Oracle Buys the Catholic Church

[Mark Feit]

Forwarded-by: Bob Placious <bob at wishiwasonthe.net>

VATICAN CITY (AP) -- In a joint press conference in St. Peter's Square
this morning, ORACLE Corp. and the Vatican announced that the Redwood
Shores, CA software giant will acquire the Roman Catholic Church in
exchange for an unspecified number of shares of ORACLE common
stock. If the deal goes through, it will be the first time a computer
software company has acquired a major world religion.

With the acquisition, Pope Benedict XVI will become the senior
Vice-president of the combined company's new Religious Software
Division, while ORACLE senior vice- presidents Charles Phillips and
Ken Jacobs will be invested in the College of Cardinals, said ORACLE
Chairman Larry Ellison. "We expect a lot of growth in the religious
market in the next five to ten years," said Ellison. "The combined
resources of ORACLE and the Catholic Church will allow us to make
religion easier and more fun for a broader range of people."

Through the ORACLE Metalink, the company's on- line service, "we will
make the sacraments available on- line for the first time" and revive
the popular pre- Counter-Reformation practice of selling indulgences,
said Ellison. "You can get Communion, confess your sins, receive
absolution -- even reduce your time in Purgatory -- all without
leaving your home."

A new software application, ORACLE Church, will include a language,
allegedly a superset of PL/SQL, which you can program to download
heavenly graces automatically while you are away from your
computer. It will combine nicely with the already existing package
called DBMS_SCHEDULER.

An estimated 17,000 people attended the announcement in St Peter's
Square, watching on a 60 foot screen as comedian Don Novello -- in
character as Father Guido Sarducci -- hosted the event, which was
broadcast by satellite to 700 sites world-wide.

Pope Benedict XVI said little during the announcement. When Novello
chided Ellison, "Now I guess you get to wear one of these pointy
hats," the crowd roared, but the pontiff's smile seemed strained.

The deal grants ORACLE exclusive electronic rights to the Bible and
the Vatican's prized art collection, which includes works by such
masters as Michelangelo and Da Vinci. But critics say ORACLE will face
stiff challenges if it attempts to limit competitors' access to these
key intellectual properties.

"The Jewish people invented the look and feel of the holy scriptures,"
said Rabbi David Gottschalk of Philadelphia. "You take the parting of
the Red Sea -- we had that thousands of years before the Catholics
came on the scene."

But others argue that the Catholic and Jewish faiths both draw on a
common Abrahamic heritage. "The Catholic Church has just been more
successful in marketing it to a larger audience," notes Notre Dame
theologian Father Kenneth Madigan. Over the last 2,000 years, the
Catholic Church's market share has increased dramatically, while
Judaism, which was the first to offer many of the concepts now touted
by Christianity, lags behind.

Historically, the Church has a reputation as an aggressive competitor,
leading crusades to pressure people to upgrade to Catholicism, and
entering into exclusive licensing arrangements in various kingdoms
whereby all subjects were instilled with Catholicism, whether or not
they planned to use it. Today Christianity is available from several
denominations, but the Catholic version is still the most widely used.
The Church's mission is to reach "the four corners of the earth,"
echoing ORACLE's vision of "a database on every desktop and in every
home".

Ellison described ORACLE's long-term strategy to develop a scalable
religious architecture that will support all religions through
emulation. A single core religion will be offered with a choice of
interfaces according to the religion desired -- "One religion, a
couple of different implementations," said Ellison.

The ORACLE move could spark a wave of mergers and acquisitions,
according to Herb Peters, a spokesman for the U.S. Southern Baptist
Conference, as other churches scramble to strengthen their position in
the increasingly competitive religious market.