PopeWatch: Open Thread
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 41 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
Let’s see now, something amusing about this pope….? Hmmm.
Did you hear the one about Cardinal Kasper and the pope meeting St Peter at the “golden gates, and St Peter said that Kasper was also his favorite theologian…”?
The pope then asked St Peter about heaven. Say, St. Peter, where ever did all these rabbits come from?
Years ago, Herbert W. Armstrong, the late founder of the Worldwide Church of God cult, was nicknamed “Mr. Confusion” by one of his critics. I think Pope Francis is a worthy successor to that title!
A joke from Craig Ferguson’s late night TV show: “The old Pope and the new Pope
just met up for a Papal reunion. They’re referring to themselves as New Pope and
Pope Classic”.
Hanrahan walks into a pub. The bartender asks him, “What’ll you have?”
Hanrahan says “Give me three pints of Guinness please.”
The bartender brings him three pints and the man proceeds to alternately sip one, then the other, then the third until they’re gone. Hanrahan then orders three more.
The bartender says, “Sir, I know you like them cold. You don’t have to order three at a time. I can keep an eye on it and when you get low I’ll bring you a fresh cold one.”
Hanrahan says, “You don’t understand. I have two brothers, one in Australia and one in the States. We made a vow to each other that every Saturday night we’d still drink together. So right now, my brothers have three Guinness Stouts too, and we’re drinking together.
The bartender thought that was a wonderful tradition.
Every week Hanrahan came in and ordered three beers. His story spread, and pretty soon everyone in the County knew and loved “Three Beers Hanrahan.”
Then one week he came in and ordered only two.
Hanrahan drank them and then ordered two more.
The bartender felt sorry and approached Three Beers. He said to him, “I’d just like to say that I’m sorry that one of your brothers died.”
Hanrahan said, “Oh, me brothers are fine—-I gave up beer for Lent.”
It Is Difficult To Remove The Pope From It All.
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I posted this over at 1P5:
You have to hand it to them.
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First Step: Disarm the Faithful:
Next: [Proceed to prepare to] Implement the very things the faithful were told not to insist upon.
– Call a sham Synod on “the family” when it was “The Homo Agenda All Along” [sarmaticusblog].
– Manipulate the Synod and release an interim report pre-approved by the pope but not from and not even seen by Synod Fathers. A report which has been called one of the worst official documents drafted in Church history [John Smeaton, co-founder of Voice of the Family].
– Via a fiat include in the final Relatio items rejected by the Synod Fathers but which are crucial for the agenda.
– Broadcast the message and take it to the road [e.g. via interviews, reflections at Santa Marta, speeches by Cardinals Kasper & Maradiaga].
– In the Lineamenta, instruct Bishops to avoid, in their responses, a formulation of pastoral care based simply on an application of doctrine, which would not respect the conclusions of the Extraordinary Synodal Assembly and would lead their reflection far from the path already indicated.
– Leading up to Synod 2015 hammer away at “the rigid legalists, or the hypocritical doctors of the law” – by the way, who are these in the Church?
– The Germans? No so subtle.
– Shepherds up to and including the Pastor of the Universal Church remain silent as what was once the land of saints and scholars becomes pagan in a day.
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You have to hand it to them [They and their infernal conductor].
When thinking about Pope Francis’ modus operandi the image of a child playing in a sandbox comes to mind. But in this case the sand is peoples souls. And Francis is having fun as builds his little mounds of progressive hope and destroys them with his ambiguity and flashes of doctrinal coherence. One views his evolutionary approach, where something beautiful is supposed to emerge from millions of random acts of conflicting ideas, as if he believes the entire world will find the Catholic Church as fun and undemanding as he does his sandbox.
One could also call this approach madness. I pray for Pope Francis every day as should we all. With God there is always hope.
@Michael Dowd: Very well said. Thank you!