Papal Bull

If the world's recovering Catholics -- a category that technically includes all Protestants, the descendants of Jews forced to convert upon pain of execution during the Spanish Inquisition, approximately 90 percent of parochial school graduates, and anyone who can remember Cheech & Chong's Sister Mary Elephant bit -- were starting to have second thoughts about their contempt for an institution identified by Sir Isaac Newton and Jack T. Chick alike as the whore in the Book of Revelation's must-read Chapter 17, then Pope John Paul II's recent swing through Mexico and St. Louis should douse any and all ecumenical second thoughts with a nice splash of ice-cold, holier-than-thou water.

The Cincinnati Enquirer -- the new paper of record at least for Pete Rose fans, as evidenced by a recent letter to the editor that persuasively argues thusly on behalf of Charlie Hustle: "If President Clinton gets hailed for telling a lie and remains president, then why should Pete Rose be kept out of the Hall of Fame for doing the same thing?" -- got it more right than it could ever know by headlining a story about the pontiff's 36-hour gig in St. Louis, "Pope gets rock-star greeting in US."

Indeed, the Vicar of Christ on Earth formerly known as Karol Wojtyla is acting like a self-indulgent rocker and not simply because the perennially near-death cleric has gone on more final-farewell-that's-it tours than the Ramones and the Who combined. And not simply because he's really only hitting the road to drum up interest in his new rap CD Abba Pater, set for release from Sony Classical on 23 March. (Word up: Tracks include "prayers, homilies, and chants" set to Vatican-approved music; the disc's first single "Pater Noster," or Our Father, will also be a video.) And not simply because he insisted on having all the green M&M's removed from his dressing room.

This time around, JP2 managed to blend perfectly sanctimonious social messaging with rank hypocrisy on a level that hasn't been seen since heavier-than-air country boy John Denver mouthed environmentalist slogans while stockpiling petroleum products at his Rocky Mountain retreat in between drunken drives on Pikes Peak.

But let's give the religious road warrior this much: He knows how to work a crowd and keep those offertory envelopes thick with cash; he doesn't grouse about doing his old hits; and he remembers to write down what town he's playing.

"I am told that there was much excitement in St. Louis during the recent baseball season when two great baseball players were competing to break the home-run record," he told a crowd of 20,000 "shrieking teenagers." And he came loaded with the theological equivalent of "Are you ready to rock?" exhorting his fans to resist the "culture of death." Cue more shrieking.

In a move that recalls Pete Townsend beating Abbie Hoffman on the stage at Woodstock, the Holy Father laid into the abortion issue even as he shared a platform with Bill Clinton, whose primary presidential legacy (apart from suggesting a use for Phillies Blunts beyond simply packing them with weed) may well end up being his veto of a bill that would have banned partial-birth abortions.

After comparing abortion to the Dred Scott decision, the pope continued, "Today the conflict is between a culture that affirms, cherishes, and celebrates the gift of life, and a culture that seeks to declare entire groups of human beings -- the unborn, the terminally ill, the handicapped, and others considered 'unuseful' -- to be outside the boundaries of legal protection."

Such in-your-face moral integrity is always inspiring, even, or perhaps especially, when it comes from a guy who fronts a cult that once christened the Pep Boys of fascism -- Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco -- as righteous "defenders of the faith." To be sure, there is a strong element of weary ritual to such a predictable declamation, a sense, say, of Gene Simmons breathing fire for the 500th time, of Mick Jagger riding one more inflatable penis, or of Marilyn Manson simulating fellatio onstage yet again. And certainly one can only be disappointed that the septuagenarian successor to St. Peter didn't at least try to kick the president in the nuts after Clinton lauded him in terms reminiscent of Bono's Emmy Awards tribute to Frank Sinatra.

"For 20 years, you have challenged us to think of life not in terms of what we acquire for ourselves but what we give of ourselves," said the prez, perhaps momentarily mistaking John Paul II for an intern. "We honor you for standing for human dignity and human rights," said Clinton, brushing aside the "culture of death" shtick with a hug and a smile.

While such antics are mildly nauseating in the manner of hearing a maxi-length sermon on an empty stomach with a hangover, they are not particularly hypocritical. Like so many other tourists, John Paul saved that particular moral lapse for his south-of-the-border vacation (reports have it that he also stocked up on fireworks and cheap tequila). In Mexico, the pope lip-synched his decades-old, anti-materialism, anti-capitalism medley even as his trip was underwritten by corporate sponsors, including Frito-Lay, Mercedes-Benz, Sheraton Hotels, and the Mexican bread company Bimbo. Among the sanctified tie-ins: stamplike pictures of the pope and Mexico's patron saint, the Virgin of Guadalupe, stuffed into bags of Ruffles potato chips (collect all 10 poses!) and billboards proclaiming Pepsi an "Official Sponsor of the Fourth Visit of his Holiness John Paul II to Mexico."

At least when the Sex Pistols went on their Filthy Lucre tour a few years back -- an event that produced its own form of adolescent shrieking -- they didn't lecture about the evils of worldly goods in a country where economic growth is largely limited to odd-job contract-killing for the brother of a former president and where no more than three Zapatista rebels can appear in public at any one time due to a chronic shortage of ski masks.

Though the Vatican could have easily set up an eBay account and auctioned off a few holy relics -- a purported foreskin of Christ (near-mint condition, no reserve), eyes of St. Lucy (in original packaging), slivers from original cross (Dutch auction) -- to cover the estimated US$2 million the trip cost, it instead decided to shake down, in the words of The Washington Post, "an all-star roster of corporate sponsors ... that would do Michael Jordan proud." (Perhaps the only question remaining is how the United States Postal Service missed out on being a sponsor.)

Simultaneously showing the steely determination that allowed the Church to go centuries before officially pardoning Galileo for the crime of being right about the sun and displaying the get-along sensibility that made it so easy to cuddle with Mussolini, official papal spokesmen seem unlikely to respond with contrition anytime soon.

According to Mexican press reports, "We live in an age of advertising," one of the papal spokesmen said. "We are men of that age." Such a shockingly passive, faddish sentiment might have seemed right coming from, say, Rod Stewart's manager. But it seems very, very wrong when it comes from a flack for a man who, unlike Stewart, really could be mistaken for a rock star. Indeed, that particular PR encyclical only leaves us saddened that John Paul II, who ascended to his current position in 1978, didn't take office early enough in the Me Decade to go through full-blown glam, disco, and punk phases.