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.
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.
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| 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.
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