No one ever expects to catch fire during surgery.
It's funny that anyone is expected to take the news seriously, when even serious news is hard to accept at face value. The Seattle police launched an investigation recently to figure out how a patient burst into flames while undergoing heart surgery in 2003.
The investigation was initiated after an anonymous letter was sent to the media. It certainly makes you wonder why it took two years for people involved to think maybe someone catching fire on the operating table was just a bit troubling.
But while curious news abounds, nowhere is this truer than in the world of Catholicism. When even mundane malpractice stories take on tragicomic absurdity, no one provides good old-fashioned novelty quite like the Catholic Church.
On Tuesday, white smoke rose from the Vatican, and dignitaries ushered in a new pope to take the place of recently-deceased Pope John Paul II. Chosen to be the new kid on Jesus' block was German Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. In this case, the fresh blood in the Vatican was only slightly fresher than a Ford Model-T-Ratzinger turned 78 years old on Saturday.
Some have cited the Church's desire to appoint a \transitional"" pope, someone who can hold the position for a couple years without rocking the boat. Even with that said, appointing someone born in 1927 is just nuts. You have to wonder if they even want him to bother unpacking his bags at the Vatican. Vegas is probably setting the over-under on his papacy at around three and a half years.
Since this is our generation's first new pope, we weren't prepared for the suspense, spectacle or ritual. Or the politics, for that matter. I hadn't realized that the new pope would definitely come from Europe. And since the American press invariably refers to Latin American entertainers as either ""fiery"" or ""spicy,"" I thought it would be fun to see one of the Latin American cardinals elected pope, just to see the enthusiastic TV coverage:
""The Catholic Church is getting ready to spice up the Vatican with their fiery new pope!""
But while this may seem like inappropriate commentary to be coming from a Jew whose only connection to Catholicism is rooming with a Bostonian, I do hold the past and current popes in great respect in certain regards. After all, John Paul II was the first pope to acknowledge that evolution isn't entirely kooky-talk, to acknowledge that the Catholic Church should have stood up against the Holocaust and to bless break dancers at the Vatican. Meanwhile, Ratzinger chose the papal name Benedict in honor of Pope Benedict XV, who sought to mend Europe's political divisions from World War I.
We've never seen this done before, and at this rate, we will see several more popes in our lifetime. The barrage of ceremony and religious politics alone is staggering. Some of their policies seem sensible-in a town whose mayor is named Cieslewicz, we can understand renaming public officials. Some of their policies aren't as user-friendly-nothing wrong with Darwinism or oral sex from where I'm sitting.
But even if it seems odd to see a pope elected at such an advanced age, and to witness it through coverage that makes even the wackiest domestic news seem tame, there is no denying that if nothing else, the Catholic Church is remarkably good at sustaining itself. And when it comes to the craziness of the pope's coronation, like any hard-to-swallow news story, this too shall pass.
Besides, it's better that smoke rise from the Vatican again than from our bodies during surgery.
