pressreturn

I guess it’s only fair to make mention of one of the most newsworthy events of the day: the Pope’s visit to Washington.

Worked into every speech since he arrived here has been an apology for the “deep shame” inflicted on the church by certain members who have, let’s say, gone beyond their briefs.

Interestingly, only last month did the church announce a new set of sins for the modern day world – I guess in an attempt to keep the conversation in the confession box on things that the confessor might actually have done. Taking a look around, it’s pretty obvious that all the “old” sins have largely been eradicated – it works! – look around you, do you see any greed, sloth or wrath? [/sarcasm]

I was wondering what they might have come up with – I was sure that pedophilia would have made the list. But no – it’s basically more like “thou shalt not pollute the earth or bugger around with genetics and stuff”.

Oh, and in the middle – there’s this one: amassing excessive wealth. Hmm. I was rather under the impression that the Catholic Church was one of the wealthiest organizations on the planet. Didn’t take a great deal of searching to come up with some backup:

The Vatican’s treasure of solid gold has been estimated by the United Nations World Magazine to amount to several billion dollars. A large bulk of this is stored in gold ingots with the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank, while banks in England and Switzerland hold the rest. But this is just a small portion of the wealth of the Vatican, which in the U.S. alone, is greater than that of the five wealthiest giant corporations of the country. When to that is added all the real estate, property, stocks and shares abroad, then the staggering accumulation of the wealth of the Catholic church becomes so formidable as to defy any rational assessment”

Let me go and scratch my beard on this one. Oh, and by the way: day #19 sans smoke. I almost even forgot to mention it.