E-dict

The Pope has a website. Now, to be fair, he's not the "real" pope. He's not even a medieval-style antipope, backed by the Holy Roman Emperor in a naked power grab. He's just one man, out there on the streets, who had a dream. Now I don't know whether the Pope in Rome is web-savvy -- I doubt it -- but I do know that Pope Michael I, né David Bawden, was elected with a quorum of six, and that he has a website, and that makes him Pope in my book.

Pope Michael came to this momentous decision when he realized that the Catholic Church, and all of its so-called Holy Fathers, were tainted with Modernism. Among the charges: Pope John Paul II gave Mass to half-naked Papuans. Clearly something had to change, and an antipope was born.

Concerns about Modernism aside, I'm delighted that we finally have a pontiff who understands Web 2.0. While John McCain still can't read his e-mail, Pope Michael is pioneering bold new tithing techniques. And in his segment, "Questions for The Pope," we are invited to e-mail Pope Michael "any honest questions." Please don't abuse this invitation, guys. I don't want to be known as someone who directed a lot of spurious e-mail to the Pope.

Because this is 2008, the centerpiece of this ecclesiastical website is a blog: The Pope Speaks. I was initially pleased to learn that he calls his posts "popsts", but I think that might just be a typo. No true Pope would be that fanciful. The actual blog, I'm sorry to say, is that Catholic argot which is as hard and pointless to wade through as any encyclical or chirograph. He may be a child of the Information Age but in a lot of ways, the new Pope is the same as the old Pope.