Tag Archives: Emeritus Pope Benedict

Yesterday’s Pope-Or Is He?

06 Wednesday May 2020

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I find any photo of Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI (a title he gave himself) extremely irritating. Spectacularly uncharismatic at any time, even when- no, particularly when- he is smiling, I find the white cassock very annoying. Surely only the Pope wears this? And he is no longer the Pope ?

Two quite famous questions spring to mind. One is from the little girl who, seeing Princess Margaret for the first time, asked ‘Mummy, what is that lady for ?’ The other is from Metternich at the Congress of Vienna. A delegate stood up to speak, took a heart attack and died . Metternich turned to a colleague and asked ‘What do you think his purpose was in that ?’

The most irritating photo of all must be the one which appeared on local Facebook recently. There he is, sitting on a park bench .He is wearing what is known on Amazon as a flat cap, but to us as a bunnet. It is, of course, a white bunnet. Now I know Papal crowns fell into desuetude some years ago, but come on. A white bunnet?

The camera angle precludes a look at the skip, s I cannot see if it has the Keys of Peter in gold on it. But one must remember that he has always been rather a dandy, once indeed nicknames Pope Prada. Once- about a hundred years ago-the symbol was a working class symbol and not just in Scotland. Having recently found out that one can pay £38 for one that doesn’t melt in the rain, I think we can forget the solidarity bit.

He was also quite a lad for the Gucci moccasins. So much so, that it was solemnly noted that immediately after his resignation he adopted a Mexican leather pair. Unfortunately, we are not told if he abandoned those red socks so beloved of the late Rev. Ian Paisley. What a pity ! There are of course many who believe that thinks he s still wearing them.

It would be a pity if readers felt that this blog was deteriorating into argumentum ad hominem and cheap gibes. Believe us, you’ll know wen we are. All we ask, to adopt the frequent inquiry of Del Boy in ‘Only Fools and Horses’, is quite simply ‘What is his game ?’ Some may feel we being disrespectful to a pope, but he is no longer a pope, which is our point. The expression is ‘If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen ‘. He apparently couldn’t- stress, health- but he’s still there and is very much in the way of the cook. He was too ill to go on as Pope, but not ill enough to leave the Vatican which he has haunted as Pope Doppelganger the First, and last, I imagine.

The mechanics of any organisation , as anyone who has ever worked n one, however primitive, will know, can be both simple and complex. Firstly, you can’t have two bosses. Secondly, the Emeritus has spent most of his life in the Vatican, apparently having learned nothing from the Byzantine intricacy which, inexplicably to most of us, governs its workings. Can it really never have occurred to him what a nuisance he must be ? Oh, come on ! Has it been just a spectacular illustration of he difference between sense and stupidity?

He has laid himself open to he conspiracy theorists. The most magnificent and laughable is that he resigned deliberately to undermine anything progressive that a successor might attempt. Well, he’s asked for that.

It was childish for us to imagine that Pope Francis would be able to organise the provision of the Eucharist overnight for the billion who depend on the Roman Rite for this. He does not seem to realise that it is probably too late , and that the world has passed the Rite by. The Amazon Synod was an opportunity to extend ordination to parishioners and bring the Eucharist to the 50000 parishes without priests. But he could not bite the bullet, and instead endorsed the odd notion that celibacy is essential for providing the Eucharist.

He has had many problems, and the Emeritus and his retinue may prove to have been the greatest, as he actually walks about the Vatican Gardens dressed as a pope. But what could Pope Francis have done ? To have had the Emeritus frogmarched away by the Swiss Guard would have alienated even more those reluctant to accept any change in a Church apparently prepared to ignore the appalling scandal of the secular clergy’s paedophily.

Has the situation got to Pope Francis? Quite probably in my opinion. He is 83 yeas old, has probably given himself too much to do,and may well be exhausted by both looking to the future and watching his back. His main concern must always be China, always the dragon in the room in 2020 soon possibly the the most powerful country in the world,and how to bring it the Eucharist. And yet this old Emeritus has created a unique niche for himself as an obstacle to a Pope’s work- now, of all times ?

The Poe’s failure to extend ordination need not define his Papacy. We must hope has time yet, and that belatedly, the Emeritus may learn sense.

It’s Time To Say Farewell- But Not To This Site

06 Sunday Jan 2019

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We’ve spent a lot of time on this site making references to the Last Supper. We saw it as the foundation of the Church, laugh at us if you like. We saw it as a command from the Man who was to die an appalling death a few hours later. This was to provide the Eucharist for the world.

Looking back from 2019, obviously some kind of organisation was necessary. History and geography and common sense demanded it should start in Rome to be effective. It did, although there were other places , almost all in the Middle East, where the Word took root, obviously around walking distance from the Upper Room. In 2019, there are 23 of them. We’ll come to them in a minute.

The biggest did things its way. This was called the Roman Rite. The others did things their way and are called the Eastern Rites. Fair enough, you will say.

If you can bear it, look back to 2018, the year of ‘Come to bed with Uncle Ted’ this being Cardinal McCarrick of the Roman Rite, or the Roman Catholic Church.

In Britain, we have to bear the burden of Cardinal O’Brien having been the man who in modern times brought the long, disgusting , hypocritical and terrifying history of seminary education out into the open at cardinal level.

Our Church was based on the Moving of the Stone . Say what you like about Cardinal O’Brien and his like- and we do, and we will- the Church in 2019 must be based on the Lifting of the Stone. It was a big stone- and we all know what a mass of wriggling ,disgusting lower levels of life live under stones. We hope here that we do not give offence to those who marked the Incarnation by holding wakes outside turkey farms.

50,000 parishes are without priests because the Church has rejected the basis of the Roman Catholic Church in 2019, that the Eucharist can only apparently be provided by celibate men who have survived the seminary experience.

But there are 23 parts of the Church which have avoided this sex-obsessed cul de sac. Let us think of them at this New Year tide, and how humiliated they must feel by being lumbered by association with the power-crazy, sex-obsessed leaders of the Roman Rite.

Your radar may say here ‘Ah ! Crank talk !’ . It’s not, you know. And you do know .

While this site has breath to continue during 2019, inhibited though it may be by small cigars, it hopes to continue examining what caused the demise of the Roman Rite, or the Roman Catholic Church as opposed to the Catholic Church in 2018. It will involve St Pope John Paul II, Emeritus Pope Benedict XIV, and many others. , not to mention the Curia.

Do please keep watching. Like many other such sites all over the world, we have a lot to say and at the moment nowhere else to say it.

Et Tu Bergoglio?(if accurately quoted)

07 Thursday Sep 2017

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Pope Francis is quoted a lot. Possibly therefore he is misquoted a lot. We’re prepared to give him all kinds of leeway. If he’s asked a long question and says ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ , did he necessarily have time to examine the question carefully? We know, we know, we’re on his side.
In March he was extensively quoted on the subject of ‘viri probati’, or ‘approved men’, a concept dreamt up by Emeritus Pope Benedict for keeping control of ordained laymen. Worse still, he was quoted as actually saying’older viri probati’.We have searched the internet diligently , and there are only some references to ‘older’ when this quote is mentioned. So who knows? But just in case, we propose with all due deference and respect, and certainly more than we would give to StJP2or EPBen to lay about us.
If you have and have always had a full-time job in the Vatican, and you are in your late seventies or eighties, we have to put it to you that you have never had anyone say to you ‘Do you know what the hell you’re talking about ?’ (Add being a Jesuit Provincial to Pope Francis’s case). Go quite far down the pecking order and add old Mgr X or old canon XXX (yes him!) in Glasgow. Has it ever happened ? Or have just always confused the clergyman with his function?
Anyway, another time for that, but we have to put the question, fearlessly as ever, to Pope Francis.
‘Probati’? Approved? Approved by whom? We prefer to speak only of the Church in Scotland, beginning with, of course, Cardinal O’Brien , and working our way down the list of pederasts, mistress-keepers and embezzlers who have disfigured its work in recent years. But we will not do so, even if only because this PC is on its last legs. They were all approved. We know nothing personally of , say, the Church in the USA other than what we see in Oscar –winning films, or in Australia /from what we read in best sellers like Thomas Keneally’s latest. We wish we had a German correspondent.
Effective and efficient approval, we will say, has not been a gift given those in the Church whose business, even after six years or so in a seminary, is assessing candidates for the priesthood. A parish is a community, sometimes far flung, sometimes in a city. To regard it simply as a collection of faces beyond the altar rails is a mistake.
The suggestion that a parish would select , among those whom it would choose as being worthy of being Ordained Celebrants , those who are unworthy is a slap in the face to any parish, a vibrant and infinitely complex network of family and social relationships , and frequently uncharitably so assessed. Would any parish choose for election a sexual adventurer, a pederast or an embezzler to represent it? And if some chancer should escape scrutiny, we must remember that 8.5% of the Apostles betrayed Christ Himself.
Approved forsooth, the latter word being one we have always wanted to use.
We are reluctant to believe that Pope Francis said’elderly’.This is where we have to ask even Pope Francis if he knows what he is talking about. It is also a criticism of celibacy, and its failure to provide a life lived among the young.
We find a succession of rhetorical questions incredibly irritating We will simply make a series of statements . If you disagree, you know where we are. We remind you that the average age of members of To Feed The Flock is 80 plus.
Teenagers think anybody over 21 is middle-aged. The expression ’coffin-dodgers’ is widespread, and applicable to anyone over 40. ‘Elderly’ is commonly considered a euphemism for Alzheimer’s. Those between 30 and 40, who have fought the good fight and are still church-going, don’t really know what life is like in 2017. A 70 year old is a dodderer, be he lay or clergyman. Older people have let the Church become what it is today,without challenging Cardinal O’Brien and his like. If an old man can relate to Christ and his teaching, therefore how can he relate to life as a Catholic adolescent? Those who remember Stephen Fry must ask-what would he have said?
All of these ideas help to keep the third lost generation from the Eucharist.
Elderly? Come, come, Pope Francis, if you actually said this.