Silly Season

I always think of election cycles ushering in a silly season, where people say and do the stupidest things either as candidates or supporters. A papal election is even worse, because, at least in America, the election is viewed in political terms. Undoubtedly the Cardinal's involved, being human, do some horse trading in order to elect the person they think is best for the position, but the balance of what is going on right now is rooted in prayer, seeking guidance from the Holy Spirit, and knowledge of what the Church faces today. Lack of knowledge of Church teaching never stopped anybody from bloviating about what the Church should do, of course, and the usual suspects rejoice in having a microphone and/or camera to bloviate into. The chants of "the spirit of Vatican II" from people who have never read the documents ramp up, as does the railing against a Church who, well aware that most of the sex scandal in the Church came from homosexual liaisons between priests and teenage boys, has banned ordination of openly homosexual men - how awful that the Church condemned for the scandal take steps to avoid a repeat of it!  And all the other squawks from folks who think their 50 or 60 years of living with the words "I want to" foremost in their lives trumps a couple thousand years of prayer, study, and philosophy, are even louder. The likes of John Cornwell, whose Hitler's Pope is so easy to show as nonsense that even the cover photo is easily proved as a deliberate falsehood, once again get to get up an rant and rave, making one think of nothing more than the Maria Monk stories of the 1830s.

But in the nonsense there's pretty funny stuff, and Creative Minority Report has stumbled across it.  Amazing how a camera and mike will make people talk about things like what they think of the new Pope's ex-wife....

Note to those not paying attention - we don't have a new Pope yet. And I'm pretty sure that none of the eligible Cardinals have been married.