Remember when Gerald Ford died and it took about fourteen weeks to bury him? This Papal visit is looking equally interminable. And Pope Ratzi hasn’t even gotten to NYC yet to fuck up our traffic. Of course, the Secret Service is involved, which means your tax dollars are paying part of the cost of this mass of feelgoodiness.

But before you let the fawning news coverage get you all misted up, remember who we’re dealing with here:

Ratzinger is on record as believing that Vatican II was a mistake because the Church entered into a dialogue with society rather than holding itself apart from “a progressive process of decadence”.

In interviews, he has fumed about the laity that no longer allowed priests to run their lives, women ignoring their most important functions as virgins and mothers and the widespread failure to believe in the devil.

More after the jump.

Whoa, feel the love!

Ratzinger, as Pope John Paul II’s enforcer, reinvigorated the Congregation [the Inquisition] and used it to destroy not only the individual careers of theologians but also entire churches, as occurred in Holland. It is part of the irony of Ratzinger that one of the theologians he oppressed, the Brazilian liberationist Leonardo Boff, was one of his students during Ratzinger’s liberal period.

Wow - an uncaring conservative who destroys stuff he doesn’t like - can we call him George W. Ratzinger?

A legacy of John Paul II’s, which Benedict is expected to build upon, has been the growing power of bizarre semi-secret organisations like Opus Dei and the Neocatechumenal Way within the Church. Catholic laity can look forward to more intrusions from these weird cults into parish life.

Organized religion … ain’t intolerance grand!