Since Martin Sheen would have been only in his early to mid-twenties, he probably would not have been cast in the role of a “pope of the Catholic Church”. As a popular line of the time stated “Would you believe, Anthony Quinn as the Pope in “The Shoes of the Fisherman?”

I almost fell off my chair laughing at this one. Oh, so NOW they’re laying down the heavy hierarchical thing–”You can only know god through us”–and shouting Power to the People?!!

Oh, that’s RICH!

She rocks….

And lets not be fooled by their “charity”. They are bigots…they don’t do charity to help people, they do it as recruitment. If catholics were truly charitable, they would do it of themselves and not need the church to brow beat them (and push them to give money to fight civil rights as they just did in Maine).

The Vatican owns treasures beyond our imagination. There are the priceless artworks (and yes many are porn….one of my favorites is the Laocoon group (I always forget how to spell that) that was dug up in Rome and confiscated by the pope (I believe early 16th century?). This work of art should be in a secular, public museum, but you have to go to a secluded little out of the way courtyard deep in the vatican to find it. If you have not seen it in person you are missing one of the world’s greatest works of male muscular beauty. It is so erotic, so beautiful and so amazingly fluid you could forget it is carved of stone. It is full of erotic imagery and obviously was carved to celebrate the beauty and eroticism of the male body.

I could go on.

Just stroll the aisles of the vatican museum and there are thousands upon thousands of artifacts that most tourists walk right by. I remember a case of 16 and 15th century personal effects of various popes, each object in a Paris antique shop even without a papal association would have been worth thousands.

They could dismantle rooms and sell parts for millions. 16th century door handles and knockers, which they probably have thousands of, are each worth a few thousand on the open market. They have thousands upon thousands of carvings from the 15, 16 and 17th centuries of minor historical value that I would just cherish on my walls.

What they hold is of incredible, incredible value. If they were to put just a fraction of the less historically important artifacts up for sale I’d be on the first plane to London to bid on them.

I probably wouldn’t get a single piece because the prices would be way beyond my modest means. It would be a feeding frenzy! And to get all the minor pieces out in the open, available for scientific study, just think of how many more Da Vinci’s would be documented, like the one found in New York recently.

(imagine being the poor guy who sold that for 19k not knowing he had a multi hundred million dollar artwork?)

Let’s just say, for giggles, that I had some vast fortune, and that my vast fortune brought me ownership of all the land and all the material resources of the Catholic Church. Let’s limit that a little and say it was only the property and assets in the US, or attached to the US. The IRS would requre a dollar amount. In Manhattan alone, who would like to check property records, find out how much land is occupied by St Vincent’s Hospital and St Patrick’s Cathedral in Midtown, and calculate the comparable values of just the land and not the buildings? I’d get a massive tax credit. I’m sure the Vatican isn’t thrilled at the idea of anybody starting to eye its property (land, buildings, artwork, libraries, universities, hospitals, etc) and start calculating how much cash it’d take to replicate what they have.

Besides, you’d think that a German pope would know better than to even let one of his minions suggest that the Church of Rome has never placed a monetary value on piety. How else did they manage to sell all those indulgences that made that damn fool Martin Luther start asking questions he didn’t need to ask?

Perhaps Putin could convert the Pristine Chapel into a modern exercise spa: he can work a rowing machine while looking up at all those cherubs, buffed and toned Adam, and the bear in the beard.

The offices can be converted into a new banking center, which the clerics wanted it to be in the first place and, had their mafia links not been exposed and created the scandal depicted in the last Godfather movie, it might have worked out that way.

Just give me all the art treasures and banned books they’ve been hoarding for two centuries, including the final confessions of Paul the Tarsun, revealing once and for all what a misogynist and self-loathing, internalized homophobe he was.

To whom would you sell such things? More to the point, if someone has enough money to buy the Pieta, for instance, why don’t they just give that money to the poor and cut out the middle man?

If you’re really interested in doing something for your fellow man, don’t wait for someone else to initiate the effort.

Obviously nobody on either side of today’s “scandal” recognized that the idea is not an original thought, and the movie (though a bit long) was quite good.

I drag it out about once a year because it’s a great movie, and the plot line (making the ultimate sacrifice for the benefit of others) is well made, both through the personal life of the Pope character, and what was going on in the world.

And believe it or not, this “filthy diatribe” of a past generation had a positive ending! Perhaps the “Princes of the Church” should watch and take notes.

But since nobody in the previous Bush admin saw fit to watch “The West Wing” with steno book in hand….

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