The Age Of Shallowness

With or without albumen? Ask Francis…

Browsing the newspapers this morning, one cannot but have depressing thoughts about how deep we have sunk. Since yesterday evening it would appear bus riding in itself qualifies one to be a good Pope, and Popes who didn’t cook themselves will forever be seen as backward. The new frontier is now a Pope who does his own domestic cleaning, floor scrubbing and toilets obviously included. The bus seems, in fact, elevated to the rank of Great Elector, and the debate whether a proper carbonara is made with or without the albumen of the egg will now be, Deo Volente, answered by the Pope himself.

On the same vein, the number of supposed pundits is multiplying, who after the fact are all eager to tell us why this is such a genial move, conveniently forgetting to tell us why they didn’t think about it before. “Me too, me too!” is the war cry of the day….

Then there are the prophets of the Holy Ghost, explaining to us peasants a reality which would otherwise remain inaccessible to our simple intelligence: the seagull was obviously remote-controlled by Providence, because hey, I have to write something original before someone else does. Yours truly remembers seeing the seagull from the webcam, but neglected to think: “look, a seagull on the chimney! The Holy Ghost is clearly doing overtime! It can only be Bergoglio then, or at the very least a cyclist!”. Very stupid of me, I admit.

In all this, I miss the hard facts: the number of vocations in the Holy Father’s archdiocese during his tenure; how the Argentinian Jesuits fared during his tenure; how the seminary he ran fared during his tenure. They will be published somewhere, I am sure; but it seems no one of those whose profession it is to give us this kind of really useful information, and who have at their disposal extensive research resources, care two straws for it.

We are fed with the bus, the cooking, and the seagull instead.

Mundabor