The New Pope is Officially Christened. Except, Which Christ?...

Since I spend some time watching the goings-on of the Roman Catholic Church, simply to know what's happening so I can meaningfully introduce devout Catholicists to the way out of that body of death, I imagine I ought to put in a few words about the latest papal selection.

The thing is that the things people say about it are never much different from the things people say about any such event. One of the more notable ones this time relates to the new pope's silence, or inactivity, or uncomfortable dismissal of the ugliness that occured when he was a Catholic leader of some stripe during Argentina's "Dirty War," which loosely refers to the purging of government undesirables in 1979.

I guess my response is, yeah? So?

For one, the Catholic church has these kinds of accusations against all kinds of priests and prelates and it's all just blapping. For another, whenever the media blap a lot of this stuff as if it is really anything, then it means there are a lot of other things that are worse that they're working valiantly to keep us from identifying. This is the "partial hangout" function of the media -- it does wonders for the work of the Jesuits, and it happens all the time anyway. So what of it?

I don't for a second make light of the horrors of indiscriminately autocratic Argentina in 1979. Except that yet another thing about it is that the violence spewed by any potentate at any time in any region on the planet is sowed and nurtured by the Roman Catholic Church anyway. Yes! Good job, intrepid muckraking cadets! Good job seeing what Father Bergoglio was doing back in 1979! Fine, fine work!

But now what? He was doing what he was paid to do. And he'll be doing the same kinds of things as he fulfills his pontificate.

He's supposed to.

One thing I think about is how this will all play out what with him being the first Jesuit pope. That in and of itself may not be that big a deal except that he will bring his expertise at Sun-Tzuan arts of war into the job of being the World's preeminent sin manager. Pretty good deal I'd say.

Except that there's another dude who's very good at working the System for Cain's purposes, another guy who's a genius at executing summary military affairs and at the same time looking really wholesome by handling his own bags and riding the bus with the poor. That's the Superior General of the Society of Jesus, and I just wonder what he's thinking now that one sworn to see Christ in him is now holding office as the one to whom he must swear blood oath allegiance? This is hurting my brain!

And that's not the least of it! For there is uniquely a third party in this quasi-love triangle! The former pope, Benedict, who I heard is going to be engaging in top secret talks with Francis about baaad things going on that need to be looked at and attended to and all the rest of it. And don't think he is not in the mix of being a bad-ass enforcer himself, once having quite the reputation for running the current manifestation of the Church's Inquisition, now innocuously called the Institution for the Propagation of the Faith, I think it is. Something like that.

I'm sure they'll all smile their asses off and say they're committed to dutifully doing the Church's work and ya-da ya-da ya-da. And maybe they will. That's cool.

It's what the faithful want them to do.

Which leads to one last remark that I have to add. That has to do with who the faithful are, and what they're about. You'd think "the faithful" would comprise just those crazy ol' Catholics there cheering and smiling and doing things like waving the pope's flag around after the announcement Wednesday.

But that every single person without Christ ruling in their hearts is classified as a Roman faithful can be seen in another seemingly unrelated story, this one about the scathing report on J.P. Morgan Chase and its little "fumble" a year or so ago.

The bank lost, what was it -- I forget but I'm pretty sure it was in the neighborhood of $6 billion if I'm not mistaken. Today it was demonstrated that everyone knew about it and pretty much lied to everyone else about it and it was just generally ugly all around. Even top banker dude Jamie Dimon confessed that he did a very very very bad thing and it was very very very bad indeed.

Now we can rail and rant and rave and ralph our guts with the greatest revulsion at Dimon and this guy and that guy and any big shot on Wall Street who makes a mint doing all of this and yet...

We're no different from all the other shrills who protest this or that or whatever.

What of it?

Human sacrifice is what they do.

But here's the key thing.

No one ever seems to take the genuine, intimate, authentic, insightful look at

Themselves.

How many insist that people like Dimon do what they do and keep doing what they do so they can get their cut? How many people need Francis to get in good with so when they do major asswipe things, they'll be good?

Really, these guys only do what they do because a gargantuous chunk of the populace across the globe

Pay them well to do it.

Just FYI, I write about these things all the time on my webzine. The Chase fiasco? Happened before with Societe Generale a few years ago, and I wrote about that here. Of course the Chase thing seems to be much worse because that was here in the U.S, while the French bank's mishap, well, that's waaay out in France. And of course these things happen all the time anyway. It's happened before. A lot. It'll happen again. A lot. Whoever's responsible will have fingers wagged at them for a bit. Yawn.

I like how the Vatican wants to be in the mix of all this too, announcing a while ago that it is $19 million in the red. Ooo. Ouchy. $19 million. I still get a good chortle from that one. Um, if you knew that the Church has billions upon billions in assets as well as the undying devotion of billions of Catholicists, you'd get it.

Anyway, I don't want to seem as if this is all just one big joke. People being hacked up on the altar of rigourous World value extraction is repellently wicked. So yeah, there is a pretty cool way out, as I mentioned at the very beginning of this blog post.

I write a bit about Him here.

Would love for you read about Him. He's the only reason I do any of this. I always pray someone, at least someone will read this. Even if they don't ever come close to Wonderful Matters that they'd get it from somebody, somewhere -- someone who is Jesus With Skin who can share with them the truth about the World and what it does and why it does it.

And then take a moment to rapturously turn and walk into

The Kingdom.

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