AGAIN, YOUR HOLINESS?

The Pope is chatting again, always a good time to reach for the nearest bottle of booze we can lay our fingers on.  I truly wish this man would exercise a little prudence before he opens his mouth but that is apparently not the way he prefers to do things I'm afraid.  The Catholic world around him collapses and all he can do is hurtle insults at certain Catholics he doesn't like or hold meaningless "peace" gatherings in Rome between rabbis who despise Christ and Muslims who, even if they have a certain reverence for Him don't believe He is the Son of God.  I would think he might do more good by pointing out to the world that it is dying under the weight of sin and then go on to name those sins.

Could these incessant tongue-lashings being heaped upon his own Catholic faithful possibly bespeak of a troubled mind or a troubled conscience?

Oddly enough, even though one often finds the word "serenity" in many of his speeches he does not seem to have serene thoughts himself.  And I do wish he would grow tired, as we have grown tired, of using that "seesaw" technique or dialectic of criticizing a few safe targets on the modernist side and then go for the jugular when he attacks those Catholics who are not marching in tune with the New Disorientations of recent pontificates.  Surely by now he has flogged that particular dead horse enough?  As a Catholic myself, one not prone to the hail-fellow-well-met attitude that bubbles up in most Catholic parishes, I think I can say, "Yes, Holy Father, I get it.  People who are sticking by ancient Catholic traditions displease you.  Can we go on to more serious matters now?"

Like giving the boot to people like Cardinal Dolan?  I believe there are some openings in the Patriotic Catholic Church of China where the Cardinal would fit in quite well - and be thousands of miles away from us.  I will suggest that to His Holiness the next time I see him.

But the insults keep-a-comin' and the papolaters keep reporting them with glee.  Yet surely they could give this old chestnut a rest.  No?

[I think I'd rather not link you to the Patheos article that pointed out, not without some satisfaction, that the Pope lashed out at the "rigorists" again recently. If I did I would be contributing to their "hit" count and fattening their paychecks by doing so. (I sometimes wonder if some of those characters, the boot-lickers and papolaters whom even The Wanderer might find excessive, don't deliberately try to stir up the pot so as to give themselves a pay raise when disgusted readers click on to their articles to see what they've written.)  I don't read them in any case.  Like many others I am one of the bucket men who are scooping water from the sinking ship so as to keep it afloat; I have no time to spare for people who are hectoring me for being a simple sailor and to stop criticizing the Captain who has run the ship onto the shoals.]

Speaking personally, I really don't care how many insults, serene or otherwise, come in the direction of Catholics such as myself who try to live the way that Catholics of old used to live and worship.  I smile when I hear them, just as I would smile if I heard them from some ill-tempered boor at a nearby table at a restaurant who hated Catholics and would not restrain himself from letting the world know his opinions.  Water off a duck's back, and all that.

It is possible this Pope will go to his grave with this weird attitude, or that something will happen that will finally change that upbeat, Pollyanna outlook of his into a more realistic one, though, frankly, considering the unbelievable nightmares the Church has been suffering through in recent decades I'd hate to see what it would take to open his eyes.

Perhaps one day he will awaken to the fact that all is not well in the Church and that perhaps he has been shooting his bullets at the wrong targets.  Until then Catholics will have to keep enduring the insults and his lack of resolve in dealing with the most serious crisis the Church has ever known.  We'll have to keep praying and punching, as dear old Hamish Fraser used to say.

As for the man himself I've given up trying to figure out why he is uncomfortable with his patrimony and the Catholic culture of two millenia.

I guess I will just have to accept the fact that he is a child of his times.