Last week, I mentioned that the vast, massive conspiracy theories about the Catholic Church amuse me. I discussed some specific issues and theories, but I find them all funny, almost no matter the details. Why?
Dear God in Heaven, where do I start?
The theories are so ludicrous, I hardly know where to begin.
SECRET SOCIETIES
One running theme of most of the conspiracy theories is that there is a “conspiracy of silence” running around within the Vatican, the hierarchy, an order, pick one or all. This pops up in almost any fiction where a Catholic priest appears.
Given the news of the last decade, anyone should see an immediate problem. Not only does the Church of Rome write everything down, they never throw anything out. This is a bureaucracy that has held onto the divorce petition from Henry VIII of England, written in the early 16th century. We've held onto it for nearly five hundred years, and we haven't thrown it out yet.
If there were a conspiracy in the church, there will likely be paperwork to document it, and they'd hold onto it with their dying breath. Bad habit for a conspiracy.
But, the way I look at it, the Vatican is essentially the world's biggest marble office building, complete with Dilberts and the occasional pointy-haired boss … or pointy-hatted boss.
In the current day and age, any bureaucracy can keep a secret for a few years. But two thousand? Really?
