Popeus Corpus

*** Disclaimer: If you are Catholic and/or can't take a joke, you might want to click out of here and read The New York Times or go pick out a new baby at J.C. Penney's or something.***

Call it a shameless publicity stunt, but the Vatican announced today its plan to exhume the coffin containing the earthly remains of Pope John Paul II, which will be on-view for his beatification ceremony on May 1st. The Vatican has warned faithful Catholics and scalper wannabees that no tickets are required for entrance into this event of questionable taste.

To me, this is the Catholic Church's way of boosting its ratings. Remember when Coy and Vance came on "The Dukes of Hazzard" for that unfortunate period of time while John Schneider and Tom Wopat were on strike? Well, God-- that was just fucking awful, wasn't it? What did they do to save the show? They brought back Bo and Luke-- the real fucking deal, yo, the way it's supposed to be. Can you imagine if Catherine Bach had gone on strike and they brought in, like, Martha Plimpton to be her cousin Rita? That just wouldn't have gone anywhere good.

They way I look at it-- Ratzinger's bad for ratings. And when you're in a slump, any religious official or TV executive will say the same thing: dump Coke Zero, bring back Coca Cola (with cocaine). A little dabb'l do ya.

N'yah mean?

It's a shame that a pope who's been dead since 2005 is vastly more popular than the real, live pope they've got goin' on now, but that's the sad reality of the situation. It is what it is. Ratzinger alive will never be as universally loved as John Paul the II dead-- whether that story about him curing the 49-year-old nun of Parkinsons is true or not. I mean, I'm skeptical, frankly. She was a nun after all.

Can you say, "inside job"?

They should have just beatified him a long time ago, just for being cool. I mean, people have Pope John Paul II cause ribbon magnets on the back of their Chevy Equinoxs, for Christ's sake. That, to me, says that this champ is worthy of a little beatificment. You don't see anybody with cause ribbons in support of World Masonic Apron Day, do you? And that's why they aren't beatifying me. That, and because I eat egg-rolls filled with ground-up Christian baby meat.

If you want my personal opinion (thank God I'm writing this for a Saturday when [hopefully] no one is reading) if this dude is so fucking miraculous, I think he should exhume himself. Forget the shovels and the front-end-loaders and the backhoes and the dirty Mexicans they're going to have to pay three dirt coins a day to do all this digging-- why can't he just ascend from the grave on his own? Seriously, they could hold, like, a communion wafer over his tomb and be all like, "Here Popey, Popey, Popey!" and he'd just soar on up there.

You know. If he was really so cool.

If John Paul came back from the dead, I would want him to be a fucking Ninja Pope. Like in the Monty Python sketch, "The Bishop" (GOOGLE IT! I COMMAND THEE!) he would be all cool and shit, and he'd throw those star things and have nunchucks and make loud Asian-inspired noises, which would sound absolutely hilarious coming out of the mouth of an old, Polish dead guy in papal robes.

Oh, snap. I'm thinking screenplay. You in?