Rise And Fall Of A Court Jester

I am, I am sure, not the only one who has the feeling that The Most Astonishing Hypocrite In Church History is facing a big crisis. Blogging priests are more and more open in their criticism; Cardinals and Archbishops have made themselves very vocal; the attempt at carrying water to the cause of heresy by simply ignoring the English version of the Relatio Synodi has been thwarted after only one day of outcry; most importantly, Francis’ troubles have become so mainstream it now seem every secular outlet feels the need to report about them.

How far away, now, the time of the beach balls on the altar seems! I would be very curious to see what would happen if Francis were to do something like that again. You can bet your hat that several prelates would intervene, and the world would know whom are we dealing with. It’s not 2013 anymore. The novelty is gone, the magic is no more.

It seems to me that Francis has been walking on a rope for too long and now has, to put it bluntly, fallen down. He may find a safety net to save him (figuratively) and his pontificate (far less so) from smashing to the ground; but that he is falling seems rather clear to me, and actually I can see the actual smashing coming.

When many secular outlets start to talk openly about your “challenges”, what they are meaning is that you are looking weak. And they sense, rather than know, that this is so. Francis’ downfall will be as much of a media show as his rise.

We, the properly instructed Catholics, do not feel what is happening. We know. So I will now proceed to explain a couple of things for those liberals who may, perchance, have clicked themselves to a place of Catholic sanity. Listen well, you liberals, and take note for future reference.

A Pope is not the leader of a party. He cannot change the organisation he leads. Blair, or Thatcher, or Reagan could reshape their party, because a party can be intrinsically reshaped. The Church cannot.

In the same way as the Catholic Truth towers, immense, over every Pope, the prestige and effectiveness of this Pope can only – in the long term, and in essentials – be based upon that Truth. When the constant drawing from this Truth fails, the ground will slowly begin to shift from under the Pope’s feet. Yes, he can manage to look pleasant for a while; yes, he can ingratiate the world up to a point; but in the long term, he will be expected to do the job of a Pope, and will be judged according to his ability to do it properly. Reality will, at some point, catch up with his Pontificate, and he can only hope he dies before that moment comes.

Francis has done nothing to deserve any merit as Pope. He has squandered an immense patrimony of prestige as Pope by leveraging his position for the sake of his own popularity. The novelty was huge, and for a while the entire non-Catholic planet was in the thrall of this media storm. But this newly acquired popularity could only be as superficial as the way Francis used to acquire it. Think this: if a Pope wants to participate to “the X-factor”, his success will be immense, and victory assured. But in doing so, he will squander the vast popularity that made his success possible in the first place, and he will remain there: the winner, yes; but the winner with a newly acquired status of “celebrity”; a status as quickly lost as it is acquired.

Francis has sacrificed the sacredness of the Pontificate for the most shameless attention-whoring imaginable, in purest wannabe-celebrity style. What he has lost, he will never regain, because no King can regain the respect of his subjects once he has transformed himself in the court jester. Francis will, from now on, be seen as the funny guy with the red nose, saying those mad things that please the perverts; a chap soon to be forgotten, as the next funny guy with a different nose comes along, and cheap people look for cheap entertainment elsewhere.

The world loves the novelty factor, but it then requires more and more of it, like an heroin addict. Francis has tried to oblige as far as he could – actually far more than he could – and has fallen on his nose. The world now looks at him on the ground, his nose running blood, and it starts looking for some other form of shallow entertainment.

The novelty is gone. The enthusiasm is gone. The apparent invincibility is gone.

But the sacredness is also gone; the authority; the prestige; even the respect of his own priests.

Will he find a net? Will he salvage his Pontificate, now sinking in full sight of the media world? When have you ever seen a Pope criticised every week by Cardinals, and more and more often by blogger priests, for being unorthodox, overbearing, and in one word, a Jesuit?

I might be wrong, but I think this pontificate will end up in a huge tragedy for the man who thought he could make everything new. You can’t teach an old heretic new tricks, and Francis cannot become – short of a miracle – a decent priest at his age. If you ask me, I think this old heretic will run toward the wall with reckless abandon, thinking that it will embrace him. Frankly, I can’t wait for the impact.

It’s not even that the Emperor has no clothes. It’s that the Emperor stays there in the middle of the street, dressed like a trannie, and more and more bystanders watch him with a mixture of embarrassment and contempt, as he wonders what has happened of their cheering, and why less and less people find him just the ticket. He tries the old jokes, and less and less people laugh.

The magic is gone. The Emperor is the accomplice of perverts. That’s just how it is.

This is how I think he will end. An embarrassment. A trannie on the street. A court jester who does not amuse almost anyone anymore. A failed Pope. A clown of a Pope. No, wait: a failure as Pope, and a failure as clown.

The world has noticed already. The magic is clearly gone. When the magic is gone, what will remain? Profoundness of thought? Admirable orthodoxy? The prestige of a true Peter? A great intellect?

No, I tell you what I think will remain: embarrassment.

And the embarrassment, like the popularity, will be huge.

M