Boy: Well, Myanmar still hasn’t been convinced to accept aid, despite thousands of deaths. China still needs help searching for survivors from the earthquake. Also, street battles are raging in Hezbollah again.

Pope: (Disinterested) Yeah, yeah.

Ratzinger takes a large sip of his coffee.

Boy: Oh, and gay marriage was legalized in California.

Ratzinger spits his coffee all over the floor.

Pope: Gay marriage!? That’s sinful! That’s biologically wrong! That violates . . . which commandment is that again?

Boy: None of them. Sexual orientation is vaguely mentioned in the Bible, though.

Pope: Exactly! That’s why we must take action! Liberal California judges always ignore the vague parts of the Bible! Gather my cloak and humorously oversized hat! We must rid the world of these uncomfortable differences!

Boy: Would you like your breakfast first? It’s dry white toast, very plain, just how you like it.

Pope: There’s no butter or jam on it, is there?

Boy: No, father.

Pope: Ok, good. You know I don’t respond well to change.

Boy: I’m well aware, father.

An equally young, equally shirtless African-American boy enters.

Black Boy: Is his holiness ready to use the toilet?

Pope: No, not yet.

Black Boy: Is there anything I can do to make his holiness’ poopy time arrive more quickly? A massage?

Pope: No, thank you. Poopy time will be pushed back until this afternoon.

Black Boy: As you wish. No morning poopies.

Black Boy exits.

Boy: Is the Popemobile ready for your trip to the airport, or will we be taking your Mazda Miata?

Pope: The airport? What for?

Boy: Well, I assume you want to fly to California to cleanse the hippies of sin.

Pope: Absolutely not! I only travel for publicity. I don’t fix things while I’m there. That would burden me with the responsibility of getting actual results. We will stay with the time-honored church tradition of standing at a podium and shouting a lot.

Boy: Very well, father. I’ll prepare your favorite podium; the one with the cupholders and iPod dock.

Pope: To think, they pulled a stunt like this less than a month after I left the United States. Less than a month! Did they think I wouldn’t notice? I know how to search Google. I have a Yahoo toolbar on Internet Explorer. I am not a fool!

Boy: They will surely burn in hell, father.

Pope: Yes, when the Day of Reckoning arrives, their gayness will explode like pine cones in a fireplace. Only then will they truly understand their fear.

Boy: That’s beautiful, father! But I don’t think gays actually fear you.

Pope: Really?

Boy: Sometimes they dress up like you for Halloween.

Pope: What about politicians?

Boy: When their seat is up for election, maybe.

Pope: Surely, the general American public is still scared of me.

Boy: I think they’re scared of you in the same way they’re scared of Naomi Campbell.

Pope: They’re afraid I’m going to throw my cellphone at them?

Boy: Yes, but they know they’ll never meet you in real life, so they don’t really worry about it.

Pope: Hmm. Perhaps fear doesn’t equal respect. Perhaps I should soften my tone. I did get good reviews when I apologized for the church’s tendency to ordain rapists.

Boy: And when you conceded that gays and pedophiles aren’t necessarily overlapping groups.

Pope: Perhaps I shouldn’t mention California at all in my speech. I’ll just allude to it. That way I can get my point across without looking like such an insufferable twat. People might even think I’m a nice guy and have a newfound respect for Christianity.

Boy: That’s a very mature decision, father. It seems you’ve really grown as a human being.

Both stand in silence for a moment.

Pope: Will any of this growing help me kill gayness?

Boy: It might, father. God willing, it might.

Pope: God truly does work in mysterious ways.

Boy: Indeed. Sometimes He’s obvious, and sometimes He reaches around from behind.

Pope: Shut your filthy fucking mouth!

“Y’know, that is just like people today,” she said.

“Nobody’s nice anymore,” I said.

“You could bake a pie in the time it takes a man to open a door for you these days,” said Agnes.

“People don’t dress up like they used to,” I said. “Folks wears jeans to church. Loooooordy.”

“No one asks if they should take off their shoes when entering my home!” yelled Agnes.

“Nobody under 30 gives up their seat to me on the bus!” I screamed. “And murdering innocent people in video games is the last straw!”

Playing Grand Theft Auto IV is like putting Jesus right back up on the cross. You can murder people on purpose in this game. On purpose! I can understand murder if it’s not intentional – a number of years back, I had an incident with my car and a vagrant man that ended in a trip to the river – but to do it on purpose is just sick! You can hit innocent people left and right in this game. “Thwap! Thwap!” It happens so often that it actually becomes fun! Especially when you look at the grill of your car afterward and see blood splattered all over it.

Aside from the violence, there is – and I don’t like to use this word – but there is intercourse in the game. You go on dates with young ladies who are seemingly beautiful and proper, but after three frames of bowling you take them home and they give it up faster than Elvis Presley gave up gospel. You can’t see the – and again, I dislike this word so much – intercourse, but you can hear it, and let me tell you, no one should have that much fun during . . . that particular activity. As my pastor says, when the time comes to procreate, you should just lie there and pretend it’s not happening.

This “game” also has violent gangsters. Not the delightful old-timey ones with the cute hats who sold moonshine and looked like Humphrey Bogart, but black ones! I’m not racist, but I don’t like black people. Even conversing with fictional black men on a video game gives me the heebie jeebies. The graphics of this game look so real that I’m afraid they’ll jump right out of the TV and sell my nice coat on a downtown street corner. As I said to Agnes in one of our 12 conversations about the game today, I didn’t move all the way out to Sherman Oaks for this!

Speaking of the game’s graphics – a term I learned from my grandson, bless his heart – Grand Theft Auto IV’s graphics and sound are too good. Pedestrians you hit don’t just die, they scream and cry for help as they perish. Isn’t that just terrible? Why can’t they die politely and quietly? If I were hit by a car, you wouldn’t hear a peep out of me. That’s the way my generation was raised: Classy until our last dying breath.

My generation was also considerate of those less fortunate than us. But the pedophilic satanists who created Grand Theft Auto IV obviously don’t. They made the game’s text and menus absurdly small. I’m sure it looks nice on a big fancy 17″ color TV, but I can hardly see a thing on my 12″ black and white set. Though that’s probably for the best. Agnes and I played it for 12 hours yesterday looking for devious things to complain about, and the only thing that kept us from fainting was our poor eyesight and my small TV.

I think America should ban all impolite video games. No one should be allowed to play Grand Theft Auto IV unless they’re like me and only play it to catalogue all the horrible sins in it. The day I let this filth go unmonitored is the day I’m cold and dead in the ground, like this drug dealer I totally just plowed over with my car.