Candles, Clergy, and Communion for 57,000 Apopalix Now!
By SEWER CHANNEL
Published: April 12, 2008
The Pope will straddle second base in Yankee Stadium and field fungos, but stand over center field at Nationals Park in Washington and test for steroids in the wafers. Should it rain, there are 100,000 ponchos with “I love Ratzinger” emblazoned on them in scarlet ink silk-screened on a gold lamé background in reserve at the Bronx stadium. Additionally, three Polish nuns have dusted off a gold and silver garment, hand-woven more than a century ago, for the pontiff to wear at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in the capital in case of a dirty bomb.
Tickets for the stadium Mass, allocated to parishes based on average Sunday attendance divided by pregnancy rates, then distributed by lottery to those who have failed their GEDs and can also produce a government-issued photo identification. Ticket scalping is punishable by Ex-Communication and All Hell in Damnation.
With all its spiritual, political and cultural significance, the six-day visit of Pope Benedict XVI to Washington and New York next week is a daunting logistical operation involving everything from candles and catering to cell phone ring-tones (“I love you Popee Popee Babee” by Shakira, and “Fuck me Fuck Me FUCK ME, Big White Daddee” by Little Kim), not to mention ciboria, metal receptacles originally used for Necco™ Wafers, that now hold communion wafers in Nostalgia Pax cellophane wrappers. (Pez™ bid for the contract, but the Vatican rejected the designer’s proposal of plastic figurines dispensing communion wafers “directly from Jesus’s rib meat.”)
Among the profound — and mundane — questions planners are confronting: How do 530 priests and deacons give communion to 57,000 people in 14 minutes?
“I just want to make sure it’s done reverently and safely,” the Rev. Msgr. Wallace A. Harris, the event coordinator for the Sunday afternoon Mass at Yankee Stadium on April 20, said at a practice Wednesday afternoon. Over 500 Nathan’s hot dog vendors have been specially trained to dispense the wafer with the appropriate exhortation, “Wafers! Wafers! Wafers he-are! Gehtchyor wafers while they’re hot!!”
Priests — coming from as far as the Australian Outback — are assigned based on dates of birth, daily Crystal meth intake and number of nine year old boys despoiled, with the youngest (and most able-bodied) assigned to the upper deck, where stairs are narrow and steep and the winds strongest. There, the trembling of pre-pubescent erections will be most apparent. (more…)
