Did Jesus Own His Own Clothes?

     I’d been waiting for this ever since I read then saw Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose.  I’ve been holding out some hope that in my lifetime I’d see the Church evidence that it can answer a question at the core of the Inquisition’s vicious trial and autos-da-fe at the film’s monastery and, of course, at the core of Christianity (and Judaism) itself, correctly, as that ancient rabbi would have, as all the Hebrew prophets would have, as all the better rabbis and priests and ministers and Imams of this day would.

     Did Jesus own his own clothes?

     Traditional Judaism holds that none of us owns anything despite the contingencies and conveniences of civil law. Everything belongs to God:  the tin cup held so hopefully by the street beggar, the acreage held so jealously by our largest landowners belongs, in the most fundamental sense, to no person.

     At the trial witnessed by Sean Connery’s William of Baskerville the fix, of course, is in. The Inquisition’s answer is that Jesus owned his clothes:  if he didn’t, the luxury that sustained F. Murray Abraham and his fellow corrupt papal envoys would lose all legitimacy.

     Inquisitors win, men burn.

     Pope Francis, who seems constitutionally suspicious of fellow churchmen whose spiritual ancestors paraded their wealth and greed and fashioned dogma to trample the poor in ‘Rose’, early on in his tenure cashiered Bishop Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst. That man had spent $41,000,000 on renovations to his private residence at Limburg. Improvements included, according to Alison Smale in The New York Times, “a $20,000 bathtub, a $1.1 million landscaped garden, and plans for an 800-square-foot fitness room…[and a] personal chapel.”

     Did Jesus own his own clothes? 

     Pope Francis appears to know.