The RHONJ-fueled epiphany had given the bumbling cleric a
clarity of vision. Vladimir had the facts, but, as the brainless figurehead, it
was up to him to articulate the points on behalf of the other clerics that how
to implement the reforms was a question of semantics, not right or wrong. After
what seemed like a Super Bowl with nine scoreless overtimes, he would take the
decisive step to break the tie.
There was only one way to end this defensive struggle, and
it was to confront the problem head on: He would present the facts to the Dark
Pope directly. In preparation he prayed that there wouldn’t be any hard
questions. To reach for the brass ring was risky, but like a Groupon for
liposuction, inherently worth it.
Alas, word came in that the Dark Pope had been taken ill and
was said to be bedridden, feebly clutching his name-brand smartphone as he lay
incapacitated. The bumbler feared yet another scoreless overtime, but, in a
twist of fate, the Dark Pope’s obsession with his vision of the implementation
of the reforms compelled him to propose a teleconference so that he might
continue to debate the issue on said name-brand smartphone. And it was done.
On the day of the teleconference, the cardinals assembled
and the bumbler presented the facts, unadorned, for six quarter-hours. And
then, the evidence presented, they rested. And, as they awaited comment, all
that could be heard was the labored breathing of the ill pontiff, and it seemed
to go on for eons.
Finally, the Dark Pope broke his silence and launched into a
litany of objections to semantic differences between Vladimir’s immaculate
conception and His Holiness’s: corporations in years past had used different wording
than they were proposing for the Church to “illuminate the issue”. But, other
than the bumbler, the cardinals were intellectually prepared and responded to
this all out blitz with choruses of “because…” for which the Dark Pope had no
answer – no amount of fear-induced groupthink could derail their momentum. They
were divinely inspired to speak truth to power.
The confluence of events was fortuitous: The Dark Pope was
weakened by illness and his powers didn’t translate through the ether – he was
crippled by his virtual presence even as he gripped his name-brand smartphone
ever tighter. But like his doppelgänger Teresa Giudice, the Dark Pope would not
give up without a fight.
“While you were talking,” the Dark Pope rasped, “I did a
little research on the Internet. Haven’t other reputable organizations used
torture and humiliation to prevent corruption? Come now - persuasion without extraordinary
rendition is like trying to see in the dark without a lamp!” and the cardinals
nodded their assent despite the fact that the doings of the Spanish Inquisition
was irrelevant. It was this kind of hollow jeremiad highlighted by Monsignor Memoria – descents into hyperbole and
outright assholicism – that had led to all of these scoreless overtimes. However,
their nodding was strategic: Out of expedience they would concede points in garbage
time, but not cede victory.
The Dark Pope assumed that their silence indicated tacit
agreement with his cleverly argued points, and he continued: “And isn’t it a
fact that we still have problems with chauffeurs pilfering the wafers and the
wine from the Popemobile?”
As the Dark Pope railed on and on about these minor transgressions,
the bumbler wondered if what he’d been rhetorically asked in his youth was
indeed true – did the pope really defecate in the woods? Alas, he lacked the
ability to concentrate amidst the blizzard of negligible side issues and was
soon pursuing other vexing questions in his inner monologue, like “How much
wood could a wood chuck chuck if a wood chuck could chuck wood?” but kept it to
himself for even he knew these were dangerous musings in the presence of the
Dark One for fear of being labeled cack-handed. And while he considered these questions,
the cardinals continued to throw the Dark Pope bones about the cleverness of
his observations until he finally relented.
***
Some time passed and the implementation of the reforms began.
The Dark Pope internalized the decision as if he’d decreed it himself. And like
converts everywhere, his devotion to this position transformed into zealotry.
In a celebration of “his cause”, he called a gathering where he might
pontificate at great length on the subject to underlings who would find it
important to listen.
The Dark Pope selected a sweltering chamber within the
Vatican of a size such that the cardinals were packed in with standing room
only. He kept them waiting as he freshened up in his chambers and blew-dried
his hair, teasing it into an elegant grey pompadour. When he finally deigned it
time, he waltzed in in his perfectly pressed black robe and strode to the front
of the room, name-brand smartphone clutched lovingly to his breast.
The Dark Pope was aptly named: Wherever he went, he cast a
shadow in all directions, regardless of the location of the lights. The room
had been well illuminated prior to his arrival, but as soon as he took the
podium, the room grew dim. And even if over time they’d become used to his
high-horsedness, the cardinals could not shake The Fear of being hazed like
rookies in training camp in the presence of the Dark Pope.
As the sweating cardinals waited with trepidation, all that
could be heard was the mechanical breathing of the Dark Pope as he cast a
menacing gaze over them. And then he faux-cheerily began: “Let us commence. As you all know, I’ve kicked off an initiative to cleanse the
church of the corruption. I’m excited about what the future holds. Why, I just
recently developed a plan that Vladimir is to implement, specifying all the
minute details so that he would do it correctly, and then returning again and
again to grill him on the minute details. It will return the church to even
more exalted heights. We should all feel good about bringing glory to God!”
The Dark Pope had long considered himself infallible (re
infallible, in accordance with the First Vatican Council of 1870, the pope is
infallible only when he makes an ex cathedra statement, i.e. a statement
concerning “a doctrine concerning faith or morals to be held by the whole
Church”) and he approached this meeting from this perspective. It was said out
of earshot of the Dark Pope that only one infallible statement (regarding the
Assumption of Mary) had been made since the First Vatican Council of 1870. Pope
John XXIII was quoted as saying, “I am only infallible if I speak infallibly
but I shall never do that, so I am not infallible,” but the Dark Pope surely
would have dismissed this as “applying to other popes” – did no one recall his mission-critical
proclamations that he quizzed the cardinals on at regular intervals?
As the Dark Pope gently twisted the proposed reforms that
had been agreed to earlier to fit his semantics, he gestured with his name-brand
smartphone and exhorted them to “turn water into wine,” and
gave them a moment to soak in the wisdom that he had most generously bestowed. The
intent was clear: Using his tremendous God-given intellectual gifts, the Dark
Pope was attempting to pump up the troops with his vision, albeit through the unconventional technique of acting as
if he were Knute Rockne in a modern-day Notre Dame locker room and telling them
they all needed “to row together” while projecting a slave galley on the wall
to enhance his point.
As the Dark Pope paused, the room fell deathly silent save
the mechanical breathing of the pontiff. Suddenly, the swarthy intellectual
cardinal, in a stroke of political genius, shouted “Yes!” a la Marv Albert (but sans women’s
underpants/taped-on toupee) and then, as if in anticipation of a swarm of angry
dissent being launched his way, punctuated his remark by pounding his chest
like an ape in an apiary. His apparent force of conviction had caused a
sombrero-shaped halo to again appear above his head, temporarily driving back
the Dark Pope’s shadows. And this was not entirely for show: He was
intellectually aligned with the Dark Pope at a skin-deep level. And beneath the
surface he was hopeful that he would be able to strip the encumbrance of all
the minor implementation details levied upon Vladimir’s reforms.
Looking to capture some of the Dark Pope’s lovin’ for
himself while the gettin’ was good, one of his ghostly pale and balding
sycophants tossed what seemed to be a softball question to bolster the Dark
Pope’s position: “Will the reforms be specified explicitly enough so that we
can be sure that Vladimir will implement them correctly?” He’d spent hours on a special project with the
Dark Pope in discussion with devout nuns and assumed that through this
engagement he’d formed an elevated rapport with the pontiff, but was swiftly
dispatched by the Dark Pope with an acid tone of ridicule: “Haven’t I already
gone over this? Is this really the first you’re hearing of it?” and several less
experienced cardinals chuckled.
As the Dark Pope’s pride swelled under these accolades and trouncings,
his shadow grew darker, eventually snuffing out the light from the swarthy
intellectual’s halo and even the ghostly whiteness of his balding sycophant.
His brilliance was unmatched and he was convinced that his semantics would win
the day. He handed off the floor to the senior cleric who would spell out the
details.
The senior cleric briefly took up the chant: All of the
resources in the room were to be repurposed for the glory of cleansing the
church, and then adjourned the meeting, and the cardinals filed out.
But despite the obvious satisfaction of the Dark Pope as his
shadows even spilled out through the now-open doors into the hallway, his
attempts to create enthusiasm around what had now become “his vision” had not
created a groundswell of excitement. Instead, there was dissent among the
cardinals in attendance. “Implement this vision? I feel as if I’ve been put on
the rack – please no!” muttered one under his breath, while others ironically complained
bitterly that the solution was terribly ill-defined and they wished to return
to the familiar surroundings of parishes of their youths, and the bumbler imagined
their surprise when they realized that the definition down to the finest detail
complete with a nasty messenger awaited them shortly. Sullenly, the sweating
cardinals shuffled out of the hall to ponder the trail-mix of pain and
suffering that awaited.
But after the meeting had ended, during the period of
mourning that many of the conscripted cardinals were indulging in following
these announcements, an event that hadn’t happened in nearly six hundred years
cataclysmically occurred: The pope announced his abdication and, by
implication, the abdication of the other side of the Janus that was the pope,
the Dark Pope too. He claimed fatigue, as he spoke to the clerics in Latin,
announced his decision during an address at the “Consistory for the
canonization of the martyrs of Otranto”. He/they would be the first pope to
resign since the Middle Ages (Gregory XII in 1415, to end the Great Western
Schism). And many initially didn’t know what he’d said because they didn’t know
Latin – understandable, since the entrance exam only required them to check a
“yes” next to the Latin box on the test. But once the more well educated journalists
covering the event revealed the truth, rumors immediately began to fly about
some sort of “divine intervention” that would cleanse the church of the
corruption once and for all and perhaps allow them to reach the Promised Land.
***
The conclave began and 1.2 billion followers eagerly awaited
the decision. There was considerable hope amongst those closest to the
situation that the successor would truly embrace reform, and that he would not
be paralyzed by insecurities and obsessions with fine-grain detail. No obvious front-runner had been identified and it seemed a
real possibility.
And finally the fumata bianca was seen: The cardinals had
selected an Über-pope,
and the decree would soon be handed down. The followers rejoiced in anticipation
of the announcement. But when the name was read, a realization befell them: The
conclave had been stacked with sympathizers of the old pope, and like a weak secondary
torched by a flea-flicker, a ceremonial pontiff had been named that would carry
on the same policies, through his proxy formerly known as the Dark Pope.
In a sign of the technological new world older, preceding
even his old-school verbal address to the masses in St. Peter’s square, the
elected pontiff tweeted his first words from his new pulpit:
@pontifex – The #lantern shall illuminate the path to glory!
And the Iceman cameth as the overtimes stretched to
infinity…
