Nip/Tuck : The Vatican episode!

Nip/Tuck, as you may know, is a TV series based on the lives of people undergoing plastic reconstructive surgery and that of its practitioners. Plastic surgery, for example, on burn-victims is an indisputably desirable benefit realized through the marvel of medical science. But such surgery on the process of aging is not even fit for being an exhibit in Madame Tussauds Wax Museum! Because, a waxed live-being is almost a zombie! And, this is Vatican.

When aging actors try to fit into roles meant for youth, it becomes a sight as disconcerting as the oppositional defiance exhibited by the belly flab against the restrictions of their skinny jeans! This is why there is a time to be young and there is a time to act one's age. CNN's septuagenarian Larry King does have a penchant for younger women. The fact that it is his choice and he can afford it, is hardly the point. The "optics" of it has never been sexy. Even Playboy's Hugh Hefner - that mercurial messenger of sexual liberation - is well past the point of passing the baton before his ideological revolution takes on the aura of the rambling, incoherent American Tea Party!

Vatican, The Sequel - since its sexual abuse debacle - is showing an urgency to get grooving with the young and the hip as a way of rebuilding its image. First it was the 180 degree Galileo-turn-around about the once-despised Beatle, John Lennon. Lennon is honourable now! And lately, it is Vatican's appreciation of the 1980 Hollywood classic, The Blues Brothers. What is troubling are its pronouncements: "This is a memorable film, and, judging by the facts, a Catholic one". Why Catholic? Because the storyline involves the Blues Brothers - Jake and Elwood - being on a "mission from God" to raise money to pay a back tax bill for an orphanage (Toronto Star, June 18th). The humour-challenged Vatican totally misses the point! No surprise.

My questions, then:

1) After the sexual abuse disaster, should Vatican even be allowed to utter the word "orphanage"? Is it trying to find the back-door to another pubescent group via the Hollywood Boulevard?! Vatican is emblematic of the nightmare that many of these ghoulish caverns became for its residents: why is it then so giddy about the mere fiction of saving an orphanage? Doesn't it sound as eerily repulsive as a pedophile's enthusiasm over the financial bail-out of a children's daycare center? Vatican does not get it: does it?!

2) Since when is a good humanitarian act a Catholic exclusive? Then, would Bono's (U2) African debt relief campaign and Bob Geldof's Ethiopian famine relief concert (Band Aid),and the Beatle George Harrison's collaboration with Ravi Shanker for famine relief in Bangladesh be less meritorious because they are non-Catholic? Even Hamas, despite its notoriety, does more charity work for its displaced fellow-Palestinians than Vatican ever will for its own. For all its self-entitled claims, Vatican not only failed its own Rwandan faithfuls, but was also treacherously complicit in their deaths, abetting the notorious Rwandan genocide! How Catholic is this?!? And, for the Knas, closer to home is Abhaya. And, need I mention Njaarackal?

3) Oh, and then (continuing with the Blues Brothers) Vatican could not resist its favourite indulgence - sex: Vatican makes special mention of Elwood passing up on a chance for a one-night stand with a woman (played by the famous English model Twiggy) "to fulfill the mission". What has sex got to do with humanitarian acts?!!

My article The Applegate of All Things Sexual (Sneha Sandesham, May 2010) did cite this very concern: as I wrote, you may have just returned from an arduous relief mission in Haiti, risking your own health and life, but if you did not pull an "Elwood", or you are of Elton John's sexual orientation - despite the millions he fundraises for all kinds of charitable causes - you are just not that good enough!

Nip/Tuck all you want Vatican, but without a substantive transformation of your "soul" which, if not already sold to the proverbial devil, you are nothing but an Egyptian mummy from ancient times attempting to do a John Travolta dance-step to the BeeGees' Saturday Night Fever disco tracks in the name of currency! Do you have any idea how ridiculous you look?!

You appear grotesque because your attempts at rehabilitation are pretentious and fake (much like the plastic surgeries). Nothing short of a seismic shift and a total destruction of your entity can save you. And this will not be unlike the temple that needed to be rebuilt from ground up as parabolized in the Bible, a book you are so fond of quoting but without ever understanding even a single word in it!

Nip/Tuck all your lies Vatican, and shine the light on Truth. This Truth, if not burdened by the opacity of your cataracts, you will see, is hardly of Catholic proprietary!