Did You Know?

Did you hear that the Catholic church is bringing back the indulgence? It’s true! Yes, the thing that caused the Protestant Reformation and subsequent Catholic Counter-Reformation, what with the orgasming Jesus statues and the drinking of milk from Mary’s breasts and the German Bible and the burning down of churches and/or people. When I first heard this, I thought: “wow.” But then I found out that indulgences weren’t actually jettisoned until the Vatican II, in the 1960’s. Then I thought, “what?” It seems like something that would have been purged from the Catholic vibe zone back in the sixteenth century as they were trying to make everyone stop becoming Protestants. Then I decided it must be that during the C-R, they stopped allowing indulgences to be purchased with MONEY, which was the thing that made everybody so mad (well, one of the things). Rich people can buy their way into Heaven but the rest of us have to slog through a bunch of charitable works instead? Bullroar! On to the iconoclasm! And then in the 60’s they must have banned indulgences of all kinds, even the ones given for charitable works. This is my theory, and I plan to do no research to verify it because ultimately it doesn’t matter to my life that much. But still, to find out the Catholic Church had reinstated the practice of granting indulgences, and first thing in the morning at that (the finding out–not the reinstatement), well, it was quite a shock. Luckily I am neither Catholic nor Protestant, so I don’t actually give much of an s.
The Vatican is having some problems lately, am I right? That bishop who denied the Holocaust…I love denying the Holocaust. How can you deny something like that? Denying the moon landing, now that I can see. No one was actually present; it’s ultimately unverifiable. It’s on the effing MOON. It already sounds like a made-up scientology joke. But the Holocaust?? Did all these people with tattooed numbers on their arms just agree to make up the exact same story? I don’t usually pay much attention to Holocaust deniers, so I’m not sure what their actual logic is based on. I’m sure it’s not at all kooky or racist.