Time magazine's cover a week ago must have fascinated Bible fundamentalist readers of the "Left Behind," $60 million grossing, "end times" religious sci-fi series. (Indeed, how gross.)
These biblical fundygelicals are convinced the pope is CEO to the Great Whore of Babylon, and also the Great Beast of Book of Revelation, whose name totals 666. Ask the next gospel-go-grab-you who comes prayerfully a-knocking to explain the numerical eschatology.
(Better still: flash pleasantly, slam the door and be done with it. Unless of course your soul-saver thrusts a Wide Stance sandal in, winks knowingly, taps three times, indicating it's time to get down on collective bended knees for a private, Christian lip-service blessing.)
Time's cover is a rendering of Pope Benedict XVI's mitre-panoplied back, accompanied with caption, "Why Being Pope Means Never Having To Say You're Sorry." (Sorry, by the way, in English, Italian, German, French, Hindi, High – or Down Low – Church Latin. And, to be sure, Gaelic.)
Apparently backside anatomy as a book title or cover illustration sells. (There's also biblical precedent. Moses, when handed the first tablets of the Ten Commandments – yes, there are four dissimilar sets recorded in the Old Testament – got a favored, totally unexpected, glimpse of Yahweh's anthropomorphic "hind parts.")
Time magazine's cover story includes public/press cons and Church/ Vatican pros about how the beleaguered pontiff has handled the sex scandals shaking up his reign as Vicar of Christ. (Priestly hands in the underage nookie jar have cost Mother Church billions.)
Pope Benedict XVl isn't the only pontiff not to make unequivocal apology. (Or who, for whatever reason of Divine Gold Card privilege, choses to gloss things a bit.) There were, shall we say, with history at our collective backsides, a goodly number of popes who enjoyed themselves in matters carnal, liaisons brazen, surroundings unquestionably decadent.
Nigel Cawthorne, a feisty Englishman who writes frequently for London Guardian, Daily Mail, Mirror and New York Tribune, is author of "Sex Lives of the Popes" (Prion Press; Barnes & Noble reprint, 2008.) The book is ideal perpetual indulgence reading, say with red-light, bedside votive candle, same-sex, venial-sin partner of choice. Says tattletale Cawthorne …
"In the last 2,000 years the popes have set the sexual agenda for almost a quarter of the worlds population. But while preaching chastity from on high, many have practiced something altogether more dissolute.
"There have been gay popes who have made their catamites cardinals. There have been grossly promiscuous popes of both (sexual) persuasions. Orgies were not unknown in the papal palaces. One pope ran a brothel out of the Lateran Palace."
"The Catholic Church has gone to great lengths to hush this sort of thing up. Virtuous ones, on their election, have taken the same name and number as earlier popes to cause confusion." Compare, if you're that damnably curious, sinner John XXlll (1410-1415) and truly sainted John XXlll (1958-1963).
Among popes who were bi, perhaps the most famous – thanks to his irritating patronage of 30-year-old, Sistine Chapel painter Michelangelo – is Julius ll (1503-1513). "He was the father of a family and a hard-drinking, hard-swearing, swashbuckling pederast," sums up Cawthorne.
Another pope of the same name, Julius lll (1550 -1555) also had pederastic tendencies. He enjoyed an ongoing relationship with Innocenzo Ciocchi Del Monte, a 14-year-old beggar boy "rescued" on the streets of Parma. Julius eventually adopted the lad and, and when the kid turned 17, made him a nephew and cardinal.
According to http://www.Gay365.com, and for what it's worth realty-wise, two gay men are presently living in the residence of former John Paul ll. (Rumor has it the house has been redecorated to suit more "eclectic" tastes.) Pax vobiscum.
