Why Does the Pope Hate the Internet?
I don't hate the Pope. Hell, I hardly even know him. Couldn't pick him out of a crowd of old German dudes wearing mitres and carrying jewel-encrusted wands. So why's he going around shit-talking people who use the Internet?
Today, Pope Benedict XVI warned that the Internet is making young people lonely and confused:
"A large number of young people... establish forms of communication that do not increase humaneness but instead risk increasing a sense of solitude and disorientation," Benedict told a Vatican conference on culture.
Oh no, His Holiness did not just say that. You know what else makes young people lonely and confused? Catholicism. Have you ever met someone more internally conflicted than a young devout Catholic? (I think the millions of 13-year-old Catholic boys desperately trying not to masturbate would agree.) Actually, you've probably never met a young devout Catholic, because they spend all their time in the confession booth, praying and going to church instead of engaging in fun leisure activities like premarital sex and Bocce.
That's not the only beef the Pope has with the Internet (and, by extension, me.) The Pope also said that the Internet was "blurring the boundary between truth and illusion." Hahaha. Have you ever read your own Bible, Pope? At least on Wikipedia if a drunk person writes a bunch of made-up stuff about magic ghosts someone else will eventually come around and correct it.
Listen, The Pope, I don't go around writing pithy blog posts about minor Catholic doctrinal changes; you should not be making declarations about the Internet. Perhaps some day I will start an Internet-based religion, or you will launch a Pope-based gossip blog. (VaticanWag?) Then—and only then—will we meet as equals on the field of battle. In the name of the Facebook, the Link and the Holy Foursquare, Amen.
(Catholic priests could not be reached for this article because they were too busy planning their big exorcism conference in Maryland. Because demonic possession is real, unlike everything on the Internet.)
