Catholic Conspiracies II: Revenge of the Vatican Ninjas.

Last week, I mentioned that the vast, massive conspiracy theories about the Catholic Church amuse me. I discussed some specific issues and theories, but I find them all funny, almost no matter the details. Why?

Dear God in Heaven, where do I start?



The theories are so ludicrous, I hardly know where to begin.



SECRET SOCIETIES



One running theme of most of the conspiracy theories is that there is a “conspiracy of silence” running around within the Vatican, the hierarchy, an order, pick one or all. This pops up in almost any fiction where a Catholic priest appears.



Given the news of the last decade, anyone should see an immediate problem. Not only does the Church of Rome write everything down, they never throw anything out. This is a bureaucracy that has held onto the divorce petition from Henry VIII of England, written in the early 16th century.  We've held onto it for nearly five hundred years, and we haven't thrown it out yet.



If there were a conspiracy in the church, there will likely be paperwork to document it, and they'd hold onto it with their dying breath. Bad habit for a conspiracy.



But, the way I look at it, the Vatican is essentially the world's biggest marble office building, complete with Dilberts and the occasional pointy-haired boss … or pointy-hatted boss.



In the current day and age, any bureaucracy can keep a secret for a few years. But two thousand? Really?



My major problem with that idea isn't so much a matter of my religious background (Catholic), my educational background (history and Philosophy), or anything of the sort. Bureaucracies tend to leak like a sieve. Even the army and law enforcement.



The FBI spawned Deepthroat—a loser who got passed over for promotion.



The Pentagon—Pentagon papers, anyone?



Most intelligence agencies have politicians in the mix somewhere, so that'll screw over practically anyone …



You can have whistle blowers in practically any organization...



The Catholic Church is also a bureaucracy. One disgruntled employee is all you need. End of secret.



Last week, I mentioned that one organization in the Church people like to pick on is the Society of Jesus, a.k.a., the Jesuits.



The Jesuits started as a missionary order, and tended to go out to new worlds, seek out new civilizations, boldly go where no man had gone before … and sometimes get eaten by the locals. Now a teaching order, they've spawned more stupidity than orthodoxy in the Church. If you look up Liberation Theology, Jesuits had a hand in spawning that steaming pile of theological gruel--a gruel that has been banned by every Pope since its inception.



The other order that conspiracy theorists like to shoot at is the Opus Dei … Where do I start? According to reporter John A. Allen, all you need to do to get the Opus Dei to open up is buy them a few rounds. Then the trouble becomes trying to shut them up.



And the biggest problem with using them in a conspiracy: Opus Dei is primarily a lay organization. Of it's nearly 90,000 members, only 2% are priests. I'm sorry, a Catholic organization of civilians are going to be privy to ancient secrets and conspiracies? There is a disconnect here.



THE MUSCLE



Also, I have another problem, one that has great big flashing red lights. All of these big secrets, threats to the Catholic Church, maybe even all of Christendom, are being eliminated. Lives are snuffed out, voices silenced.



Depending on who you ask, Catholics killed President Lincoln and JFK, and we're pulling the strings behind President Obama.



With the tinfoil helmet brigade, the Vatican is so scary, covers up so much, silences so many, controls so much of the planet even in THIS day and age.  Then we have to have muscle men.  We must have kneebreakers  This must mean that the Pope has his own personal assassination squad. People to kill at the nod of his pointy hat … wait.



Matt's Vatican Ninja rendering

Does this mean … that the Vatican has Ninjas?



Hmm, Vatican Ninjas … I wondered why all of those ancient Soviet leaders dropped dead after John Paul II was shot.

I can see it now. Dark, shadowy figures clad in the blue and gold colors of the Swiss Guard. Each of them either Swiss with Special Forces background, or former soldiers who join the priesthood. Once they join the shadowy ranks of the Papal hitmen, they are taught to kill up close with a rosary-garrote. When you turn your back, they smack you over the head with a halberd.  For longer distances, a boomerang shaped like a cross comes out of the darkness and takes down armed guards (It worked in the video game Castlevania).

 

And maybe, just maybe, they can have Throwing Stars of David for every time they worked with the Mossad.

Vatican Ninjas would be awesome!

I want my Vatican Ninjas!

Sigh … I guess I'll have to write my own.

How would I do it?  Simple: the Catholic Church has a screening process to weed out psychos, pederasts, etc.  That's why the majority of bad priests were ordained before the new screening process was installed (I say "new screening process", but it came out in the early 90s).  If I wanted to create actual Vatican Ninjas, I would forward all of the "psycho" pile to a special division, where they can weed out the "special" ones, ones that can be sent to training to Kill For the Lord!  Muahahahaha! 

Problem: who wants a psycho as a hirling?  Seriously?  While the priesthood MUST, statistically, get some nutjobs applying to their ranks, who'd want to bring in a crazy who's impossible to control?  I mean, that's as out there as having an assassin who is a psychotic albino monk with a bad limp ....



Oh, wait, nevermind.

The biggest problem: back to the pointy-hatted Dilbert boss, and the Vatican bureaucracy.  If there were Vatican Ninjas, there would be enough memoirs from them by now to fill a library.

End of the day, the vast conspiracies around and about the Vatican are laughable. In America, our Bishops don't have the charisma to lead a pack of vampires to a blood bank.  Trying to get people to actually teach the faith correctly seems to be impossible (my Catholic schools were nothing to write home about). We can hardly get Cardinals to line up in a row, or organize halfway decent public relations, yet the Vatican is supposed to be leading the charge to take over the world.

Right now, I would sooner believe in a "conspiracy" once jokingly suggested to me by R. Hendershot: that Dan Brown and Stephanie Meyer are in a plot to overhype their books to the entire universe.

However, if there is someone out there in charge of accounting for this vast, Roman Catholic conspiracy, I want a paycheck. Thank you.

 

And this is my rendering of a Vatican Ninja.

This is why I'm grateful to Matt.

And what am I going to be doing tonight?

Why, what I do every night …

TRY TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD!!!!!



On paper.

With my Vatican Ninjas.

Muahaha.

Catholic Conspiracies: The Illuminati Polka and the attack of the Vatican Ninjas.

 

I have decided to make this a comedy posting. Why?



Recently, I went looking for a book on one end of the crazy spectrum. The book had been (loosely) based on an episode during World War II, and it was supposed to “prove” that Pope Pius XII could not qualify as “Hitler's Pope.” Instead, this conspiracy theory had Pope Pius XII using the Jesuits to assassinate Adolf Hitler in World War II.



It was called Vatican Assassins.



On the one hand, it really covered an actual incident during the war: where German Generals who wanted to kill Hitler had expressed a desire to use Pius XII as an intermediary. The Generals thought that Pius XII could be a neutral party when talking to the British, laying the groundwork for a truce after they had assassinated Hitler. Obviously, the plan didn't work, since Hitler killed himself years later.

Vatican Ninja, by Matt

On the other hand ... Vatican Ninjas?  Are we serious?

Okay, Vatican Ninjas would be cool, but that's next week....

Or I can show a very well done photo by Matthew Funtime, for extra gratuitous coolness....

As for Vatican Assassins, I had originally stumbled across this work six years ago, when I first researched the entire matter of “Hitler's Pope” for a graduate paper. This was a few months before I even started writing A Pius Man. Perhaps an entire year before the book.

Recently, I wanted a laugh, and I wanted to see if anything had happened with this particular nutjob and his Vatican Ninjas.



So, I put Vatican Assassins into an Amazon search, and then Google …



Oh my dear God, the results I got…



Eric Jon Phelps: Vatican Assassins: Wounded in the House of my Friends. This, um, interesting work exposes THE TRUTH, about how the Jesuits killed President Lincoln on the orders of the Pope. They also assassinated John F. Kennedy. (paging Oliver Stone, someone is stealing your plot).  It includes a "History Of The Jesuit Order" … I don't even know where to start on this one.



Vaticanassassins.org: which discusses “Obama's White Papal Masters.” Apparently Rome has taken over the White House; I didn't know that we supported the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell.



Thewatcherfiles.com: “Vatican Assassins Ordered Attack on WTC World Trade Towers.” Again, the head of the Jesuits is to blame here. The dark, mysterious figure of “The Black Pope,” who everyone knows about (the colors of the Jesuits are black … and black … he lives in Rome, hence “Black Pope”). Proclaimed as welcoming “the New World Order,” a catchphrase of nutjobs for, at a guess, longer than I've been alive.



Also in books, I got: The Entity: Five Centuries of Secret Vatican Espionage.  The "Entity" is supposed to be the Vatican spy service.  The description?

"The Entity has been involved in the killings of monarchs, poisonings of diplomats, financing of South American dictators, protection of war criminals, laundering of Mafia money, manipulation of financial markets, provocation of bank failures, and financing of arms sales to combatants even as their wars were condemned, all in the name of God. The contradiction between God’s justice and Earth’s justice, Christian beliefs and Christian power all fall before the motto of the Entity: With the Cross and the Sword."

Nod very slowly, and back away.  Someone here is a little crazy.

Another book: The Vatican Exposed: Money, Murder, and the Mafia.  Obviously, written by someone who saw Godfather III



WTF?



And, a classic: a 1983 “Secret History of the Jesuits.”   In this book, we are apparently not only responsible for one, but two, count 'em, two world wars.

I'm going to give you one guess, and only one guess: what is the ONLY offensive thing I have found in all of these crackpot conspiracy theories, strange, delusional fantasies, and utter comedy routine?  If you have guessed that it is the image on the right, you guessed correctly

So, at the end of the day, instead of finding a ludicrous conspiracy theory based (very) loosely on an actual event (and that hit every branch of the crazy tree on the way down), I found a whole bunch of borderline schizophrenic theories, brought to you by the tinfoil hat brigade.

Now, it might be me.  It might be I'm strange.  For the most part, I find these people funny. Then again, the theories are so ludicrous, I hardly know where to begin.



At random, shall we start with the Jesuits assassinating President Lincoln? I don't know why the Catholic Church would want to kill him, but before even reading the book or the rest of the book's description, I'm already laughing. Why? Because President Lincoln requested that the Vatican create American Cardinals, moving the United States out of missionary status. Lincoln wanted the Catholic Church in town as an actual establishment. Considering that this was within the decade before Thomas Nast's anti-Catholic propaganda were popular, I can only think this is the closest a non-Catholic like Lincoln could get to being supportive of Rome.



Or, we could look at President Barack H. Obama's "White Papal Masters"..... how anyone can say it with a straight face is beyond me.  As a Democrat, last time I checked, Obama supports abortion in America. He supported the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Funny, I didn't know that Rome supported either of the above.



So, let me get this straight: the Vatican kills people who support us (Lincoln) and controls people with principles that are the opposite of what it publicly postulates …



And, of course, the Vatican started World War II .... a war that tore apart and butchered six million Polish citizens, half of whom were Catholic.  Because, after all, it's an institution that's been around for soooooo long, it can afford to lose three million people like that.



I'd continue, but I'm too busy laughing.  The authors of these various works might have had less than savory motives, or they might even believe this drivel.  If they believe it, they have my condolences, and my suggestion that they see a good shrink. These are almost as stupid as Godfather III, where the theory was that Pope John Paul I, who died within a month of being elected Pontiff, had been assassinated by the people involved in ripping off the Vatican Bank. (Let's completely ignore that Albino Luciani, before becoming John Paul I, had a crappy medical history; if anyone knew what sort of shape he had been in, he would never have been elected. But you can't talk some people out of a good conspiracy.)



And you thought people had a lot of conspiracy theories about the Illuminati.



This is so bad it's laughable. Not to mention that the Jesuits, the root of all of the conspiracy theories, have basically been running amok with “Liberation Theology”-- a concept that had been condemned by the Pope. So, the Jesuits, “the spooooooooky Vatican assassins,” have been at odds with the Popes for at least thirty years. Maybe forty.  And, somehow, the Popes of that time period were not, and have not, been assassinated. Hmm, funny that.



As my friend Jason noted, when I first told him of this blog idea, “[T]he only [C]atholic conspiracy I can buy is that 'Yes, we want Notre Dame to win in the NCAA'. But that goes without saying.”



UPDATE: Part 2: Revenge of the Vatican Ninjas.

"Erin Go Boom," a story of A Pius Man.

In the background of A Pius Man is a suspicious-looking priest.  Danger is not new to him.  Which makes you wonder .... he wasn't always a priest, was he?







Erin Go Boom

A note on religion, characters, and who do you trust.

Not too long ago, a friend of mine read through the first fifty pages of A Pius Man. She was struck by something odd. The first priest who made an appearance was rather shifty looking. Her note was “is he supposed to look that menacing?”



Answer: Yes.



It occurred to me that I should address something: there might some people who think that, because I'm Catholic, means that A Pius Man is going to have an easy answer: Pope Pius XII was a saint and an action hero who could do no wrong.



This goes double for those who believe that, just because I go do church every Sunday, I must be super Catholic. (I have a disturbing vision of me in a cape that's Lenten purple. I then desire to acid wash my brain) Believe it or not, I have had people tell me this, to my face, even though it's more or less a minimum requirement.



If you fall into any of the above categories, then, good, that means you'll be surprised for most of the book.



Yes, I'm Catholic, but that doesn't mean brainwashed zombie. We'll take practically anybody. And we do: from the Kennedy clan to the founder of National Review, to the regular hosts of Crossfire. Even at the beginning, there were wise men an shepherds—for God comes to those who read many books, and those who read no books, but not those who read just one book (stolen from Bishop Fulton Sheen). For me to make every priest, Pope, Bishop, and everyone associated with the Roman Catholic church, a saint, would pretty much require a full frontal lobotomy, or total ignorance of the history of the Catholic Church. There's a reason most of the Popes have not been canonized (made a saint, not fired out of a cannon, though I can think of some priests who would benefit from the latter).



As Fr. Andrew M. Greeley, novelist, Catholic priest, and raging political Liberal, has noted, there are some good men who became Popes who made for bad leaders, and some not so nice people who became pope, but were at least able to lead a pack of vampires to a blood bank. One Pope who ended up in Dante's Hell had been a monk; a good and saintly person who all but ran screaming from the office. Several Popes had to be warlords, if only to quell the riotous local population, if not to halt advancing armies. Popes are like the rest of the members of the Catholic faith: they get all sorts.



So, when I started A Pius Man, it was after having done my homework on Pope Pius XII. Any conclusions I drew would be what I found in the history. I would burn him in effigy if I found anything amiss, and make him look good if he did good.



As for everyone else in the clergy—I've met stupid priests, good priests, gay priests, bad preachers, and I've read about the really bad ones. While I object to making Catholic priests a collection of punching bags, I'm not going to fall off the horse on the other side and make them all perfect. Trying to imagine them as perfect cardboard cutouts would actually make some of them even more boring than they are now.



It may have been John P. Marquand's character Mr. Moto who was the first obviously misleading character. The character was Japanese during a time when Imperial Japan was running roughshod over China, and spends much of the time lurking in the background. He kills at least one person with seeming little to no provocation. In the movies, they cast him as Peter Lorre, well known for playing assorted murderers and monsters of varying sorts. He was dark and sinister looking.... and he was also the hero.



However, now that I've noted that, I should probably go into something else: who the hell is the good guy here?



A Pius Man has been described more than once as a spy thriller. International intrigue will abound, and telling the good guys from the bad guys may require a score card.



Who do you trust in A Pius Man? I know I asked the question before, but seriously, think about it.





Fr. Francis Williams, SJ: a priest who not only seems to know what lurks in the hearts of men, but spends his time lurking in the background, has combat skills, and did we mention that he had connections with two known terrorists, murdered before Chapter 1? Oh, and he's also changing orders: he thinks that Opus Dei looks good.





Sean AP Ryan, mercenary: his idea of a good time generally involves shootout in public landmarks, explosives, and automatic weapons. It's well known that he's been brought to Rome to teach priests self defense tactics—even though he has a body count in the low hundreds.



Hashim Abasi, Egyptian cop: he's in Rome to coordinate security on the Pope's visit to Cairo, but his father blew himself up while working on an explosive vest, his country is on the brink of being taken over by radical extremists... and, oh, yes, it looks like he stoned his wife in an honor killing.



Scott “Mossad” Murphy and Manana Shushurin.... okay, these two look like two spies who are in Rome on a fact finding mission. One is a Catholic from Israel, and the other a member of German Intelligence. But why does Scott slowly have his resources shut down one by one, and why is she a German with a Russian last name? And why she she carrying such a large gun?



Commander Giovanni Figlia. He is the head of Papal security. To get to the Pope, you have to go through him. Then why does he steal a murder scene from the Rome Police? The victim is researching Pius XII, and the killer (and second victim) is a terrorist who spends a lot of time around the Pope's right hand man. For Figlia, how far does he think he has to go to protect the Pope?



Secret Service Agent Wilhelmina Goldberg: she's there to audit the Pope's security. She's from out of town, she was in the car with Giovanni Figlia when a body landed on it. She only just arrived in town. So, obviously, she had to have nothing to do with any murders, plots, or conspiracies. How much more obvious could it be? But did I mention that Mossad reserves the right to call upon the support of any Jew in the world at any time?



Interpol Agent Maureen McGrail: In Dublin, a priest is murdered before he can leave for Rome. He was going to testify at the canonization proceedings of Pope Pius XII, and now he has a swastika carved into his forehead and a knife sticking out of his chest. She's going to Rome to see if someone wanted to stop him from talking. She obviously has NOTHING to do with this.... even if she does have a past with mercenary Sean Ryan, and has helped him kill over a dozen people.



How did I end up with a book design in such a way that you can't really trust anyone? Just lucky I guess.