(The Sunday News supplement)
Caption: The feet that once walked the Sea of Galilee here protrude from the mud, still showing the nail scars from the crucifixion.
Religion collapses as western world shaken
JERUSALEM–UPI– The Christian Faith lies in ruins today as the central myth of the world-wide religion–the Resurrection of Christ– was shattered by the discovery of a 2,000 year-old corpse and its positive identification as that of Jesus of Nazareth.
Western civilization has been rocked to its core by the revelation and although reports from Rome remain sketchy, several startling announcements have been made from the Vatican.
At 3:00 pm Rome time the papal secretary announced the official canceling of the Easter holiday. “After all,” said Monsignor Luigi Pasta, “If you don’t have a Resurrection and Ascension, you don’t have much of an Easter, do you?”
Pasta also stated that the Pope and the College of Cardinals had resigned and that the Vatican’s remaining skeleton staff was going about the dismantling of the Catholic Church.
Earlier in the day when mobs of disillusioned Christians stormed the Vatican they found the Pope’s apartment bare, with the exception of an airline receipt for two tickets to Argentina.
Throughout the rest of Europe and North America, revolutionary mobs have toppled government after government claiming that political states and religious beliefs had robbed them of their human potential. (See story on this page.)
The discovery that toppled Christianity began just two days ago several miles outside of this ancient and previously “holy” city. Fahkir Boumedium, an itinerant cymbal maker, stumbled across the centuries-old body while digging for brass at the site of an apartment-complex kibbutz under construction.
Digging by candle light in the early morning hours, he noticed a sandal-clad foot protruding from a drainage ditch and, digging further, Boumedium unearthed the cadaver’s head still bearing the legendary Crown of Thorns.
Boumedium told UPI, “It’s nothing to me, I’m a Moslem, but I thought others would like to know.”
The anger of many ex-Christians stemmed from the obvious attempts of the Pope and others to first deny and then downplay the discovery. Even after medical, archaeological, religious and historical experts had confirmed that the half-decomposed body was that of Jesus, Pope Paul had insisted that to announce the bitter truth would be to bring havoc to the Christian world. Word finally leaked out from one of the panel of experts and the Vatican was forced to make the announcement admitting that the central tenet of their religion, the redemption of sin through the sacrifice of Christ, in their words, “was inoperative.”
Worse yet was the report filed by Dr. Vera Similitude, of the United Nations medical team, who was one of the first to examine the body from a medical standpoint. In it she stated that Christ had not died from wounds inflicted by Roman Centurions, as reported in the Christian Bible, but rather had died from complications of an advanced stage of syphilis.
Speculation is high among informed sources that the entire New Testament was simply faked after the natural death of Jesus, who was one of many Hebrew religious fanatics preaching in Palestine during that period.
The truth concerning what took place between the time Pope Paul was informed of the devastating discovery in the Middle East at 4am Rome time and the time he finally relented and made the information public may never be known, but ashen-faced Romans arriving at St. Peter’s in the early morning hours were greeted by a sight they will long remember: the historic shrine of Catholics everywhere and the base of Christian faith was boarded up and ‘for sale’ signs from an Argentine realtor dotted the huge plaza.
But as a small band of black-garbed, elderly Italians hopelessly said their rosaries in the muted night, radical Italians took other action.
Forming a loose coalition of leftists, atheists and cynical ex-Christians, they broke down the sealed doors of the Vatican and rushed into the former seat of Catholic power.
Untold millions of dollars worth of art objects and precious metals were literally stripped from the walls in what must have been one of the fastest turnabouts in the otherwise quiet career of Pope Paul. So sudden was the departure that early arrivals at the once-sumptuous residence report a projector in the cinema room still running, endlessly repeating “King of Kings.”
Coming on the eve of Christianity’s holiest occasion, Easter, this betrayal by Vatican City has spurred repercussions unheard of in modern-day society. Howling mobs of Catholics stormed their churches in city after city–only to find ‘for sale’ signs and announcements of car washes to be built on the sites of their former houses of prayer. As one Roman businessman put it, “This is a Watergate that dwarfs any other cover-up in the history of mankind.”
That the “Jesus Christ Cover-up,” as, it is now being called in European capitals, is the most pervasive ever known goes without saying. Informed sources in Vatican City report that when the crowds broke through to the inner chambers of St. Peter’s, radical groups were carting off literally tons of (cont. on p. 94)
Workers revolt as anarchy sweeps world
WASHINGTON, D.C., LONDON, PARIS, BERLIN, MADRID, MOSCOW, WARSAW–UPI, AP–The future of governments, capitalist and socialist, remains in doubt today as waves of anti-authoritarian rebellion reverberate across Europe and North America.
Falling like dominoes in the wake of the news that Christianity was based on fraud, nine European governments have been toppled in the last 18 hours.
In Latin America and the United States uprisings’ in the major cities put the forces of tradition in grave jeopardy at this writing. In every major European city, councils of armed workers have proclaimed the end of all authority of one group or class over another.
In the West, cries of “Down with capitalism,” rang through the streets of Paris and London. In Prague and Moscow, hundreds of thousands marched for the first time shouting “No More Bureaucrats.” In every city pledges to end wage labor, commodity production and the factory system brought joyous dancing in the streets as main intersections became the scenes of festive celebrations. How the wave of anti-Christian feeling rapidly developed into stronger anti-political sentiment was expressed by a Belgian office worker, “They had our minds mucked up with all that God and Jesus shit. We thought they were everything and we were nothing,” he said. “When that went down the drain all those other people in control of our lives looked just as useless as the saints.”
In Yugoslavia a Belgrade metal worker explained why uprisings had toppled bureaucratic state socialism: “We were all atheists before, but the example of our brothers and sisters in the West just set the example for us. Now we can set up real communism and get rid of all the “marxist” politicians.”
Germany today is a place where no priest is safe from the diatribes of angered citizens. Portugal has become a no mans land where nuns are run out of town like so many beggars. To no one’s memory even those weaned on World War II has there been anything to match the scorn and bitterness the average citizen feels towards those in power.
Political leaders of the surviving nations are barricaded at this hour in a Swiss chalet, hurriedly mapping out plans for a last stand on the European continent. Men who once held such high positions as Prime Minister of England and Chancellor of Germany were seen being smuggled into the highly-guarded chalet by horse-cart.
Anti-religious rebels, intoxicated by the unprecedented collapse of organised religion, have seized power in many areas. Rail and communication lines in most of the U.S. are said to be in the hands of atheists.
A first hand report by fleeing nuns in France indicates that local villagers have reacted to the news from Vatican City by seizing the churches and burning them.
Crowds estimated at over 500,000 swept through downtown Madrid today shouting revolutionary slogans and holding anti-religious demonstrations.
In one instance, throngs were seen pulling a makeshift trailer with a replica of a crude outhouse containing statues of Franco and Pope Paul IV.
World stock market crashes
GENEVA-UPI- World stock market prices plummeted today as billions in discounted stocks and securities found their way into an already shaky Eurodollar market.
The sudden abdication of the entire hierarchy of the Christian world had brought about an extremely volatile financial situation in a sensitive world capital market already wracked by double digit inflation and growing worldwide workers’ revolutions.
When reports from Berne and Geneva indicated that huge amounts of blue chip stocks were being sold in random lots yesterday, speculation had it that the Middle East was ready to explode into war and the Sheiks were attempting to create havoc in the money capitals of Europe
The truth unfolded in the late evening when developments from Rome showed that the entire financial empire of the Holy Roman Catholic Church was being liquidated by unknown Lebanese brokers.
As one New York banker put it, “Sure we knew the Pope had a few bucks to throw around, but we had no idea it was this much.”
Truly, an unprecedented amount of (cont. on p. 94)
Papal fleet repelled
PAGO, PAGO, American Samoa–AP–Much like the legendary man without a country, the papal fleet of Boeing 747’s carrying the Vatican’s major domos wander the globe searching for a place to call home. Refused landing clearance by the Pago-Pago islanders last night, the total number of countries to refuse them permission to land now stands at over 103.
Coming on the heels of a stunning aerial defeat at the hands of Wake Islanders, flying vintage WWII Japanese Zeroes, this was, as one observer called it, “like condemning them to Purgatory.”
An informed source, on hand when the Pope received word of the defeat, reported that the Pontiff took it extremely well.
“What you gonna do?” The pope said philosophically, “I know I’m no Walt Disney in the hearts of the people but I was only trying to make a buck. Sure, once in a while I pulled their leg but it was all in good fun. We should let bygones be bygones.”
Extent of Fraud Knows No Limits
Fatima myth exposed
LISBON–UPI–Our Lady of Fatima, one of the most renowned shrines of Catholicism, was revealed yesterday to be a gigantic hoax.
Spokesmen for an anarchist group, which seized official records after the fall of Portugal’s government today, said the hoax of Fatima was perpetrated by the Portuguese government and the Church in 1906, after church attendance in the small town had dropped below 2 percent of the population.
The religious legend has it that the “Virgin Mary” appeared before three Portuguese children in the little town of Fatima just after the turn of the century. On one of the visits, she is reported to have given them a prophecy sealed in an envelope.
On that visit, she, or someone looking like her, went to the townspeople to show them the power of faith. So awed were they by the sight that they built a shrine to her memory.
A crude candle-powered projector with a hand tinted slide showing Mary floating on a cloud was found yesterday in a cellar in Lisbon, raising anger at the Church to a new high. So great was the parishioners’ rage at being tricked that it is reported there is not one religious object left in all Portugal. Crucifixes are being used for paint stirrers in Oporto. Novena candles (cont. on p. 94)
Treasures found
ROME–AP–What was originally thought to be merely a construction site containing the body of Jesus Christ has now been found to also contain valuable relics, according to Tel Aviv’s leading archaeologist, Dr. Irving Smith.
Next to the body of the “Saviour of Mankind” was found a journal, believed to have been written by Christ’s own hand, which gives the world new information concerning his so-called “lost years.” These were the ages between 12 and 25 when his exact whereabouts were completely unknown.
Sample passages indicate some of the heretofore unsuspected places that Jesus had lived in his middle years. For instance, a passage in the first part of the journal indicates a knowledge of downtown Bhagdad. It reads, “Yea, verily doth I tread passageways and hidden halls of the temples of pleasure, so too doth the fallen women follow in my footsteps out of Bhazghadian (Bhagdad) to my camp where we held lectures late into the night.”
Further on is a description of an Egyptian banquet where Christ beseeches the noblemen, “So I say unto you, what good does it do a man to gain all the wealth of the world only to lose his soul? Thou must strip thyself of all worldly goods in order to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. For that purpose I have brought two chariots which thou can begin filling with thine unwanted luxuries.”
Today’s index
Accent 1-20D
Art-Books 2F
Classified 1-20H; 14–16K
Real Estate 4-14K
Contact 10 1B
Crossword 5C
Editorial 8G
Feature Page 78
Finance 1-10G
Hobbies 8F
Homes, Gardens 1-2K
Horoscope 3C
Lively Arts 1-10F
Movie Guide 6F
Obituaries 19D
Death Notice. 19D
Outdoors 6E
Sports 1-8E
Travel 1-10J
- Detroiters React to Destruction of their Religion, P. 12
- Bishop Emrich’s Last Column, P. 48
- Lou Gordon Gloats, P. 19
- Col. Heinl Assesses the Military Implications, P. 96
- Local Religious Leaders Say Final Good-Bye, P. 23
- Jane Lee Gives Advice to Ex-Christians, P. 48
- Tigers Whip Bosox, P 53
This page originally appeared as the March 27, 1975 Fifth Estate and was found throughout the city pasted on the doors of churches on Easter morning and stuffed in Detroit News boxes. Produced by the EAT THE RICH GANG.
See related article in Eat the Rich Gang Panic in Detroit, Issue 368-369, Spring-Summer, 2005.