The Pope gets an iPod

(to the tune of twentieth century fox, J. Morrison and the Doors)

He's a 21st century Pope, oh yeah!

Just be thankful the pope is not in a position to lay a fatwah on your head for such blasphemies. Now bow your head, ask his forgiveness and say ten Heil Marys!

nice to see ignorant bigotry is alive and well. Go ahead and stamp your Klan card but what you say is total paranoid bigot fantasy straight out of Deliverance. Catholic schools all over the country = wealth? You've obviously not spent much time at Catholic schools. I guess that's why so many have closed over the past 20 years. The fatcats running those schools retired on all the vast hordes of Catholic wealth. Yeah that's the ticket. With very few exceptions the schools barely get by and that is through very underpaid teachers that can make half or less of public school teachers and a admin/teach to student ration that is often less than 10% for the same number of students as in public school counterparts. Readers Digest did a story years ago comparing the Boston Public system to the Catholic system. Roughly same number of students at the time. Yet the Catholic system put out better students, higher grad rates, higher test scores etc. All this while having 3 people in the administration that did what 1250 did in the Public school system and the teachers making roughly half of what the public school teachers made. Your other comments are just as ignorant. The Vatican does not tithe the billions of Catholics all over the world. The Church is run by bishops and each bishop is the head of the local Church - the parishes under his diocese. Church donations from parishioners go to their local church and a small percentage to the local diocese. Again with very few exceptions most diocese around the world are very poor and struggling.

Wow Cynthia... remarkably ignorant.

Catholic schools don't even usually begin to charge what most public schools get funded per student. NONE of what they charge is passed on to the Vatican. How do I know? I taught history at two after college. We counted on alumni donations and annual fundraisers to keep the lights on and the paychecks from bouncing.

"In Mexico, a priest is not even allowed to go out in public anymore, not in his robes, the starving poor there keep giving the priest all the families money for food or medicine because they think a prayer from a priest means more to God than their own word." I can't tell if that comment is straight-up ignorant alone... or racist too. Never mind that it is not even true.

So the Pope has an iPod. For all his nice shoes, his BMW (anyone here wanna DRIVE a pope-mobile??) and place to live, would anyone here want that job?

Pretty impressive that the Pope even knows who Howard Stern is!!!! Go Howard!

I concur with Cynthia and Adrian. Some of us saw the humor in your post Scott. I bailed from that crap when I was 13 and figured out what a bunch of hypocrites they are..........and that was 30 years before anyone talked about their rampant pedophilia.
Interesting how the simplest thread can take on socio-political-theological arguments when people have a voice. I'm going to Vatican.com and tell them what I really think.

Dear World, The pope is just a human being like you and I. He shares in the same general emotions we all have. If he wants to have a little fun with an ipod then good for him. He has not sinned by doing so. Therefore, let him continue his good work. Pretty soon, you'll be able to download his sermons to the ipod. More $$$$ for the church.

To Cynthia Ragel: Catholics do not tithe to the Church. A tithe is 1/10 of one's income. Catholics do contribute money, of course. Catholic school education is excellent. There are 28 Jesuit universitied in the US alone, and they include Boston College and Georgetown University. Where do you get your information? Look at the stats. One small example is St. Louis University College Preparatory. Last year it produced two students with perfect scores on the ACT. Your education left you without the knowledge that "Catholic" should be capitalized when it refers to a member of the Roman Catholic Church. When used to mean universal, it is not capitalized. And yes, occasionally we Catholics do pray to God. Bob Dunn

Oh yeah, I hadda pick myself up off the floor with the Howard Stern bit.
Now if one tenth of Stern's audience would just once give a listen to Arinze, we might have something to marvel, ooh and ah at.
As far as Bach and the Pope's Germanic pedigree- do some basic research; Ratzinger's "taste" is well-documented: Mozart, Ludwig and others more associated with Vienna. I'm sure he's spent sufficient time communing (get it, get it?) with JSB but, darn it, PapaRatzi's Desert Island breakdown just ain't Baroque Lutheran. Get over it, culture mavens. All things considered, I'd be very surprised if he ever dons those ubiquitous but complimentary white earbuds even to take in Amadeus or LvB-as his Holiness's usual M.O. is to sit down at a real grand piano daily and actually perform their compositions; or he can import in any symphony at will and transport their studied booties from the airport in an armada of Beemers. I mean, he IS the POPE! Ozzy's so past tense.

Yes, the Vatican runs a deficit, except this past year when they netted around 4.3 million.

And the person who said what are they doing to help the people--plenty--if you can not tell, the pro-life movement was begun by Catholics and is funded by many Catholic people.

And anyone who will disrespect the Pope by calling him Benny, needs some help, he deserves respect, even if you do not believe in the full communion of the Catholic Church, you still should show the respect that a man in his position deserves. His Holiness Benedict XVI is a great asset to The Church and will help to begin much reform that is needed.