Hammer Time!, Dept.

Indulgences Return, and Heaven Moves a Step Closer for Catholics - NYTimes.com

From the page:

"For Catholics, a Door to Absolution Is Reopened

The announcement in church bulletins and on Web sites has been greeted with enthusiasm by some and wariness by others. But mainly, it has gone over the heads of a vast generation of Roman Catholics who have no idea what it means: 'Bishop Announces Plenary Indulgences.'

In recent months, dioceses around the world have been offering Catholics a spiritual benefit that fell out of favor decades ago -- the indulgence, a sort of amnesty from punishment in the afterlife -- and reminding them of the church's clout in mitigating the wages of sin."


That's the stuff! B-b-b-benny XVI rockin' the house ol' skool! Plenary indulgences...man, I don't know about you, but that takes me back...back...back to the town of Wittenberg, to whose church doors a brash monk by the name of Martin Luther is nailing some four score and fifteen theses.

Why, here are four of them right now to harmonize an instructional message! Sing it, theses 21 - 24!

21. Therefore those preachers of indulgences are in error, who say that by the pope's indulgences a man is freed from every penalty, and saved;

22. Whereas he remits to souls in purgatory no penalty which, according to the canons, they would have had to pay in this life.

23. If it is at all possible to grant to any one the remission of all penalties whatsoever, it is certain that this remission can be granted only to the most perfect, that is, to the very fewest.

24. It must needs be, therefore, that the greater part of the people are deceived by that indiscriminate and highsounding promise of release from penalty.

*ha ha!* Sounds like B-b-b-benny's trying to get money for old rope! Now, Ol' Crocodile-head isn't going to be selling the indulgences like his illustrious, sodomitical predecessors lurved to do. Or so he claims. The spokesman for the Diocese of Brooklyn, the Rev. Kieran Harrington, noted that it's about "acts of charity." Like, say, giving alms to rebuild St. Peter's Basilica? 'Cause that's why Pope Leo X--preceded by Pope Girls Gone Wild IX--authorized the sale of indulgences back in 1517. Which set that aforementioned brash monk a-hammerin'.

In a related story, the pope also reminded the faithful that Jews torture consecrated Hosts in blasphemous parodies of the Mass, that the Mussulmans unjustifiably occupies the birthplace of Our Lord and that women are foul cloacae who brought Original Sin into God's creation. He closed his message with a resounding "Deus vult!", unsheathed his sword, Widowmaker, and lopped the head off his Ganymedean altar boy.

In the words of Damn Yankees' Mr. Applegate: Those were the good old days!