Holy Father--Welcome to America

Your Holiness, when you were John Paul's right-wing, right hand man, you thought you knew all there was to know about us. A memo from Opus Dei, a telegram from Ronald Reagan, a letter from an archdiocese about some renegade ghetto priest blessing the Sandanistas, gay marriages and condoms. And I'm sure Dubya, Laura & Dick have given you the Disney level tour. Yes, you make the normally nightmarish commute in and around D.C. something like Mordor in The Lord of Rings, but we're used to that in this town. However...this clip should give you the truth about the D.C. area specifically, and America. Daniel Day-Lewis even mentions you (not you, technically) a few choice times.




You see, Holy Father, we are a nation of tribes. Now more than ever. Martin Luther warred against the corruption of the Holy Mother Church and birthed Protestantism, and when Henry VIII took advantage of Vatican political scheming and hypocrisy to justify his own horniness and meglomania to give my family the Episcopal Church. These are familiar metaphors which give you a taste of the conficting and contradictory forces that churn in this country every day. We are beholden to marketing and dumbing down of all forms of information and entertainment. You've only recently spoken on that, yet you still wish to convince us that homosexuality equals pedophilia, and millions of undocumented aliens are the best practicing Catholics out there because they don't use abortion as birth control and have kids at a young age. You shake the hand of our president, yet he often orients himself with people excoriate any religion other than evangelical Christianity and any Jews who can help bring about the Rapture. Indeed, a you preach respect for Muslims as a religion of Abraham, while they are Christian Taliban who think the earth is 10,000 years old and just two generations ago equated Catholicism with anarchy and death. I don't think you're huge fan of Islam or real science, but you haven't gone that far. Neither did John Paul. You preach against our pernicious, self-righteous and self-destructive lurches that resulted in a war in Iraq which profits only a few. But do you force the issue? No. You keep it as close to the vest as your predecessors did when they secretly concluded Concordates with Hitler and Mussolini...and then disavowed them.
Oh yes, your office is one of conflict, too. Perhaps it might help you get inside our heads, as well as our spiritual cores? On the surface, we are all promise and glitter. Underneath, there is an ugliness that no one wants to own. Yes, welcome to the United States of America. Ave Maria.