Immense Gains.

Yes, Frankie. Wrong career…

Yesterday, Argentina has won the Football World Championship. Congratulations, and all that. They are half-Italians after all, so they had good football (soccer) genes to work with.

Their goalkeeper has, upon winning a goalkeeper-related trophy, proceeded to make an extremely vulgar gesture with it. Not only was this extremely vulgar, but also shockingly stupid considering half the planet was watching. I haven’t seen the video as I never follow prize giving ceremonies my team has not won, but I understand that the antics was checked live on tv, in front of, likely, a couple of billions. Stupidity and arrogance mixed together in a deadly cocktail.

And then it dawned on me: this must be something not necessarily linked to a person, but linked to a mentality, an attitude. Evidently, the Argentinian boor has to be a very special kind of boor; someone who boasts of his coarseness and wants all the world to see it, rather than the usual variant in which the coarseness is clearly there, but it is not boasted about.

This very public coarseness must be at the root of the unbelievable arrogance of Francis.

“How can he do this?” – we have asked countless times when seeing him insulting the Blessed Virgin, separating children’s hands joint in prayer, or just not showing up at the concert. “Does he not realise he will look stupid in front of everyone?”

Perhaps he does. Perhaps he doesn’t.

But he will do it anyway, because this is the kind of boorishness that, in his “cultural” environment, people like him will boast about.

Seen from this perspective, all becomes clear.

Francis should have become a professional goalkeeper instead of a priest.

No improvement in footballer’s behaviour, of course; but what an immense gain for the Church!!

Shepherd’s Pipe Carol

Defrocking Catholicism

Worth more than tax money.

I have not followed the details of the matter. There might be something I have missed. Si sbalio, mi corigerete (look it up!).

But it seems to me that Father Pavone does more for the unborn in one day than all of the US Bishops, together, in a year. It seems to me that there is something deeply, fundamentally wrong in confusing an obviously Catholic issue like abortion with a strictly-intended party political activity.

Padre Pio, during the election of 1948, explicitly invited his faithful to vote to defeat Communism. Should we defrock him, too? And what about all those countless priests who, in former times, took obviously Catholic positions in political controversies? Should every priest who approved of anti-abortion legislation be defrocked, too?

Mind, I do not have all the story. There might be legal technicalities, and there might be other issues. But it seems to me that Father Pavone is not welcome within the US Church establishment, because it gives the lie to their way too cozy relationship with the Democratic Party, which has the right to kill the unborn as a fundamental part of their ideology.

Sheesh, the same people who allow angry lesbians every licence to pretend they are nuns, will defrock Pavone? The same people who consider Pelosi and Biden worthy of receiving communion, will deny Pavone his role as a priest? What is this, a joke?

I am not liking this and I am not buying it. If this is done out of fear that the Church could lose its tax-privileged status, then it is really disgraceful; then in that case, the right of the Church to talk Catholic should be defended vigorously in Court and, if necessary, the tax-privileged status renounced.

There must be more to this than meets the eyes.

I am grateful for link that give more background to the story.