Maybe the question arose clearly only a couple of days ago.

I was sitting at a local Diner's breakfast counter at the time, by myself, listening to an exquisite Beethoven Sonata in my iPod, casually watching a TV screen with close-caption, reporting live from the  Catholic Church where the late Senator Ted Kennedy's funeral was being officiated.

Ah, the power of the written word! Had this been a normal TV, with regular audio, I would have  easily tuned it out, having had many years of practice in mastering the skill.

But close-caption? It caught me unprepared and my eyes were allured into reading.

As I savored my eggs-over-easy, naively unaware of what was about to occur, I looked on and kept reading the words as they appeared onto the screen, seemingly out of nowhere,  slightly entertained by the not-so-occasional spelling mistake that threatened to change the tone of the report from a somber historical account to a Sesame Street spelling parody.

Certain that I was the only one thinking such irreverent thoughts, and careful not to betray my amusement and allow my face to be seen smiling, I proceeded to focus again on my eggs, guiltlessly looking down at my plate, in an attempt to convey an attitude of discreet composure to any possible onlooker.

Too late, I regretted. My attention had already been snatched by the incongruity of the show I had been tricked into watching. "How can this be?" I thought to myself. "How can all these people be sitting there, pretending that this is for real, and no one's cracking up?"

"Distinguished guests, we are gathered here today to honor the memory of a great man..." I read the words, appearing as the priest spoke them and, as he continued to offer tribute to the recently deceased hero, for one of his great deeds or another, I saw a few middle aged men, dressed in the usual Catholic clergy's garb, carrying out a ceremony so filled with contradictions that I truly wondered how any of them, humorless as they seemed, could keep a straight face.

Granted that it was a funeral, where the expression of sympathetic sorrow must be maintained at all times by everyone present, whereas laughter might have been frowned upon, if pretense, hypocrisy and falshood were the parameters of an artistic form, I'd say that this particular ceremony would have to have taken the crown as its masterpiece.

I wondered how many hours it must have taken the unfortunate PR person to figure out who should be sitting where in the Church, and next to whom, so as to avoid insulting this important one or the other. The poor chap must have sweated seven shirts, as they say in Italy, realizing that, inevitably, one or more of the illustrious guests might find his or her seating unacceptable and demand that the head of the responsible party be brought to them on a silver platter.

The officiating priest looked himself quite agitated, as he rattled out, over and over again, all the Presidents' and Vice Presidents' and ex-Presidents and ex-Vice Presidents' names, along with the respective First, Second, Third and Fourth Ladies' names, all of whom were sitting in the first row, sure to be captured a'plenty by the ever hungry cameras, and then the names of the slightly less powerful ones, sitting right behind them, and always in the proper order, making sure never to alter the ranks or else...(we all know where his head would have ended up, should he forget the PR chap's detailed instructions and warnings!).

It would have been funny, if it hadn't brought up my indignation about the Albigensian Crusade, still so fresh on my mind from my recent research.

OK. I know. This may sounds like cheap polemic, but come on: here is the same clergy whose power, organized through political administration and strengthened by legal jurisdiction, has been oppressing and terrorizing millions of good, innocent people for centuries on end.

Here are the same men who, only a few centuries ago, would have gladly wrapped me up in rags, maybe you too, and eagerly lit us up on fire atop a heap of dead wood, for our soul's sake and in the name of God.

Here is the same old bunch of celibate male priests, representing the same old celibate male divinity, still symbolic of the most supreme power on earth, officiating the funereal rites for a man whose  wealth and power, as everyone knows, was acquired through a family legacy of the most despicable kind. Not to mention that such a wealthy man's political connections require the presence, at his funeral, of the most influential people currently alive on earth, including the same sort of self-righteous ignoramus (to use a respectful description) whose hands are soiled with the blood of  the most recent religious war's victims, for what is the war in Iraq, really, if not yet another, blasted, bloody Crusade?!

What a farse! I thought to myself. Or is it me? Am I the only one who finds the whole thing absurd, distasteful, immoral, despicable and down right revolting?

Mind you, not because I care about who feels like honoring whom. Oh, no! I couldn't care less about that. Bow down to your own gods and let others do the same. That's religious freedom's first tenet.

Rather, I feel a sense of indignation welling up in me, at the thought of what was done to the Cathars by the very same people who are still claiming to be the holy ones while, in reality, all they do is cater to earthly powers, no matter how much evil, ruthless killing and corruption these powers continue to perpetrate.

Look, I don't mind moving on either. Let us forgive one another and, together, create a better future. I'm all in favor of that. But that's not what this is. This is the same old story, just a little less gruesome, because, after all, we are civilized people, aren't we?   

Just think of how many homeless people could have been given a permanent home and a secure job, with the money, power and resources that went into burying this one rich, dead man.

Wouldn't that sort of memorial rite have been more pleasing to God?

I guess that depends on whose God we are talking about, doesn't it?