Not wanting to be upstaged by Michael Jackson, the Pope went on a tour of his own recently. Like a criminal returning to the scene of the crime, he and his entourage showed up in sub-Saharan Africa to spread his version of the word of god. It’s unfortunate for Africans that Joseph Ratzinger won’t leave them alone, but for the church Africa is a key battleground. With dwindling membership around the world, and an off with their heads policy from the main competition, Ratzinger decided he’d better visit the beleaguered continent to give the troops a little pope talk.

In fact, when Joseph Ratzinger became Pope Benedict XVI, the dreams of many Africans went up in smoke. Ratzinger was a strange choice for Pope. After the long reign of his hard line predecessor, John Paul II, there was thought that the replacement would be more in the mould of John XXIII. But Ratzinger, former Hitler Youth member, had helped oversee the growing influence of Opus Dei and other fundamentalist elements within the Vatican. When the votes were counted, John Paul’s strongman for Latin America and Africa won the silly hat.

Ratzinger deserves a pass on the Hitler Youth thing. He was a boy, it was a scary time and who among us knows with certainty what we would have done in similar circumstances. But when your career aspiration is to have the nicest room at the Vatican, a pattern starts to emerge.

It’s not that everyone who ends up in the Vatican has totalitarian tendencies but it seems lately that the guys in charge are the ones with the hardest asses. It is as if John XXIII put a scare into the church hierarchy with his ecumenicist yearning and plans to modernize a moribund tribe. This was heresy to the scarlet- robed power brokers, the altar-egos who had long since forgotten their pastoral purpose. These guys, as they all are, need enemies above and below to justify their existence and keep the believers on edge.

Ratzinger had been a key behind the scenes player for years, initiating or implementing the church’s tragic and fatal policies in Latin America and Africa. Given the horror that he and his cronies enabled during forty years, you’d think that he would have been disqualified from running. But the Vatican is blood deep in vested interest and geopolitics. If there’s some collateral damage along the way, well there’s always the next world.

In any event, Ratzinger got his promotion, changed his name to Benedict XVI, prayed the people of Africa wouldn’t know him by the alias, and showed up in Cameroon.

He was there to talk about all the usual pious stuff with which he hides his intent; world peace, helping the poor, believing in his god, conversion rates and the most important topic of all, reinforcing the embargo on condoms – like Albert DeSelvo opposing a ban on women’s stockings.

Despite the overwhelming scientific evidence that condoms prevent AIDS, other sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancy, despite the countless orphans in the AIDS torn continent, despite the thousands of children born with AIDS, too soon with no parent, the pope rails against prophylactics. The sanctity of life – “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short” in the words of Thomas Hobbes, protected or unprotected, by the incessantly sanctimonious.

Apparently it is against god’s law, as outlined in the handbook, to wear condoms while having sexual intercourse. Of course most things sexual are against god’s law; sex outside of marriage, sex for pleasure inside of marriage, homosexuality. Even masturbation, which would seem harmless, is hands off, according to god. I have not come across the church’s policy on wet dreams. Maybe that is what bedtime prayers are for. You ask god to prevent your having a nocturnal emission and inadvertently committing a sin. (pissing your sheets is okay as long as you’re not drunk)
I have to admit that I am not among the world’s foremost biblical scholars. Maybe I’ll peruse its pages in the future, but there is more than one book out there and I have a preference for history over fiction. Still, I am not completely without religious learning.

For example, there are three kinds of sin and you start learning them quickly. Before the umbilical cord is cut, before you can grab your first breath of fresh air, let out your first yelp, have your first dump or suck your first tit, you’re on your way to hell. This is called Original Sin and has you immediately indebted.

The cartel holding this debt doesn’t want to break your kneecaps, but they do want your loyalty. They need members, the more cowed the better. Claiming they are saving your sinful young soul, though it’s really a recruitment drive, you are taken to a sacred bingo hall where the local pope sprinkles what is called holy water on your head and you’re free of that first transgression. This is called baptism and is the first step to full membership.

However, let’s say that you’re a little groggy; you’ve been trying to get a little shut-eye while all this voodoo is going on around you and suddenly, some wacko you’ve never seen before, throws water in your face. Your first reaction is going to be “what the fuck?’ and there you are again, back on the debit side of the sin meter. Not to worry though. As soon as you are old enough to hold a conversation, you get to go to what is called a sin bin and tell the heavy breather on the other side that you’re sorry you thought he was an asshole the first time you met; that and all the other wicked things you’ve done as a five year old.

The second and most serious type of sin is called Mortal Sin. This is when you have done something really bad like killed someone (or a continent) and then it’s harder to clean the slate. You may be ordered to do what the church calls “pennants” which means that for a number of years you have to, for example, cheer and pray for the Chicago Cubs.

But pennants alone won’t purchase forgiveness and get you back on the toll free to wonderland. You must be willing to believe with all of your heart in one of two things; a) that Jesus Christ, former big-league center fielder from the Dominican, good range, soft hands, no hit, is your Lord and Savior or b) that the Detroit Lions will win the Super Bowl next year.

So now we come to the third kind of sin, and the one that church hates the most, Venereal Sin. There are a number of ways to commit this type of offence, mostly involving sex. However, you can easily cleanse yourself by going to see the holy water guy every Sunday and promising never to do again what you’ve already planned for later that night or by going to see the doctor on Monday for a shot of penicillin.

So while we’ve covered the ways you can lose and regain the road to redemption, there is much more to the bible than sinning, maybe. Time doesn’t permit a full recounting of my incredible biblical knowledge so a few examples will have to suffice.

In the beginning, the book of Genesis talks about how the world was made in six days, much quicker than Rome a few thousands years later. Its perfect couple, Adam and Eve were leading an idyllic life in the world’s first gated community, called Eden, slightly west of where James Dean was living at the time. The place was bountiful – lush forests, verdant valleys, clean water, gentle animals, even a rib take-out joint.

Then one day Eve, bored out of her skull talking to same dud all day, decided to upgrade her education. Goaded by a talking snake which knew full well that god would throw a hissy fit, Eve went to the apple tree of knowledge and picked one of its fruit so she could brown nose the teacher. However, on her way to class, she couldn’t resist and took a bite from her bribe to be.

When god found out that Eve was attempting to learn more than he permitted and expand her traditional role, he felt threatened, and as usual, angry. Fearing an outbreak of feminism and independent thought, he ordered the tearing down of that wall. This rash act meant that dinosaurs had access to the distraught pair. Soon enough, Eden was overrun by T-Rexes, Velociraptors and Bill Donohue. Adam’s family was drummed out of paradise and into the cold, harsh reality of economic downturn.

However, according to the good book, in spite of the rough start and several generations of in-breeding, dinosaurs and man prospered. Sure there were occasions when the reptiles tracked down and devoured humans but in fairness who can forget the huge rack of Brontosaurus ribs that Freddie Flintstone had hanging off his window. It all seemed to even out.

While those on earth seemed to be doing okay, god was brooding. He checked the fun odometer and saw that it was way over the top. As anyone who reads the bible knows, god is a pretty stern fellow. He doesn’t see the humor in many things. So after years of voyeurism, he decided to flood the entire earth and drown anyone or anything enjoying sex and other forms of pleasure. The irony is that in spite of his limited sense of humor and general lack of empathy, he chose Bill Cosby, at that time a few hundred years into his career, to build an ark and save a heterosexual pair of each life form.

This was a big task for an old comic. There was a lot going on what with having to round up two of everything from dinosaurs to viruses. One day while Bill was off doing background checks and psychological testing, god was purposely distracted by a call from Lucifer. Taking advantage of the chaos, a gay couple came in through the back door and quietly stowed away in one of the closets. This means that the ark was likely not docked in Persia where there were no gays at the time.

Bill finally crammed straight couples of every kind, along with needed supplies, into an ark that must have been a large boat for its day and god unleashed the deluge. For forty days and nights, the rains came. The fortunate few million spent their time lining up for the john, shuffling the deck, catching Bill’s dinner theater and dove watching.

Just before the forty days were up, the dinosaurs decided they’d had enough of Bill’s routine and formed a mutiny led by Fletch, a Christian. They commandeered a couple of life arks and struck out on their own. One group settled in Chevy Chase Maryland where their descendants would, a few chapters later, form the post-Diluvian Republican Party. The other ark found a lush, man-free island where they prospered for centuries until a group of actors looking to buy an exclusive getaway accidently discovered them.

As biblical scholars will be only too aware, I haven’t even scratched the surface of what lies in the book. However, just from these few excerpts you can quickly appreciate its powerful truth and its essential use as an infallible guide for life.

Perhaps there are some cynics out there who take much of what is written in the holy book with a grain of salt or as was the case with Mrs. Lot, a pillar. Nonetheless, when Pope Benedict says that condoms are inadmissible under the lay, he can cite whereof he speaks.

In Africa, as in other poor regions of the world, there are good people of all religions or none that are doing precious work in horrendous conditions. They have dedicated their lives in service of people that most of us try to block from our consciousness. Most of them do it for no gain, no thought of promotion, no monetary reward, indeed for no other reason than they can’t turn away.
Many of them are genuinely inspired by faith that puts deeds above dogma and generosity ahead of liturgy. They don’t need God interpreted for them by elderly men in ancient robes or ranting mullahs. If faith motivates these people to do unenviable and crucial labor with no fanfare, it would be cynical to put them in the same category as the businesses that claim their souls.

The history of the institutional church in Africa is squalid. In Rwanda, three nuns and a couple of priests were tried and convicted of acts of genocide in the 1994 slaughter. As usual, members of the church hierarchy were in lock-step with some of Rwanda’s worst characters. In 1992 in Angola, John Paul II asked for the return of land the church had claimed in the days of Henry the Navigator. The Vatican is now conspiring with the Angolan government in the forced eviction of families who have eked out an existence on that coveted land for centuries. In the disaster that is Zimbabwe, the Vatican recalled one of the leading opponents of the vile Robert Mugabe, Archbishop Pius Ncube, who was set up in a sex sting by Mugabe. The Vatican kept him in exile for over a year before allowing him to return with orders to keep his mouth shut. And the beat goes on.

So there’s Benedict XVI, offering ignorance instead of bread, casting doubt on the effectiveness of condoms and ordering the disease ravaged people of Africa not to wear them. He is shamelessly threatening much of the progress made by health groups, including the WHO, and more enlightened governments like Uganda’s which has made the battle against AIDS a national security issue.

There is a power struggle in Africa. Islam is on a Caliphatic march from the north and the fault lines are many; Sudan, Somalia, Nigeria. The Islamic birth rate is high and their recruitment strong. The pope can’t allow himself to be so badly outgunned. There is strength in numbers; in bank accounts, at the polls or the end of a sword. Opposition to condoms has nothing to do with the bible and everything to do with propagation.

Both sides need to stock their armies. It has been for centuries thus; the crusaders and the jihadists both pointing to their fairy tales as justification for atrocities committed in the name of their shared, mirthless god. Their contemptible closed-mindedness towards issues of sex encourages unsustainable birth rates and the global spread of a plague. They should be nothing more than relics of a superstitious and misogynistic past. Yet they carry on – destroying hope, fighting science, bamboozling the uncertain, press-ganging the unaware and attacking those who won’t choose.

The very fact that these cults exist offers the best proof there is that the god of the bible and koran is made up. If there were such a god, he would surely have let it rain a few days over Rome and Mecca.

Copyright © 2009 Paul Heno