Now, it may arise at some stage in your pontificate that your best friends are involved
in homosexual scandals. After all, it could happen to any of us one day. Suppose that "Uncle Fred"
(of the St Wormwood and Gall Mafia that got you the papal job)
has been sodomising the wrong people. Suppose that his bosom friend Kevin Farrago denies knowing anything about it,
in spite of sharing a bed home with Fred for several years. Suppose that Cardinal "The Donald" Whirl never
knew that the diocesan funds had been used to pay off Fred's victims. Suppose also that there's another
dodgy cardinal in the loop, who keeps tweeting "Nighty night snugglebum" to his sisters. Suppose that Cardinal Spinach... oh, never mind.
Trouble with the Barque of St Peter? No, you're doing fine!
Quick! A distraction! It's not enough to ask your friend Father Martin James to tweet some new heretical thoughts about how Jesus learned how to do miracles by talking to the little boy who was wandering round with five loaves and two fishes. No use inviting even more dodgy characters to the World Meeting of Dysfunctional Families in Dublin. Kim Jong-un has only said "maybe", Omar al-Bashir is out massacring people, Barack Obama is playing golf, and Emma Bonino is too busy designing a more powerful bicycle pump. Oh, what can you DO?
Simple! Rewrite the Catechism. Do it secretly before announcing it, and do in a Jesuitical way, so that people will be arguing whether you have really tried to change Catholic teaching under their feet. The Death Penalty is a good one to experiment with. Now we know you're against it, although traditional Catholic teaching hasn't gone that far. But you can pretend that it has.
"It's for a new touchy-feely Communism, where you don't murder the dissidents."
Now, the language you use has to be Jesuitical, or else people will understand exactly what you're trying to say. We've gone past Good and Evil, Right and Wrong, Sin and Redemption. You could try "inadmissible". That's a good word that can mean anything.
Of course, once people have got used to receiving updates to the Catechism, perhaps by daily emails, you can change it as much as you like without worrying too much about traditional teaching. Homosexuality disordered? No, of course not. Transgenderism a delusion? Not likely! Adultery a sin? Oh COME ON, haven't you read Amoris Laetitia?
"Bless me, Father, for I have done something inadmissible."
"No, my daughter, the Pope has changed the Catechism, and it's all right now."
Meanwhile, in the popular press, it's POPE ECCLES HAS CHANGED CATHOLIC TEACHING. If they think you can do that, maybe you really can do it?
Poop Francis is a HERETIC! He has ceased being Pope. Time to call for a Conclave.
ReplyDeleteThere's no reason why not! If he can actually do this, then it's all over now, or was over five years ago, because he is going to change everything. Because he can! It's all up for grabs, all of it, and there is no such thing as dogma or doctrine, it's whatever this Argentinian yokel says it is.
ReplyDeleteI pity us, the Catholics who care, but I especially pity the faithful priests, because they are stuck like Chuck in this Church of Satan, and I have no idea how they are going to exist with this situation. We the laity can say, I've had enough, this is misery, and I don't want to attend or support the Church of Satan, but it's a bit thornier for them.
I don't feel pity for bishops. Man up, you have an obligation to Christ and to the sheep. God help you if you continue to dodge that responsibility. Many Catholics are in the end stages of communion with this church. Many do not want to support in any way, men who molest boys or each other or male prostitutes or whatever else that's breathing that they can molest. The sodomy, the Communism, the building of the Trojan Horse that brings in Islam to replace Christendom, all of it, many are done. Now if the pope can just change dogma, make the 2000 year old church a liar or a dope, then all of this is pointless and we might as well stay home.
Will he be resisted to the face?? I pray we don't hear crickets this time.
Remember!!
DeleteWE are the Church. We are the flock. Frankie, weak willed Bishops, over-indulgent Priests... they are the shepherds and sheep dogs and when they are not doing their jobs we are still there. Every Priest is at the end of a long line of "electricity" that stretches back to our God who gave his life on the cross for us.
Sometimes that "electricity" (remember?) is a lot like "telephone" and the message gets garbled at some point, by error, mishearing or on purpose, but we have not lost that message. It continues down in The Bible and in The Catechism and no man canchange God's Word.
The hubris shown by our current PINO in Rome will find him out and we shall continue to be His flock and if our shepherds are all "lost sheep" we need not be a lost flock as well.
Here is an excellent essay on this: https://www.thecatholicthing.org/2018/08/03/on-capital-punishment/
I'd put Twitter back on the mobile if there were daily Catechism updates.
ReplyDeleteHas @holysmoke never thought to give you space to blog at the Catholic Herald? many of those folks seem to be #saved and should be receptive to your words of wisdom.
The nearest I got was being quoted twice in "Best of the blogs" or whatever it's called. I couldn't cope with more fame than that.
DeleteYou excel yourself! Bravo!
ReplyDeleteJPII made it much more ambiguous.
ReplyDeleteDon't think "ambiguous."
DeleteThink "mysterious."
So our current PINO (pope in name only) has chosen to change the catechism. This seems to be just another "fine mess" he's gotten us into.
ReplyDeleteOne question about the term "inadmissable" leads me to wonder, "can we still do it (capital punishment), but simply not "admit" what it is? This seems to be a fairly popular "work-around" used in many areas of public (and private) life.
As for, "It's for a new touchy-feely Communism, where you don't murder the dissidents." Now the PINO has also come out against "life imprisonment. Does this all mean that in the new 't-fC' a thirty-year sentence to the Gulag, not life, is an acceptable, even desirable, fate? Surviving the Gulag for thirty years isn't likely but then, you could get hit by a scooter crossing the street in Rome.
A terminally ill woman (stay with me!) goes to her doctor and says,"Doctor, I've been given six months to live. Can you help me?" The doctor suggests that she marry an accountant. "Marry an accountant?! Would I live any longer?" "I'm afraid not", replies the doctor. "You'd still only have six months...but it would feel like six years."
ReplyDeleteThe time since March 2013 feels more like fifteen, rather than five years.
Did you see the Babylon Bee? Says death penalty still permissible for those who drive too slow in the passing lane.
ReplyDeleteI like your references to Francis doing it "in a Jesuitical way." Too few people realise what that means, and they need to learn. Jesuits have consciously, deliberately mastered the art of speaking in a duplicitous manner, and they teach young Jesuits how to do it; and not only that, but some Jesuits have actually openly defended lying. They HAVE WRITTEN about it. People need to know this, in order to understand statements by Pope Francis.
ReplyDeleteHe has not changed anything. Just confusion and muddle to make people think he has changed something. Fr Hunwicke makes a very good point:
ReplyDelete"And I am as uneasy as I was yesterday about the confection of a new, undefined moral category of "inadmissible". The fact that the French version expresses things quite differently ("inhumaine") suggests that the authors were simply groping helplessly around for terms which sound incredibly stern but have no discernible meaning."
While it is busily being rewrtitten in the vernacular it remains as always in the Latin. Much like a very small dog lifting its leg to a very large tree this pope is attempting to put his stamp on all things Catholic while taking as few risks as possible with his soul. His legacy will be to be "the ambiguous pope" and as such he will be known down through the ages yet to come.
ReplyDelete"...the ambiguous pope..."
DeleteDoes that mean he can use a scissors with either hand while he's cutting and re-pasting various parts of Church teaching? Or does it mean he's equally at home in both the spiritual and secular world? Or should I just return to the dictionary?
Ambivalence is its own reward.
DeleteIt means he can not merely see all sides, he can come down, mercifully, on all sides whenever a lack of clarity is called for, or not.