Will “Why a Saint?” Beat Out “Game Change”?

I tried to buy the new political tell-all “Game Change” at Borders yesterday and they were sold out. Maybe I’ll lower my sights (or raise them, depending on your view) and buy “Why a Saint?” I give you saint-watcher, intimate of popes and writer Monsignor Slawomir Oder. Today, Reuters tells us a thing or two about Pope John Paul II (the current Pope’s predecessor), according to Oder. “'Pope John Paul II flagellated himself regularly to imitate Christ’s suffering', according to a book published Tuesday by the Vatican official in charge of the process that could lead to the pope’s sainthood. The book says that John Paul, who died in 2005, engaged in a practice known as mortification, the self-infliction of pain in order to feel closer to God, whipping himself with a belt that he kept in his closet.” Monsignor Slawomir Oder, the chief honcho of the cause for John Paul’s canonization, says that whipping yourself is “an instrument of God’s perfection”. So, all you guys who thought my posts about “Opus Dei” were nonsense, listen up. “Opus Dei” (God’s work), is the cult founded in 1928 by Jose Maria Escriva, a monsignor in Spain who, among other esoteric beliefs promoted the practices of beating oneself and wearing a hairshirt (cilice) to show how much one loved God. “Opus Dei” has roughly 85,000 lay members worldwide and about 3,000 in the United States. Pope John Paul II thought the “Opus Dei”cult was so marvelous and so filled with pious people who exemplified the Christian ideal that he canonized Jose Maria Escriva in 2002--an act which, by me, was as insane as Escriva. We are told by Oder that, “Pope John Paul II whipped himself with a belt, even on vacation, and slept on the floor as acts of penitence and to bring him closer to Christian perfection”. Well, here’s my point: If these religious guys want to feel Christ’s pain on the cross (which, of course, they can’t because they are not Christ), but if that’s what this crapola is all about, then I would not question their religious zeal in going out and being crucified. But whipping and hairshirts? Please! It’s too close to autoeroticism for me to equate it with Christian perfection. And as to that, has any research been done on whether all this whipping leads to the perfection of an awesome orgasm? But back to the current Pope Benedict XVI who was called Pope John Paul’s “Enforcer”. Pope Benedict wants to canonize the guy who canonized the nutjob Escriva. I know it’s mean to find humor in the crazy acts of crazy people, but this latest pronouncement from the Vatican has me ROTFLMFAO!