Pope Benedict the Defender

The Vatican, which has long been shrouded in the archaism of its flying buttresses, Renaissance domes and painted ceilings, recently made a resolute step into the light of modernity. “Behold,” said Pope Benedict XVI from his balcony, a burning bush next to him. “I stand before you, ordained by God, in offering of the new Ten Commandments. Of Driving.”\nMembers of the crowd below cheered from their Vespa scooters.\nThe Catholic Church is often critically portrayed as an unchanging institution, unwilling to cope with modern times. But right after hearing last month about that new-fangled invention, the car, the Vatican gathered its finest theologians to compose a new Ten Commandments, officially titled “Guidelines for the Pastoral Care of the Road.” These better-than-Moses commandments show that the Catholic Church has found the vocabulary to grapple with the minutiae of our fast-paced, technology-driven lives. Who knows what the Church will do when they find out about the iPhone?\nThese “ten commandments of driving” are a representation of the Church’s efforts to appear relevant in daily life. But such efforts are more the exception than the rule, as Pope Benedict XVI is a conservative in favor of maintaining the church’s elitist, hierarchical practices and doctrine.\nBenedict is making sure his papacy restores the Catholic Church to its proper place: the dark ages.\nIn 1970, the liturgical cycle of the Tridentine Rite Mass ended as result of the Second Vatican Council’s reforms during the mid-1960s. After the council’s decision, Latin was no longer considered the sacred language of Catholic mass, and churches around the world began to celebrate in the local vernacular. For that brief historical moment, the Church genuflected to its lay people. It made mass a more personal, less distant and more tangible religious experience. \nBut this past week on July 6, the pope declared that “what earlier generations held as sacred remains sacred and great for us too, and it cannot be all of a sudden entirely forbidden or even considered harmful.” \nAnd thus, he pleased the traditional Catholic hordes and revived the Latin Tridentine Rite Mass.\nSure, Benedict. We ought to cherish the sacred traditions of the Catholic Church. Perhaps we could burn a few Jews? Or go on a bloody crusade? Or perhaps you’d like to restore Italy to your papal estate? As you can see, earlier generations in Catholicism’s dark history are not the best guide for the present.\nThe Catholic Church is precariously dangling between modernity and tradition. Its efforts at modernity are only meant to distract from Benedict’s plan to time-travel back to the dark ages. He longs for a simpler time, when God wasn’t dead and no one questioned absolute power.\nThe revival of the Latin mass is a way to conjure awe and fear in the lay people the way the Catholic Church did when most people were illiterate. Archaism, as one Boston priest put it, helps add “mystery” to the Catholic experience.\nBut I can read, and I see right through you, Benedict.\nP.S. Please don’t excommunicate me.