The Pope, a Boy Scout, VIP A, and VIP B were on an airplane that suddenly lost power. The pilot, wearing a parachute, came to the rear and told the passengers, “There are only three parachutes available for the four of you” – and then he jumped from the plane.

VIP A (fill in your own personality) took one parachute and said, “I’m a very important diplomat, and I need this so I can save the world.” Then he jumped out. VIP B said, “I’m the smartest man in the world so I need to live,” and he jumped out.

The Pope said to the Boy Scout: “Young man, you take the last parachute, I’ve lived a long, full life, and I have no fear of dying.” The Boy Scout then said: “Don’t worry about that. The smartest man in the world just jumped out wearing my backpack.”

Now that’s a funny “pope joke,” unlike the material a desperate freebie New York City newspaper decided to put on its front page last week. What ever could have possessed the editors of this Village Voice clone to mock the illness of Pope John Paul II with 52 very unfunny jokes about his impending death?

[Yesterday, the editor of that paper, the New York Press, said he resigned. Jeff Koyen, 36, said he quit because his publisher, Christopher Rohland, suspended him without pay for two weeks. Mr. Koyen told The New York Sun that he had no regrets about publishing a list making fun of the pope’s health problems. “No one in New York was really upset,” he said.]

When I saw that Matt Drudge had posted it on his Web site, ensuring that the paper would receive undue attention, my first impulse was to ignore this tripe. The paper’s own Web site was swarmed with surfers, who would then be required to register their e-mail addresses to see the offensive article. What a great marketing ploy: Bash the pope, and gain a huge e-mail list to sell.

Then I reread the article and recognized the desperation and hatred that must ooze from the pores of this paper’s editors. After all, what did this pope say just before his latest bout with illness? He reiterated the church’s stance against gay marriage, calling it the “ideology of evil.” Whew! That’s a no-no among many here in New York whose agenda is challenged by his authority over Roman Catholics.

At Sunday Mass, I watched a video tape on the Cardinal’s Appeal 2005, which is being shown in all the parishes of the New York archdiocese. In one scene of a local parish, the camera flashed on an altar boy, and I was suddenly reminded of all those nasty priest jokes that late-night television hosts made during the priest scandals of 2002. If my mind could be poisoned by the impressions foisted on us by press and network coverage, imagine how it encouraged the anti-Catholic sentiment that abounds in our city.

The now former editor of the freebie paper conceded to the Sun last week that only 20% of the jokes were funny and the others were distasteful and made him cringe. I congratulate him on finding that 20%, because not one was remotely laugh-invoking. Yet the editor felt confident enough to put it on the front page, because when it comes to outrage in this town it never applies to bias against the church.

Priests have become satyrs, predators of our innocent children, and derided by those in the entertainment and literary world. Our pope, the vicar of Christ, has been reduced to an object of ridicule during his most vulnerable time in life. The 52 jokes include these two gems. He is described as dying and looking like a baboon. Upon his death, doctors “discover that not only was the Pope a woman, but also Hitler.”

Side-splitting, right?

But this is nothing new, and as I watched the video showing all the good works that are done in the archdiocese, I was delighted to see a glimpse of my old parish, St. Cecilia’s on East 106th Street. I filtered out the jokes and smears and remembered my own personal experiences. My brother and my three sons were all altar boys and were never molested. The priests, nuns, and brothers that I’ve met all through the decades have for the most part been pious, dedicated human beings who’ve sacrificed their lives to do good.

I actually feel pity for that writer and that editor who are so consumed with hatred that they are unable to judge when they have made a mistake. In a press release about the vile front page, William Donohue of the Catholic League writes: “Of course, they hate the pope. Which makes sense: he is the one man whose commitment to the truth has literally driven them over the edge.”

All the more reason to wish the pope a long, long life.