POPE ASKS : "WHERE IS JESUS IN THE AGONY OF OUR TIME?"

By Darryl Mason

The Pope has done his Good Friday special, and he's still not a big fan of gay marriages, contraception, poverty and altering the human gene for any purpose at all.

No big suprises there.

But Pope Benedict XVI's really cut loose, getting far more apocalyptic than his predecessor did.

According to the London Times, the English translation of his prayers and mediations contained lots of talk about our "Satanic" age. Wonder who he might be referring to in partix?

Some other highlights from his prayers go like this : By messing with the human gene, trying to alter it to cure diseases and disabilities, scientists are trying to "modify the very grammar of life as planned and willed by God."

He calls this brilliant new science of saving lives and easing suffering, "insane, risky and dangerous” and claims scientists are trying to "take God’s place without being God”.

Apparently, "we have lost our sense of sin. Today a slick campaign of propaganda is spreading an inane apologia of evil, a senseless cult of Satan, a mindless desire for transgression, a dishonest and frivolous freedom, exalting impulsiveness, immorality and selfishness as if they were new heights of sophistication.”

I think he's talking about Harry Potter, and maybe Playstation, too.

One of the prayers continued thus, "our affluence is making us less human, our entertainment has become a drug, a source of alienation, and our society’s incessant, tedious message is an invitation to die of selfishness.”

Okay, he's definitely talking about Playstation now.

He had this to say about the mothers of the world, "River of tears shed by mothers, mothers of the crucified, mothers of murderers, mothers of drug addicts, mothers of terrorists, mothers of rapists, mothers of psychopaths, but mothers all the same”.

And you can't argue with that.

For a church that is richer than Bill Gates, Donald Trump, Rupert Murdoch and all the world's oil companies combined, the Pope's got plenty to say about poverty, which is always important, but it doesn't seem to be going away any time soon, does it?

“Where is Jesus in the agony of our own time, in the division of our world into belts of prosperity and belts of poverty . . in one room they are concerned about obesity, in the other, they are begging for charity?”

How true is that? In the same half hour of news last week, I saw a story on the obscene obesity of porky little American kids and another story on a million infants starving to death in Africa. The irony was enough to make you want to cry, and deep fry some more cheese sticks.

"Where is Jesus in the agony of our time?"

Right here, apparently.

JESUS FOUND - ON AN EASTER EGG



An American woman claims she used an Easter egg dye kit on this hard-boiled egg, eight years ago, and it left an image of Jesus. She was running late for an Easter service, so to hurry up the drying process, she blew on it, the ink smeared and this was what she found when she returned home.

It's the face of Jesus, claims Linda Bargas.

"I think it just happened, and it's something beautiful to look at," Bargas said.

Eight years old, but she claims it doesn't smell rotten.

But eight years is long enough to own a Jesus egg, she claims, so she wants to sell it. Presumably on E-Bay.



Now, Linda may see the face of Jesus on this Easter egg, but I see something else, far more clearly. The black hooded profile of Death himself, just to the right.

Now that is creepy.

Or maybe we're both mad.