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I’m Not Writing about Kitty Pope
I started writing about Indiana’s RFRA law, but everyone else already has. Blogs left, right and center have covered the issue for days; why should I pour a couple hours into an article destined to get lost in the crowd? Completely out of ideas, I asked my 11-year-old daughter, “what should I write about today?”
“I know! KITTY POPE!” She was very enthusiastic.
“Uhh… what?”
“The Pope — BUT A CAT!”
“I’m not writing about Kitty Pope.”
My daughter was dejected. She then recommended I Photoshop the President’s face on a cat’s body, but by now I questioned her editorial judgment.
The whole concept of Kitty Pope doesn’t even make sense. Is the kitty a pope just for cats or the Pope-pope who intercedes for human Catholics too? And if Kitty Pope only ministers to felines, we’re talking Catholic cats (cat-olics) only, no? I can only assume there would have been a Kitty Luther who attempted to reform the hierarchical structure and ceremonial trappings of the Roman church. Probably a German Rex.
On second thought, cat church history wouldn’t necessarily run parallel to human church history. There needn’t be a great schism between eastern and western cats, and it certainly wouldn’t have involved the insertion of the filioque clause into the Nicene Creed since cats have no written language. I mean, I don’t even understand the Trinity, so I doubt cats have a tight grip on God’s triune nature.
I’m not even sure cats can get into heaven. When a pet dies it’s comforting to think of seeing it again in the afterlife. But if there is a Kitty Heaven, a literalist interpretation requires a Kitty Hell where unsaved cats suffer eternal weeping and gnashing of teeth. If I ended up in hell there would be a lot of cat dander because my allergies get bad around longhairs. Really bad.
With a feline-specific Kitty Pope, you would add in kitty purgatory and kitty limbo (have you tried baptizing a cat?) which would really complicate things. Logically, it would work better if there was a single heaven and a single hell instead of a sub-eternity for each animal.
With that assumption in place, a priori, there is no need for each animal type to have its own pope. Thus, a Kitty Pope would have to be the actual Pope and, honestly, does anyone see that happening? Catholics just green-lighted the first South American Pope, they aren’t jumping to non-humans any time soon. Frankly, the entire discussion is just ridiculous.
So, no, I’m not writing about Kitty Pope. And that’s final.
Published in Humor
We have a logistics challenge here – where would we find a cat willing to be mere Pope? Since cats consider themselves to be gods, they would consider it a demotion to be Pope (God’s representative).
It’s important to remember that the Great Schism between humans and cats occurred in the 12th Century, when the Catholic Church declared cats to be satanic. This may have been the primary cause of the Black Death plagues in the 14th Century.
So maybe we shouldn’t be so cavalier when it comes to the Cat Pope, eh?