With the possible exception of a mother or two, nobody who reads my journal has been alive during an Intergnum — that is, the period including the death of a Pope and the election of his successor. The series of events that is initiated upon the Pope’s death is actually quite interesting, so I thought this would be a good time to share some of the rituals with you, my loyal readers.

When the Pope is first thought to be dead, a special Cardinal first asks him, basically, "Are you dead?" If the Pontiff doesn’t answer, the cardinal takes out a special hammer and strikes him about the head with it three times. The purpose of this is to make sure he’s proper dead; if, in fact, the Pope was still alive, the repeated blows to the head would change that with a little holy brain trauma. Then special bells in the Vatican are rung to scare away all the vultures that have been roosting outside for the past decade waiting for that old coot to up and die already.

Between four and six days later, the Pope is buried in a specially elongated box designed to accommodate his Pope hat. There are two burial services — one in public, and then another, held in the dead of night, for the deceased’s illegitimate family.

The College of Cardinals must meet within no fewer than 15 and no more than 20 days within the Pope’s passing. Only those Cardinals under the age of 80 are allowed to vote, thanks to a decree passed by the current Pontiff, who considered everyone that old to be too senile to be trusted. If you don’t see the joke here, I’m sorry, I’m not gonna hold your hand through it.

The election of the new Pope is called the Conclave, meaning "locked in" — the Cardinals are not allowed to leave the building until they’ve reached a decision by 2/3 majority. If they do not make a decision within the allotted time, the Catholic church collapses.

Each Cardinal writes his vote on a secret ballot. If a given vote does not yield a 2/3 majority, the ballots are used as rolling papers. Thick clouds of black smoke going through the chimney alert bystanders that the college is still indecisive and high. The marijuana is, of course, provided by cardinals from Central America. The Irish bring whiskey and violent religious fanaticism, the Italians bring food, and the Polacks play quietly in the Special Education annex of the Vatican. The French are such a bunch of assholes that they usually don’t even get invited.

If a vote is successful in determining a new Pope, however, all the Cardinals who didn’t win get very upset and throw all the ballots into the fire, causing a plume of white smoke to arise and inform everyone nearby that there has been a decision. Then the hazing starts.

No one knows exactly how the Papal hazing works or what it includes, by which I mean I can think of several hillarious things but I’m not quite tasteless enough to use the phrase "brutally sodomized" under the present circumstances. The one thing I can mention is that the Pope’s new name is selected based on the conversation he has with the first police officer to question him about the drunken streaking in the streets of Rome. For example:

"Sir, what is your name?"
"Oh, fuck, I’d better not tell him my real name! Uh…John…no, Paul. John Paul. Yeah."
"Sir, those are two first names."
"Oh no it’s not, I’m not as think as you drunk I am." (collapses)

After that, it’s smooth sailing for whoever gets elected to the position of dictator over a billion people from all walks of life, all over the world: terrorists, alcoholics, genocidal butchers, child molestors, drug kingpins, and damn dirty Polacks — all have a place in the Catholic Church.

So here’s to you, John Paul II. Sure, you cannonized war criminals and used kid gloves on guys who fucked kids, but at least you didn’t wink at the Holocaust or start a crusade or anything. And at the end of the day, that’s got to count for something.

	Tagged with: catholic, pope. This entry was posted on Saturday, April 2nd, 2005 at 1:52 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.