This week in ironyville
March 29, 2005 6:04 PM   Subscribe

In a shocking, or not turn of events the Pope may be getting a feeding tube to match Terry Schaivo's and complement his big hat.
posted by petrilli (58 comments total)
 
Alright! More Terri! Keep it coming, people!
posted by thirteenkiller at 6:06 PM on March 29, 2005


Alas, I missed the follow up that this contradicts earlier edicts.
posted by petrilli at 6:06 PM on March 29, 2005


Anything to deLay going to that wonderful afterlife, hey? Somebody needs to call Frist and get a proper diagnosis for the poor guy.
posted by undule at 6:06 PM on March 29, 2005


Why exactly is the pope so scared of dying?
posted by arcticwoman at 6:11 PM on March 29, 2005


They _both_ could use a feeding tube, why always the divisionary, apparent contradiction ?

Forget for a minute that she's a nothing and he's godlike, they're just a man and a woman, both mortal, both going to die soon. What's staggering is not that they both need, but they both are just humans yet they don't get the same.
posted by elpapacito at 6:11 PM on March 29, 2005


Perhaps the Pope knows where he's going after condemning hundreds of thousands to die in Africa for "banning" the use of condoms?
posted by petrilli at 6:12 PM on March 29, 2005


Finally the Pope is going to find out about the sanctity of life. It comes in a tube.
posted by palinode at 6:12 PM on March 29, 2005


a lotta pope hating going on in here...
posted by jonson at 6:15 PM on March 29, 2005


*triple-takes at palinode's comment, looks around for quonsar*
posted by loquacious at 6:20 PM on March 29, 2005


Yeah! Fuck that fucking Pope!

(Just trying to be like the cool kids.)
posted by ColdChef at 6:21 PM on March 29, 2005


arcticwoman makes the perfect point. Why would the Pope be afraid of dying?

I think that its not really the Pope so much as the people who run things in his name. A robot chicken with its head cut off is still a chicken with its head cut off. And really, if they can keep him alive but in a persistent vegetative state then isn't that the best of all worlds?
posted by fenriq at 6:25 PM on March 29, 2005



posted by sharksandwich at 6:25 PM on March 29, 2005


By the way, are the people who surround the Pope called Poples? And if not, why not?
posted by fenriq at 6:26 PM on March 29, 2005


Look, the Pope doesn't really have any say in these matters, not anymore. At this point, it's a cadre of Cardinals who are more or less taking advantage of the Pope's illness to counteract everything that Vatican II brought about. Any why not? They want to bring the Church more in line with the other, more conservative, denominations, and having the Pope--who just a few months ago complained about this cult/culture of "health"--go on a feeding tube against his will accomplishes two things. First, it shows the world's holiest man (sorry, Dalai Lama) will suffer on this mortal coil as long as necessary, via the feeding tube. Second, and more importantly, it allows this cadre to continue ruling the Vatican without having to worry about the upstart notions of a new Pope.

Sadly, as much as I respect the Catholic Church (born, raised, educated by Jesuits, and so on), this is more or less the final straw for me. Between this and the Pope/cadre's declaration that the most important cause for the Church in 2005 is fighting gay marriage (as opposed to, oh, AIDS in Africa, poverty in general, the unchecked warmongering of the Pax Americana, nuclear proliferation, Islamic terrorism, and so on) . . . it's time to convert. Any suggestions?
posted by thecaddy at 6:29 PM on March 29, 2005


I had that thought about the Jesse Jackson intervention earlier today. Shouldn't the Reverend be enthusiastic about someone getting the chance to go to heaven?
posted by tizzie at 6:29 PM on March 29, 2005


I also don't understand why this is "ironic." Or, for that matter, why his tube would complement his big hat. Unless, it's, you know, jewel encrusted.
posted by ColdChef at 6:29 PM on March 29, 2005


Jesse Jackson is physically unable to avoid joining protests. It's a condition.
posted by ColdChef at 6:32 PM on March 29, 2005


arcticwoman makes the perfect point. Why would the Pope be afraid of dying?

Who says he's afraid of dying? You don't have to be afraid of dying to choose to live as long as possible.

And isn't the way this post was written the very definition of trolling? (asks this agnostic/soft athiest)
posted by pardonyou? at 6:36 PM on March 29, 2005


It's not about being scared to die.. If denying a feeding tube constitutes murder (and refusing one for oneself is suicide) like the Pope just said, then of course he'll get a feeding tube, if it comes to that.

I think that its not really the Pope so much as the people who run things in his name. A robot chicken with its head cut off is still a chicken with its head cut off. And really, if they can keep him alive but in a persistent vegetative state then isn't that the best of all worlds

They could follow the example of the Tibetans who kept the fifth Dalai Lama's death secret for fifteen years and continued to pass down directives in his name. Oops.
posted by thirteenkiller at 6:40 PM on March 29, 2005


thecaddy, i hear Mormons are popular lately--altho Episcopalian is closest to Catholic, no? (i think you should just stay Catholic and not observe nor give money, like everyone i know)


Finally the Pope is going to find out about the sanctity of life. It comes in a tube.
Bingo. If they're not going to let the Pope go meet his boss, then there's no hope for anyone.

And someone here told me the other day that no "extraordinary measures" are to be taken.
posted by amberglow at 6:43 PM on March 29, 2005


This woman has just booked a flight to Rome via Florida.
posted by alms at 6:51 PM on March 29, 2005


I'm no fan of the Pope, or of Catholicism in general, but this is ridiculous - he's not brain-dead, and according to the article, these tubes are "... relatively common for long-time sufferers of [Parkinsons] "
posted by me & my monkey at 6:53 PM on March 29, 2005


petrilli : a rather informative page on contraception debate among Catholics and official Catholic exponents. I never heard about any excommunication for use of condoms..while in the past disagreeing with the
Church official teaching was grounds for excommunication.

I guess forces inside the Church would like a modernization attempt, something to make the Church more compatible with today -options- (consider widespread contraception wasn't readily avaiable in the past) being offered to people ...while other forces would still like to have a supremacy or a fight against the infidels, mostly self destructive forces whose interest in the destruction of the positive values that can be found in some Church teachings.
posted by elpapacito at 6:56 PM on March 29, 2005


The risk of excommunication is not what I was reffering to, but that many people, for whatever reason, blindly follow what they're told on these issues. On the grand scale of povery, death, loss, orphans, etc., the choice to effectively encourage those things, because of some absurd belief that "every sperm is sacred" demonstrates that life isn't valuable, dogma is.
posted by petrilli at 7:02 PM on March 29, 2005


There is no possible way that they should let the pope die peacefully. Keep that fucker tubed for 15 years, I say. Mayhap we will discover some sort of cure for his illnesses then. It serves him right for that earlier edict on feedin' tubes.

Also, isn't Matt anti- feeding-tube-posts?
posted by graventy at 7:07 PM on March 29, 2005


Please don't be nasty...this is a beautiful man who has done more for humanity than probably all of the combined posters here will ever do...I pray for him, as I do for so many others...but I ask of you...don't be so horribly disresceptfully as others have been....this is, truly, a beautiful man....
posted by 1016 at 7:10 PM on March 29, 2005


I hope he lives for years and years and starts making insane declarations about shaving pets and eating only fruit for weeks at a time, how the runs are cleansing and help to remove demons. Not that we would get to hear any of it.
posted by weretable and the undead chairs at 7:11 PM on March 29, 2005


Perhaps he is beautiful in the same way that aids is beautiful.
posted by weretable and the undead chairs at 7:13 PM on March 29, 2005


To clarify: I find him and the church in general to be a more destructive and negative force than anything else. Both in the past and in the present.
posted by weretable and the undead chairs at 7:16 PM on March 29, 2005


Seems like an illuminating coincidence . . . but it isn't -- the pope, as far as I know, still has a cerebral cortex.
posted by Toecutter at 7:20 PM on March 29, 2005


By the way, are the people who surround the Pope called Poples?

I kind of like "Pope-lets."
posted by the_bone at 7:23 PM on March 29, 2005


Also, isn't Matt anti- feeding-tube-posts?

Yes, but he was not speaking ex-mefilitria
posted by delmoi at 7:30 PM on March 29, 2005


what weretable said. The entire international coverup and protection of of pedophilic priests alone disqualifies him or them from "beautiful."
posted by amberglow at 7:39 PM on March 29, 2005


I don't have a problem with the Pope choosing to have a feeding tube. I do have a problem with somebody else deciding that the Pope needs a feeding tube. There are lots of things to dislike about the Pope's position on many topics but guess what... that's not going to change with a new Pope. The next Pope isn't going to come out in his Popemobile and say "Hey fellas guess what? The other Pope had it all wrong. Contraception and abortion are alrighty with the Lord. As for lady priests, well, we'll now have vestments in pink! Oh, and one more thing, being a practicing homosexual is just peachy too!"

I've read that the present Pope has his reasons for hanging on to his position and the main one is that he thinks the antichrist is wandering around doing whatever it is that antichrists do. I guess resigning would be like declaring your free agency the day before your now ex-team appears in the Super Bowl.

And one more real thing: By all accounts the next Pope is going to be more conservative than the present one or at least that's what I've read. Expect trends in Catholism to lean more towards the dark ages than the age of enlightenment.
posted by substrate at 7:47 PM on March 29, 2005


Johnnie Cochran is dead.
Jerry Falwell is sick.
The pope is on his deathbed.
Quite a day for schadenfreude, eh?
posted by fungible at 7:56 PM on March 29, 2005


Would it be possible to discuss the issue(s) at hand without being horribly disrespectful to what is surely -- believe it or not -- a substantial portion of Metafilter members (i.e., Catholics)? Shocking as it seems, not all Catholics are holier-than-though backwoods evangelical hypocrites. Some are even thoughtful, intelligent people. There are even some in high-order professions in medicine, law, and academia. In other words, thinking people, and maybe even among us.

I'm just asking that we not take the low road when presented with a choice of including totally gratuitous and snarky hostility or laying out an issue more dispassionately.
posted by margarita at 7:59 PM on March 29, 2005


Can't help but notice that petrilli 's post has its initial tag as "pop" instead of "pope". A mistype, but surely relevant to current events!
posted by ericb at 8:12 PM on March 29, 2005


I think of the Pope and Michael Jackson as almost the same person.
posted by tallbuildings at 8:13 PM on March 29, 2005


elpapacito writes "Forget for a minute that she's a nothing and he's godlike, they're just a man and a woman, both mortal, both going to die soon. What's staggering is not that they both need, but they both are just humans yet they don't get the same."

But the Pope still has a brain; Terry Schiavo does not.
posted by orthogonality at 8:36 PM on March 29, 2005


orthogonality, how dare you allow reality to get in the way of a crusade! In a perfect world, every body alive today would get to live out their last days hooked up to machines that would do everything for them, keeping them going until the final last gasp of the mortal coil can no longer be sustained.

Yeah, we'd have billions of people on respirators and ventilators and eating human pig slop, I wonder if they'll soon start talking about collecting their heat energy?

That's why, when I die, I'm going to jump into a big old meat grinder, see them hook that shit up to a machine and make it live.
posted by fenriq at 9:41 PM on March 29, 2005


the_bone: I kind of like "Pope-lets."

How about Pope-arazzi?
posted by palinode at 10:27 PM on March 29, 2005


for me:

Popites
posted by lacus at 10:58 PM on March 29, 2005


... as for Terri, I've been reading her blog.
posted by lacus at 11:07 PM on March 29, 2005


Popites

I always thought they were a right bunch of Vaticunts
posted by bunglin jones at 12:50 AM on March 30, 2005


pope-onians.

The Pope and the Vatican should be aware that anything other than the application of all available medical procedures to keep the pope alive (even if not aware) for as long as possible is the only thing they can do. Anything less is either suicide or murder, and both of these things are sins.

Hook him up to machines and keep his AIDS spreading, Poverty enabling, War causing ass alive as long as is inhumanly possible. And if he's in pain or he's suffering, remind him that to live is to suffer and this is but a momentary side effect of original sin.
posted by seanyboy at 3:33 AM on March 30, 2005


Sorry, that sounds awful mean. Sorry Mr Pope. I'm allowing Christian style thinking to get in the way of my Atheistic morals. Let the man die in his own preferred way. And let him die peacfully, in as little pain as possible.
posted by seanyboy at 3:38 AM on March 30, 2005


I'm just asking that we not take the low road when presented with a choice of including totally gratuitous and snarky hostility or laying out an issue more dispassionately.

The problem is who decides the high road? Anybody who says consenting adults can't safely fuck for fun while protecting pervs who fuck children for fun doesn't deserve any respect at all.

The pope isn't the head of the backwoods evangelicals. He is the head of the Catholic Church. The church that has been an unabashed pedophilia enabling organization for a long long time. The church that is completely asinine when it comes to same and safe sex issues. The church that consistently seems to turn a blind eye to genuine evil.

The fact that most Catholics in the developed world pick and chose from the menu papal proclamations makes it even worse for the rest of the world where the pope is actually affecting lives... You want respectful discource for the Catholic church? Make the church worthy of respectful discourse.

Funny how Sinead was right...
posted by srboisvert at 4:12 AM on March 30, 2005


Maybe they keep him alive because, in spite of all the pomposity and cute costumes, they are all scared to death the next pope will be The Antichrist?
posted by Goofyy at 4:13 AM on March 30, 2005


"every sperm is sacred." MP isn't exactly a reliable source of doctrine.

"I've read that the present Pope has his reasons for hanging on to his position and the main one is that he thinks the antichrist is wandering around doing whatever it is that antichrists do."
Well, I read something somewhere (written by some one) that he doesn't think the antichrist is among us.

"Anything less is either suicide or murder, and both of these things are sins."
That's never been the Church's position on end-of-life care.

Be as disrespectful as you feel necessary, but please try to be better informed.
posted by klarck at 4:54 AM on March 30, 2005


Yep, the cardinals are definitely using the Pope's illness to do major damage while they can.

From the Vatican Bank's ties with drugs, mafia, money laundering and blowing up judges (not to mention the likelihood of their involvement in the murder of John Paul I, a real reformer and believer in social justice) to the institution of the fascism-loving, autoflagellating and brainwashing Opus Dei as the Church's key educators of youth to the grotesquerie of this Pope preaching to Ethiopians in the midst of overpopulated famine that contraception is a sin (all while the church owned controlling interest in the world's largest prophylactic producer -- I read these as a teen in the Washington Post but cannot find internet corroboration now) to the different grotesquerie of allowing child molestation to go on while attacking its victims (find your own links... they're everywhere) to the crackdown on Jesuits trying to help the oppressed and the poverty-stricken in Latin America and elsewhere, I don't foresee this man sitting up on fluffy clouds strumming a harp when his moment of judgment comes. Maybe if he'd been more like Fr. Pedro Arrupe and actually, I dunno, gave a damn about the human condition and Jesus' actual teachings I'd have some sympathy for him.

I'm sorry if you are Catholic and this offends you. I went to a Jesuit high school where I met some of the most enlightened and progressive and caring human beings in the world in the form of the priests there. They remained in one of the worst parts of DC and operated the city's largest shelter when fellow priests, protesting racial integration, moved to the suburbs to build schools with 18-hole golf courses.

There are awe-inspiring Catholics. And then there are men like this Pope who have no real moral standing whatsoever. I won't shed a tear for him. There are billions of more worthy people on this planet to worry about, people who aren't actively doing so much harm. I wish him no suffering and a peaceful death, but I wish he and his kind the Hell out of the Church or, barring that wonderful dream, the dissolution of the Church itself. They can take the government-meddling, artifact-thieving, real-estate gambling, child-molesting Greek Orthodox Church with them when they go. The Chuch, with it's capital C, perverted Jesus' teachings entirely right from its institution. It was and is all about heirarchy and protecting the stratified, miserable status quo. Keep the sheep in line.

Bitter much, you ask? Hell yeah.
posted by the_savage_mind at 5:26 AM on March 30, 2005


As for lady priests, well, we'll now have vestments in pink!

There already are pink vestments, they are worn on Gaudete Sunday during Advent.
posted by sciurus at 6:16 AM on March 30, 2005


klarck: Fantastic link. Thanks!
posted by seanyboy at 6:38 AM on March 30, 2005


thecaddy - have you considered atheism? Great dental plan.
posted by Pretty_Generic at 6:42 AM on March 30, 2005


and complement his big hat

Why disrespect other people's beliefs? Anyway, irreverence has been done.
posted by guanxi at 12:19 PM on March 30, 2005




Please don't be nasty...this is a beautiful man who has done more for humanity than probably all of the combined posters here will ever do

You forgot your sarcasm tags.
posted by bshort at 1:28 PM on March 31, 2005


Also, he's been given last rites.
posted by bshort at 1:50 PM on March 31, 2005


"Last rites" is misleading, though. The CNN article at least confirms he was given the Annointing of the Sick, which is a long blessing and annointing with oils. It is for both the very ill and the dying. He's had it before.

What does not seem to be known is if he has also had his final confession (who does the Pope confess to?) and viaticum -- eucharist for the dying. These final two rites are much more urgent.

I wouldn't be surprised, though.
posted by Sangre Azul at 2:36 PM on March 31, 2005


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