Sunday, October 13, 2013

One dear bishop

German bishop Tebartz-van Elst did get some attention by the K-Landnews but we merely saw him as an example of what a well-fed state supported church looks like.

Then the new pope happened, and the hardened crew at the K-Landnews desk had to credit the new pope for doing and saying Christian things.

The contrast of the frugal, old French car driving Pope and the splendid, flamboyant, new beemer driving Bisphop became too much for the German weekly Der Spiegel hailing from the Protestant heartlands of northern Germany.

The big spender dis-graces the new print edition of Der Spiegel. "The Lord's Dear Bishop" (our translation) is the title, but the nice use of the German "teurer" (dear, as in British dear) is not what got our attention.

The eerie color match of the biggest paper Euro note of 500 Euros and the bishopy purple got us.

Now, the Euro banknotes have traditionally, if we can use the term for its short life, been a lot more colorful than the US dollar or the German D Mark, but today would be the day we'd love to see the designer comments for the 500 Euro note.

Was the master minter of the European Central Bank a Catholic?  A former Catholic protesting the close fiscal ties between the Catholic Church and the German state?

The likely explanation, of course, is that any serendipity is a figment of the imagination. Der Spiegel would have found another way to obtain the imprimatur for the dear Bishop.

Our annual quota of posts about an organization that behaves just like you would expect from any that consists solely of a bunch of guys with no useful purpose in life is filled, so don't expect anything else on the subject before 2014.

Except a few Santa Clause posts.

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