification is "blest." how mysterious.

    ReplyDelete

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