Pope fatigue
Ireland is somewhat awash with Pope this weekend.
The papers and television have been full of it for the last week or so, and today and tomorrow the country grinds to a standstill as the wee fella with the white dress from the Vatican is whisked around the country on a whistle-stop tour.
Technically I am a Roman Catholic. I was signed up into the club by my parents, but seeing as I was only a couple of weeks old at the time, I consider that contract invalid. Unfortunately there is no way I can cancel it officially so I just ignore it. Fortunately there is no clause in that contract that compels me to actually do anything, such as travelling to view visiting pontiffs so I’m happy to ignore the whole circus.
I remember well the day the last Pope visited. A million people crowded into the Phoenix Park to see him but I was up the mountains at our daughter’s Christening, thereby signing her into the very institution I was trying to avoid. I can be cruel sometimes. In my defence I will say that it was virtually impossible back then to get a kid into school without that piece of Catholic Contract.
Ireland has changed a bit in the forty years since the last visit. We now legally have contraception, divorce, homosexuality [and half a million genders], same sex marriage and a church that was decimated by sex abuse scandals. There are also the scandals about the Madeleine Laundries where unmarried mothers were forced into slave labour and their babies sold off to America. It has changed so much that we have a gay Prime Minister and a black Rose of Tralee.
As a result of all of this, this Pope isn’t going to get quite such an easy ride as the last one forty years ago. I can’t see a million visiting the park this time around. Doubtless he will pay lip service to the past scandals but unless he hands over every priest [and those involved in the cover-up] to the civil authorities and bungs a few billion into the compensation funds, it won’t mean very much.
Personally I have nothing against the present Papal incumbent. I wish him well on his little visit.
But if he wants to call in here to see me, I’m busy.
Red Francis is a communist apologiser. He should be De-poped and a real religous person who doesn’t screw around with politics should be installed. This South American fucker was a Sandinista and fought for a communist take over. I am Roman Catholic and do not recognise him as Pope!
Wow! That’s strong. There again I have never recognised any pope. Maybe the two of us should start a new religion from scratch? A sort of fork of Christianity?
It’s been done, on recognizing the pope there was one who got his picture taken with JFK and was up on the wall in the good room all over Ireland for years.
They already created “Catholic Lite”. It’s called Luthernism.
Red Francis was on the national news tonight. All they showed was the protesters.
“bungs a few billion into the compensation funds,” (should be in italians but the button ain’t working)
Ahhh all becomes clear. I had wondered why the “SURVIVORS” were sooo disappointed apparently by what *wasn’t* in the Pope’s Dublin Castle Address (full marks btw to “Franky Goes To Babylon” (c)JHigham for NOT slapping the simpering mick sodomite) . I should have known it was about the money, DUH! Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure there are a lot of genuine church abuse victims in Ireland , perhaps more so than elsewhere-things like the Laundries were an obscenity (although is chopping babies up in the womb less cruel than having them forcibly adopted…even by Americans? Philosophers will debate that one.) But the apparent scale of supposed abuse would have me lighting the Raccoon Signal if she was still with us. Personally I’m betting they only went after the Church cos Jimmy Savile never visited Ireland.I hope Franky takes the only sane approach and says ‘if you were abused by a priest etc, go report it to the Garda and I give you my papal word we will open our files to them, full disclosure and pay whatever compensation the court awards you without quibble…and if the perp isn’t imprisoned we will move him to a chaplaincy in a leper colony somewhere…or post-BrexSShite Britain…same thing’.
Apparently the catholic church believes that abortion after birth is perfectly fine. As the bodies found on the sites of the Madelaine laundries indicate. That at least means that the unfortunate women had to go through ” Eve’s punishment” before the unwanted infant is disposed of.
As the bodies found on the sites of the Madelaine laundries indicate
Pfaffenspiegel resurfaces? If human remains (ie actual real solid evidence) have been found, in this dna and age , then we can expect some murder trials (or have there been already, I don’t keep up with the news?).
Look it up, Google is your friend.
I did. You were referring to Tuam et al? So far no one it seems is reporting that it was possibly ‘abortion after birth’ ie murder-either directly or by neglect (although the sheer number would suggest even to the most cynical that there was some pretty awful neglect going on). Although I haven’t checked the ‘hot sheets’-those of a supermarket tabloid ‘I was pregnant from Lizard men’ nature conspiracy sites, whom I expect are all convinced it was a satanic plot or The Eugenicists.
Infact as far as I can discern the OUTRAGE is as much about the treatment of the dead as how they came to be deaded in the first place. Looking at the first ‘Historic Child Mortality Rates in Ireland’ google result i chanced upon https://www.indexmundi.com/facts/ireland/mortality-rate I am surprised , assuming those figures are correct, that it was only 800 (guessimate) in Tuam.
I don’t know how Francis has the gall to take time off to go gallivanting around the world. There’s a massive, root-and-branch, clean up job awaiting his personal attention. Heartfelt apologies and hush money just don’t cut it.
I could never get my head around Catholicism, never work out how you started with an itinerant First Century preacher and ended up with the Vatican (and I do have a Masters’ degree in theology from Bristol University)
Thousands of homeless in Ireland at the moment and they’re spending €20 million on the visit? I would imagine it’s a hell of a lot more but that’s what they are admitting to.
All the churches are beyond me. The Church of England has been involved in the cover-up of a paedophile bishop who retired to live in our parish in a house bought him by the Duchy of Cornwall (Prince Charles was a friend). I can’t find anything in the Gospels that puts the church ahead of people.
“Thousands of homeless in Ireland at the moment and they’re spending €20 million on the visit?”
“For ye have the poor always with you; but me ye have not always.” Matty 26, 11 , would i imagine be the justification and let us not forget the Pope is not only Christ’s Vicar on Earth, Capo di tutti Capi of the Church but also a Head Of State so Ireland has to receive him in a fitting manner….i mean you’d be horribly ashamed if Franky had to fly Ryanair, drive around in a hastily converted former ice cream van that someone’s brother in law had in his back yard ( “Stop Me and Buy…Salvation”) and with the sermon on the Loaves & Fishes sponsored by the McFillet Of Fish . And then there’s the entertainment value he provides and the boost to your tourism industry.
“never work out how you started with an itinerant First Century preacher and ended up with the Vatican”-Ian
Either it was by the Lord’s design or someone somewhere realized they could make a killing on the Eternity futures markets. I hate to say it but I know which option my money is on. Props on the Masters in theology btw, I have some small idea of what that entails….even from somewhere like Bristol 😛
Perhaps there was some point when God told them the clergy had to be rich and that everything had to be done in Latin (or 17th Century English), I think I must have missed that chapter in the church history book!
Well if the Logion Of Thomas are to be believed (and I’m working off memory here) Christ said “Render unto Caesar that which is Caesars, render unto God that which is his and render unto me mine”….oh sod it I shall check before posting this.
“They showed Jesus a gold piece and said to him: Caesar’s men demand tribute from us. He said to them: What belongs to Caesar, give to Caesar; what belongs to God, give to God; and what is mine, give it to me.!”
Yep that’s what I thought (and on a technical note I’m with J.A.T.R on the Logion).
when God told them the clergy had to be rich -Ian
We know from the NT (and I know you know but for those who don’t) JC was not short of ‘a bob or two’ to put it in technical jargon. (Possibly like unto Gandhi who was once asked by one of his followers ” “Do you know how much it costs every day to keep you in poverty?””) . Jesus was bankrolled by the rich women of the court and he seemed to have no end of wealthy friends where he could couch surf. No First Century Food Bank for this Son of God. Jesus fittingly, for hawkers of narcotics and opiums-of-the-peoples, also had a sicario as a bag man…a money bag man.
A bit like Marx being supported by Engels, who received money from the mills Marx despised. Having spent thirty years as an Anglican priest, I am still astonished at the capacity of the church to claim it has embraced humility and poverty.
I should make a joke about priests embracing Humility, Poverty and their underage sister Charity but its late….
However , if i remember my theology rightly, don’ t you remain a priest, once ordained even if you leave the Anglican Church (as is the Catholic tradition)?
Your recall is completely correct! The Anglicans are even more rigorous than the Catholics. In the Catholic Church there is the option of laicisation, Anglican theology regards ordination as of such a nature that it cannot be divested.
I’m told the Pope has apologised to God, but it’s not God who got abused.
According to The Bestes Frau’s Daily BrexSShiteur , Capnophobe and Homeopath , only 200K turned out to gaze upon the Holy Father. Mind you comparisons with the crowds JPii could pull in are perhaps unfair-he was COOL even for non-Catholics, very much an 80s icon. Cool enough he got his own Spitting Image puppet. http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/gallery/2005/03/23/The-Pope.jpg*just remembered I actually had a postcard of the real JP2 stuck inside the cover of my Order Of Mass/Hymnal, true story* Like I said, ‘icon’. This new guy is a bit of non-entity….I doubt he’s even written a hit song.