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Entry: Pope Banned from Speaking in Rome Link: http://www.takimag.com/blogs/article/wankers_ban_pope_from_speaking_in_rome#15047 Post contents: Come now, just where would the Church be without its opponents? Would that they were a tad more foreboding than a bunch of Itralian Hipsters or dread-locked college layabouts but one must take what one gets. After all, one of the principle reasons the west is stumbling is because it has seduced itself to notions of triumphalism while satisfying it's definition of "culture" with an extractive consumerist treadmill that runs on "externalized costs" greased by a "hidden hand" that wears a boxing glove made by the Fed and sold by K Street. The West's biggest antagonist, right now, is itself and any "Last Chance Armada" will land on shores jam-packed with Ennui Zombies who need an ever-increasing dose of fantasy methadone to keep facing the diminishing returns of an empty life. Not that religion will help either. The flourishing trade in the rhetoric of "you can have big hooters and a nice car too" has many of the adherents to Televangelism swooning while the Catholic Church is auto-reduced by sybaritic priests in the suburbs buying Florida Condos with the congregation's money or finnochio brothers preying on Cub Scouts. A liturgy that demands a lot of repeated standing and kneeling wears thin on the Barcalounger generation. At least the mad rabid dogs of the Wahabbi Assassins retain a little passion about them as they go to their deaths for intercontinental power plays because thats a better "Life Plan" by their "Life Coach" Osama than the one consigned to them by the Arabian Satraps of Gout. If People of Reason stopped petulantly arguing with People of Faith, both of whom are getting ever more belligerent as they weaken, we might get somewhere but don't count on that anytime soon because all eyes are on the Rapture Convoy, brought to you by The Association of Global Arms Merchants who sponser that fine "professional grade" diorama of dinosaurs cavorting behind cavemen children at an "Intelligent Design" Museum near you. No wonder ennui is so fashionable. No wonder rehashing of the Gallileo farrago seems relevant. No wonder this way-too-long campaign for the Presidency of this lapsed Republic seems more like a fist-fight at the corner gas station near the Elementary School than it does reasoned and productive debate within a Republic that has pretensions of greatness. But , big deal, life is rich and do not miss, Mr. Zmirak, after your inventory of the bones in that little cabinet off the Veneto ......a stroll along the mint-scented alleyway up the hill to the piazza near the Church of Santa Sabina....where you can sit and eat an alfresco lunch beneath a copse of Orange Trees as you look out over the river valley toward the Vatican. Rome was built, sacked , rebuilt, sacked again, abandoned, rebuilt , bombed and rebuilt again and has gone from Helios to the Pope and now to Distracted Relativism and still....there is passion. Sent at: 2008 11 21