Is it almost time? Can we finally start making preparations, send out a global Evite welcoming millions to a grand ritual down by the beach, a fantastic ceremony featuring copious amounts of fire and cake, dancing and vodka, Shakti icons and free condoms for all?

Verily, is the Catholic Church and its dank, nefarious heart, the Vatican, with its attendant red-robed apologists, unreformed child rapists and a leader who is, as Richard Dawkins rightly declares, "a leering old villain in a frock, who spent decades conspiring behind closed doors for the position he now holds ... a man whose first instinct when his priests are caught with their pants down is to cover up the scandal and damn the young victims to silence," is it safe to say this archaic and vile institution is finally nearing its end?

How grand to imagine -- even for a moment, even if you already sense it's damn near impossible, even if you think the Church still does some good in the world, somewhere -- how utterly uplifting to think that finally, after all these centuries of lies and oppression, intolerance and cover-up, that one of the most dangerous, insular religious monoliths in the world could come tumbling down in a smoldering heap, with something fluid, feminine and utterly transformational to spring up in its place.

You want a true second coming? A big, happy slap of the Rapture? There you go.

I am nowhere near exaggerating. At present, it's nearly impossible to keep track of all the accusations, evidence, grim letters, bogus apologies and cover-up conspiracies, not to mention the hundreds -- if not thousands -- of newly emerging claims of child rape and abuse that are winging around that "holy" place, coming in from all over the world, as dozens of old white men in robes scurry about trying to deny it all and protect the kingdom at all costs, while the flames lick ever closer.

Hell, I'm still trying to stomach three of the largest and most nauseating scandals to erupt in the past year or so.

1) The staggering revelation of 60+ years' worth of sexual abuse and beatings of countless hundreds of orphans at the hands of Irish nuns and priests, dating back to the '50s.

2) The nearly 200 deaf boys sexually molested in Wisconsin over the course of nearly 25 years by a single priest, Rev. Lawrence C. Murphy, a man who should have died in prison but who, due to the Vatican's reticence and equivocation led by Pope Benedict, instead went to his grave entirely unpunished, as a full priest.

3) The unconscionable tale of a priest named Stephen Kiesle of Oakland, who confessed to tying up and raping numerous children, who himself recognized his own vileness and begged to be defrocked, but who a then-archbishop Ratzinger insisted stay put for many more years to avoid bad PR. He therefore continued to rape and molest, unpunished, even returning years later to work as a youth minister. Put in its simplest terms: the current pope had full knowledge that one of his priests was raping children, and did nothing to prevent it.

You'd think that would be enough. You'd think that might be sufficient to turn the stomach of the world, sufficient to overthrow the dour regime once and for all.

Of course, those horrors are just the tip of the repellent iceberg. Pull on those few threads and watch in horror as a string of lies and cover-ups 2,000 years long uncoils like a tapeworm, revealing centuries of hypocrisy and shame. As for Pope Benedict, well, he's increasingly revealed to be one of the more power-hungry, ruthless, ultra-conservative popes in recent history, with new facets of his ugliness being revealed by the week.

It brings up, once again and for the millionth time, a time-honored question: How much is enough? Will there ever be a point when all the scandals and lies, rape and abuse finally crash over the enormous legal and pseudo-moral walls that religions are allowed to put up to protect themselves from persecution and justice, with waves high and powerful enough that they could wash away the Vatican once and for all?

The answer is, of course, almost zilch. There is no chance whatsoever. The Catholic Church is simply too enormous, entrenched, global, powerful. What's more, Ratzinger himself is armored like a tank with wealth, power and papal infallibility. Good thing he's 82 years old. Not long for this world. A fact for which we can all be thankful.

Perhaps, then, the only thing that can truly change the church is the revulsion and outcry of its millions of followers, demanding change, revolution, upheaval. And millions of Catholics worldwide appear to be demanding just that; the Vatican is under unprecedented pressure to make amends, modify its repellant ways, maybe usher in a true reformist pope in the wake of one of the ugliest "holy" leaders in recent history.

Then again, maybe none of it will have any effect. After all, few Catholics of any modern stripe actually pay any attention to the Vatican's childish dictums and archaic declarations, even its scandals. The pope is largely irrelevant. Turning a blind eye to the real history of the church and the nasty cadre of creepy old men who rule it? That's just part of being Catholic.

Meantime, the stunning numbers just keep coming. The Vatican has now reportedly spent between two and three billion dollars -- that's with a b -- in legal fees and quiet reparations to the thousands of molested and abused. That's just the current number. It will be growing exponentially, because the cases are nowhere near complete. They just keep coming. And they probably always will.

I wasn't kidding above. I firmly believe we have this apocalypse thing all wrong, backwards. The Second Coming has nothing whatsoever to do with some melodramatic return of a bearded, sandal-wearing hippie anarchist who comes back to take away all the booze, porn and tattoos as he whisks away the trembling "true believers" to a land of harps, minivans and horrible sex.

Wrong. The Rapture is when the major karmic roadblocks of man -- all the Vaticans, popes, temples, cults, megachurches and even most organized religions all stagger and collapse under the weight of their inherent hypocrisy, all the oppressed sexuality, the homophobia, misogyny, fear of science, the denial of true spiritual source.

You could call it one of the greatest ironies of man: Only when our supposedly "holy" dogmas, institutions and leaders fail, can the human soul ever truly be free.

Mark Morford's latest book is 'The Daring Spectacle: Adventures in Deviant Journalism'. Join Mark on Facebook and Twitter, or email him. His website is markmorford.com. For his yoga classes, workshops and retreats, click markmorfordyoga.com.

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