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April 20, 2005
You can call me Al
Do you know what must suck about becoming Pope? From what I am hearing, ascending to the papacy is much like what James A. Garfield said about becoming president: "What is there in this place that a man should ever want to get into it?"
But there is something else that has to be the pits for Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, the new Pope Benedict XVI. He has to change his name. No longer will he be known as Joseph, or as the Daily Show calls him, "Joey Rats." History will remember him forever as Pope Benedict XVI.
Obviously there is the weight of nearly two thosand years of precedent that says Ratzinger should take a new name as the Pope, but I think it's lousy. He's gone 78 years with one name, and now all of a sudden he has a new one. It's not like getting married where you have fifty years for people to get used to your new moniker.
It is, I suppose, like an actor or musician who adopts a stage name. But, an actor chooses a new name to increase marketability, as perhaps Reginald Dwight did when he picked up the name Elton John. In time, the stage name becomes his real name.
Will Benedict become Ratzinger's official name? If the Pope had a drivers' license, what would it say? Does he get a new last name, too? More interestingly, should the Pope be pulled over for speeding or maybe having only one headlight, does the cop dare to write him a ticket, and if so, who pays it?
Posted by oz115 at April 20, 2005 02:16 PM