Pope Donald the Worst?

 

 Just when I thought I was inured to the fly-paper tackiness of TrumpWorld, they succeed in flabbering the brutal hell out of my gaster. The above AI portrait of the prick as a pontiff honestly did get posted by the White House account on the Truth Social site, and despite the usual formulation of "disappointed but not surprised", I think I'll actually chuck this one into the "surprised but not disappointed" bin.

You see, the knob-glazers surrounding the president have run off with a passion after "buy Greenland" and "make Canada the 51st state", so why not humor yet another megalomaniac delusion of the slowly rotting Turnip-in-Chief? 

I should have expected as much when Sen. Graham spoke as if Trump as Pope was a real possibility:

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) suggested that the more than 230 Catholic Cardinals in the conclave “keep an open mind” about considering President Donald Trump for the papacy.

“I was excited to hear that President Trump is open to the idea of being the next Pope,” Graham posted Tuesday on X. “This would truly be a dark horse candidate, but I would ask the papal conclave and Catholic faithful to keep an open mind about this possibility! The first Pope-U.S. President combination has many upsides. Watching for white smoke…. Trump MMXXVIII!”

Graham showed support for the idea after President Trump was asked by a reporter if “he had anyone in mind” to succeed Pope Francis after he died at the age of 88.

People assumed he was joking. Nay, nay. He was planting seeds. 

A Vision in Blue

 

Laid out in repose at the Pope's funeral whilst resplendent in blue was President Trump, kept somewhat upright by virtue of his belt. Alongside him as she occasionally is, was First Lady Melania, we are fairly certain, in the more usual black, or as she likes to put it, "Widow Practice." 

Despite at least being some kind of dressed up, funeral observers are questioning whether he should actually be taken anywhere, but a variety of more interesting locations have been suggested. 

So, This Happened Yesterday

 

Trump who gets invited to the BEST FUNERALS, showed kids at the White House Easter Egg Hunt his post-assassination attempt collector's card while the stock market was tanking.

That's it. That's the picture. That sentence is the whole blog post. I've been doing this a minute and how do you even add to that? 

"Hey kids, do you know who ELSE was almost killed and rose again? Your favorite president, who got so many eggs you can't even find them all." 

Not My Circus, Not My Pontifex

 

The Pope says Ukraine should have the courage to raise a white flag and negotiate an end to the war.

"The word negotiate is a courageous word. When you see that you are defeated, that things are not going well, you have to have the courage to negotiate.”

(First reported by… pic.twitter.com/Mpl8rQhcy9

— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) March 9, 2024

As for me, I believe in the courage of telling Putin to go to Hell. To negotiate with evil is to grant it power. It does not save lives. It only tells them which lives are sacrificed today, and then there is tomorrow, and tomorrow....

The argument I have with the Pope here is the one I have with absolute pacifists anywhere: is there no noble stand, nothing you would fight for? Can you not distinguish invader from invaded? Why would you suppose that the laying down of arms against tyranny would result in an end to killing when the perpetrator--Putin's Russia, has again and again said they have no intention of stopping here? How is it on Ukraine to choose which people of theirs are fit to be martyrs for an illusory greater good?

Because the result of Putin winning isn't about territory, but the span of his influence, and the kind of government and repression he represents. It is about the lives of the people in that territory he holds and the future of their lives. The fight was started by Putin--he could have the courage of realizing that mass death for his ego is a sin. He could have the courage of backing down and reaping the whirlwind of his botched dictatorship. He could disengage now from Ukraine as Gorbachev did from Afghanistan, understanding that it would be a situation from which the bleeding would never end. 

It is the thing his great sin of imperialistic pride would not have him do--but what a conscience would dictate if he had one. 

Who thinks after any negotiation, the conflict would be over? How does Russia hold what it never should have obtained, with what violence? There is nothing in the ruined cities, the raped women, the kidnapped children, the promised enforcement of Russian culture and erasure of Ukrainian history that is not appalling. The negotiated future is just more violence, of a different and more insidious kind.

Go and chide the sinner, and don't ask the sinned against to fucking forgive in advance the horrors they would lay down their lives to save their loved ones from. 

We don't look at Pius XII in an un-admixed way. I would let the current pope consider very well the use of his pulpit. Humans are all fallible, some just need to demonstrate it less. He has a place from which to influence history. This is not that way. He would not be a peacemaker, only one who sanctions making a desert and calling it peace. 

Climate Sunday: Climate is a Moral Issue

The Pope visited the US, and particularly my own city this weekend, so I am going to frame this post in light of the Pope's visit, and his urgent message, downplayed to the US Congress, but stated a bit more forcefully to the UN--We have got to do something about this climate change.

Marco Rubio, presidential candidate and Catholic, reminds us that the Pope "is not a politician". Bless his heart.

Jeb Bush, presidential candidate and Catholic, advises us that the Pope "is not a scientist".

The Pope is the head of the state called "Vatican City" (can you say that Marco Rubio?--Knew you could!) and represents a religion whose adherents number over a billion. You tell me that guy isn't any kind of  politician, I will laugh at you for a long damn time. The Pope also is qualified to understand science. Actually, notwithstanding the Galileo stuff, the Catholic Church is pretty reality-based regarding science. Teilhard de Chardin and Gregor Mendel were notable religious who advanced the cause of human scientific knowledge. It's not unheard of for the Church to be ahead of the curve--look at all the educational facilities and hospitals the Church has created. They aren't anti-knowledge (says the Catholic-adjacent militant agnostic).

Climate Sunday: Am I the World's Keeper?

In Genesis, the brother-slayer Cain replies to God when asked where his brother is: "Am I my brother's keeper?" It's a very sarcastic and defensive question. He is trying to deflect from his culpability in slaying his brother, to ask whether he was ever responsible for making sure his brother was safe to begin with. When reading the scriptures entire, an answer to this murky question of filial responsibility emerges--"Yes, stunato, you are your brother's keeper! Not only are you not to murder him, but you should see to his thirst and hunger. You should love him as you love yourself. "

The encyclical of Pope Francis with respect to the creation goes a sensible degree further--"Yes, you are also the World's Keeper." And why wouldn't you be? You and your brother live here, and nowhere else.

The response to this simple moral entreaty to not kill the goose that lays the golden eggs or to try and make the wheat grow by pulling it up by its stalks, has been greeted by some fairly thick people by labeling the Pope a Leftist if not a Communist. Why, they fret, is the Pope trying to hurt the economy? Why is he decrying greed--isn't greed good? Shouldn't people make money off of the earth? Doesn't financial success speak for itself?

Ecrasons L'Infame!

 

If I read the cover of the latest issue of Charlie Hebdo correctly, all is, actually, not forgiven, any crocodile tears regarding what happened from the usual intolerant suspects aside. And that is how the spirit of the magazine would have it, after all. If satirists can't roast the odd sacred cow, why not pack it in? It's hard to ignore that some of the leaders clasping arms in solidarity claiming "Je suis Charlie" pretty much are no such thing. 

 

I take issue myself regarding the curtailment of free speech--I am for countering speech with more speech, for having an argument, and for hearing out people I don't agree with so that I really know where they stand. There are hurtful words I don't use myself and would prefer others not use, but when I hear them said, it tells me something about the speaker.

 

This is why I take a little exception about what the Pope said regarding insulting or criticizing the faith of others. He says that one can not--or if one does, one should expect hurt feelings, if not reprisal. Andrew Sullivan beat me to the punch at picking a comparison of quotes from the current Pontiff, and a relevant section from the sayings of a certain Palestinian Jew of antiquity, who was, if Mark was right, sentenced to death for blasphemy.  To go a little further, I would say, the beliefs of the wide variety of people on the earth being what they are--one can't help sometimes offending or contradicting the beliefs of others. One man's heresy is another man's article of faith.

 

It also strikes me as a mistake to have some inviolate box that ideas we don't want criticized can be placed in with the label "religion" pasted on. What can't fall under religion's rubric? There's an amorphous quality to the idea that leaves it subject to the determination of whoever is in power. So to go beyond considering Raif Badawi, let's also consider his lawyer, Waleed Abu Al-Khair.  To the theocratic government of Saudi Arabia, simply being a human rights lawyer is a kind of heresy. Blasphemy laws are what gets Egyptian atheists thrown in jail. The question of how free speech should be, and whether blasphemy laws should really exist, must be considered--everywhere sooner or later. 

 

As for me, I am only interested in nailing up complaints, not people. Don't we wish everyone was?

Climate Sunday: Il Mio Papa

So, I don't know why I think a speech of some kind regarding climate change, coming from this Pope, should mean something that might affect change, but why not? It isn't impossible that a person of influence might set events in motion--so let's say that the main man of the Vatican has a little spiritual pull.

I don't know what that does. But then again, I don't know what my blogging does. I try to, more Sundays than not, remind people we live on a planet of finite resources which is subject to the forces of entropy, and can experience remarkable degradation from our current capitalist carbon-centered activities. If the Pope also, some Sundays, wants to speak on behalf of the planet we all live on, then I welcome his presence in this very important discussion.

He seems like a nice and smart person. I am interested to hear what he will say. It may differ from my perspective, but if he is in favor of not spreading pollution where we eat and drink and try to breathe, he is practical and I'd say, doing it right.

It isn't bad to have religious support for environmentalism. In any event, good stewardship of the planet makes more sense to me, spiritually, than being anti-environment.

A few quickies, eh?

Because I'm on vacation and it's late at night and because I'm feeling lazy--here's some scattershot random comments--

On Eric Cantor:



So, a shot was fired through his office window, except it wasn't so much fired as came down around, and it wasn't so much his office as the building and is not in anyway mentioned on his website or anywhere else where a highly-motivated angry person could have found out about its existence and then fired wildly in the general vicinity of it, hitting part of the building if not the actual office itself by merest happenstance?

Shit, it is rough being a Republican these days.

Pope Benedict XVI




Vatican Declined to Defrock U.S. Priest Who Abused Boys

Top Vatican officials — including the future Pope Benedict XVI — did not defrock a priest who molested as many as 200 deaf boys, even though several American bishops repeatedly warned them that failure to act on the matter could embarrass the church, according to church files newly unearthed as part of a lawsuit

The internal correspondence from bishops in Wisconsin directly to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future pope, shows that while church officials tussled over whether the priest should be dismissed, their highest priority was protecting the church from scandal.

The documents emerge as Pope Benedict is facing other accusations that he and direct subordinates often did not alert civilian authorities or discipline priests involved in sexual abuse when he served as an archbishop in Germany and as the Vatican’s chief doctrinal enforcer.

The Wisconsin case involved an American priest, the Rev. Lawrence C. Murphy, who worked at a renowned school for deaf children from 1950 to 1974. But it is only one of thousands of cases forwarded over decades by bishops to the Vatican office called the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, led from 1981 to 2005 by Cardinal Ratzinger. It is still the office that decides whether accused priests should be given full canonical trials and defrocked.

He knew, and didn't act. That is actually the most damning thing I will say. NO flowery language, no hyperbole, no trying to make it look "bad". It is bad. He knew. He knew in this case, and he knew in other cases. And kids just kept getting hurt. What worse actually is there to say?

McCampaign + Palin:





Don't they just look like the Fonz and the Shark?


That picture is almost all I have to say about Palin's magnanimous decision to campaign on behalf of the man who launched her to A-list prominence in the GOP, when so many of his campaign staff from '08 were way less than kind to her, and when he himself is a candidate who is currently in the primary stage against an actual loon of the first order--and is feeling the heat.

Why is McCampaign in trouble against a somewhat dimwitted and possibly insane Teabagger? Well, it's because he doesn't come across as genuinely conservative. And he also says incredibly dumb things such as pretty much allowing that he will continue to obstruct progress in the Senate and not ever bring any earmark money back to his state. So, he wants to be re-elected to do nothing for AZ?

Why should they want him? But really, Palin is doing a mitvah for him--she actually will be doing the heavy-lifting for his campaign with whatever time she spends on it--

Again.