I was a big fan of Pope Francis, so I was relieved to know he got many of his wishes granted in terms of his funeral arrangements. Francis was a humble man, by all accounts, and the business of disposing of dead popes is not humble in the least, ordinarily. There’s so much stuff. For one, he would have to be buried in three caskets, like a Russian nesting doll. And how much fun is that? You’re being led to believe this is a great man but by the time you’ve peeled back all the big caskets, it’s just a little fellow in there after all. Who wants to be the eensiest one in the nesting doll?
Well, probably Francis. Being humble, and all. But he was able to prevail, and instead of being deposited inside superfluous caskets, he was entombed in one. His original desire was to be diced into nuggets, grilled, and served, papa asado, to poor people in his native Argentina. A compromise with a nod to his desires was observed, once he was reliably dead, which is never a given in the Catholic church, wherein he was not actually put on the barbie, but was laid to rest in a single laminated casket with a chewy nougat center.
I’m pretty sure he had to be wearing the nicest possible dress, just like Jesus after he was pulled from the cross and stuck in a cave, and had a stone rolled over him. Wait. Francis didn’t care about the fancy dress either. Francis didn’t even want to wear the ruby slippers popes totally get to wear. Francis, basically, understood what Jesus was about, which is why he irritated the traditional keepers of the faith.
Poor Francis. Not that he was going to live forever, but still, he held on admirably long, fending off pneumonia and political scorn and the rancid ire of the plutocracy, and maintaining his Christian principles, after which he was abruptly faced with the Future in the form of J.D. Vance, and he threw in the towel. J.D. Vance had already muddied up the teachings of Jesus by explaining that when He said “Love thy neighbor as thyself” he meant “Love thy wife and children if possible, and then thy nearest neighbor if she’s hot and the funds hold out, and then random strangers if they look like you and aren’t asking for money, and then…and then…once everything is shipshape in Me World, consider a sort of generalized worldly love that does not require personal sacrifice.” Which is totally what Jesus meant.
Vance defended his position by referring to the original Latin “ordo amoris,” a phrase which is derived from ordure.
We know a lot about J.D. Vance because he is smart and wrote a whole book about himself and his hardscrabble upbringing, in which he confided that he was very well acquainted with the meek, the ones who would inherit the earth, but not on his watch, and he hoped never to encounter them again. Exactly like Jesus, but different.
Thing is, there are a lot of us who have nothing bad to say about Christians who actually celebrate the precepts of Jesus, even if we have no religious affiliation. And for us, losing Francis is a big deal. Surely, there will be a backlash against such radicalism as Francis espoused. Precisely the same radicalism that got Jesus killed, if temporarily. We assumed the pendulum will swing back toward darkness.
But it didn’t. Maybe it could have, maybe in ordinary times it would have, but the rise of hate and autocracy in this world today has cast shadows sharp enough that the conclave dug deep, one more time. And elevated another man who promises to resist his elevation, and speak for the meek.
I watched the coverage of the conclave after the white smoke went up. The thousands of people gathered appeared nearly delirious, awaiting the new Pope. And when it turned out to be the American, it seemed a sort of stunned quiet befell the square.
What does this mean, the Pope of the Americas?
Already maga has attacked him and is trying to discredit him. That gives me great joy.
May our nation’s Catholics join Pope Leo and help the world rid us of this lawless, cruel, and staggeringly stupid Trump person and his horrible tribe of selfish idiots.
Amen.
I saw a clip of the nuns reacting to the new pope. They looked like fangirls at a My Chemical Romance concert during their heyday. (And, yes. I went to one. Had to leave very early on because their high-pitched screams were hurting my ears — even with earplugs.)
And MAGA…. How do you discredit THE POPE? (Sorry… he’s from Chicago, so it’s DA POPE!) I don’t think that the pope can do much against MAGA. I hope I’m wrong.
Oh dear. I do not know this My Chemical Romance whereof you speak. I have many holes where modern cultural references are supposed to be. I fill them with birds.
Neither do I
Hear! Hear!
I wonder why the “stunned quiet?” Any insights? Were they just digesting the news, or wondering who he is, or were they appalled?
I’ve heard that Italians really do not like Americans. (News flash: I’m American and I don’t like Americans.) They DID give the new pope what they consider a compliment over there: “Well, he acts less American than most Americans.”
Although Sunday church was part of our family’s schedule, for the most part it was a social gathering of people who believed this thing. Also, it was Episcopalian, which as we know is the Cool Church, though much of their worship service was similar to the Catholics. (Jonathan Winters described Episcopalians as Catholics who flunked Latin.)
So just out of curiosity, I would watch Popes coming and going and the reactions, and their attitudes toward the world–or not–and was vaguely aware of your aforementioned pendulum. But never did I see such immediate vitriole going to a Pope than has been spewed by MAGA. I’ll take a wild swing of a guess that the majority of them are not Catholic. All they know is this guy chose the name because it reflected a commitment to dynamic social issues. Or, actually, they heard from Fox that he was woke. And most likely a Marxist.
My grandfather was an Episcopalian minister but I know nothing of the faith. We wuz Lutherans, because Mom was in charge of all that and there aren’t any Episcopalians in North Dakota, I assume. The MAGA mob just jumps where the strings yank them.
Sort of off topic I guess, but a friend of mine who is Jewish was thinking about taking a job in North Dakota. We all thought that was a bad idea, considering how cold it is, how remote its is, and so we said, wait, is there a synagogue there? We googled it and only found Jews for Jesus. No synagogues anywhere near. That did it, no North Dakota move for her.
I assume they also hate him cuz he has been a fan of baseball- so out of fashion, almost like serious and generous churchgoers are going extinct too.
It drives me nuts when the media call him ‘the American pope’- as USA -ers we are so presumptuous as to claim that title. But then, he is almost a miracle- both north and South American continent residency and citizenship. I hope he kicks the correct butts.
He IS? Now I like him even more. I love baseball.
Yes- at first the news was that he was a Cubs fan- but the White Sox, truly hopeless
I’ve never understood how you pick a team if your town has two teams.
I thought Francis was the best pope I’d ever heard of, but he only sort of understood what Jesus was about. Native Americans were not pleased when Junipero Serra was canonized, and the Vatican ignored all of their entreaties. I doubt think Jesus would have agreed that all manner of horrors against the indigenous are acceptable in the spreading of the faith, but what do I know?
Fifty different tribes in California condemned the sainthood conferred on Serra, said Deborah Miranda, a literature professor at Washington and Lee University in Virginia and a member of the Ohlone Costanoan Esselen Nation of California. She wrote “Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir,” a book about her ancestors’ experiences in the Spanish missions.
“My objection and the objection of many California Indians is that he is being honored for in fact dishonoring many of our California ancestors. The missions ended up killing about 90% of the California Indians present at the time of missionization, creating all kinds of cultural and emotional baggage that we still carry to this day,” Miranda said.
(My apologies for getting serious.)
No apologies ever necessary here. In fact, if you have any insights into Pope Leo’s bladder issues, at 69, this is the place to mention them. I had to look Serra up. Looks like Francis missed the ball on that one.
I dimly recall a pope having his prostate removed during my childhood, but that’s as close as I can get.
He missed his ball, too.
Murr…..I come for your writing but stay for the comments. They never disappoint.
Ain’t it the truth?
Right? I love the comments section here!
Oh, and Murr, I saw this information about Wombats on another writer’s Substack. I never knew Wombats pooped in cubes. I thought it was something you would definitely want to write about if you haven’t already, LOL!https://www.science.org/content/article/how-do-wombats-poop-cubes-scientists-get-bottom-mystery
Numerous times, my dear, including a chapter in my book Trousering Your Weasel. We’ve been ALL OVER the wombat poop. In fact, here’s the SECOND post I wrote about it: https://www.murrbrewster.com/uncategorized/lube-them-cubes/
I grew up a Catholic, St. Francis Elementary in Bend, altar boy until 8th grade. My sister gradually made me look at the church through history, what it had done. She was 8years older.
The last time I attended mass was in ’60, as an altar boy. The other lad and I had been sipping the sacramental wine for a couple months, filling it back up with water. During the service, when the priest tossed back the wine, he stopped, and looked at the chalice. We knew we were screwed.
He dismissed us, and that was my last mass.
You are not supposed to dilute Jesus’s blood.
Euwww. I was a Catholic until I was maybe 8 or 9. My mother’s family were all Catholics; my father’s were Presbyterian, but he had to promise the Catholic Church that he would raise his children as Catholic. It was my mother who rebelled and then we became Presbyterian. All I remember about catechism was that I thought the priest changed clothes during whatever we were doing in the church. No Catholics I know have any idea what that might have been. Anyway, two religions, and none of it stuck.
Murr, I’m having trouble with this line: “His original desire was to be diced into nuggets, grilled, and served, papa asado, to poor people in his native Argentina.”
I am a simple, literal person and I am old and tired tonight. I can’t tell if this is a flight of Murr fancy or something that is…shudder…true? Perhaps an act of communion with which I hope never to become familiar?
It is quite possible that this is a dab of fancy, but I am touched that it sounded authentic. Now get some sleep!