Russ McBee

Today, I read the latest idiotic statement from the Vatican, and my outrage began to coalesce:

In comments released in advance of an interview to be published today in the German weekly Süeddeutsche Magazin, [Msgr. Georg Gänswein, Pope Benedict XVI’s secretary] said: "Attempts to Islamize the West cannot be denied. The danger for the identity of Europe that is connected with it should not be ignored out of a wrongly understood respectfulness." He also defended a speech Benedict gave last year linking Islam and violence, saying it was an attempt by the pope to "act against a certain naïveté."

"What nerve," I thought. The Catholic Church has never once in its 1,700-year history ever shown "respectfulness" for anything but its own authoritarian rule. But the excerpt above was almost the entirety of the NYT article, so I searched for a more lengthy excerpt of the interview.

I found the full interview at the magazine's website, but it's only available in German. Against my better judgement, I fed the URL through Google's translator. Once I began to read the garbled translation, my indignation over the Panzer Pope's secretary gave way to juvenile snickering.

To wit:

[Q:] You are supposed the first Pope secretary of the church history, for which beside the Pontifex also in the focus of the public stands: People magazines swarms of the "Sunnyboy in the Soutane". They are undisputed, so Swiss world week, "the most beautiful man in the robe, which was to be seen ever in the Vatikan". Donatella Versace dedicated even its own mode line to you. Does your image disturb you as woman swarm?

[A:] That I would not have become red, it irritated me rather somewhat. It does not do pain and it flattered to me first also, and it is nevertheless no sin. So frontally and directly I was not confronted before ever with my bowl. Then I noticed that this majority expression of sympathy is: a bonus, no penalty; with it I can deal well. However I would like already also that one does not remain standing with my exterior, but also the substance under the bowl to the knowledge take.

Words of wisdom, indeed. "Take the knowledge to the substance under the bowl, even after direct frontal confrontation with said bowl." I think I'll have that tatooed on me somewhere.

And about life inside the Vatican, the Monsignor offers these pearls:

The Vatikan is now once also a yard state. And there's gives yard twaddle. But there are also arrows, which are shot completely consciously and purposefully. I had to only learn to deal with it.

Of course, we can all well imagine the difficulty one must face living in a "yard state" with "yard twaddle" every day of the week.

Then, there's this shocking revelation, straight out of "Jabberwocky":

[Q:] They are to stand allegedly for the vakanten bishop seat from Munich to the order.

[A:] Those are unoccupied eggs. Freely invented, here-pulled on the hair.

And this revelation about the Monsignor's wild past:

[Q:] Fount ton wildly - were you thing?

[A:] Phase way perhaps, between 15 and 18 years. I heard Cat of Stevens, Pink Floyd and few other famousnesses from this time, also the Beatles was under it. I had at that time a rather long curl tuft. That displeased my father; thus there were Zoff around the hairdresser date and around the hair length already times. That put afterwards then quite unspektakulär.

Finally, this nugget of wisdom regarding dull work:

I had easily studied always gladly and, but the study of the canonical right I felt in such a way drying such as work in a dusty quarry, where there is no beer. One dies before drynesses.