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| One Ring to rule them all, Your Holiness! |
When he does, he has to give up more than just his nine official Church titles.
Of greatest interest to me is the fact that the Ring of the Fisherman -- that big gold signet you see on his right hand at all times -- will be ceremonially destroyed with a silver hammer. I prefer to think that it will be cast into the fires of Mount Doom, perhaps with Joey Ratzinger grasping for it in the lava and shrieking “My precioussssss...”
Also getting a lot of attention in the media are the Pope’s red shoes, which he must surrender. They are not, in fact, made by Prada, in spite of persistent rumors. This has nonetheless created an endless string of jokes ranging from the obvious “The Devil Wears Prada” film title to the slightly more subtle “There’s no place like Rome” heel-clicking gag.
An acquaintance commented to me today on the absurdity of this and all the other tradition-on-the-fly surrounding the unprecedented resignation of a sitting Pope. Hey, 1.1 billion faithful can’t be wrong. Right?
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A 15-year-old girl in the Maldives Islands was allegedly raped and impregnated by her step-father, who then killed the baby. Naturally, under Islamic law, she’s been sentenced to 100 lashings for premarital sex (with another man, prosecutors helpfully assure us).
A University of North Carolina student reported she was raped, and later shared the experience at a rape survivors function. The alleged attacker was exonerated, and he’s now apparently attempting to have the woman expelled.
Talk about weird science - computers are already coming up with mathematical solutions to problems that humans cannot understand. I, for one, welcome our new computer overlords, etc.
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