Senseless Gossip

And it came to pass the Bishop of Rome made another humble intercontinental call to give some hope and change to a landswoman of him, obviously feeling the need for a good old chat in Spanish.

This is a man even journalists have problems in reporting in a way that makes halfway sense, and generally try to isolate the snippets in which Francis might actually, have conveyed some kind of real information. But journalists generally do not have any direct and personal interests in what Francissays; besides, there are other journalists there, so one cannot understand what he pleases.

Not so for the woman on the other side of Francis' chatty phone. She lives in sin with her concubine; which, I am told, is rather a problem in her religion. Tellingly, though, she does not seem worried, or perhaps even aware, of her sinful condition. Therefore, she writes to the Bishop and say she would like to receive communion, but.. will she not contravene the rules of the Church?

My unworthy reflections:

1. Argentina has a lot of priests. Bad as many of them certainly are, I dare to say they would all have the right answer here. Perhaps they already did, and the woman thought “if catholic priests think I am in sin, I should ask the Pope, because he is clearly different from them”.

2. The situation of the lady seems to me akin of the one of the murderer who wonders whether it is against the rules of the Church not to give Christian burying to the man he has just killed. I mean, she lives in an adulterous concubinage and she is worried that she might transgress Church rules by making communion?

3. The woman clearly has an agenda. She wants to hear that she is fine. Fine – implicitly – in her concubinage, and fine in her taking communion. Look at her, everybody. What a nice gal.

4. Again: even journalists have problem in understanding what on earth Bergoglio means whenever he opens her mouth. Imagine what the woman will understand. I tell you what she will understand: what she had decided she would hear.

5. It is a sign of the stupidity of our times that fourth hand gossip lands on a newspaper. Imagine the Bishop speaking to a prostitute, who then posts a message to her lesbian lover, which is read by others, who alert a third-rate journalist, who writes a third-class article. Don't you think it will turn out Francis has said if she needs money for her and her “loved one” she may sell her body? I thought this Bishop had compared gossip to murder?

6. Good Lord almighty: we have to do with a Bishop of Rome so deprived of any sense of decency that when he wants to commit liturgical abuses, insult Our Lord or the Blessed Virgin or promise salvation to atheists “following their conscience” he does so for all the world to see without the slightest embarrassment. If he wanted to send the message it is fine for public adulterers to receive, don't you think he would just go on and do it in front of the cameras? He has already baptised the child of concubines, but never given communion to known concubines themselves. Even Francis sees the difference. So much so, that he has concocted an extraordinary synod to try to get around it without being damned by his successors for all eternity as heretic. The idea of the woman, and of the journalists, Francis has suddenly both become very shy and forgotten he cannot be seen as authorising sacrilege tout court is simply nonsense.

7. In cauda venenum. All this happens because we have a disgraceful Pope in love with his own popularity, with no idea of sound Catholicism, prone to stunts of all sorts, with a sovereign contempt for decency, and not very intelligent. A halfway decent Pope would never make such calls in the first place; even if he were able to put three phrases in a row that make some sense.

The trash press (like the Homograph) has gone on this immediately, with the usual girly excitement of the local queens.

The intellectual standards of his country are falling toward shanty town level.

Mundabor