So two elderly politicians met in Rome, and the less-compos mentis one reported that he had received the papal seal of approval from the one who has his stuff together.
Yeah, it's true. Despite, you know, big-footing the collegial shepherd(s) that That Council said were supposed to have authority over such matters. The Humble Pastor from The Argentine has a Boniface VIII streak that runs rampant...but you already know that.
[Thanks to Don for the link immediately above.]
I'll admit that this latest petty political gamesmanship threw me for a loop for a few hours, then I brushed off our Roman pontiff who demands submission's latest headgames and went about my business. It was a clericalist shin-kick to the American bishops who aren't on-board with the spiritual hospice idea and nothing more.
[I am almost inclined to think that--just perhaps--it was a misguided kindness done to a increasingly-feeble old man. After all, the meeting ran surprisingly long and our President isn't capable of enduring such. But it was at best misguided and undoubtedly mixed with baser motives.]
So I shook it off. For starters, I realized that a tardigrade could leap over this pontiff’s bar for "good" and couldn’t limbo underneath it.
I mean, think about it: this is a guy who boasts of robbing a corpse at a funeral, committed simple battery on an altar boy because the latter was holding his hands folded in prayer, calls gossip "terrorism" while constantly engaging in vicious gossip about people he doesn’t like, expressed schadenfreude about a dangerously-ill colleague and said that anyone who criticizes him does "the work of the devil." And that’s just five examples off the top of my head.
Then there's that whole "handing over millions of the faithful to communists in return for nothing and not uttering a peep in their defense" thing.
He’s an abusive gaslighter who likes to push buttons. Like all such, he revels in throwing you off your stride if you don't fight into his cookie-cutter understanding of what "good" is. If you overdo, he'll blab about it on his next airline flight or at the next Jesuit gabfest.
So don't let him get your goat. And pray very, very hard for this wayward, worldly man. Every single day.
It's the one thing he says that is unassailably correct: he is a sinner in need of prayer. And we need to pray for him for our own benefit as well as his. It helps us avoid drinking some form of spiritual poison (e.g., wrath, pride) in response to his antics. Plus, we have logs in our own eyes that need a robust chainsaw.
I will say that the pontiff's games prompted this thought: is there a definition of "good Catholic" that, say, ten million representative Mass-attenders selected from the nations of the world could agree upon, an irreducible minimum beyond which no one could transgress?
I haven't come to a conclusion yet. For example, the Creed is essential, but not sufficient, according to Our Lord in His Sermon.
But the one thing I can say is that the pontiff's chat on Friday didn't bring us any closer to "good," let alone The Good.
So, look to the Lord, Scripture, His Saints and Tradition. The last especially with an eye to the works of mercy.
And try to tune out the player in Rome, even though that will prove impossible to do short of living off the grid.