No kneeling in Church!

Top Cardinal Blase Cupich (well he has twice won the World Cup of Bad Cardinals) has spoken:

A message from our champion:

Certainly reverence can and should be expressed by bowing before the reception of Holy Communion, but no one should engage in a gesture that calls attention to oneself or disrupts the flow of the procession.

What can he possibly mean? Are people doing the Haka? Engaged in weightlifting (muscular Christianity)? Or pointing at the deacon and giggling at his rose vestments?

Permit Austen Ivereigh, the man with the Pope's ear (he keeps it in the freezer) to explain.

Austen Ivereigh is feeling disrupted.

Apparently, what Bad Cardinal Cupich is referring to is the sin of kneeling. (I don't think I've ever seen anyone throw themselves down, but who knows what they do in the Ivereigh Towers?)

Presumably he's not referring to the TLM, in which *everyone* throws themselves down - I mean, kneels? Thanks to Blase's over-zealous interpretation of Trads Cussed, trying to conduct a TLM in Chicago is now as dangerous as celebrating St Valentine's Day was in 1929, so Al Cupone is unlikely ever to encounter one - not even an LGBTTLM, which is what he would probably prefer.

In the "Hail Maori" rite, these gestures are permitted when receiving the Sacrament.

Anyway, the following showy and disruptive activities are now discouraged in the Catholic Church.

* Kneeling, especially if it delays Dr Ivereigh when he is anxious to go home.
* Genuflecting.
* Making the sign of the cross, or similar showing off how "reverent" you are.
* Saying "Amen" when receiving. Actually the TLM liturgy already acknowledges that this is showy and disruptive, so it is not done.
* Looking unnaturally pious. Or, in general, taking the whole thing seriously.

I hope that helps.

Pope Francis upset by "More tea, vicar?"

It has been reported that the 2020 Pontifical Yearbook, the Holy See's annual directory, has dropped the title of "Vicar of Christ" from its description of Jorge Mario Bergoglio, relegating it to a footnote - and we know from Amoris Laetitia that nobody trusts footnotes - as a "historical title".

More tea, vicar?

Francis has similarly lost some of his other titles:

* Boss-man of the Catholic Church;
* Mr Infallible;
* Grandmaster of the art of Papa-Slappa;
* The Big Cheese;
* Holiest Man in the World;
* Bouncer Bergoglio (from his days in Argentina);
* The Fat Controller;
* Mr Sunshine;
* Big Frank;
* Mother Nature's Favourite Son;
* Humblest Man in the Vatican 2013-2020;
* Santo Subito. 

It is said that Francis didn't like to be called "Vicar of Christ", as it sounded too much like "Vicar of Christchurch", which would make him an Anglican clergyman from New Zealand (or possibly Dorset), subsisting largely on cups of tea from grateful parishioners. However, it has always been a definite solecism to ask the Pope, "More tea, vicar?"

Choir Practice at St Ngaio's, Christchurch.

Just as it is bad manners to refer to someone by a pronoun xe doesn't want (Xe will be very offended), it is wrong to mis-title the Holy Father, Pope Francis, Deputy God (are we still allowed to use these titles?) So no more tactless references to "Christ" - they confuse him.