Papal Worship

Catholics Gone Wild

Yep, he's here. Pope B started his U.S. tour in D.C. for his 81st birthday and now has taken over NYC. You can't escape. Roads are being blocked off, police everywhere, and 24-hour news coverage blares from every channel. NY1 has a pope map so you can see his every move; I'm sure they'd love to put a GPS tracking device on him to get up-to-the-minute updates on his whereabouts.

And the teaming masses are out in force. Smiling faces, a nun waxing on about how she touched the closest person to God, but then there are the politics. In a smart move, he met with sex abuse victims. He also visited a synagogue on the Upper East Side giving a gift of a Seder plate. He got matzo. The big blessing will be at Yankee Stadium where rumor has it tickets are scarer than Final Four seats. I hope the followers get something wonderful from this event.

I, however, question Pope B's real commitment to his congregation. As far as my limited knowledge goes, many saints and dedicated Catholics embraced a life of giving, inclusion, and restrained living. Pope B continues to have problems adapting to the continually evolving emancipation of women and minorities. And he wouldn't score any points with those catholics who embrace a life of restraint and poverty for wearing designer dudes like those red Prada shoes. St. Francis of Assisi might also have qualms with the pope's position on climate change.

Back to Earth Fair where I spent the day helping set up and man out booth. We get a weird collection of folks stopping by given that the event is right outside Gran Central Terminal. Some folks just look for open ears, like the septuagenarian wearing his hemp and tie-dyed outfit who waxed on about starting the first Earth Day in 1970. But the weirdest person I dealt with was the dynamite lady. She started off talking about car pollution and the congestion pricing plan we proposed for NYC but quickly criticized the traffic mitigation plan at 'cutting the tail off the beast'. I explained that cleaning up the tailpipe would be closer to her analogy of the tail and that congestion pricing actually served as an incentive to remove some of those vehicle 'beasts' from the road. So far, so good but then her brain switched over to some strange place. In her mind we were missing the real culprit that was causing climate change - the skyscraper. She went onto explain that the dynamite used to blast the foundation for those buildings was the real driver for climate change. Her advice to me was to check it out on the internet - 'cause we all know the internet is a great source for vetted science :) She was a hoot.