Illuminati Polka and Vatican Ninjas

I have decided to make this a comedy posting.

Why? Recently, I went looking for a book on one end of the crazy spectrum. The book had been (loosely) based on an episode during World War II, and it was supposed to "prove" that Pope Pius XII could not qualify as "Hitler's Pope." Instead, this conspiracy theory had Pope Pius XII using the Jesuits to assassinate Adolf Hitler in World War II.

It was called Vatican Assassins.

On the one hand, it really covered an actual incident during the war: where German Generals who wanted to kill Hitler had expressed a desire to use Pius XII as an intermediary. The Generals thought that Pius XII could be a neutral party when talking to the British, laying the groundwork for a truce after they had assassinated Hitler. Obviously, the plan didn't work, since Hitler killed himself years later.

On the other hand ... Vatican Ninjas? Are we serious?

I had originally stumbled across this work six years ago, when I first researched the entire matter of "Hitler's Pope" for a graduate paper.

Recently, I wanted a laugh, and I wanted to see if anything had happened with this particular book.

So, I put Vatican Assassins into an Amazon search, and then Google ...

Oh my dear God, the results I got...

Eric Jon Phelps: "Vatican Assassins: Wounded in the House of my Friends." This, um, interesting work exposes THE TRUTH, about how the Jesuits killed President Lincoln on the orders of the Pope. They also assassinated John F. Kennedy. (paging Oliver Stone, someone is stealing your plot). It includes a "History Of The Jesuit Order" ... I don't even know where to start on this one.

One net posting discusses "Obama's White Papal Masters." Apparently Rome has taken over the White House; I didn't know that we supported the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell.

Another net result was: "Vatican Assassins Ordered Attack on WTC World Trade Towers." Again, the head of the Jesuits is to blame here. The dark, mysterious figure of "The Black Pope," who everyone knows about (the colors of the Jesuits are black ... and black ... he lives in Rome, hence "Black Pope"). Proclaimed as welcoming "the New World Order," a catchphrase of nutjobs for, at a guess, longer than I've been alive.

Also in books, I got: "The Entity: Five Centuries of Secret Vatican Espionage." The "Entity" is supposed to be the Vatican spy service. The description of the book?

"The Entity has been involved in the killings of monarchs, poisonings of diplomats, financing of South American dictators, protection of war criminals, laundering of Mafia money, manipulation of financial markets, provocation of bank failures, and financing of arms sales to combatants even as their wars were condemned, all in the name of God. The contradiction between God's justice and Earth's justice, Christian beliefs and Christian power all fall before the motto of the Entity: With the Cross and the Sword."

Nod very slowly, and back away. Someone here is a little crazy.

Another book: The Vatican Exposed: Money, Murder, and the Mafia. Obviously, written by someone who saw Godfather III

And, a classic: a 1983 "Secret History of the Jesuits." In this book, we are apparently not only responsible for one, but two, count 'em, two world wars.

I found only ONE thing in all of these crackpot conspiracy theories, strange, delusional fantasies, and utter comedy routine that I found offensive. THe last book had a cover of the cross casting a Swastika shadow.

So, at the end of the day, instead of finding a ludicrous conspiracy theory based (very) loosely on an actual event (and that hit every branch of the crazy tree on the way down), I found a whole bunch of borderline schizophrenic theories, brought to you by the tinfoil hat brigade.

Now, it might be me. It might be I'm strange. For the most part, I find these people funny. Then again, the theories are so ludicrous, I hardly know where to begin.

At random, shall we start with the Jesuits assassinating President Lincoln? I don't know why the Catholic Church would want to kill him, but before even reading the book or the rest of the book's description, I'm already laughing. Why? Because President Lincoln requested that the Vatican create American Cardinals, moving the United States out of missionary status. Lincoln wanted the Catholic Church in town as an actual establishment. Considering that this was within the decade before Thomas Nast's anti-Catholic propaganda were popular, I can only think this is the closest a non-Catholic like Lincoln could get to being supportive of Rome.

Or, we could look at President Barack H. Obama's "White Papal Masters"..... how anyone can say it with a straight face is beyond me. As a Democrat, last time I checked, Obama supports abortion in America. He supported the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Funny, I didn't know that Rome supported either of the above.

So, let me get this straight: the Vatican kills people who support us (Lincoln) and controls people with principles that are the opposite of what it publicly postulates ...

And, of course, the Vatican started World War II .... a war that tore apart and butchered six million Polish citizens, half of whom were Catholic. Because, after all, it's an institution that's been around for soooooo long, it can afford to lose three million people like that.

I'd continue, but I'm too busy laughing. The authors of these various works might have had less than savory motives, or they might even believe this drivel. If they believe it, they have my condolences, and my suggestion that they see a good shrink. These are almost as stupid as Godfather III, where the theory was that Pope John Paul I, who died within a month of being elected Pontiff, had been assassinated by the people involved in ripping off the Vatican Bank. (Let's completely ignore that Albino Luciani, before becoming John Paul I, had a crappy medical history; if anyone knew what sort of shape he had been in, he would never have been elected. But you can't talk some people out of a good conspiracy.)

And you thought people had a lot of conspiracy theories about the Illuminati.

This is so bad it's laughable. Not to mention that the Jesuits, the root of all of the conspiracy theories, have basically been running amok with "Liberation Theology"-- a concept that had been condemned by the Pope. So, the Jesuits, "the spooooooooky Vatican assassins," have been at odds with the Popes for at least thirty years. Maybe forty. And, somehow, the Popes of that time period were not, and have not, been assassinated. Hmm, funny that.

As my friend Jason noted, when I first told him of this blog idea, "[T]he only [C]atholic conspiracy I can buy is that 'Yes, we want Notre Dame to win in the NCAA'. But that goes without saying."

*

Now, no matter what issues and theories these people have, but I find all "Catholic conspiracy" theories funny, almost no matter the details. Why?

Dear God in Heaven, where do I start?

The theories are so ludicrous, I hardly know where to begin.

SECRET SOCIETIES

One running theme of most of the conspiracy theories is that there is a "conspiracy of silence" running around within the Vatican, the hierarchy, an order, pick one or all. This pops up in almost any fiction where a Catholic priest appears.

Given the news of the last decade, anyone should see an immediate problem. Not only does the Church of Rome write everything down, they never throw anything out. This is a bureaucracy that has held onto the divorce petition from Henry VIII of England, written in the early 16th century. We've held onto it for nearly five hundred years, and we haven't thrown it out yet.

If it happens, there will likely be paperwork to document it, and they'd hold onto it with their dying breath. Bad habit for a conspiracy.

But, the way I look at it, the Vatican is essentially the world's biggest marble office building, complete with Dilberts and the occasional pointy-haired boss ... or pointy-hatted boss.

In the current day and age, any bureaucracy can keep a secret for a few years. But two thousand? Really?

My major problem with that idea isn't so much a matter of my religious background (Catholic), my educational background (history and Philosophy), or anything of the sort. Bureaucracies tend to leak like a sieve. Even the army and law enforcement.

The FBI spawned Deepthroat—a loser who got passed over for promotion.

The Pentagon—Pentagon papers, anyone?

Most intelligence agencies have politicians in the mix somewhere ...

You can have whistle blowers in practically any organization...

The Catholic church is also a bureaucracy. One disgruntled employee is all you need. End of secret. Last week, I mentioned that one organization in the Church people like to pick on is the Society of Jesus, a.k.a., the Jesuits.

The Jesuits started as a missionary order, and tended to go out to new worlds, seek out new civilizations, boldly go where no man had gone before ... and sometimes get eaten by the locals. Now a teaching order, they've spawned more stupidity than orthodoxy in the Church. If you look up Liberation Theology, Jesuits had a hand in spawning that steaming pile of theological gruel.

The other order that conspiracy theorists like to shoot at is the Opus Dei ... Where do I start? According to reporter John A. Allen, all you need to do to get the Opus Dei to open up is buy them a few rounds. Then the trouble becomes trying to shut them up.

And the biggest problem with using them in a conspiracy: Opus Dei is primarily a lay organization. Of it's nearly 90,000 members, only 2% are priests. I'm sorry, a Catholic organization of civilians are going to be privy to ancient secrets and conspiracies? There is a disconnect here.

THE MUSCLE

Also, I have another problem, one that has great big flashing red lights. All of these big secrets, threats to the Catholic Church, maybe even all of Christendom, are being eliminated. Lives are snuffed out, voices silenced.

Depending on who you ask, we killed President Lincoln and JFK, and we're pulling the strings behind President Obama.

With the tinfoil helmet brigade, the Vatican is so scary, covers up so much, silences so many, controls so much of the planet even in THIS day and age. Then we have to have muscle men. We must have kneebreakers This must mean that the Pope has his own personal assassination squad. People to kill at the nod of his pointy hat ... wait.

Does this mean that ... that the Vatican has Ninjas?

Hmm, Vatican Ninjas ... I wondered why all of those ancient Soviet leaders dropped dead after John Paul II was shot.

I can see it now. Dark, shadowy figures clad in the blue and gold colors of the Swiss Guard. Each of them either Swiss with Special Forces background, or former soldiers who join the priesthood. Once there, they are taught to kill up close with a rosary-garrote. When you turn your back, they smack you over the head with a halberd. For longer distances, a boomerang shaped like a cross comes out of the darkness and takes down armed guards (It worked in Castlevania). And maybe, just maybe, they can have Throwing Stars of David for every time they worked with the Mossad. That would be awesome!

I want my Vatican Ninjas!

Sigh ... I guess I'll have to write my own.

How would I do it? Simple: the Catholic Church has a screening process to weed out psychos, pederasts, etc. That's why the majority of bad priests were ordained before the new screening process was installed (I say "new screening process", but it came out in the early 90s). If I wanted to create Vatican Ninjas, I would forward all of the "psycho" pile to a special division, where they can weed out the "special" ones, that can be sent to training to Kill For the Lord! Muahahahaha!

Problems: who wants a psycho as a hirling? Seriously? While the priesthood MUST, statistically, get some nutjobs applying to their ranks, who'd want to bring in a crazy who's impossible to control? I mean, that's as out there as having an assassin who is a psychotic albino monk with a bad limp ....

Oh, wait, nevermind.

The biggest problem: back to the pointy-hatted Dilbert boss, and the Vatican bureaucracy. If there were Vatican Ninjas, there would be enough memoirs from them by now to fill a library.

End of the day, the vast conspiracies around and about the Vatican are laughable. In America, our Bishops don't have the charisma to lead a pack of vampires to a blood bank. Trying to get people to actually teach the faith correctly seems to be impossible (my Catholic schools were nothing to write home about). We can hardly get Cardinals to line up in a row, or organize halfway decent public relations, yet the Vatican is supposed to be leading the charge to take over the world.

Right now, I would sooner believe in a "conspiracy" once jokingly suggested to me by a friend: that Dan Brown and Stephanie Meyer are in a plot to overhype their books to the entire universe.

However, if someone is in charge of accounting for this vast, Roman Catholic conspiracy, I want a paycheck. Thank you.

And what am I going to be doing tonight? Why, what I do every night ...

TRY TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD!!!!!

On paper.

With my Vatican Ninjas.