Oh miGod

This might not be Toy Story, but I've got a Woody

Theres something that scares me about the Catholic Church. No it's not the fact that select priests like to touch people, mainly children. No it's not the Popes giant hat. No it's not the fact that their leader used to be in the Hitler youth (what, me worry? I'm not even jewish!). Nor is it the people that come to our doorsteps from various denominations asking for us to listen and promptly having the door slammed in their face or being greeted by a naked person frustrated with door-to-door religion (it only happened once).

What scares me about the church is the fact that, unbeknown (or at least unacknowledged) to most, they are one of the richest institutions in the world with more accumulated wealth than most of us put together. What does the Catholic church do with this money? Save third world countries and abolish poverty? Not quite. Give back to the communities where faith is strong but hope is low? No. Help develop the cure for cancer? Why the hell would they do that? Maybe, just MAYBE the Pope wipes his arse with gold leaf (triple ply!). I mean, he's just gone on a world tour, he made millions of bloody immigrants bring over millions of flu strains and cause everyone in Sydney to at least get sick twice in the past few months, and he's not giving money away? Jesus! Instead the church invests in business, invests in the military and invests in the development of THEIR OWN POWER. When politicians use the name of God to justify a horrendous act, what they MEAN is that God's right hand man and his business have contributed significant funds to these causes. Still people donate money to the church every Sunday, no doubt hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars every week and what does it go to? You dont know, you're just trying to buy your way into grace.

I tend to forget about it most of the time, and given my inane ramblings its not hard to see why. All this was until I read the paper yesterday and found out that, of all groups - the Catholic Church is releasing THE BIBLE on ITUNES! Is it madness? Not really I guess. Its shrewd business, getting the most popular book in the world and turning it into audio. The market is absolutely huge and demand will be pretty much perpetual. How will it be done? Im not entirely sure. Does someone pay a dollar for a verse? Or a chapter instead? Or maybe even a whole testament! Are people really going to listen to it? Are you going to have to tell some fool on the train to turn down his iPod because you dont appreciate hearing Psalms on the way to work? What will be the most popular books? From Genesis to Revelations, all of the Lords Greatest Hits from the web to your ears with just the click of a button. As well as the iTunes release comes the idea of CD's, DVD's and other forms of digital media.

Once again the Catholic Church has latched onto a societal fad, long after the hype, and instilled themselves to make a quiet killing. Do they need more money? Hell no. Do we know where this money is going to go? Hell no. They call it 'spreading the word'. Some would call it attempted market domination. Theres a global economic crisis going on and the church is sitting there coming up with new ideas to add to its already prepostorous wealth? Would God let families go hungry while counting 20 zeros on the end of his bank statement? I highly doubt it.

Although I can't wait for the remixes to come out.