MEN WHO TAIL THE COD

.

 

 

MY MAN

.

A historian of early Christianity at Harvard Divinity School has identified a scrap of papyrus that she says was written in Coptic in the fourth century and contains a phrase never seen in any piece of Scripture: “Jesus said to them, ‘My wife . . .’ ”
—The Times.

Fine, now you know: Jesus was married and for many years I happily answered to the name Mrs. Melissa Christ. I met Jesus when we were both teen-agers, at a Young Hebrews mixer in Bethlehem. I was there with my best friend, Amy of Nazareth, and we were getting ready to leave, because we were sick of all those chubby Orthodox boys in rough burlap robes and untrimmed sideburns coming up to us and saying things like “I hope you’re not menstruating, because I’d really like to touch you.”

But then, across the room, I saw this beautiful guy with gorgeous flowing hair, wearing a simple white linen tunic and swaying gently to the music with his eyes shut, which was especially impressive because the band consisted of two elderly men rhythmically squeezing a goat. I couldn’t help staring, even after Amy told me, “I’ve heard about him. His name is Jesus and he doesn’t have a job.” But then Jesus opened his stunning blue eyes and gazed upon me, and I said to Amy, “I think I’ve just discovered one of the lost tribes of Israel.” “Which one?” she asked, and I said, “The blonds.”

Then Jesus came over and introduced himself and we chitchatted about everything, from keeping the Sabbath to how we both felt really sorry for the lame. Then I asked Jesus about his family, and he said, “My father is a carpenter,” and I could feel myself getting all flushed as I immediately thought, Hello, new coffee table.

After that, Jesus and I started seeing each other, although Jesus’ being unemployed did start to bother me, and finally one night I asked him, “So what are your plans?” And he replied, “Well, I’m thinking about inventing Gentiles.” “Gentiles?” I asked. “What are those?” “You know,” Jesus answered. “Jews who drink.”

Whenever Jesus would start telling me about this whole new-religion business, I would get nervous and ask, “But why isn’t the Torah enough?” And then Jesus would look deep into my eyes and smile and murmur, “First draft.” Which would make me even more nervous, until one afternoon Jesus sat me down on a rough-hewn bench and said, “All I’m talking about is everyone loving and respecting each other, and sharing the Lord’s bounty and bringing peace to the world.” And, while I was definitely intrigued, a tiny voice inside my head kept repeating, “Don’t lend him money.”

As the months went by, Jesus began to get more serious about spreading his message of compassion and understanding, and he began to attract hundreds of followers, and all I kept thinking was, Where is everyone going to sit? What if we run out of dried figs and almonds? That’s when Jesus waved his hand and, I couldn’t believe it, but there it was: an all-you-can-eat buffet. And I said to Jesus, “This is incredible, but I’m still a Jewish girl,” and so he waved his hand again and there they were: napkins.

Of course, like any couple, Jesus and I had our challenges. I didn’t like his friends, especially Judas, who kept telling people that he was Jesus’ manager, and who kept coming up with ideas like “What if everyone who comes to hear the Sermon on the Mount gets a free, crude wooden bobblehead of one of the apostles, so they’ll have to keep coming back, to collect them all?” and “What if Jesus wore his hair up?”

By this point, Jesus and I had been dating for seven years, and my friends kept saying things like “So when is Jesus going to pop the question?” and “Maybe Jesus would like you better if you were crippled” and “I bet Yimmel the Moabite is starting to look pretty good right now, even with the chronic perspiration.” At last, I got up my courage and I told Jesus, “You can either become a divine beacon of light for the entire world or you can marry me and start thinking about moving out of your parents’ manger.” For a second, Jesus looked dejected, but then he glowed even brighter and he took my hand and declared, “We can have it all! I want you to become my wife!” Which made me even bolder, and I asked, “But what about Mary Magdalene?” And Jesus said, “That was the old me.”

We were married in a simple, private ceremony in the desert, by a rabbi and someone whom Jesus called a Baptist minister. Right before the vows, the rabbi whispered to me, “Think about what you’re doing. Your children will be half Christian.” Which was when the minister whispered, “So what? College isn’t for everyone.”

But at our reception, at a lovely oasis, Jesus won over my family completely, when he healed my cousin Barry of Galilee, who’d been wracked with boils his entire life, although even after Barry was instantly cured my Aunt Ruth commented, “He also has lice.”

For the next few years, I accompanied Jesus as he travelled from village to village, spreading the word of God to all who would listen. I’d tell myself, “Let him get it out of his system.” Everything came to a head one night at a dinner party at a local inn. All of the apostles had gathered, and I was trying out a new recipe for unleavened cupcakes. “These are delicious,” Judas said, which made me suspicious, because, frankly, have you ever tasted an unleavened cupcake? Then Jesus announced that someone at the party would betray him, and I stood right behind Judas and I kept pointing and mouthing the words “It’s him! Wake up!” But Jesus told me privately that he suspected Luke, and, when I asked him why, Jesus said, “Because when I told him about my turn-the-other-cheek idea Luke said, ‘But wouldn’t it be stronger if you said, “Turn the other cheek, bitch?” ’ ”

Then, of course, everything went to pieces and terrible things happened, and when I was finally allowed to visit Jesus in prison I begged him to abandon his beliefs and to save his own life. But he wouldn’t do it, because that’s not who he was. “I love you so much,” I told him, “but I guess you always have to be right about everything.”

A few days after Jesus passed away, I was sitting in our hut, crying my eyes out, when the door swung open and, bingo, there he was. Of course, my first thought was, Hold on, maybe he had a twin brother. But then he kissed me and said, “No, it’s really me, and I’m dead and I’m back, but only for the day.” And I just felt so angry and hurt and confused about everything that had happened that I pounded on his chest and I howled, “JESUS CHRIST, WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?”

Then, after he left for good, I discovered that Mark and Matthew and the rest of them had been jealous of my marriage, so I was erased from the earliest Gospels, which were called Just Jesus, Bachelor Messiah, and Duderonomy. And, as for that scrap of papyrus, it was actually one of Jesus’ notecards, from his early days doing standup, as an opening act for Little Esther and the Purim Posse, and Avram and Roy. The phrase “Jesus said to them, ‘My wife . . .’ ” was the setup for a joke, which continued, on the next card, “is so fat . . .,” and you can imagine the rest. 

.

VÃO-SE FODER

Na adolescência usamos vernáculo porque é “fixe”. Depois deixamo-nos disso. Aos 32 sinto-me novamente no direito de usar vernáculo, quando realmente me apetece e neste momento apetece-me dizer: Vão-se foder!
Trabalho há 11 anos. Sempre por conta de outrem. Comecei numa micro empresa portuguesa e mudei-me para um gigante multinacional.

Acreditei, desde sempre, que fruto do meu trabalho, esforço, dedicação e também, quando necessário, resistência à frustração alcançaria os meus objectivos. E, pasme-se, foi verdade. Aos 32 anos trabalho na minha área de formação, feliz com o que faço e com um ordenado superior à média do que será o das pessoas da minha idade.
Por isso explico já, o que vou escrever tem pouco (mas tem alguma coisa) a ver comigo. Vivo bem, não sou rica. Os meus subsídios de férias e Natal servem exactamente para isso: para ir de férias e para comprar prendas de Natal. Janto fora, passo fins-de-semana com amigos, dou-me a pequenos luxos aqui e ali. Mas faço as minhas contas, controlo o meu orçamento, não faço tudo o que quero e sempre fui educada a poupar.
Vivo, com a satisfação de poder aproveitar o lado bom da vida fruto do meu trabalho e de um ordenado que batalhei para ter.
Sou uma pessoa de muitas convicções, às vezes até caio nalgumas antagónicas que nem eu sei resolver muito bem. Convivo com simpatia com IDEIAS que vão da esquerda à direita. Posso “bater palmas” ao do CDS, como posso estar no dia seguinte a fazer uma vénia a comunistas num tema diferente, mas como sou pouco dada a extremismos sempre fui votando ao centro. Mas de IDEIAS senhores, estamos todos fartos. O que nós queríamos mesmo era ACÇÕES, e sobre as acções que tenho visto só tenho uma coisa a dizer: vão-se foder. Todos. De uma ponta à outra.
Desde que este pequeno, mas maravilhoso país se descobriu de corda na garganta com dívidas para a vida nunca me insurgi. Ouvi, informei-me aqui e ali. Percebi. Nunca fui a uma manifestação. Levaram-me metade do subsídio de Natal e eu não me queixei. Perante amigos e família mais indignados fiz o papel de corno conformado: “tem que ser”, “todos temos que ajudar”, “vamos levar este país para a frente”. Cheguei a considerar que certas greves eram uma verdadeira afronta a um país que precisava era de suor e esforço. Sim, eu era assim antes de 6ª feira. Agora, hoje, só tenho uma coisa para vos dizer: Vão-se foder.
Matam-nos a esperança.
Onde é que estão os cortes na despesa? Porque é que o 1º Ministro nunca perdeu 30 minutos da sua vida, antes de um jogo de futebol, para nos vir explicar como é que anda a cortar nas gorduras do estado? O que é que vai fazer sobre funcionários de certas empresas que recebem subsídios diários por aparecerem no trabalho (vulgo subsídios de assiduidade)?… É permitido rir neste parte. Em quanto é que andou a cortar nos subsídios para fundações de carácter mais do que duvidoso, especialmente com a crise que atravessa o país? Quando é que param de mamar grandes empresas à conta de PPP’s que até ao mais distraído do cidadão não passam despercebidas? Quando é que acaba com regalias insultosas para uma cambada de deputados, eleitos pelo povo crédulo, que vão sentar os seus reais rabos (quando lá aparecem) para vomitar demagogias em que já ninguém acredita?
Perdoem-me a chantagem emocional senhores ministros, assessores, secretários e demais personagem eleitos ou boys desta vida, mas os pneus dos vossos BMW’s davam para alimentar as crianças do nosso país (que ainda não é em África) que chegam hoje em dia à escola sem um pedaço de pão de bucho. Por isso, se o tempo é de crise, comecem a andar de Opel Corsa, porque eu que trabalho há 11 anos e acho que crédito é coisa de ricos, ainda não passei dessa fasquia.
E para terminar, um “par” de considerações sobre o vosso anúncio de 6ª feira.
Estou na dúvida se o fizeram por real lata ou por um desconhecimento profundo do país que governam.
Aumenta-me em mais de 60% a minha contribuição para a segurança social, não é? No meu caso isso equivale a subsídio e meio e não “a um subsídio”. Esse dinheiro vai para onde que ninguém me explicou? Para a puta de uma reforma que eu nunca vou receber? Ou para pagar o salário dos administradores da CGD?
Baixam a TSU das empresas. Clap, clap, clap… Uma vénia!
Vocês, que sentam o já acima mencionado real rabo nesses gabinetes, sabem o que se passa no neste país? Mas acham que as empresas estão a crescer e desesperadas por dinheiro para criar postos de trabalho? A sério? Vão-se foder.
As pequenas empresas vão poder respirar com essa medida. E não despedir mais um ou dois.
As grandes, as dos milhões? Essas vão agarrar no relatório e contas pôr lá um proveito inesperado e distribuir mais dividendos aos accionistas. Ou no vosso mundo as empresas privadas são a Santa Casa da Misericórdia e vão já já a correr criar postos de trabalho só porque o Estado considera a actual taxa de desemprego um flagelo? Que o é.
A sério… Em que país vivem? Vão-se foder.
Mas querem o benefício da dúvida? Eu dou-vos:
1º Provem-me que os meus 7% vão para a minha reforma. Se quiserem até o guardo eu no meu PPR.
2º Criem quotas para novos postos de trabalho que as empresas vão criar com esta medida. E olhem, até vos dou esta ideia de graça: as empresas que não cumprirem tem que devolver os mais de 5% que vai poupar. Vai ser uma belo negócio para o Estado… Digo-vos eu que estou no mundo real de onde vocês parecem, infelizmente, tão longe.
Termino dizendo que me sinto pela primeira vez profundamente triste. Por isso vos digo que até a mim, resistente, realista, lutadora, compreensiva… Até a mim me mataram a esperança.
Talvez me vá embora. Talvez pondere com imensa pena e uma enorme dor no coração deixar para trás o país onde tanto gosto de viver, o trabalho que tanto gosto de fazer, a família que amo, os amigos que me acompanham, onde pensava brevemente ter filhos, mas olhem… Contas feitas, aqui neste t2 onde vivemos, levaram-nos o dinheiro de um infantário.
Talvez vá. E levo comigo os meus impostos e uma pena imensa por quem tem que cá ficar.
Por isso, do alto dos meus 32 anos digo: Vão-se foder"

 ..

PAGAR E NÃO BUFAR

.

Contribuinte - Gostava de comprar um carro.

Estado - Muito bem. Faça o favor de escolher.

Contribuinte - Já escolhi. Além do preço, tenho que pagar alguma coisa mais?

Estado - Sim. Imposto sobre Automóveis (ISV) e Imposto sobre o Valor Acrescentado (IVA)  

Contribuinte - Ah... Só isso.

Estado - ... e uma "coisinha" para o pôr a circular. O selo.

Contribuinte - Ah!...

  

Estado - ... e mais uma coisinha na gasolina necessária para que o carro efectivamente circule. O ISP.

Contribuinte - Mas... sem gasolina eu não circulo.

Estado - Eu sei.

Contribuinte - ... Mas eu já pago para circular...

Estado - Claro!...

Contribuinte - Então... vai cobrar-me pelo valor da gasolina?

Estado - Também. Mas isso é o IVA. O ISP é outra coisa diferente.  

Contribuinte - Diferente?!

Estado - Muito. O ISP é porque a gasolina existe.

Contribuinte - ... Porque existe?!

Estado - Há muitos milhões de anos os dinossauros e o carvão fizeram petróleo.. E você paga.

Contribuinte - ... Só isso?

Estado - Só. Mas não julgue que pode deixar o carro assim como quer.

Contribuinte - Como assim?!

Estado - Tem que pagar para o estacionar.

Contribuinte - ... Para o estacionar?

Estado - Exacto.

Contribuinte - Portanto, pago para andar e pago para estar parado?

Estado - Não. Se quiser mesmo andar com o carro precisa de pagar seguro.

Contribuinte - Então pago para circular, pago para conseguir circular e pago por estar parado.

Estado - Sim. Nós não estamos aqui para enganar ninguém. O carro é novo?

Contribuinte - Novo?

Estado - É que se não for novo tem que pagar para vermos se ele está em condições de andar por aí.

Contribuinte - Pago para você ver se pode cobrar?

Estado - Claro. Acha que isso é de borla? Só há mais uma coisinha...

Contribuinte - ...Mais uma coisinha?

Estado - Para circular em auto-estradas

Contribuinte - Mas... mas eu já pago imposto de circulação.

Estado - Pois. Mas esta é uma circulação diferente.

Contribuinte - ... Diferente?

Estado - Sim. Muito diferente. É só para quem quiser.

Contribuinte - Só mais isso?

Estado - Sim. Só mais isso.

Contribuinte - E acabou?

Estado - Sim. Depois de pagar os 25 euros, acabou.

Contribuinte - Quais 25 euros?!

Estado - Os 25 euros que custa pagar para andar nas auto-estradas.

Contribuinte - Mas não disse que as auto-estradas eram só para quem quisesse?

Estado - Sim. Mas todos pagam os 25 euros.

Contribuinte - Quais 25 euros?

Estado - Os 25 euros é quanto custa o chip...

Contribuinte - ... Custa o quê?

  

Estado - Pagar o chip. Para poder pagar.

Contribuinte - Não percebo ...

  

Estado - Sim. Pagar custa 25 euros.

Contribuinte - Pagar custa 25 euros?

Estado - Sim. Paga 25 euros para pagar.

Contribuinte - Mas eu não vou circular nas auto-estradas.

Estado - Imagine que um dia quer...tem que pagar.

Contribuinte - Tenho que pagar para pagar porque um dia posso querer?

Estado - Exactamente... Você paga para pagar o que um dia pode querer.

Contribuinte - E se eu não quiser?

Estado - Paga multa.

.

THE BIOLOGICAL-DIGITAL CONVERTER, OR, BIOLOGY AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT

J. CRAIG VENTER

These are exciting and challenging times for science and society. If you look at the practical side of things, in the next 11 years we're going to add a billion people to the planet, so basically the equivalent of China being added in 11 years, and 12 years after that we're going to add another billion people. Last October we just passed the 7 billion mark, and that took 12 years to happen from 6 billion. In the 1800s it took well over 100 years to go from 1 to 2 billion people. We're in a unique time in history where there are more people alive than have ever existed in human history, and we keep expanding tremendously, and exhausting the resources of the planet.

There are a number of things that come into play here. We've been doing everything from trying to understand the human genome, and human genetic inheritance, and we have teams that are doing some of the first genomes of early populations in Africa and have traced down actually the oldest populations in Southern Africa that we all have evolved from, from groups that migrated out of Africa. It turns out I have a Northern European ancestry primarily, and so we probably all share this. My ancestors, and probably most of yours found Neanderthals attractive and mated with them. And so what was thought to not be any coexistence, we now ... 3 to 4 percent of my genome is Neanderthal-derived. My friend, Bill Clinton, when we shared an honor a couple of years ago, told me he learned that he was 3 percent Neanderthal, and that explained all his problems while in office.

We're learning about our own history, our own migrations, but we have to do something different for the future. A major producer once argued that we have two hopes for humanity, one is to be able to populate distant planets, and the other is to alter our genetic code so we can survive in a very deteriorated environment here on the planet.

We're working on both, and there are some exciting changes. Science is changing things very quickly. Think about how the Internet has changed all of our lives in the last decade or so. I assume most people here have an iPad, and that's three years old, barely? And it's hard to imagine life without an iPad in our culture. But very soon we're going to be able to send something else across the Internet. We can now send biology at the speed of light, and this is one of the implications of our work, which we recorded two years ago making the first synthetic life form. We completely synthesized the genetic code of a cell starting with a digital code in the computer—it's the ultimate interface between computers and biology. The digital code and the genetic code have a lot in common; something Schrodinger pointed out in 1943, saying it could be something as simple as the Morse code.

Digital code, as you know, is a binary code, and ones and zeroes, and your genetic code is literally four-base code with ACGs and Ts. We can now readily convert in between the two, and we can define life at its most basic level. Things that were a mystery fifty, sixty, seventy years ago, we now understand completely.

We know what a cell is, know that all the components, all the proteins in the cell are miniature robots. They don't have a brain, they don't have a soul, they have a structure that defines their function, and their structure is determined by the genetic code, which defines the linear code of the protein, which determines how it folds, how it functions, and how stable it is. You don't feel it sitting there, but every one of your 100 trillion cells is rapidly metabolizing proteins. Your proteins have a half-life between a few seconds and ten or twenty hours. You don't know that you're sloughing 500 billion skin cells a day. All that dust you find around your houses, in your apartments? That's you, little bits of you. You turn over your entire skin every two to three weeks. Biology is a constant state of renewal, and it's a software-driven state of renewal. Take the DNA out of the cell, and the cell dies. In fact, that's why radiation kills people. It disrupts the genetic code, breaks it up, and people die because all the proteins degrade very quickly.

But imagine if you could e-mail yourself to Mars or some distant planet. We can actually do that now, because with our synthetic cell, we start with the digital code in the computer, and there's no difference between digital code and genetic code. Because digital code can move as an electromagnetic wave, basically close to the speed of light, we can now move biology at the speed of light. This has some practical applications.

The recent movie Contagion portrayed how everybody died from flu pandemic, while awaiting the vaccine. Real life is much better than science fiction. We can now make a new flu vaccine in less than twelve hours using synthetic DNA. Instead of having to deal with a major pandemic where you can't travel out of your home or your city, imagine that you had a little box next to your computer, and you got an e-mail, and that gave you a chance to actually make a vaccine instantly, sort of like 3D printers. What we do with information now, we will be doing with information and biology together.

Obviously the downside is you could instead of giving your partner a genetic disease or an infection, you can e-mail it. So people could use this to do harm, as we see with computer viruses all the time. You would, of course, want good computer and biological virus protection on your DNA decoder.

Many of us know the space, electric car, and solar energy inventor and entrepreneur Elon Musk, whose rockets are doing extremely well. Based on this success, within a decade we're likely going to see attempts to colonize the moon. Elon wants to colonize Mars. Depending on how close moon and Mars are to each other, it takes between four minutes and twenty-one minutes for an electromagnetic wave, for light, to go from Earth to Mars. But imagine you're on a colony on Mars, and you want a new cell that produces food, or fuel, or some medicine, or a vaccine, you can just e-mail that and convert it back into biology.

The idea that you're basically a DNA-driven software device is not the view that people necessarily have of themselves. But every cell on this planet works that way in a biological-to-mechanical kind of fashion. No brain controlling what happens with DNA reading and protein synthesis in your cells. The combination of one hundred trillion cells gives different people different abilities to make wonderful music, to make science advances, to think, but every one of those cells operates in the same fashion. And that means we will be able to decode how the brain functions by understanding these same mechanisms. There's no need to evoke mysticism or a higher being. That's what Schrodinger did seventy years ago. He couldn't explain things, so he did what people do when they can't explain something. He evokes mysticism. But science is getting very advanced with regard our understanding life. We know what it is, and we now know how to reproduce it. We produce life by writing new software.

Our announcement made eighteen months ago, was one of the few science announcements that received an immediate response from the President and the Pope. The President asked his Bioethics Commission to start looking at this development as their number one issue, and the Vatican released a statement that all we did was change one of the engines of life. They said it could lead to some important advances, but it wasn't creating life itself.

But DNA is not the engine of life, it's the software of life; the proteins are the engines, they're driven directly by that code in a very understandable, predictable fashion now. This has implications in many different areas.

We have teams trying to work on new sources of food, actually designing new food in the computer. It may be awhile before they taste as wonderful as some of the food we had tonight, but we can actually design foods that have very high nutritional components to them, and we're learning a lot as a society about food chemistry. The Olympics are about to hit London. Many of the Olympic athletes have special physicians and nutritionists. They're giving them certain types of proteins. These Olympic trainers can actually sculpt people's bodies in very specific fashions, depending on which muscle groups they want it to go.

We are chemical beings, and we're software-driven beings, and once you understand that, then you can write new software. Anything becomes possible. We're trying to design cells to make new sources of energy, recycling carbon dioxide, getting these same cells to maybe use their recycled CO2 to make food, as well as fuel. It was an exciting change at least at a stage when we're exhausting our existing natural resources, and unless we can just stop population expansion, we have to do something pretty drastic in new sources of food, fuel, water and medicine.

It's an exciting time for science, it's an exciting time for society, but I'm sure there are a lot of strange thoughts running through your minds about the implications of some of this and where it might take us. We were tossing around ideas earlier. We're trying to make meat just by making beef and chicken muscle proteins without the cow and the chicken. And so I was calling it "motherless meat". And then Brian Eno came up with the line that it was "murderless" meat.

Those of you who are vegetarians are going to have real dilemmas in the future of not knowing what's meat and what's vegetable, because in fact, we can grow these meat proteins in vegetables. In fact, vegetables have most of the same proteins that are in meat anyway. Our definitions of life are getting clearer; the social ambiguities are getting greater.

.

O HUMOR NÃO NEGRO DE BASHAR AL-ASSAD

Let's face it. English is a stupid language.
There is no egg in the eggplant,

No ham in the hamburger
And neither pine nor apple in the pineapple.
English muffins were not invented in England.

We sometimes take English for granted,
But if we examine its paradoxes we find that
Quicksand takes you down slowly
Boxing rings are square
And a guinea pig is nighther from Guinea nor is it aa pig.

If writers write, how come fingers don't fing?
If the plural of tooth is teeth
Shouldn't the plural of phone booth be phone beeth?
If the teacher taught,
Why didn't the preacher praught?
If a vegetarian eats vegetables
What the heck does a humanitarian eat?

Why do people recite at a play
Yet play at a recital?
Park on driveways,
And drive on parkways?
How can the weather be as hot as hell on one day,
And cold as hell on another?

You have to marvel at the unique lunacy
Of a language where a house can burn up as
It burns down.
And in which you fill IN a form
By filling it OUT.
And a bell is only heard once it GOES!

English was invented by people, not computers
And it reflects the creativity of the human race
(Which of course isn't a race at all)
That is why when the stars are out they are visible
But when the lights are out they are invisible.
And why is it that when I wind up my watch, it starts,
But when I wind up this poem,
It ends!!!!

.

THE FINAL BATTLES OF POPE BENEDICT XVI

By Fiona Ehlers, Alexander Smoltczyk and Peter Wensierski

The mood at the Vatican is apocalyptic. Pope Benedict XVI seems tired, and both unable and unwilling to seize the reins amid fierce infighting and scandal. While Vatican insiders jockey for power and speculate on his successor, Joseph Ratzinger has withdrawn to focus on his still-ambiguous legacy.

.

Finally, there is clarity. The Holy See has cleared things up and made the document accessible to all: a handout on checking whether apparitions of the Virgin Mary are authentic.

Everything will be much easier from now on. The Roman Catholic Church has taken a step forward.

This "breaking news" from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) reveals the kinds of issues the Vatican is concerned with -- and the kind of world in which some there live. It's a world in which the official Church investigation of Virgin Mary sightings is carefully regulated while cardinals in the Roman Curia, the Vatican's administrative and judicial apparatus, wield power with absolutely no checks and the pope's private correspondence turns up in the desk drawers of a butler.

It's a completely different apparition of the Virgin Mary that has pulled the Vatican and the Catholic Church into a new crisis, whose end and impact can only be surmised: the appearance of a source in the heart of the Church, a conspiracy against the pope and a leak code-named "Maria."

Since the end of May, the pope's former butler, Paolo Gabriele, has been detained in a 35-square-meter (377-square-foot) cell at the Vatican, with a window but no TV. Using the code name "Maria," he allegedly smuggled faxes and letters out of the pope's private quarters. But it remains unclear who was directing him to do so.

Even with Gabriele's arrest, the leak still hasn't been plugged. More documents were released to the public last week, documents intended primarily to damage two close associates of Pope Benedict XVI: his private secretary, Georg Gänswein, and Cardinal Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican's top administrator. According to one document, "hundreds" of other secret documents would be published if Gänswein and Bertone weren't "kicked out of the Vatican." "This is blackmail," says Vatican expert Marco Politi. "It's like threatening total war."

A House in Disarray

Fear is running rampant in the Curia, where the mood has rarely been this miserable. It's as if someone had poked a stick into a beehive. Men wearing purple robes are rushing around, hectically monitoring correspondence. No one trusts anyone anymore, and some even hesitate to communicate by phone.

It all began in the accursed seventh year of the papacy of Benedict XVI, with striking parallels to the latter part of Pope John Paul II's papacy. The same complaints about poor leadership and internal divisions are being aired outside the Vatican's walls, while the pope himself seems exhausted and no longer able to exert his power.

Joseph Ratzinger turned 85 in April. This makes him the oldest pope in 109 years, and one of the few popes who have exercised what Benedict has called this "enormous" office at such an advanced age.

Of course, he is still enviably fit, both mentally and physically, especially compared to his predecessor in his later years. But speaking has become unmistakably more difficult for Benedict than at the beginning of his papacy, and it's hard to miss that his movements have become stiff and cautious.

He recently told a visitor that his old piano hardly gets any use anymore. Playing it requires practice, he added, but he doesn't have any time for that. He prefers to continue working on the last part of his series on Jesus, which he wants to finish before dying.

A Ship with No Captain

These days, it isn't difficult to find clerics at the Vatican who are willing to talk, provided their identities remain anonymous.

The monsignor who finds his way to a restaurant near Piazza Santa Maria in Rome's Trastevere neighborhood one evening worked closely with Ratzinger in the CDF for years. But even before the waiter arrives with water and wine, the monsignor delivers his verdict on Ratzinger's papacy: "The pope doesn't fully exercise his office!" In his view, instead of having things under control, they control him.

The pope isn't interested in daily affairs at the Vatican, says the anonymous monsignor. Still, this is not exactly unprecedented, as his predecessor also neglected the Curia. While the Polish pope spent a lot of time traveling, his German successor is apparently happiest while poring over books and writing speeches. "He simply isn't taking matters into his own hands," the monsignor says. In essence, he adds, the pope faces a different power in Rome -- and one he hasn't take command of.

Although the Vatican is Catholic, it's also two-thirds Italian. In the end, says the monsignor, the Vatican's employees and administration don't care who among their ranks leads the Church. Even for someone who has been living there for decades, the monsignor says, "the Vatican is a ball of wool that's almost impossible to untangle -- not even by a pope."

When John Paul II died in April 2005, the Curia was in terrible shape. Events and personnel decisions had been postponed during his last few years, in which he was often ill. The new pope was expected to finally clear off the desks and give the Curia a fresh start.

But, for the most part, such reforms haven't materialized. Priests still hold all key positions, including those on the Council for the Laity and the Council for the Family. The only woman in a senior position, Briton Lesley-Anne Knight, was driven out of office as secretary-general of the Catholic development agency Caritas Internationalis in 2011 for having openly opposed the Church's male-dominated hierarchy.

Fractured and Ferocious

A "reform of the Curia" is probably a contradiction in terms. Its hierarchical, essentially medieval organizational model is incompatible with modern management. The Vatican is an anachronistic, albeit surprisingly tenacious system, in which pecking orders and an absurd penchant for secrecy and intrigue prevail. "The only important thing is proximity to the monarch," says a member of a cardinal's staff. Rome works like an absolutist court, one in which decisions are made by people whispering things into the others' ears rather than by committees. "There are many vain people here, people in sharp competition with one another," the staff member adds.

Who spoke with whom, and for how long? What did they talk about? Who attends early Mass with whom, and who invites whom to dinner? Who's in and who's out? Who belongs and who doesn't, and who's coming into favor and who's falling out of it? "This mood fosters feelings of exclusion, discrimination, envy, revenge and resentment," the monsignor says. And all things have now appeared in the so-called Vatileaks documents.

Papal secretary Gänswein, in particular, has made many enemies. As the pope's gatekeeper, he has influence over who is granted or denied the pontiff's favor as well as over which events and issues might command his attention. This power can trigger fear, jealousy and derision in the corridors of the Apostolic Palace, the pope's official residence. For Gänswein, it seemed almost miraculous that he was able to spend an entire evening relaxing and conversing with German clerics at the Vatican's embassy in Berlin last September. It was an experience he couldn't have had in Rome.

The Vatican is disintegrating into dozens of competing interest groups. In the past, it was the Jesuits, the Benedictines, the Franciscans and other orders that competed for respect and sway within the Vatican court. But their influence has waned, and they have now been replaced primarily by the so-called "new clerical communities" that bring the large, cheering crowds to Masses celebrated by the pope: the Neocatechumenate, the Legionaries of Christ and the traditionalists of the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) and the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter -- not to mention the worldwide "santa mafia" of Opus Dei.

They all have their open and clandestine agents in and around the Vatican, and they all own real estate and run universities, institutes and other educational facilities in Rome. Various cardinals and bishops champion their interests at the Vatican, often without an official or recognizable mandate. At the Vatican, everyone is against everyone, and everyone feels they have God on their side.

Perhaps Benedict XVI simply knows the Vatican too well to seriously attempt to reform it. "As pope, this veteran curial insider has turned out to have virtually zero interest in actually running the Roman Curia," writes John L. Allen, a biographer of the pope.

Losers in the Battle for Reform

The current scandal unfolded against this backdrop. The revelations about the secret Vatican documents -- dubbed "Vatileaks" by none other than papal spokesman Padre Federico Lombardi -- first emerged more than four months ago. They suggest a Vatican mired in corruption and character-assassination campaigns, a plot that seems hardly limited to a butler's alleged act of theft.

The central figure is Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, whom the pope instructed in July 2009 to clean up at the Vatican administration. The overzealous lawyer imposed cutbacks in various areas, including construction contracts, real estate and management of the Vatican Gardens. In a letter to Bertone, he wrote that he had turned a Vatican budget deficit of €7.8 million ($9.8 million) into a surplus of €34.5 million within a year by putting an end to old boys' networks that "always awarded contracts to the same companies" -- at double the prices customarily paid outside the Vatican. Viganò made himself unpopular with his fight against waste and abuse of office.

He was maneuvered out of his position after only 27 months and, since October, he has been the Vatican's ambassador to the United States in Washington, far away from the Vatican. He has perceived his transfer as a punishment. In a letter of protest to the pope, he painted a blunt picture of the Curia: "The realm is fragmented into many small feudal states, with everyone fighting against everyone else." The conditions, he wrote, are "disastrous" and, even worse, are "well-known" to the entire Curia.

The Vatileaks scandal has also brought to light the reasons behind the sacking of another senior official. Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, head of the Vatican bank until shortly before Pentecost, was apparently shown the door because he was trying to bring more transparency to the scandal-ridden institution. His goal was to make the bank -- where Mafia godfathers once deposited their money for safekeeping -- eligible for the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development's (OECD) "white list" of supposedly clean organizations. Tedeschi wanted the Vatican to finally disclose transactions that satisfied international standards on combating money laundering. He failed.

Observers believe that the banker's case is the real core of the scandal, a power struggle over control of the Vatican's finances. This most likely explains why Tedeschi was so vigorously ousted. The bank's board of directors issued absurd justifications for his expulsion, saying that Tedeschi, a professor of business ethics, was unpredictable and had drawn attention to himself through his absences.

In any case, it's clear that Tedeschi has lost out in a struggle against Bertone. It apparently displeased the pope's second-in-command that new guidelines could make a cut in the Vatican's assets.

An Old Guard Ignored

It would be overly simplistic to interpret all of this as merely a conflict between reformers and traditionalists. In reality, it's about the Church's sclerosis, and a problem that has a name: Benedict XVI.

The Vatican's old guard, made up of Italian cardinals and their backers, believed that they had found a transitional pope in Ratzinger. But now the transition is in its eighth year, and the Curia is roughly where it was near the end of the previous pope's life: There's no one in sight to firmly assume the helm.

Benedict XVI surrounds himself with individuals he's known for a long time, and he's given them considerable power. When he appointed Bertone to his senior office, the pope bypassed the usual pecking order of the cliques. He and Gänswein, known in Rome as the "Black Forest Adonis" on account of his southwestern-German origins, have become too powerful and independent for many cardinals in the Curia. Bertone and Gänswein were the primary targets of the attack code-named "Maria."

Cardinals from Italy's provinces have noticed that their access to the Holy See is slipping away. Although Bertone is Italian, he prefers his fellow members of the Salesian order, elevating them to key positions and nominating them as cardinals. In addition, the 77-year-old Bertone is seen as a poor manager and awkward diplomat. In the summer of 2009, a delegation of cardinals reportedly asked the pope to replace him.

But the head of the Vatican administration can hardly be the only target of the "Maria" attacks. The reason for this is that it's highly likely that he would only have remained in office for another six months in any case so as to clear the position for a successor. No, "Maria" is aiming higher than Bertone.

Uncomfortable in Office

The Catholic Church has a leadership problem at the center of its baroque court. The leaked documents ultimately harm Benedict himself, and the scandal is also fundamentally detrimental to the papacy itself. With each additional day of speculation over the true masterminds behind the plot, there is a growing impression of a difficult papacy and a weakened pope who is no longer calling the shots.

For a long time, Ratzinger himself could hardly believe he was suddenly the leader of all Catholics. More than a month after his election, on May 24, 2005, he paid another visit to the place in the Vatican where so many things had begun for him: the seminary in the Campo Santo Teutonico, a green island in the cramped papal state, directly adjacent to the sacristy of St. Peter's Basilica.

He had lived here during the Church's sweeping modernization effort known as Vatican II and, in 1982, he returned to Rome from Munich, staying "in a room with only the bare necessities around me so that I could make a fresh start."

Ratzinger remained loyal to the seminary community until he was elected pope. For decades, he celebrated Mass at 7 a.m. there every Thursday, and he often ate with students in the dining room, had discussions with them and attended the Christmas party in the fireplace room. It was a place to which he could seek refuge from his duties as head of the CDF, a kind of adopted family.

He hasn't been to the seminary since his last visit, in late May 2005, which lasted over an hour. In parting, Ratzinger signed the guestbook. He wrote "Benedict XVI" and then, leaving a small space, scribbled "pope." At first he wrote it with a lower-case p, but then he changed it to an upper-case one.

None of his predecessors had ever signed anything like that -- and Benedict himself would never do it again. It was almost as if he had to tell himself: My God, I'm the pope!

Ratzinger felt uncomfortable with the power he had assumed, which is one reason he has declined to comprehensively reform the system. He has preferred to place his trust in his underlings.

A Need for Family

Benedict doesn't need the Vatican; he needs a small family. Family is sacred to him, and it's something he has always sought throughout his life. The only surviving member of his family is his older brother, Georg. His father, Joseph, died in 1959 and his mother, Maria, in 1963. His sister, Maria, ran his household for about 30 years, even in Rome, until her death in 1991. When she died, he wrote in his memoirs: "The world became a little emptier for me."

For Ratzinger, all of these issues remain unresolved. At the World Meeting of Families held in Milan in early June, he responded to questions about family in an ad hoc and unscripted manner. "Hi, pope," a 7-year-old girl said to him. "I am Cat Tien. I come from Vietnam. I would really like to know something about your family and when you were little like me." The 85-year-old Benedict replied: "To tell the truth, if I try to imagine a little how paradise will be, I think always of the time of my youth, of my childhood. In this context of confidence, of joy and love, we were happy, and I think that paradise must be something like how it was in my youth."

Ratzinger has repeatedly tried to foster this "environment of trust," but it has repeatedly been damaged. When Ratzinger moved into the papal apartments in 2005, he suddenly had to go without a longtime confidante. Ingrid Stampa, the housekeeper who had succeeded his sister, was not permitted to join Ratzinger in his new quarters. She had been disgraced in the Vatican for having once pointed at St. Peter's Square from the window of the pope's apartment and waved to the crowd -- an unforgivable faux pas.

Instead, four lay sisters with the Memores Domini association -- Loredana, Cristina, Manuela and Carmela -- became his new housekeepers. They looked after him for five years, attended his prayers every morning, celebrated Christmas and saints' days with him, and ate their meals with him.

Then one of them, Manuela Camagni, was killed in a traffic accident in 2010. The pope was shaken. He knelt before her coffin, delivered a eulogy and spoke of the "unforgettable family-like moments" he had enjoyed with her.

With the betrayal of his butler, who had been at his side around the clock, the small world of Joseph Ratzinger has once again been thrown out of joint.

The Elusive 'Benedict Effect'

When compared with expectations, the results of Benedict XVI's seven years as pope have been rather modest. The German pope will not be remembered much for his avowed fight to preserve the unity of the Church. Instead, he will be remembered as a victim of circumstances and of fragmented, competing factions, as a pontiff plagued by scandals, mistakes and gaffes. He even built walls back up that seemed to have been worn down long ago. His papacy has consisted of years of ongoing apologies and alleged or actual misunderstandings.

He has annoyed the Protestants by declaring that denominations other than his own are not true churches. He has alienated Muslims with an inept speech in the Bavarian city of Regensburg. And he has insulted Jews by reinserting a prayer for the conversion of the Jews into the Good Friday liturgy.

He has also snubbed the Church by currying favor with the traditionalists of the Society of St. Pius X, which rejects the Vatican II reforms. The current backlog of Church reforms, which had already started piling up under his conservative predecessor, John Paul II, has only gotten bigger under Benedict. The Catholics' Day held in May in the southwestern German city of Mannheim, with its 80,000 attendees, was a last cry for change in the Church.

The fact that the pope is German has not had a lasting effect on Germans. When he was newly elected, the German media spoke of a "Benedict effect," of how having a German pope would positively influence conversion and retention rates in Germany. But, if it ever really existed, this effect quickly dissipated. Since Benedict's election in 2005, the number of people leaving the Catholic Church in Germany has more than doubled, and it's been the highest most recently in Ratzinger's former Archdiocese of Munich and Freising. Only 30 percent of Germans are still Catholic today.

The claim, often made by enthusiastic Catholics on German talk shows -- that all of this is a German or European problem and nothing but sour grapes, and that the Church is more successful elsewhere -- isn't even true in deeply Catholic Latin America, where the number of Catholics has been sharply declining. Evangelical Christians, on the other hand, are multiplying there like the loaves and fishes in Canaan.

Stymied by Vatican Insiders

Ratzinger has only been able to make it through those seven years by making sure he has small escapes. In addition to his everyday duties, he has written books and encyclicals on Christian love ("Deus Caritas Est") and on hope ("Spe Salvi").

Some of his writings have become best-sellers, even in hopelessly secularized Germany. Indeed, this pope has managed to put the Vatican back on the secular world's radar. His encyclicals, his thoughts on reason and faith, and his criticism of the relativism of all values have been closely followed in the press. He has been seen as a pope who understands the zeitgeist.

In fact, the pope's failure to live up to many expectations has actually often benefited the Church. "Christianity, Catholicism, is not a collection of prohibitions; it's a positive option," Benedict said before his trip to Bavaria in 2006. Although he stands behind dogma and pure doctrine, he tries not to alienate anyone, even if he admittedly hasn't always been successful at it. By now, the pope seems about as mild as the Queen of England during his appearances. He knows how to captivate a crowd without spectacular gestures. He has met with Holocaust survivors in Auschwitz, abuse victims in the United States and people with AIDS in Cameroon.

Benedict has understood better than others what the Church's real condition is -- and how far removed it is from his ideal. His stumbling block has always been the Curia. Perhaps the real thing learned over the last seven years is just how powerlessness a pope can be.

Already Searching for a Successor

The pope only wanted to be a "simple, humble worker in the vineyard of the Lord," a "servant of the truth." Now he stands before the reality of his own mortality. For some time, he has been overcome by periods of "deep sadness," says a source close to Benedict, though he notes that it is unclear whether this is merely sadness or genuine depression.

Ratzinger survived two mild strokes in the early 1990s. Both his father and sister died of strokes. The pope takes aspirin as a preventive medicine. He is plagued by osteoarthritis in his knees, especially the right one. Walking is getting more difficult for him, and he now uses a rolling platform, which he mounts upon entering St. Peter's Basilica, such as when he is wearing heavy garments.

He hasn't gone on vacation in the mountains since 2010. Sometimes he takes short walks with his secretary in the Vatican Gardens, where he says the rosary.

In the Curia and the backrooms of the Vatican's palaces, efforts are already underway to search for a successor. The possible outcomes of a conclave are analyzed and candidates are discussed, as was done seven years ago. Some say the next pope should be someone like Pius XII, the pope between 1939 and 1958 who was a calculating and predictable power player and Vatican insider. Or someone like Paul VI, the pope from 1963 to 1978, who paid attention to the Curia's interests. The name of Cardinal Angelo Scola, the archbishop of Milan, has been mentioned, as has that of Leonardo Sandri, an Argentine cardinal with Italian roots. Another possible candidate is Curia Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, president of the Pontifical Council for Culture and one of the few Vatican insiders who is adept at handling the media, politics and the public.

The Italians, with 30 votes, still form the largest bloc in a conclave. Some believe that, after more than 33 years of foreign dominance -- first by a Pole and then by a German -- it's high time to elect an Italian pope. After all, proponents of the idea argue, an Italian cardinal knows the Roman Curia best. But the Italians' prospects have become slim since Vatileaks, says Vatican expert Marco Politi. "If the scandal has exposed one thing, it is the typical Italian mess. Italians are no longer seen as papabile (capable of becoming pope). They have discredited themselves with their power struggle."

Last Days and Legacies

Benedict himself knows that he doesn't have much time left. "The last segment of my life is now beginning," he told birthday guests in April.

In fact, his planning hardly goes past next July, when he will attend the Catholic "World Youth Day" in Rio de Janeiro. Healing the rift with the SSPX will be at the top of his agenda in the coming weeks, in addition to admonishing feuding groups to exercise mutual respect.

With the dispute that has erupted over the assessment of the reforms of Vatican II, which began 50 years, the pope is now experiencing a return to his own past. Will the once liberal-minded and now conservative pastor find the strength to foster reconciliation at the end of his life? To blaze some middle path between tradition and modernity for the world's 1.2 billion Catholics?

"Stalin was right in saying that the pope has no divisions and cannot issue commands," Benedict said in the 2010 book-length interview "Light of the World." "Nor does he have a big business in which all the faithful of the Church are his employees or his subordinates. In that respect, the pope is, on the one hand, a completely powerless man. On the other hand, he bears a great responsibility."

Benedict has always seen himself as a teaching rather than a governing pontiff. The professor-pope from the small Bavarian village of Marktl am Inn will undoubtedly not go down in the annals of Church history as Benedict the Great.

But he will be remembered as a church leader with a human face, as someone who has remained true to himself as a theologian, and as someone who turned his back on the power within his own four walls. In other words, as a pope with a lower-case p.