Karol Joseph Wojtyla has left the building

God, If You Exist…
By Joseph Walther

Everyone who knows me knows that I have a wild sense of humor. Sometimes it is dry, at other times it can be sarcastic, and at other times, it can be blatantly funny. I can find humor in everything. In my case, at least, it is not that I find tragedy to be funny. I do not. On the other hand, laughter has always been a great defense mechanism that has helped me to maintain my sanity throughout my sixty two-years on this earth. While laughing in the midst of a calamity does not eliminate the calamity, it lightens the negative impact and helps me to face it and to remember not to take myself too seriously.

With this said, I am about to write this column about the greatest pope I have ever known. I intend to sprinkle humor throughout. If you are one of those humorless tightasses who feel compelled to help God run the universe, I recommend that you go back to reading your prayer books and skip this one. While I was born and raised a catholic and even entered the Catholic seminary, I have come to disagree with many of the principles espoused by the Roman Catholic Church. I will not list the reasons here. I did not even agree with many positions John Paul II took. However, with his death, I feel, for the first time in my catholic life, that I have lost a saintly friend. Humor is my way of dealing with it.

As everyone not in a coma knows, yesterday evening, Karol Joseph Wojtyla, aka Pope John Paul II, died. The time is not important. What is important is the fact that he was a good man. He was a good, kind, and caring person BEFORE the Conclave of Cardinals elected him to the Papacy. The accomplishments attributed to him during his twenty seven-year tenure as Pope are too numerous to list here and I will not even attempt it. To me, it is much more important to remember that he never compromised his principles. As the cool dudes often say, “he not only talked the talk, he also walked the walk.” His death leaves a gaping void, not only among the 1.2 billion Catholics throughout the world, but also among the other 6.3 billion members of the worldwide population.

John Paul II is the first pope that I have ever studied with any conscious degree of admiration and natural respect. This man was an inspiring and wonderful human being, not because he was “the pope”, but because of his strict adherence to a professed code of personal conduct and beliefs. He never wavered from that code. His Papacy only added worldwide recognition to the credibility of this human being who rose from the ranks of ordinariness to become the leader of the Roman Catholic Church. “Ordinariness” is what made people feel that he was “their” pope and that while he was important, he was one of us. I suspect that more people will miss him than any of the other popes of our respective lifetimes.

During my parochial school days and up through my junior year in high school, Pope Pius XII occupied the Vatican. Children and teenagers did not pay a whole lot of attention to Vatican matters back then and even less now, so I do not recall much about his tenure other than what Sister (Skull Crusher) Edwards beat into my head; that he could order me directly into Hell if I didn’t stop trying to cop a feel from Lulu Lovely. I did not really believe her, but Skull Crusher was a woman we “boys” feared a lot more than the Pope. Face it; he was an old man living an ocean’s width away. She was a nasty old lady trying to get into heaven by severely mauling hormone-crazed boys into compliance and she enjoyed her work.

Anyway, Pope John XXIII followed Pope Pius XII. Then Pope Paul VI got his turn at bat, followed by Pope John Paul I. While all of these men were good popes, I did not feel compelled to pay too much attention to what they were doing. After all, I was only 36 years old when Pope John Paul I died. My goodness, I was still thanking God for getting me out of Viet Nam without a body bag and celebrating the fact at every possible opportunity. I must confess, though, I was quite interested in the part about making it ok to eat meat on Fridays. In addition, I was thrilled beyond description when they downgraded MANY of my boyhood MORTAL sins to adult VENIAL sins. This meant that I did not have to treat a post make-out trip to the confessional as an “emergency”. Even if I had died before getting there, Purgatory was a far cry from Hell!

Wisdom is a function of age and maturity. This is especially true when a male comes to the stark realization that he is NOT going to be able to score with all of the females in the western hemisphere. And, an even starker reality sets in as males approach the mid fifties and early sixties age group. Yes, at this age, the simple horror of it all is the fact that good bowel movements begin to take precedence over, shall we say, matters of carnal interests. Viagra notwithstanding, all of you young snots out there need to understand that this is what it comes down to, eventually. However devastating as you think this is, though, there is a bright side.

First of all, as you young studs age, older females become foxes, looking much better than they did just a few years earlier in your lives AND you don’t need to drink lots of beer to recognize this. This is great news because more than two beers when you are in your sixties will take you out of commission for about a month and no amount of Viagra will help. Second, aging makes you get to the point much quicker than you did earlier in your life. There is no time to “impress” because if you do not get to the point right away, you may forget whatever the hell the point was. Third, you become a lot more philosophical about things, especially as those things pertain to sexual crises, such as early arrivals on your part, a slow starting engine on your part, and an engine that just does not start at all.

Yes, philosophy starts to become a substitute for what you can no longer do all night. Not only can you not do it all night, you do not want to do it, even once. You are just flat out too tired. You begin paying attention to previously unimportant matters such as which party controls the Congress and issues of right and wrong. When you do your yearly renewal of faith and the priest asks, “Do you renounce Satan and all he stands for”, the thought that, perhaps, now is not the ideal time to be making any enemies, is the first thing that pops into your head. You begin to realize that there is an awful lot of gray area between the extremes of “right” and “wrong”.

I receive a tremendous amount of email because of this column. More than a handful of my readers assume that I am a crotchety old atheist. Well, this is totally unfounded; I am not an atheist. I am an agnostic. This means that I have no idea if there is a God or if any remembering part of me will live beyond this life. In other words, I am not sure and I do not believe that anyone can prove such a belief, not even Pope John Paul II.

Regardless, Pope John Paul II did not lose, no matter what happened when he died. If his faith turns out to be THE reality, I am sure he got into heaven on the first ballot. Conversely, if the atheists are correct, he still won. He lived his life committed to his beliefs and died happy with who he was in life, knowing he was going to be with Jesus. He will never know that he was wrong because there will not be anyone out there to say, “gotcha, sucker!” I can think of many less desirable ways to both live and die.

Finally, if there is a God and I could interview Him, there are a few pressing questions I would love to ask.

Question number one would be:

God, why are there so many sets of rules regarding your interests? Certainly, you must know that there is a lot of killing going on down here and most of it is in your name. The Muslims are slaughtering Christians because they have different rules as to how to honor you. Both sides, of course, claim that you are on their side. Other Muslims are killing the Israelis by the thousands and vice versa. It seems that the Israelis have a set of rules that they claim came directly from you. Not only this, they are going around telling everyone that THEY are your favorites. You being God and all, I don’t have to tell you that this really upsets all of the other groups in the area because they are under the impression that you are on THEIR side. For years, Iraqi Muslims and Iranian Muslims killed each other because of a silly disagreement over the best way to recognize you. Each side, of course, claims that you are on THEIR side. Even some Muslims in that area have adopted another set of rules regarding their devotion to you. However, they don’t feel compelled to kill those with differing beliefs. Guess what, God? They are getting the crap kicked out of them. Nevertheless, you already know this.

I know you must be one busy dude. It has to be a bear running the entire universe. However, it scares the living daylights out of me to think that eventually these people are going to get their hands on some nukes. I am sure you are aware that “busy” will not begin to describe your schedule when that happens.

So, would you consider sending a message? It wouldn’t have to be sophisticated. I think that some thunder and high velocity wind plus maybe your booming, yet assertive but gentle voice proclaiming something like, “Behold, this is God. Knock off the crap. I never said anything about killing each other. Don’t make me come down there”, would do the trick. Whatever you do, don’t use an intermediary, especially the likes of Oral Roberts, Jimmy Swaggart, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, George Bush, or any of those other God Guys on television. You know the ones I mean. They are the ones with bad hairdos. You can’t miss them. They are constantly asking people to send in a “faith” pledge. I find this highly suspicious. We are supposed to make the “faith” pledge to you but we send the money to them. I can’t believe that you hand picked these people!

My second question would be:

God, it seems that you inflict an awful lot of innocent children with hideous diseases and deformities, such as AIDS and Spinal Bifida. What’s with that? Is this sort of thing necessary? I realize that some people claim that you are punishing us for something. According to Falwell and Robertson, it’s because of the gays. Others claim that you do this as a gift to us. Your folks, we call them the God Guys down here, keep telling us that you do this in order to show your love for us. Either way, couldn’t you pick on the adults? I mean, right here in the United States alone there are over 550 members of Congress, and a seemingly endless number of talk radio hosts. All of them are infinitely more deserving. Instead of letting some baby be born with Spinal Bifida, how about inflicting all radio talk show hosts with large, low-hanging, painful, bleeding and incurable hemorrhoids? For Sean Hannity, in particular, if you also wanted to let his penis fall off, I don’t think too many people would complain. I know that I wouldn’t! Would you just consider it? Thank you in advance.

Well, God, I have more questions but I know how busy you must be. Surely, it must upset you to have us constantly blaming you for everything bad that happens down here. On the other hand, a lot of “experts” tell us that all of this stuff is your will. I’m so dog gone confused!

Oh, before I forget, I'd like to ask for one more favor, God. If you exist and you have not admitted Karol Joseph Wojtyla, to your kingdom, please do so quickly. Also, if you could send us another one like him, it would be great.

Joe Walther is a freelance writer. You may contact him by clicking on CONTACT ME above or by email at Joe_Walther@comcast.net