Report links Pope's resignation "to the discovery of a network of gay prelates in the Vatican, some of whom... were being blackmailed by outsiders."

The Guardian reports:

[The Italian newspaper] La Repubblica said the cardinals' report identified a series of meeting places in and around Rome. They included a villa outside the Italian capital, a sauna in a Rome suburb, a beauty parlour in the centre, and a former university residence that was in use by a provincial Italian archbishop....

The Vatican does not condemn homosexuals. But it teaches that gay sex is "intrinsically disordered". Pope Benedict has barred sexually active gay men from studying for the priesthood.

Urban Dictionary Urban Word of the Day: "Too pooped to Pope."

434 up, 249 down.

"Should Elderly Politicians Make Like the Pope and Quit?"

Asks David Weigel.

Pope Benedict is three years younger than Sen. Frank Lautenberg, who's puttering around condemning the very idea of Cory Booker running against him....

[C]overage of Lautenberg... high-fives him for his vigor. A recent Philadelphia Inquirer story pointed out that the senator had returned from "a cold that became the flu" and was "wielding a cane -- which he insisted he didn't really need," but otherwise focused on his "feistiness."

Weigel mixes 2 topics: the individual's decision to continue despite age and infirmity and the way the media (and the rest of us) "play along." Nothing about what the Pope is doing changes the playing along part of it. We've come to believe that age discrimination is wrong, and we've allowed that to mean too much.

Age discrimination isn't like race discrimination! Age takes a toll on people and it matters and affects their performance. A specific individual may be doing relatively well for his age, and we ought to see him as an individual, but age matters. Statutory law prohibiting age discrimination tells us not to take age into account in some situations, but that doesn't include electoral politics. Feel free to boldly assail Lautenberg for clinging to his Senate seat. (And feel free to criticize judges who seem to be hanging on too long, especially Supreme Court Justices.)

Is the Pope any help here? He waited until he was 85 to step down. And he began the onerous work when he was nearly 80. The previous Pope — immensely admired — made a point of sticking with the job through a long, painful decline. I think both of these Popes encourage people to keep going and not to cede the work to the less old.

"After having repeatedly examined my conscience before God..."

"... I have come to the certainty that my strengths, due to an advanced age, are no longer suited to an adequate exercise of the Petrine ministry."

Are you keeping up with the tweeting of the Pope?

I started "following" him, but then there were no tweets, and I check Twitter so rarely, that I hadn't read any of his tweets. Then, I read in Vanity Fair: "Pope Starts Tweeting, Can’t Stop Tweeting, Is Called a 'Huge Bummer." Wow. Okay. So, I'll check what the Pope is tweeting. (I am not Catholic, so I'm under no obligation!)

Mary is filled with joy on learning that she is to be the mother of Jesus, God’s Son made man.True joy comes from union with God
— Benedict XVI (@Pontifex) December 19, 2012

Going for the embed code, I get to see everyone who's replying to that:

@pontifex dear Pope, we can read it in Bible, Twitter is for posting something trendy. Try it please.
— Jānis Palkavnieks (@Palkavnieks) December 19, 2012

. @pontifex Who is this 'God' you keep talking about?
— Carl Maxim (@carlmaxim) December 19, 2012

How many followers does the Pope have?

184,908, at the moment. But he's a newby on Twitter and hasn't even tweeted yet.

Oh, now 185,914. Impressive. Climbing. Ascending!

I see he's "following" 7, but it turns out all 7 are himself, in various different languages.

I went there via Twitchy, which says: "Shameful: Pope Benedict XVI joins Twitter, vile hate starts before his first tweet."

The great thing about Ratzinger's twitter is that we can finally report the Pope for abuse. Abuse of boys, human rights & twitter @Pontifex

Predictable.

The Pope with a clown, Susan Rice caught between 2 power-heads, and a heavily tattoo'd quarterback.

I don't know what Matt Drudge is trying to slip into our subconscious today, but it's phantasmagoric. Felliniesque.


Click to enlarge.

The quarterback is Colin Kaepernick, who, not having murdered anybody, seems to be doing comparatively well, NFL-wise. His mother is "annoyed." The body scribblings are Bible verses (we're told). Across the chest it says "Against All Odds." Is that in the Bible? I don't know. Ask the Pope (if he's through clowning around). I've heard of the book of Philipians, so maybe there's a Philcollinsians.

Hillary and Rahm are swirling around Susan Rice. The story is Hillary prefers Kerry as her successor. Fine, but I can't see the Pope+Clown → Tattoo'd Quarterback transition. I hate to think there's no connection, that these are simply the stories that belonged at the top of their respective columns. Drudge means so much more. Tell me what the meaning is.

Here's the story about the Pope meeting 1000s of circus performers at the Vatican:

Benedict, a known cat lover, paid particular attention to a pair of lion cubs that were brought up to him, stroking them and chatting with their trainers. At one point Benedict even bent down to caress one — not an easy feat given the 85-year-old pope has trouble with his knees and occasionally uses a cane.

A gentle scene. Not the first thing that leaps to mind when you think about Christians and lions. 

Kateri Tekakwitha, Lily of the Mohawks...

... the first Native American saint.

The Pope's butler has been arrested!

"His job included handing out rosaries to dignitaries and riding in the front seat of the 'Popemobile,' a vehicle used for public papal appearances..."

Did you just get a Mardi Gras image from that job description, like I did? Picturing the Popemobile, with the butler tossing out rosaries?

Anyway, the butler, Paolo Gabriele, 46, is one of the few individuals who has access to the Pope's desk, and there have been leaks of "hundreds of personal letters and confidential documents" to a journalist who published them in a book called "His Holiness."

It seems absurd that the butler did it. Here's a Straight Dope inquiry into the old phrase, supposedly based on hackneyed mystery novel plots.

The expression "the butler did it" is commonly attributed to novelist Mary Roberts Rinehart (1876-1958), who wrote dozens of popular books, starting with The Circular Staircase in 1908. In 1930 she published The Door, in which — I'm sorry if this ruins the suspense for you — the butler does it. But the words "the butler did it" do not appear in the book, as far as I can tell — I confess I skimmed — and Rinehart was hardly the first crime writer to implicate a menial...

[C]rime-fiction writers of the day tended to think that casting one of the hired help as the culprit was cheating. (That is, it was only OK for the butler to be suspected of doing it.) In his 1928 essay "Twenty Rules for Writing Detective Stories" (the source of rule number seven above — you thought I was making this up?), S.S. Van Dine spells this out in rule eleven: "A servant must not be chosen by the author as the culprit. This is begging a noble question. It is a too easy solution. The culprit must be a decidedly worth-while person — one that wouldn't ordinarily come under suspicion." Noting the blithe classism in this suggestion, we return to the Oxford Companion: "Because the butler can move about the house in the course of his duties with complete freedom and because he is so taken for granted by the other characters that no one pays attention to him, he makes an ideal culprit."

You see the divide here. Too easy! say fans of the ten-people-in-a-country-house subgenre. Perfect! say slightly more adventurous writers, and indeed, having the butler do it seems like a great opportunity to inject the resentments of the proletariat into the genteel world of Hercule Poirot and his ilk. 

You hear that? It's too easy.  Look for a decidedly worth-while person — one that wouldn't ordinarily come under suspicion. Hmmm.

"Let us strip away our fixation on what is material, on what can be measured and grasped."

"Let us allow ourselves to be made simple by the God who reveals himself to the simple of heart."

Why the early Christians did not celebrate Christmas.

Rev. Brian D. Blacker explains:

It was strongly felt that the celebrating of any day or date – be they birthdays or anniversaries of an event – was a custom of the pagans. By the word ‘pagans’ they meant irreligious people who still live in the darkness of superstition. In an effort to divest themselves of all pagan practices, therefore, they did not even set aside or note down the date of their Saviour’s birth....

Most scholars agree that the birth of the Redeemer did not take place in the month of December at all. In fact, the 25th of December was not even chosen by the Christians, but by the Romans – the traditional arch enemies of the early church...

[The Romans had begun] to celebrate the “Feast of the Sol Invictus” (the Unconquerable Sun) on December 25. Soon many Christians began to join in this pagan festival and the various celebrations that went with it. Their faith wasn’t vibrant enough (or real enough) to stand against the strong pull of the festivity and celebration around them. They drifted with the crowd.

Thus, in order to keep the Christians away from all the pagan rituals that was part of this worship of the sun, Bishop Liberius of Rome declared, in 354 A.D., that all Christians everywhere should celebrate the birth of our Lord on December 25...

We must recognise a parallel in what took place in church history and what is taking place in this day and age....

Uh oh. Here comes the sermon. You can go to the link if you want to see what lessons Rev. Blacker draws from this sequence of events. It seems to me there are quite a few different lessons you might teach with that intro, and I believe the conversation we have right here will be more interesting and enlightening than what Rev. Blacker says.

And then there's the separate question whether the Feast of the Sol Invictus theory of Christmas is even correct. Joseph Ratzinger, who is now Pope Benedict XVI, has observed that December 25 is simply 9 months after March 25, and March 25 was the date of the Annunciation, that is the date of Jesus' conception.

Getting the date right matters far less than the question whether we should be doing annual celebrations on a particular date — including all kinds of birthdays, death-days, and anniversaries — and which days should be the ones that we single out as the biggest occasions. Even if you're a Christian, you could decline to celebrate Christmas and even then, it could be for one of a number of reasons: 1. because it's less important than other days within Christianity, 2. because celebrating birthdays and anniversaries is not what Christianity should be, 3. because it's too closely associated with the pagan festivities having to do with the sun, or (least convincing reason) 4. because December 25th is the wrong day.

ADDED:  Sorry, but I'm going to argue with the Pope. Doctors calculate the length of pregnancy from the first day of the woman's last period, not the date of conception. If Mary conceived on March 25, then the first day of her last period — I've never before in my life thought about Mary's periods! — was  March 11th or thereabouts. (I'm assuming Mary had 28-day periods and conception occurred on the day of ovulation, 2 weeks later.) If the first day of Mary's last period was indeed March 11th, using the standard calculation, the predicted due date is December 17th. I can't believe it was so easy to point out a hole in a Pope's argument!

"This beatification is different because this pope is different."

"He’s a man with a role in history, not just in church history... The seal of sainthood doesn’t close the debate on history... In a certain sense, for many Catholics he’s already a saint, even without beatification and, let’s be honest, even without a miracle."

ADDED: Longer video here.

Why the Pope can't be an organ donor.

For one thing: "his body belongs to the entire Church and must be buried intact." But:

Furthermore, if papal organs were donated, they would become relics in other bodies if he were eventually made a saint.

I don't know enough Catholic theology to understand what's wrong with a saint's relic functioning in someone else's body. Saints are supposed to help us out only in ways that that are unachievable by ordinary dead people?

Today's exercise in the comedy of Drudge photographic juxtapositions — AKA Drudgedy.

At Drudge right now, the picture at the very top is the Obama-with-winged-fingers that we were talking about yesterday, but let's talk about this collection of images:



This is a mysterious one, so let's brainstorm. The first thing I noticed was how that Google "You can trust us with your data" device — whatever it really is — looks like it's designed to stamp beanies onto the Pope's head or perhaps to examine/muddle/read the mind of the Pope. In the center column, the space shuttle is a simple and obvious phallic symbol. The left column — which we may interpret in relation to the giant technological phallus — is mainly hands: Nancy Pelosi's outstretched palm and Arnold Schwarzenegger's thumb-to-fingers grasp approaching 3 phallic microphones thrust toward his face.

Okay, you take it from there.

Why is The Beatles' "Revolver" the Vatican's idea of the best record album of all time?

Because of the priest and the church in "Eleanor Rigby"? No. Looking at what else they came up with...

Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of The Moon, Oasis’ (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?, and Michael Jackson’s Thriller, whose “illuminating simplicity and musical thrust” they hail. Also: U2’s Achtung Baby, Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours, Donald Fagen of Steely Dan fame’s The Nightfly, Carlos Santana’s Supernatural, Paul Simon’s Graceland and David Crosby’s If I Could Only Remember My Name.

... I'm guessing they're just Baby Boomers like me.

There's no Bob Dylan though. He's okay himself, but he "harshly tested the ears and patience of listeners with their inferior imitations, thinking that their tortured meanderings might interest somebody." Ha ha. Religious opinions.

"Maybe I’m old-school, but 'President fires CEO' looks as wrong as 'Pope fires Missile.'"

Lileks.

The headline.

"Men and women sin in different ways," says the Pope's personal theologian.

Oh, you mean like the way we love too much?

Just kidding. Let's read the article:

"When you look at vices from the point of view of the difficulties they create you find that men experiment in a different way from women."

Experiment? Is that what we're doing when we go wrong, experimenting?

[Msgr Wojciech Giertych, theologian to the papal household, wrote in L'Osservatore Romano that] the most difficult sin for men to face was lust, followed by gluttony, sloth, anger, pride, envy and greed.

For women, the most dangerous sins were pride, envy, anger, lust, and sloth, he added.

So the men struggle with all 7 sins, but somehow the women are not susceptible to — what? — gluttony and greed? My reaction to that? Well, first... it's time for a midmorning snack. Or 2!

"$50 million for art!... $200 million to piss off the Pope!"

Analyzing the stimulus:

"Showing off, bragging by a young English working-class musician who had grown up in the age of Elvis Presley and rock and roll...."

The Vatican's semi-official newspaper forgives John Lennon for saying he was bigger than Jesus.

Although Pope Benedict has criticised many aspects of modern pop culture, he now allows the newspaper of the tiny independent Vatican state to reflect the reality of the world outside in a way that would have been unthinkable in the days of Pope Paul VI who reigned during heyday of The Beatles.

If the "cross in the dirt" story were true, wouldn't a good Christian have "witnessed" to it early on?

In this Bloggingheads clip, Bob Wright and I refer to different aspects of Christianity (and talk about this Andrew Sullivan post). (At the end, I ask who's more religious, McCain or Obama, and propose a bet that might shock you.)



Watching this now and comparing Bob's take on Christianity to mine, I have a theory about why McCain shifted from not talking about the cross to talking about it.

McCain was initially an Episcopalian, and only fairly recently identified himself as a Baptist. My Christian upbringing was Episcopalian, and Bob Wright was raised as a Southern Baptist. Bob thought of Christianity as something to witness at every opportunity, and I thought Jesus's admonition to keep one's religion private (which comes in Matthew 6, just before he gives the words for the Lord's Prayer):

Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven.

Thus, when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

Could it be that McCain, as an Episcopalian, thought more like I did, and then later, after becoming a Baptist, saw the matter more the way Bob did?

ADDED: I tweak the eminently tweakable Episcopalians: