"I Got the Pope Right Here; His Name is Paul . . ."Papal Morning Line from Paddy Power

The soldiers therefore, when they had crucified him, took his garments, (and they made four parts, to every soldier a part,) and also his coat. Now the coat was without seam, woven from the top throughout. John 19:23 Douay-Rheims Bible

Like this Horse?  Like This Horse?  I LOVE this Horse!  I could Eat This Horse! - 
the late Dave Feldman dean of Chicago Track Writers: Chicago Sun Times

 Betting on anything is the sucker's game. A Fool and his money is soon parted; a gambler and his kids' money, the Dude at the End of the Bar's money, OG's Pay Day Loans money, Maxed out Credit Card's Money, and the Last Person Who Will Make Eye-Contact With You's nickel is parted real fast.   This I know.  I am a recovering gambler.  No Skye Masterson, this boy. 

I am now Nicely-Nicely Hickey having seen the light and been slapped silly by family and friends - clean since 2005.

Nevertheless, while I eschew this occasion of sin; nevertheless, understand the attraction.  Betting on the next Pope, like Keno/Caribbean Stud/Roulette and especially the slots is a House Game. It's fixed.  Sure 86 Cardinals vote, but fix is in - the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit -AKA The Third Person/ Paraclete/ The Bird - picks the Pope.

The Tote Board has the odds going to this trifecta

1-Archbishop Angelo Scola 2-1

2-Peter Cardinal Turkson 5-2
3-Marc Cardinal Ouellet 11/2

I like long odds - which explains why I am boo'd at GA meetings -and I love Chicago's Francis Cardinal George. 200-1

Sit Down Hickey!!!!!!!!! You're Mocking the Pope!

Not a jot.  

Man, He do favor Stubby! 

 Mayhaps.
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Eric Zorn calls the Papacy Dysfunctional Institution

In less time than it usually takes for Eric Zorn to say something really stupid, quicker than a Forrest Claypool job- hop and faster than a Tony Preckwinkle denunciation of some dead white man from Western Culture, EZ beat the Las Vegas Odds Makers with his latest Anti-Catholic musing on the occasion of the Pope's retirement announcement:

I was shocked to learn that he's the first to resign rather than to die in office (is office the right word?) since 1415. And I would think that Catholics would be glad, at least in general terms, at the violation of this dysfunctional tradition. Not only does it seem to increase the likelihood that the Pope will rule with clarity and vigor, but also the likelihood that the transitions will be smoother.

I am not shocked to learn that Eric Zorn is shocked. Eric strikes me an opinionated opinion-slinger whose sum total understanding of history and culture is gleaned from PBS premium gift discs of Ken Burns and Bill Moyers lectures, rounded out with solid HBO viewing.

Not having had the pre-packaged melange of intellectual stuffing gobbled up by the Chicago Tribune's editorial cabal and its house mice (EZ & Scmich), another person with a robust appetite for learning might counter with this -" well Eric, I mean Mr. Zorn, you may be interested to learn that while the Pope is bishop of Rome, he is also the Head of State and the last Pope to call it quits did so to end the Avignon Schism. That was a dispute with real political repercussions like war and stuff.  Gregory X!! resigned and the Council of Constance ( a place not a girl) selected Martin V over the three contestants Gregory Benedict and John. There was Teutonic issues and Hussite heresy as well as the vote for Marty.

Subsequent Popes, likewise had all of this historical stuff too - alliances with Austria ( Holy Roman Empire) against Italian States, and Norman Naples and Spain and Reformation Protestants and Enlightenment goofballs like Rousseau who begat Italian secularists of the 19th Century who attacked and sacked Rome, and later Bismark who hated Catholics like a Medill and more sieges and riots and then the Nazis and Joe Stalin kind of kept Popes busy.  Too busy to think about retirement.


Manya Brachear The Seeker is an adept at hooting off her anti-Catholic bazoo only seconds after she chips the china along with "journalists" of her gender in the Cardinal's parlor.

The dysfunctional tradition????  You mean like the Supreme Court, or being Andy Shaw?

Naw, Popes stay on the job because they have quite a bit to do. The Popes I knew Pius XII, John XXIII ( for real one; not the anti-Pope of Council of Constance), Paul VI, Pope John Paul and Pope John Paul II  all displayed remarkable wit, charm and intelligence all the way to the end. Benedict XVI resigned a step or two ahead of "the Final Call."  None displayed the ravages of senility so evident in Congressman Jan Schakowsky, Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, or Richard Roeper.


To mime Eric, "Dude, Popes don't have an Illinois Pension."

Five Rauf Necks from The Religion of Peace Arrested for Plot on the Pope in Jolly Olde England

Five - count 'em - Five Algerians Try to Kill the Pope. Like These Five Algerians of days gone by!
Fiver Algerian Altar boys? No. Five Algerian Orangemen? Nope. Five Algerian Camus and Noam Chomsky Fans of Malboro Lites and Lap Dances? Warmer. Five Algerian Islamist Thugs Who Missed Imam Rauf's Mideast Meet-'N-Greet? Bingo!

The suspects, who are aged 26, 27, 36, 40 and 50, are being held and questioned under the Terrorism Act 2000.

The firm where the arrests were made is now being searched, as well as homes in north and east London.

Sky News crime correspondent Martin Brunt said he understood the men were North Africans employed by the agency to work for Westminster City Council.

He said they had been about to start a day shift that would have included cleaning streets around the House of Commons, where the Pope is due to speak, when they were arrested.

Essay - Quam Videri: Spy Wednesday & Judas and Judy Outrage on MSNBC & the Progressive Media

``Where the Bishop is, there let the multitude of believers be;
even as where Jesus is, there is the Catholic Church'' Ignatius of Antioch, 1st c. A.D


I went to Catholic grammar school for eight years; attended a Minor Seminary ( St. Augustine's in Holland Michigan) for three years; graduated from a Catholic neighborhood high school ( Little Flower at 78th & Honore); took my Bachelor of Arts at Loyola University; taught at a Catholic high school ( Bishop McNamara in Kankakee); received my Master of Arts at Loyola University; taught and coached at a Catholic boarding school ( LaLumiere School in LaPorte, IN); worked in development at two Catholic high schools ( Bishop Noll Institute & Leo High School) and never once personally encountered or witnessed clergy sexual abuse.

While in the Minor Seminary at Holland, MI run by the great Augustinian priests and brothers I slept in two- tiered bunks in a barracks-like dormitory with forty of my classmates and a priest occupied an adjacent room. Nothing.

At Bishop McNamara, one student, among the many hundreds of boys and girls with whom I had daily contact, reported to me and several of my male colleagues about sexual abuse by a priest in in the rectory of St. George's parish six miles from Kankakee. We reported the abuse to our Principal Father Ken Yarno.

Father Yarno, a graduate of Bishop Mac and varsity football star on the fighting Irish, took direct, immediate and very public action. The priest was arrested in the public eye, cuffed, perp-walked and punished.

The abuse of a child is the most horrific thing human beings are willing to inflict in this life.

The Catholic Church is scourged. But that is not enough for too many who find the Church in adamant opposition to abortion, sexual libertines, financial predators, and political animals.

Yesterday, was Spy Wednesday* in the Catholic Faith's Holy Week that began last Sunday.

I was treated to faux Catholics on MSNBC Hardball - Chris Matthews and Joan Walsh - two the most fatuous and oily fatheads walking on shod feet.

Holy Week and the continuing sex-abuse scandal allowed the French-kissing Judas and Judies of the corporate media - self-styled reformed Catholics - to spew, shout, interrupt and howl calumnies about their points of view ( Walsh shrilled,wailed and keened about the Partiarchy of Male Prelates, because a WOMAN should be the Pope! Mathews did his usual Charlie McCarthy musings and drones) that the insitutional Catholic Church is intrinsically evil. This is the place for politics as the MSNBC Progressive Cheerleading Squad of Matthews, Schultz, Olbermann, Maddow, O'Donnell and their fellow lesser lights taut and taunt as MSNBC ratings plummet.

Pope Benedict XVI has been targeted by the corporate media since long before the Holy Spirit led him to the Chair of Peter - He was Ratzinger - the Pope's bully boy; the Nazi Flak Gunner; the foe of Feminism and dauntless shepherd of the unborn children.

A gutless, but politically correct and protected Bishop, Rembert Weakland of Milwaukee, protected pedophile priests and tossed the sins of these lice to Rome and into claws of the enemies of the Catholic Church.

I detest all my sins. One of my biggest sins is the sin of Anger. I would have every child-predator executed - publicly. That's how I roll, I guess and will face my God for that stiff-necked point of view.

I detest the hypocrites of the corporate media who collect huge bags of silver by calumnizing the Church in order to 'Change the Narrative.'

Pope Benedict XVI will survive his Gesthemane and the Church will long outlive the idiot box Judas and Judy shows on MSNBC.


*

For thirty pieces of silver was Our Lord betrayed, as prophecied by Zacharias: 1

Zacharias 11:9 -12
I will not feed you: that which dieth, let it die: and that which is cut off, let it be cut off: and let the rest devour every one the flesh of his neighbour. And I took my rod that was called Beauty, and I cut it asunder to make void my covenant, which I had made with all people. And it was made void in that day: and so the poor of the flock that keep for me, understood that it is the word of the Lord. And I said to them: If it be good in your eyes, bring hither my wages: and if not, be quiet. And they weighed for my wages thirty pieces of silver.
St. Luke explains how this vile betrayal happened: a devil entered into Judas:

Luke 22:3-6
And Satan entered into Judas, who was surnamed Iscariot, one of the twelve. And he went, and discoursed with the chief priests and the magistrates, how he might betray Him to them. And they were glad, and convenanted to give him money. And he promised. And he sought opportunity to betray him in the absence of the multitude (see also John 13:2).
But Jesus already knew this would happen, as we know from this earlier exchange with His Apostles, after He revealed that we must eat His Body and drink His Blood. He knew what Judas would do with the free will God gives to all men:

John 6:64-72
The words that I have spoken to you, are spirit and life. But there are some of you that believe not. For Jesus knew from the beginning, who they were that did not believe, and who he was, that would betray him. And He said: Therefore did I say to you, that no man can come to Me, unless it be given him by my Father.

After this many of his disciples went back; and walked no more with Him. Then Jesus said to the twelve: Will you also go away?

And Simon Peter answered him: Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life. And we have believed and have known, that Thou art the Christ, the Son of God (see also John 12:26-29 and Matthew 26:25).

Jesus answered them: Have not I chosen you twelve; and one of you is a devil? Now he meant Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon: for this same was about to betray Him, whereas he was one of the twelve.

Click my post title for a wonderful web page Fish Eaters

Pope Benedict XVI and Father Ken Yarno, C.S.V. - It Takes a Giant to Say I'm Sorry

"You have suffered grievously and I am truly sorry," Benedict said, addressing himself to the generations of Irish Catholics who suffered "sinful and criminal" abuse at the hands of priests, brothers and nuns.
"It is understandable that you find it hard to forgive or be reconciled with the church," he said. "In her name, I openly express the shame and remorse that we all feel."

Not only Ireland, but his own Germany has joined America in outing the sexual predators in clerical garb.

Teachers, rabbis, ministers, community activists, camp leaders find wolves among them seeking to target the children or the needy and the afflicted to victimize and sodomize.

I was taught by hundreds of priests and brothers and never once encountered any sexual abuse or even an uncomfortable situation - I was blessed.

In my first years as a teacher and coach, I learned that one of my students was being abused by a priest. Me and my colleagues brought it to the attention of our Principal - Father Kenneth Yarno, CSV. This man had more balls than a bowling alley!

Father Ken Yarno, had been a football star at St. Pat's Central and returned to direct his alma mater as Bishop Martin D. McNamara High School in Kankakee, Illinois.

When a bunch of us brought the news of the young guy being abused by a priest in Father Yarno's very own Order - the good man reacted like any decent human being -Ken Yarno was mightily pissed off! Father Yarno is a working man and was in top physical shape with forearms like Popeye and neck on him like a Mike Lucci. He told me and the guys ( Jerry Krieg, Jim Frogge, Rich Zinanni, Dave Raiche, Charley Olson) that he'd take care of it. This was in the late 1970's. The priest, Father Burke, was lauded in the media as 'a protector of way-ward boys.'

In blink of an eye, the iconic Father John Burke, C.S.V. was arrested at his rectory in the French town of St. George ( Kankakee County) and the press had been called for the perp walk. God Bless Father Yarno! Father Burke went to jail and Father Yarno was re-assigned.

I like Pope Benedict XVI! This guy is the real deal. No parsing; no mincing - Pope Benedict gets right to the nub of the horrors of clergy abuse.

The Church will be fine with this good man's hand griping the necks of sneaks and the creeps in stiff collars.

Pope Benedict, like Chicago's Cardinal George, is a Great Shepherd. Father Ken Yarno is Great Man!

Pope Benedict Welcomes Anglicans - Epicopalians Who Woke Up.

There was a sociology of Protestantism that went: A Methodist is a Baptist with shoes. A Presbyterian is a Methodist who has been to college. An Episcopalian is a Presbyterian who is living off his investments. This has all changed now. Now an Episcopalian is, I suppose, someone heading a campaign against AIDS.

- Joseph Epstein 2003. Click my post title for a thoroughly charming and insightful interview with Joe Epstein.


When a south side Catholic got tired of going to Church he became a Unitarian. That way he could safely believe in anything without the moral and societal complications of explaining Atheism, or spelling Agnosticism.

The great American Master of the Essay, Northwestern University's Joseph Epstein - a guy who says, " Don't call me Professor; that's a guy who bangs on a piano in a Cathouse."- wrote a number of short stories grouped as Fabulous Small Jews.
This collection presented Jewish Chicagoans as witty, complex, bitter, confused and lovely people who are thoroughly American. None of the Phillip Roth angst, for Epstein, but rather people comfortable in their own skins - no polemical table thumping, or fiddling up on the garage roof at 6800 N. Campbell - he was replacing the loose shingles. I read Joseph Epstein's collection a few years ago. I need to go back to it, but I loaned the damn book to retired Detective Billy Higgins who in turn passed it on to Gene Callahan - an Armagh Carpenter who still has my back-up banjo. The Irish are the Bermuda's Triangle of loaned items.

Joseph Epstein writes about the relationship between people and the truth. Epstein - be it in Fiction or Essay -always nails it. We poor Chicago Irish have only Father Andy Greeley, who gets about as close to the truth as I do to the Confessional Box. Mea Culpa!

There is Hope! Pope Benedict XVI welcomes Anglicans ( Henry VIII's Theological children) back to the Faith.

The Apostolic Constitution approved by the Pope creates a new structure, which will allow Roman Catholic provinces such as England and Wales to have their own “Personal Ordinariate” for ex-Anglicans.

Parishes and individuals can go over to Rome en masse and join the Ordinariate. Although Catholic priests must be celibate, married former Anglican clergy who convert under the Apostolic Constitution could be ordained as Catholic priests although they would not be allowed to become bishops.

The Ordinariate could take the form of those created to care for Catholics serving in the Armed Forces and will be supervised by a senior cleric called an Ordinary, likely to be taken from the ranks of the former Anglican clergy.

It will provide spiritual care for the converts and they will be able to ask the Vatican to approve new liturgy based on their former Anglican readings, which they would hear at their own church services. They may be allowed to use Anglican prayer books.

However it is claimed there would be “formidable legal obstacles” to former Anglican parishes keeping hold of their old church buildings.

As many as 50 Anglican bishops worldwide are expected to convert under the new procedure and Cardinal Levada said the number of ordinary worshippers who had asked for such a provision was “in the hundreds”.

He added: "If there was a woman pastor in one of these groups, I would be surprised."

The leading Anglo-Catholic group in the Church of England, Forward in Faith, has warned repeatedly of a mass exodus to Rome if women are introduced to the episcopate without proper provision for those who object to the innovation.

While the group has so far remained within the Church of England to defend its place as the battle continues over women bishops, the landmark move by the Pope is likely to tempt many parishes away.

Forward in Faith said it “rejoiced” at the initiative, which it called a “decisive moment” in the history of the movement.

If Anglicans can start to see the intrinsic beauty and attraction of doctrinal and moral certainty, maybe we Catholics can become as comfortable in our skins as our Jewish neighbors reflected in the pages of Joseph Epstein's wonderful book of stories.


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/religion/6386833/Pope-Benedict-XVI-paves-way-for-thousands-of-disaffected-Anglicans-to-cross-over-to-Rome.html

Chicago Catholics Voice Welcome to Pope in New York Times

The New York Times On Line has a great feature that captures the attitudes of American Catholics. Some of people ineterviewed are profoundly insightful and from Chicago.

Ms. Terry Sullivan, correspondant for Chicago Daily Observer, is the most thoughtful. Other Chicagoans featured are St. Patrick's Parish Pastor Father Tom Hurley, Jim Healy, Carlos Lourenco, Oralia Mascio, and Kirk Struhart. Click my post title to hear from your neighbors.


Well done ladies and gentlemen. The best gift the Pope can get in America is Honesty.