Why Not Go Farther?

I SEE A LOT IS BEING made of what is being presented as Pope Leo casting shade on non-hetero "normal" marriages in an address he made to the Vatican Diplomatic Corps, the other day.   It is being presented in a way that a lot of my fellow LGBTQ+ People will, no doubt, be offended by as could, very easily Women or men who had single-parent families and,  I'll point out, those who have made other kinds of marriages than the minority of those covered by the remarks.   

This can be achieved above all by investing in the family, founded upon the stable union between a man and a woman, “a small but genuine society, and prior to all civil society.”[2] *

I'll give you the entire context of this in the second of three words he said were the basis of the Church's, well,  I'll give you that paragraph too:

In our dialogue, I would like us to keep in mind three essential words that represent the pillars of the Church’s missionary activity and the aim of the Holy See’s diplomacy.

The first and third are certainly worth discussing but it is that one sentence this is focused on.  It appears in this context. 

The second word is justice. Working for peace requires acting justly. As I have already mentioned, I chose my name thinking first of all of Leo XIII, the Pope of the first great social Encyclical, Rerum Novarum. In this time of epochal change, the Holy See cannot fail to make its voice heard in the face of the many imbalances and injustices that lead, not least, to unworthy working conditions and increasingly fragmented and conflict-ridden societies. Every effort should be made to overcome the global inequalities – between opulence and destitution – that are carving deep divides between continents, countries and even within individual societies.  

It is the responsibility of government leaders to work to build harmonious and peaceful civil societies. This can be achieved above all by investing in the family, founded upon the stable union between a man and a woman, “a small but genuine society, and prior to all civil society.” [2] In addition, no one is exempted from striving to ensure respect for the dignity of every person, especially the most frail and vulnerable, from the unborn to the elderly, from the sick to the unemployed, citizens and immigrants alike.

My own story is that of a citizen, the descendant of immigrants, who in turn chose to emigrate. All of us, in the course of our lives, can find ourselves healthy or sick, employed or unemployed, living in our native land or in a foreign country, yet our dignity always remains unchanged: it is the dignity of a creature willed and loved by God.

Of course no one should hold their breath waiting for America's free press to notice that passage about "the global inequalities – between opulence and destitution – that are carving deep divides between continents, countries and even within individual societies," when they can gin up hatred of LGBTQ+ People for the free press and to  its owners' profit.  This piece is as much about how the free press will use selected sentences and phrases that Pope Leo uses, and nothing sells in the free press like sex.  

Note the the [2] just after the problematic quote which refers to a footnote that indicates this is a quote taken from Leo XIII's great encyclical, Rerum Novarum which was issued on 15 May 1891.   If there's one thing that Leo XIII was not thinking of it was LGBTQ+ families, which I doubt he could even imagine.   Leo XVI certainly can imagine such families and those other "non-standard" families I mentioned and others, such as families that result from divorced parents remarrying or, I'll point out, families that would fit entirely well within the ones covered by his definition THAT IS UNTIL ARE THEN ALTERED BY UNEXPECTED DIVORCE OR INVOLUNTARY SEPARATION OR DEATH.   I'm sure many of the families of those who Good Pope Francis was so concerned about,  those who were imprisoned, those who were separated by the necessity of a parent going abroad to try to get the means of support - immigrants (Leo has certainly taken up their cause even before he became Pope) and many others are as much in need of the concern of governments, churches and other institutions.  AND SO DO THOSE WHOSE PARENTS OR GUARDIANS AREN'T IN THE MINORITY OF MARRIAGES COVERED BY POPE LEO'S UNFORTUNATELY RESTRICTIVE SENTENCE.

My first question in regard to the remark about types of families is why shouldn't governments go farther in providing the good implied by Leo's claim of why they should focus on some families than in the subset of all families he chose to focus on.  

I will note that in no place at least in any document I've seen, has Leo opposed such support being given to the majority of families that aren't covered by the set he sets out as the supposed ideal.  Though that is certainly the implication being taken from it by those who hate LGBTQ+ People and our families.   Maybe I should start capitalizing Families,  because, as the two Leo's more than just imply,  People ideally live in families, if not biologically related People living in one or more households, then in families of friends.

I'll use this opportunity to advocate something I did when the marriage-equality issue was so much under discussion, after the Massachusetts Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriages in that state and the Republican-fascists and the free press used hatred of LGBTQ+ People to promote Republican politicians chances,  as they are doing now, no doubt using Leo's unfortunate sentence to do that. 

The government should not be in the marriage business, that is between couples and God, in the first instance and, somewhat down from there, whatever churches they choose to belong to.  Governments should have no more to do with that than to acknowledge households and relationships by recognizing civil unions of two adults who choose to enter into a civil union.   In discussing that at the time I noted that in France, the most common form of civil union was entered into by single daughters and their widowed or divorced or otherwise unmarried mothers.   Civil unions and families are what should enjoy the governmental protections that are given only under legal marriages now.  

The irony of the Catholic Church position on this is that it defines such homes only by the sex lives of those who head or form such families.  You'd think they would recognize that families can be formed when those who lead them don't have sex with each other and never intended to.   I know of families in which a Lesbian aunt or Gay uncle play as big a role in them as the biological parents or parent do.  Such a family which is not defined by anyone having sex with anyone would be left out of the concern of governments under this formulation AS WOULD THE CHILDREN GROWING UP IN SUCH FAMILIES. 

Update:  I should have mentioned that a lot of those who would make such vicious use of Pope Leo's statement would fail to notice that their own families are as not covered by what he says governments should be concerned with as those of LGBTQ+ parent-led families.   For a start, families in which one or both of the parents have adulterous relationships even if they stay married, those which, as I mentioned above, are formed after the divorce and remarriage of one or both of the hetero-sexual parents.   I don't have statistics BUT I'LL BET THE LARGE MAJORITY OF THOSE IN POLITICS AND THE MEDIA WHO MAKE SUCH USE OF IT ARE AS EXCLUDED BY POPE LEO AS SAME-SEX COUPLES' FAMILIES, in fact I'll bet that there are as large a percent of stable same-sex parent families of faithful couples as there are in hetero-sexual parent families.  I'll bet Lesbian couples raising children have a better track record of faithfulness than hetero-sexuals who would be taken as falling within Leo's definition. 

I wish I could find the clip of the former professional virgin, Ben Shapiro whining and squeaking about the only purpose of marriage being pro-creation.   Someone in the Q&A asked him if he intended to stop being married when he was done having children.   It's a question that any politician or media figure who says something along those lines should have to answer for IN TERMS OF THEIR OWN LIVES AND MARRIAGES.  

The Free Press Is The Enemy Of Egalitarian Democracy And A Decent Life For All

THE MEDIA HANDLING of the news that the best president in living memory,  Joe Biden has an aggressive and metastasized form of prostate cancer has been entirely in keeping with the media handling of Democratic politicians as opposed to Republican politicians, also going back to at least 1966 or so.  Any Democrat or would-be liberal or lefty who hasn't noticed that Democrats are ALWAYS in for worse treatment by the media than Republicans in that fifty-nine years  or so is either a media professional who has a vested interest in lying about that - and almost all of them are - or they are extremely stupid.  

The fact is that the media is only even a friend of equality and democracy when they have some requirement to favor the truth over opportunistic lies.   That comes as close as a taught lesson from experience as could be had from an honest appraisal of the history of the American media, freed by Supreme Court rulings to lie with impunity.  That is freed to lie  when it comes to Democratic politicians who might not favor the interests of the millionaires and billionaires who own and run and appear on camera in the media as opposed to the Republicans who are devoted to the servicing of millionaires and billionaires.  This is yet another example of that one law for the lion and the ox meaning oppression as mentioned here Saturday,  one law for the liars and the truth-tellers leads to oppression as can be seen in the descent of American politics into fascism over exactly that same fifty-nine years after the Sullivan Decision.  

Jake Tapper is, no doubt, gleeful in the marketing opportunity he and his co-writer have had in applying the double standard that is fully compatible with the First Amendment, one-law fits all, as it has turned out.   No doubt about it.  I heard the allegedly liberal NPR giving him that kind of opportunity this morning as they used his line that not only Joe Biden's administration but the entire Democratic Party allegedly kept Joe Biden's health problems and alleged mental decline a secret.   They do that AS NO PART OF THE MEDIA THAT REALLY COUNTS, THE NETWORKS, THE CABLOIDS, THE GUTTER LEVEL PODCASTERS, ETC.  DON'T DO THE SAME FOR THE ENTIRELY CLEAR MENTAL DEBILITY OF TRUMP.  

Joe Biden's administration LED BY HIM, PUT TOGETHER BY HIM, had the best performance of any president since Franklin Roosevelt did with a similar situation handed to him by three Republican presidents.   His economic policies were the envy of democracies that didn't bounce back anywhere near as much from the economic chaos that had come in the years before he took office.   He had the most competent presidency since LBJ's and, unlike the tragedy of LBJ getting suckered farther into Vietnam by the Harvard boys,  Joe Biden bravely took the hit by sticking to the deadline that Trump I set for the U.S. exiting from the interminable war in Afghanistan.   He was, indeed, THE MOST COMPETENT PRESIDENT OF MY LIFETIME and that goes back into the Truman years.  Yet the media has painted him as a senile and incompetent old man.  Apparently George Clooney's disappointment that Joe Biden, during a very difficult presidency forgot his face figures heavily into this.   As good an actor as Clooney might be, and he's good but he's not great, and as handsome as he continues to be,  I'd rather have a president who remembered the People and issues that were a vital part of his job than even a celebrated Hollywood actor.   Actors who are disappointed that a President, who has to meet regularly with heads of state,  politicians, advisors, popes, heads of state, etc.  might not recall who they are (do we know that Joe Biden watched his movies?) are not the best measure of the competence of an American president.  

I will contrast the media handling of Ronald Reagan who frequently forgot who members of his cabinet were and who as sympathetic a head of government as Margaret Thatcher noted had nothing much in his head,  who believed he was in on the liberation of a Nazi concentration camp, as he sat in Hollywood, the incompetent and stupid Bush II and now Trump who is clearly and publicly both stupid and demented and who wrecked America's health-care,  economy and infrastructure once and who is doing it again, and who well may top Hoover in tanking the economy decisively.   

Anyone who buys into the relatively young Thomas Jefferson's absurd notion that journalism is a reliable bulwark against oppression after two hundred and fifty years of the evidence that unless they are punished for lying, they will always serve wealth and the most malicious of purposes, is either a liar or they are more demented than anyone has accused Joe Biden of being.   I would put Jake Tapper in the liar category,  someone who serviced the rise of Trump II by his refusal to fact check him during the "debate" that he co-anchored with the equally putrid Dana Bash.   And I would put NPR,  the New York Times and virtually every other large player in the American media in that category.   

There is a potential for the media to serve egalitarian democracy but not so long as it is owned by the millionaires and billionaires and especially not as long as it has legal protection to lie with impunity for the interests of its owners and operators.   The legal mechanisms to hold them to account and to break up the very real control of those with millions and billions would be far different from what we have now and, LIKE ANY MAN MADE LEGAL SYSTEM, would have flaws and dangers embedded in them.   For anyone who prefers the current system with its known dangers which are deadly to egalitarian democracy and a decent life for all than to try to learn from the disasterous history of America after the Sullivan Decision, you have already given up on equality, democracy and decency,  how much worse does it have to get before you face the obvious truth?   A Third Reich, Italian fascist or Imperial Japan in ruins?   A post-nuclear nightmare?   I will remind you of the Musk-Trump regime playing with the "fail safe" system that protects us from our own nuclear arsenal -  I wonder if George Clooney will admit that it was safer under Biden than with what he, foolishly, helped bring us back to.   I can't rate our alleged journalism's danger to democracy as opposed to the role that Hollywood has played in it - Trump as a politician is a product of Hollywood as was Reagan - but "liberal Hollywood" is about as reliable for being a problem for it.   But, then, entertainment is a matter of make-believe, just as our journalism is, now that they have also had public interest requirements removed from them, as well as not lying.  

There Are Already A Huge Number

of totally fake AI generated videos supposedly of Pope Leo giving sermons he never gave and saying things he hasn't said.   I get a lot of "catholic" as well as Catholic content foisted on me by several sites algorithms in the languages I do searches in and I've seen them in English, French and Spanish so far.

I hope that someone as internet savvy as Leo assigns a couple of People at the Vatican to get on that because if the comments on such fake videos are anything to go by,  they will be a major burden to his papacy as they, in fact, are in every area of activity online and, so, in real life.  

This is a real danger for reality being what determines human culture.   It didn't start with AI or even the internet but both of those have made things worse by an enormous factor.   

For Once A Welcomed Commercial - A Quick Post Which May Lead To More In Time

WILLIAM BLAKE is one of my favorite poets and one whose poetry has often resisted my understanding.   I've tried a couple of interpreters of Blake, E.P. Thompson was the last one I tried, and, while I've found some persuasive things in them, none of them has ever really convinced me they really got him.   I did come to the conclusion that you probably couldn't get to him unless you shared at least some of his belief in God and Jesus which even such devotedly sympathetic secularists reject.   It would be like someone studying modern physics without believing in electrons or current biology without believing in the things that Barbara McClintock discovered (which, clearly, many of the big names in the popular understanding of science, today, don't).   

I will note that in the last several months of reading Scripture, especially the New Testament,  I have come to the startling conclusion that love is a central force in existence, both our only hope of the survival of death - and I mean literally that, continued conscious existence after bodily death, not some remembered existence or other transient metaphor - but also as the reason any of us or the universe exists at all.  I haven't developed any great Scriptural or reasoned arguments to support that,  so huge is it that I would guess you'd have to say it in Blakean language and that might not have the force it needs without Blakean pictures in color, as well.  Blake is also one of my favorite artists.  

I hadn't thought of Blake in my thinking about this until listening to this new short essay "Enemies of the Human Race" William Blake on the disaster of atheism, by Mark Vernon - which has an announcement of his upcoming book Awake!: William Blake and the Power of the Imagination which, alas, won't be published here in the States until September and who knows if any of us will have enough money to buy it by then.   

I may go into some of what Mark Vernon says when I have time to work out a better copy of the machine transcription (AI is a so-so stenographer as well as being essentially stupid) and I'd have to re-read the two long and difficult poems he discusses.   What he says about Blake's condemnation of what amounts to modernism and, in my thinking, the inadequacy of republicanism and secular, non-egalitarian democracy and the impossibility of that when there is enormous disparity in the actual having of physical, material wealth.    I think Blake got it right when he said, "One Law for the Lion and Ox is Oppression".    The pretenses of our law that pretends that there is "Equal Justice Under Law" when there never has been and the Lockean framers of the Constitution and the judges and "justices" have made it even more so have certainly come to its real reality in the criminal triumph of Trump and Republican-fascism.   I might note that you could state it more clearly by replacing "lies" for "Lion" and Truth for "Ox,"  only one such substitution of terms to prove the validity of the relationship - if you wanted to try to do it mathematically. 

Update:  Don't know why it didn't occur to me that you might be able to read the essay at Mark Vernon's Substack.   You can but it requires a subscription,  you can get a free one with a link through his website.  I will be reading through what he said on the video and might have some comments on it later. 

Hey Hey RFK How Many Kids Did You Kill Today?

If someone deserves to die that way it's Little Bobby,  I just hope he doesn't take innocent children along with him.  

 Notice how Chris Hayes discerned a definitely eugenic statement about only "sick children" dying of measles and advocating "choice" for parents to allow their children to be one of those "sick children" - no doubt the "sick children" might have a different opinion about their parents ignorantly or malignantly taking that chance for them just as those who have fallen for the anti-vaxx cult lies taking such a chance.   Put on top of his call to register those who are said to have autism - something his fellow Republican-fascists USED TO claim to fear as a prelude to . . . . something BAD.   At least when they gave that as their excuse to oppose Social Security.

The irony in the new eugenics goes very deep, all the way back to a belief in the theory of natural selection and its long and immediate history of generating eugenics as a "science."  One of those huge ironies is the enthusiasm that the haters of Darwin have for his most consequential product.   I'm sure Little Bobby is a true believer in not only the reality of evolution but in a particularly crude and primitive conception of Darwinism, natural selection.  With him the common cause he has with the Protestant Fundamentalist anti-evolutionists is his love of money.   When it comes to anti-vaxx,  he got into it and stays in it and promotes it because it enriches him. 

The Absurd Idea That "AI" Can Have Rights Will Swamp Democracy

I HAVEN'T HAD THE TIME to look much at what Pope Leo has to say about "artificial intelligence" but thinking about the little I've heard has brought to my mind something that I haven't heard anyone address, yet.   He does seem to have at least some of the problem with it that I also have, which is yet another good sign. 

Talking about the product of "AI" in the context of journalism forces me to talk about the stunning amount of "AI" that presents not only fiction but lies as a highly dangerous,  convincing simulacrum of fact or even truth.  A HIGHLY CONVINCING PRESENTATION OF TOTAL FICTION INCLUDING SOME OF THE MOST HATEFUL CONTENT IMAGINABLE, AND PERHAPS UNTIL NOW UNIMAGINABLE.    That was, of course, not something that waited for AI or the internet or even electronic media but it is possible to generate lies so fast and so fecundly lies that can be sold with the same kind of software that Google and other media use to sell.  That was something done with direct mail before the internet became a thing - but it expanded enormously with the spread of low-cost computer and computing but it is something that has expanded enormously feeding off of the enormous amounts of data that People give up stupidly and willingly or that which is mined without any of them knowing their activity is being monitored and complied.  

It is insane to think that the assumptions of the framers of the First Amendment and even those who developed other theories of "free speech" and "free press" in the ink on paper and through snail-mail technology can possibly match the new reality that the media of today presents for democracy, self-government, and the possibility of a decent society.   It won't surprise that anyone I doubt the legal systems of old democracies or the most allegedly up-to-date law will be able to cope with it,  the self-interested complicity and compliance of lawyers, law-makers, judges and "justices" are already destroying the possibility of egalitarian democracy.

The question I have yet to hear anyone ask or address is where the "right of free speech" or "press" in AI generated content is born or resides.    The idea that anyone but a living being can have rights is not only absurd but it is dangerous.  The criminally insane 19th century Supreme Court invented "corporate person-hood" has literally deprived real human beings of their rights, their property AND THEIR LIVES over and over again, it has been a Court erected juggernaut attacking equality and democracy.   Are they going to invent such "rights" for computers?   For software programs?   For the inhuman production of their simulation of "speech" which appears to be being published online without so much as a human reviewing or editing or even directly publishing the content on Youtube or Google or other venues that will, also, not monitor or control their content?  

I have every convidence in the stupidity of the law, the courts, the Supreme Court, the "civil liberties" industry which has a long record of cynical service to even some of the most homicidal and destructive of industries, peddling gun violence, peddling alcohol, tobacco, addictive prescription drugs, and even industries that endanger the health and minds and lives of those who are employed by them.   I have every confidence that the ACLU would oppose any questioning of the idea that "AI" cannot have any of the various "rights" listed in the First Amendment.  

But it's well past time someone brings up the absurdity, the superstition, the self-serving nonsense that the product of "AI" can be said to possess 'rights".  

P.S.  I recently listened to several novels "read" by "AI" including some phrases in French among the English text.   I suppose the more than absurdly laughable "French" ("S il vou plat and other worse than an English speaker trying to phonentically render French text) and repeatedly mis-reading words spelled the same way but pronounced differently ("read" is only one of those).   I'm afraid that human-read audio books are going to be a thing of the past, throwing large numbers of human voice-actors out of work.  Like MP3 and online streaming destroying the recording industry and doing huge damage to the music profession,  this is going to really have a bad impact on human culture.  

Roland Martin And Company On Pope Leo's Creole Heritage

THIS HAS ME SMILING like little else I've heard this year. 

 

Not A Blast But More A Retro Petard From The Past - I'm Noticing At Least a Blip in 00s era Neo-Atheism On The Internet

LOOK AT WHAT THIS MEMBER of the "Ethical Society" recently said in a comment on that fun Youtube channel I recently posted a piece from here. 

@ZenBearV13

5 months ago (edited)

“Religion is the first — and worst — explanation we came up with.” - Christopher Hitchens

As a member of the Ethical Society of St. Louis, I agree with the premise you advocate here. Religion is not an isolated system of beliefs but a part of our development as sapient beings that must be integrated into our understanding of our future. It doesn’t deserve special reverence, merely conscious consideration.

Considering the video starts with a question of whether the listener or someone they know suffers from a condition called "angry 17-year-old-atheism," which Christopher Hitchens based his entire journalistic career on spreading (I can't figure out any other reason he'd have had that long gig at The Nation, and I used to read him all the time when I subscribed) before he branched out to a Bush II era neo-con theme, maybe being the last of a long line of Trotskyites who took that baby step from one depraved ideology to a similar but far more lucrative depraved ideology,  I'd say this guy's answer to that question is "Yes." 

Christopher Hitchens?   Really?   That liar and journalist whore who went from being a Trotsyite to a supporter of the worst neo-cons and crypto-fascists?   One who, I will guarantee you, would be supporting if not actually Trump, then much of what the Trumpzis are doing if not on anything else than on the basis of his financial interest and getting his drunken mug on right-wing media.   The man who, among many other things, supported the Bush II regime and its entirely illegal and catastrophically bloody and permanently consequential invasion of Iraq, defending their motive of getting hold of Iraq's oil? 

That's who members of the "Ethical" Society hold up as a valid judge of ethics?   It's like holding up James Randi as a figure of science, as many a true believer in materialist-atheist-scientism apparently still does.  Only that's relatively less dangerous.   I was mildly interested in following up on the "Ethical Society" and its members during my long look at 00's era new atheism but I started losing interest in it as it went out of style and fewer of those stuck in angry 17-year-old style atheism mentioned it as their their attention drifted to newer shiny objects.  I have been tempted to do the same critique of the Fieldston School in NYC based on its product, the one I've slammed elite Catholic Education and the prep--> Ivy sysem on.  I may have mentioned the "ethics" of A.G. "Dash" Sulzberger, the man whose journalistic ethics at the New York Times apparently are identical to those of Jeff Bezos, as one of them in the past.   The Fieldston School strikes me as a kind of atheist religious prep which has about the same relationship to "ethics" that the elite Catholic preps have to the Gospel of Jesus, these days.   Based on its product. 

I too hastily deleted a comment in moderation

 this morning, one which mocked Catholic "doctrine" as being entirely nonsensical.   I just didn't want to get into it, especially with someone who I doubt has the slightest notion of what Catholic doctrine is and how it differs from dogma or a pop cultural dog's lunch of Chick Publications' nonsense, for that matter.   I think he thought it was going to upset me but, as he generally does, he missed. 

As things progressed through a busy day I thought it was kind of funny because "Catholic doctrine" isn't what the Church is most importantly about,  even for most Catholics, it's how we live that matters.   I say that as I mention that that "Catholic doctrine" includes the social-justice doctrine that it's clear Pope Leo XIV has signaled will be a major focus of his papacy.  If I had to choose between any secular doctrines, everything from market economics to a mixed system to the many socialisms that aren't absolutely wedded to a transcendent conception of human and other life I would say anyone who doesn't choose that "doctrine" is a fool.  

Looking at RMJ's place he makes a similar point much more briefly:

I am always cheered by anything that advances people over other concerns.

It was when Good Pope Francis did that he got the right wingers, the Burke's the Sarahs, the Muellers, the Stricklands, Viganòs,  and the EWTN, National Catholic Register (not to be confused with the generally excellent National Catholic Reporter) and the rest of the billionaire-millionaire financed "trad-cath" astro-turf LARP cult in a swivet.  It got not a few of the Cardinal Electors in a swivet too, even some of them made it clear they didn't want someone who would carry on the work of Francis.  Even some of those those who Francis showed his charity, such as the scandal plagued Cardinal Pell, turned on him because he cared more about People than abstract notions of purity in doctrine and dogma.  Charity comes well down the list of concerns for such guys, even though it was the central teaching of Jesus.  I would point out that one of the greatest ironies of the would-be "trad-Catholics" is that they're even more willing to overturn even the longest standing of those, like the U.S. Supreme Court in the hands of the American right, there is little apart from scolding other People over their sex lives that such are willing to overturn in service of their often blatantly corrupt ends.   And when you mix in such stuff as American legal credentialing by the most elite of our secular universities, the trad-caths go full raving fascist loony.  

The social media and other activity of the well-financed liars of the trad-cath right in the period between the papacy of Good Pope Francis and Pope Leo has been fully as bad as the worst of the Republican-fascist attacks on President Biden and then Kamala Harris, joined in by the commercial, secular media.  I was glad to see that like Francis, Pope Leo has some familiarity with social media, he must be familiar with the worst of it.   Which I don't think it will be possible to ignore.  I hope, unlike Francis, that he is more willing to crack down hard on the lying cardinals, bishops, priests, etc.  whose mother tongue isn't Church Latin but false witness.  Such as Strickland and Viganò should have been shut down a lot sooner than they were.    While I hope that such cases are handled with more justice than JPII and Benedict XVI often dealt with their critics,  I hope Pope Leo understands the danger that they pose, not just to the Church but to secular politics in places where the cults that they sway exist.   Doing justice is always a narrow path between caring about the rights of the individual and the danger they pose to the wider community or an innocent individual.   I think, though Francis did, in the end, take means to protect the innocent, sometimes he should have acted faster.   

I think RMJ said it best, though.  

Still Optimistic Going Into The Second Day

WHILE POPE LEO has said things in the past that LGBTQ+ People like me wouldn't much like - and who knows how much he may have grown since he said them - the indications from his social media activity are really encouraging.   Here's from a piece about that from the National Catholic Reporter:  

There is only so much we can learn about Pope Leo XIV from his X account, an account in which he mostly retweeted others. But if we read between the lines, we can see a common thread of deep concern for the marginalized and the poor, and an emphasis on the role of government in ensuring the welfare of its citizens. For those who hoped for continuity with Francis' pontificate, Prevost's X feed is a reassuring, and downright hopeful, scroll.

Whether it's posting a Spanish language video interview condemning the death penalty with compassion and nuance, or resharing a stern rebuke of those who offer "thoughts and prayers" without policy changes in the face of mass shootings, our new pontiff has not minced words about the sweeping implications of nonviolence.

During the tumultuous year of 2020, he posted multiple calls for racial justice and promoted COVID-19 vaccinations as a means of caring for the vulnerable. (He was also seen wearing a face mask as late as 2022.)

It only takes one brief glance at Prevost's X profile to see that immigrants are particularly close to his heart. His last post before becoming pope, shared on April 14, was a retweet drawing attention to the suffering of the deported — and calling out President Donald Trump specifically for a lack of compassion. But this wasn't new for Prevost; he's been challenging Trump's position on immigration since before Trump even won the 2016 election.

But immigration isn't the only issue that compelled Prevost to speak out against Trump. In 2017 he shared a post by the Laudato Si' Movement pushing for the president to read Francis' climate justice encyclical, Laudato Si', and another by Catholic News Service Rome expressing concern about the environmental impact of Trump's policies.

Perhaps the biggest difference between our current American political leaders and our new American-born pope can best be summed up by a 2021 post that appears to bear an original caption from Prevost himself. Linking to a commentary on a homily on the Beatitudes delivered by Francis, Prevost wrote: "These beatitudes also highlight the temptations faced by bishops, like that of seeking power and a comfortable lifestyle."

I was kind of hoping he'd adopt the immediate shock-effect of Francis coming out in a plain white cassock as a means of reinforcing a rejection of "power and a comfortable lifestyle" but maybe he figures that point has already been made and he is saving his action for more serious fights. 

People have been commenting on the widespread non-Catholic enthusiasm for the idea that WE have a Pope,  some have said that even a lot of atheists and non-Christians have been enthusiastic about this choice as they soon became encouraged by Good Pope Francis.   I don't think the a "trad-Catholic" choice would have had that effect, especially from the hard-core legalists - a canon lawyer would have been even more of a disaster than another academic theologian.   I think the reason for that is that modern secular culture, modernism (in that sense) is as unfulfilling and unhelpful as reactionary "traditionalism."   Reactionary traditionalism, as voiced by the like of J.D. Vance, other recent right-wing converts and the wealth-generated "trad-catholics" is ultimately as useless.  Like the 18th century style of "liberalism" that sought to free the rich to enjoy their wealth as they rode roughshod over workers and others, as opposed to the original American form of liberalism that was based in the egalitarian economics of the scripture,  the sterile, would-be scientific "modernism" that is what most people concentrate on is more a matter of wealth hoarding with permissiveness to those with that wealth than anything else.  The long list of the icons of modernism who were enthusiasts for dictators, both of the right and the would-be left should make everyone's use of that term more careful about what they mean.  

I hope that Pope Leo turns out to be another pastoral Pope who has the same orientation as Francis for the hunger, homing and material as well as spiritual welfare for least among us, for the environment, for those who are marginalized, for those who are in the worst parts of their lives.   As I said, I hope he makes a radical decision to change the priesthood that will admit that the Holy Ghost hasn't seen eye-to-eye with Church tradition on an exclusively unmarried-male priesthood, turning back the Benedict-era policy of shrinking the church so as to make it more to the liking of those who yearn for a return to before Vatican II.    I will say that noting that if you read even the reactionaries among past Popes after Leo XIII,  pretty much all of them supported and reinforced the Catholic social teaching of that Leo, at least in their official documents.   If you want to put their economic policy in terms of secular politics, it tends to radical equality BECAUSE IT FOLLOWS THE GOSPEL AND THE LAW.   There are no egalitarian economics and, so, politics more radical  than the Gospel of Jesus.  It is an expansion of the already radical economics and politics of The Law of Moses.   That might not be what the billionaire-millonaire astro-turf-high-visibility "trad-Catholic" cult wants but it is the heart of Christianity and the best of the Catholic tradition.  The real one, not the one that lends itself to live-action-role-playing as seen in the movies and on TV.  

"Pope Leo XIV" Is A Good Sign

POPE LEO XIII is universally acknowledged to be the initiator of modern Catholic Social Teaching.  In one of the articles I read anticipating what names the new Pope might choose the author speculated that if "Leo" was the name of choice it would be a way for him to indicate that was what he intended to focus on. 

In other articles, most of which said that it was a very long shot that an American might be chosen,  Robert Provost was said to be someone known to be dedicated to continuing the process of reform and change that Good Pope Francis, now Saint Francis Bergoglio began. 

I said something of what I hoped the new Pope would do, including complete equality for Women in the Catholic Church.   I also said that I didn't expect that to happen.   I'm hoping that he will open up ordination to married Catholic men,  John Paul II opened the door by allowing disaffected Anglican priests who are married to become Catholic priests.   Who knows if even that partial reform will happen? 

But that's only some of the less important change that needs to be made.    His many years working in Peru will give him a lot better idea of that than I'll ever have.  

I'm provisionally optimistic but that makes me nervous.    I'd been afraid of them electing someone who I knew would be mediocre to bad, though I was pretty sure the real disasters put forward as likely candidates would never be elected by two thirds.    I expect that the integralist-fascist nutters are going to be splitting.   After this I think it's pretty unlikely that things will go back to JPII-Benedict XVI.  

Someone Wants Me To Comment On Jordan Peterson On The Bible

I DON'T FOLLOW THAT FRAUD and, no, I wasn't aware he'd written a book allegedly about the Bible.   I don't look at his stuff much because no matter what he's allegedly writing about, it turns out that it's really about his pathological view of sex.   And even for a psych-guy, his is pathological.  From what I gather, that's what his view of the Bible (really two books and a quarter of one from the Old Testament) is about. 

Looking around and reading the reviews by some of those who are not a fraud in any way, such as the estimable Rowan Williams, it appears those who did the reading of it so I don't have to are not favorably impressed.   I'll lean heavily on his review from the Guardian: 

Two points to begin with. One is that Peterson remains ambiguous about what many would consider a fairly crucial issue: when we talk about God, do we mean that there actually is a source of agency and of love independent of the universe we can map and measure? Faith is “identity with a certain spirit of conceptualization, apprehension, and forward movement”, he writes in relation to Noah; it amounts to “a willingness to act when called on by the deepest inclinations of his soul”. Echoes here not only of Jung, who figures as a key source of inspiration, but of the radical 20th-century Protestant theologian Paul Tillich, who proposed redefining God as whatever is the focus of our “ultimate concern”. Some passages imply that God is identical to the highest human aspirations – which is not quite what traditional language about the “image of God” in humanity means. Peterson seems to haver [never read anyone use that verb before, I'm impressed] as to whether we are actually encountering a real “Other” in the religious journey.

The second point is connected. Peterson’s readings are curiously like a medieval exegesis of the text, with every story really being about the same thing: an austere call to individual heroic integrity. This is a style of interpretation with a respectable pedigree. Early Jewish and Christian commentators treated the lives of Abraham and Moses as symbols for the growth of the spirit, paradigms for how a person is transformed by the contemplation of eternal truth. But, as with these venerable examples, there is a risk of losing the specificity of the narratives, of ironing out aspects that don’t fit the template. Every story gets pushed towards a set of Petersonian morals – single-minded individual rectitude, tough love, clear demarcations between the different kinds of moral excellence that men and women are called to embody, and so on.

The effect is somewhat one-note; the actual way in which the stories develop, speak to one another, correct one another, handle internal tensions and debates is muted at best. This is the sort of thing that classical rabbinical exegesis in fact relishes, and that some more modern Jewish discussion – by Emil Fackenheim, Jonathan Sacks, Nathan Lopes Cardozo and others – models very powerfully. Peterson is rightly hostile to antisemitism, and this might have led him to engage a bit more with the rich world of Jewish interpretation. Instead, he relies a lot on rather dated Christian commentaries (and seems to have a limited acquaintance with Hebrew, a drawback for a project like this).

My guess is that Peterson knows crap all about Hebrew or Biblical Greek or about much of any Biblical commentary. 

In fairness, he does pick out some distinct trajectories within the stories, for example, in the narratives about Moses. But the expositions constantly shade into meandering polemic about a range of modern issues, especially gender, on which Peterson has made his position pretty clear elsewhere. Eve’s yielding to the serpent’s temptation, for instance, is viewed as the characteristically female error of sentimental, pseudo-compassionate acceptance of the unacceptable that you see in bad parents, especially mothers, who “cripple their children so that they can make a public show of their martyrdom and compassionate virtue”.

This does tempt me to go to a library to look at the book to see if he works in the natural history of lobsters somewhere,  something which has figured heavily in his prescriptions for the behavior of men and Women in the past.  

Well, there is certainly a discussion to be had about toxicity in parenting, but finding it in the second chapter of Genesis requires impressive single-mindedness (and it is worth noting that Jewish exegetical tradition, unlike Christian, has never been that interested in Eve). Peterson claims that analysis of the patriarchal subtext of the biblical stories is a ridiculous distraction, observing that Genesis depicts both men and women negatively. What he does not seem to acknowledge is that discussing patriarchy is about recognising patterns of social power embedded in the stories, rather than whether specific men are painted in favourable or unfavourable lights. This makes it impossible for him to grant that such discussions can help us avoid some of the spectacularly destructive exploitation of biblical material that has reinforced the demeaning of women throughout Christian history.

Predictably (for those familiar with his online battles), he sees any qualification of the simple binary of gender identity as equivalent to denying the difference between good and evil, a refusal of the basic polarities of reality. But most serious discussions of gender fluidity do not deny evolutionary biology or sexual differentiation as such; they are asking for a more painstaking attention both to the social construction of roles and to the specifics of dysphoria. They deserve a better level of engagement.

I will break in here to say that I think everything Jordan Peterson does is to try to regain his place in bro-kulcha, the manosphere that he held in the 2010s,  with his adoring online incel-boy followers and the wealth that having written a bogus best seller got for him.   I will stipulate that Rowan Williams is a nicer guy than I am.   Peterson is to Women as Jerry Falwell was to Black People, using misogyny the same way that Falwell used white supremacy to build an empire, though, clearly, Falwell was better at that than the Psych prof from the U. of Toronto has been.   Maybe he realizes the potential to have a pseudo-religious movement behind such an effort, which would explain why, in his senescence, he is trying to take that marketing opportunity. 

I do think the possibility of a Jordan Peterson holding down an alleged scientific professorship at a major English language university, albeit in an alleged science,  should count as much in the discrediting of his field as the presence of such as Kevin MacDonald in an allied pseudo-science, "evolutionary psychology" should have served to discredit the scientific status of that ocean of bilge.  

And so on, with other issues as well (most bizarrely, the conclusion of the Book of Jonah is made the occasion for a tirade about valuing the “natural” world over human life, which seems to have something to do with Peterson’s hostility to some kinds of environmental ethics; not really what the text is about). These rabbit holes do no great service to the broader challenges Peterson wants to draw attention to. There really are corrosive manifestations of hedonism, relativism and infantilism in our culture; there really is a mentality that deludes us into thinking that we can be whatever we want to be, and that any notion of short-term sacrifice for a more durable and fully shareable good is unimaginable.

I suspect that Peterson has put a lot of his money into the extraction industries - he is from the Texas of Canada,  Alberta.   I'd like to know just where his investments lie because I think that's where we will find the whole of his treasure does. 

But the insistent contempt for nuance and disagreement (“idiotic”, “addled”, “egregious”), and the reduction of any alternative perspective to its most shallow or trivial form, does not encourage the serious engagement Peterson presumably wants. This is an odd book, whose effect is to make the resonant stories it discusses curiously abstract. “Matter and impertinency mixed”, in Shakespeare’s phrase.

I'll note that Peterson apparently wants his book to be taken seriously as a scholarly work by a university professor,  I don't have such a purpose, all I am is a political blogger though when I do get more serious I use different language.  That's my excuse.   I don't think it would have occurred to me to make this last criticism that Williams does, though I think it's a fair one for him to make.  

I looked at several things and listened to one.  I'll leave you with this highly entertaining Youtube review which contains what I think is one of the most salient of uninvestigated questions about Peterson and his cult of manhood,  WHY THOSE WHO WANT TO BE MANLY MEN HAVE INVESTED SO MUCH IN THE TOTAL, WHINY-WIMP THAT JORDAN PETERSON IS?   

I think it's a good question?   Why isn't the squeaky (one of the higher tenor voices before the public, these days)  whoosie, psych-prof, dangerous-fad-diet endorsing (has he got money in his daughter's scam, too?),  clothes-horse getting into fist fights?   It reminds me of Bertrand Russell's comment on Nietzsche's advocacy of beating Women in Zarathustra,  Nietzsche knew that if he ever tried to whip a woman, she'd get it from him and whip him with it.    I understand Peterson is big on Jung. Probably a safe bet for a fraudster and scammer.   As if anyone knows what he was talking about. 

One of the comments puts it well, "Jordan Peterson is to religion what Jordan Peterson is to philosophy."  

The Eternal Annoyance Of Media Predicting Soon To Be Made Decisions

CONSIDERING HOW SOON we will likely have the answer to who the next Pope will be, it is really stupid how many stories making or pretending to be making predictions of that have been in the media.   If there is one thing that isn't known, it is what the inclinations of most of the 133 or so Cardinal Electors going into the conclave is and even less so what happens within that closed system might change any minds from what they are today.   Even some of the more level-headed people who know something about some of the Cardinal Electors and have some idea of the process are making predictions, such as that this is likely to be a short conclave lasting at most four days.   Well, that may well be the case but given the inability of anyone to make predictions like that in the past, who could possibly know that well enough to make a confident prediction?  

I would like it to be a law that media outlets that issue predictions have to follow up to see if those predictions came true or not.   But that's not going to happen. 

It's interesting how many non-Catholics seem to be getting into the act.  It reminds me of one of my favorite examples of this kind of thing,  Americans who go four years without ever watching a figure-skating spectacle immediately becoming self-appointed experts of the Winter Olympics figure-skating finals and having a totally convinced and righteous opinion as to who should win.  Though in that case the silly phenomenon is harmless. 

I won't make a prediction about the conclave but I will predict that if the new Pope doesn't open up ordination to married People, rather fast, it will be ever more a moot question because Catholicism is a sacramental religion and for those sacraments that ordination is required for,  the most basic actions of being a Catholic will grow ever rarer for ever more of those who were baptized into the Church.  I wouldn't expect the next Pope to do the right thing and open ordination to Women, and married People but if they don't do something rather dramatic to get more priests into the parishes,  the Church will shrink very fast.   It was one of the worst things about Benedict XVI that he was more than OK with that, he wanted to drive those who didn't agree with him out of the church - it should be a law that an academic theologian isn't electable as the pastor of the Church.   JPII didn't do much to improve things, either.  His scandal filled papacy during which the child abuse scandal broke drove a number of those Catholics I knew away from the church even before Benedict made that his policy.   

I sometimes watch the mass from the Cathedral in Montreal.   I wasn't surprised to see how few there were at weekday masses but seeing how few there were at mass at the Cathedral there yesterday really shocked me.   It's not in the Bible Belt or some college town in the North East of the US, it's a major church in a province which was once synonymous with Catholicism.   I don't know if having a larger number of priests, some of whom are married and, perhaps, often are more in touch with real life than so many of the unmarried me of the Church are but they've been praying for those vocations that have been drying up for decades,  this month is dedicated to praying for that.   While the Cardinal Electors are trying to discern what the Holy Ghost is telling them about a Pope they should understand the message of those prayers having been unanswered so definitively.   Maybe they will,  I was hoping Good Pope Francis would but he left that problem unsettled.   I wouldn't begin to predict what's going to happen on that question. 

Someone Mentioned To Me That Mamet Made A Movie

THAT INTERESTS me about as much as someone bringing out an LP of Anita Bryant's greatest hits.   I have no interest in what that LGBTQ+ slandering racist and misogynist would be poet laureate of the bro-kulcha manosphere has to say about anything.   

Actually, I might be more interested in an Anita Bryant Greatest Hits album and I'm not interested in that at all.  At least hers comes in at generally less than four minutes instead of wasting about two hours.   

Open Question To The "AI' Producers of "Historic" You Tube Videos

What the hell is a famous  Walker Evans picture of an impoverished American mother and her children doing at this point in this video about Nazi sadists?    

AI is so so stupid.    Don't you guys ever fact check this junk?  Artificial "intelligence" is going to be the total death of a sense of reality being reliably attached to reality.   Unless law and deputedly democratic governments take serious action to stop it, democracy won't just be endangered, it will be impossible. 

The is the most amazing and hopeful thing I've seen in months. Moving a BRICK! 1909 library building to higher ground

 

Built in 1909, the Johnson Public Library is a Carnegie-style brick building that sat between Railroad Street and the Gihon River. Johnson is a former mill town where two rivers meet. Over the years, countless floods have devastated the library and town, most notably in 1927, 1996 and 2023. The library lost 1,500 books in the recent flood and has been operating out of the basement of the nearby Masonic Temple. When they heard about a grant opportunity, library staff and town leaders worked together to apply, in the hopes that they could create a new future for the library and their town.

On April 25 and 26, the library was transported from its home of more than 100 years and carried half a mile away to higher ground to Legion Field on School Street, below the elementary school. The Herculean effort took all night and included dozens of community volunteers, utility and construction workers, road and moving crews, first responders and 28 bucket trucks. Route 15 was shut down for three hours, and the power lines had to be removed to make way for the formidable 40-by-45-foot library on wheels. 

New England Building Movers used diesel-powered hydraulics and a series of six dollies to maneuver the library forward on 48 wheels. It moved slowly and got stuck turning tight corners — a few trees had to be cut down, and three inches were shaved from its eaves to make it fit. Despite the late hour, townsfolk lined the streets to see the slow parade of utility trucks and the glowing brick structure, which took up the entire road and was lit up with lights. 

The library’s new location is outside the floodplain; it will be expanded with an addition that will include more space for community activities. This project is funded by a $1.68 million grant from the Vermont Department of Libraries through the U.S. Department of the Treasury Capital Projects Fund grant program. Community members applied for the grant, coordinated the all-night move and celebrated the library’s new home.

In the latest episode of “Stuck in Vermont,” Seven Days senior multimedia producer Eva Sollberger saw the library crossing the Pearl Street bridge in the twilight hours — it had to be lifted above the guardrails — and attended the community celebration in the afternoon on April 26. It rained all day, but no one had to worry about water in the basement at the library’s new home. Staff hope to reopen the new and improved library by the end of the year.

I Don't See Any Reason To Give Them The Benefit Of The Doubt

My sister and others I've talked to never had junk calls on their cell-phones until after Musk and his incel-boy army started stealing files in the federal government.   I am going to assume they're selling the data they've stolen, including things like contact information.   And I have no doubt that they are going to use it for far worse than to financially profit from it.  The Constitution and the law has done nothing to prevent this when both should have prevented the executive branch irregulars stealing it to start with.   This is a prelude to Communist China style control of the population, that's so obvious that mainstream journalists are noticing it. 

I Wouldn't Be Surprised

 if Trump and the Republican-fascists say that parents should replace the toys that won't be under the Christmas tree  with guns.    I mean, look how many of them have posed with guns on their family Christmas cards in previous years.   That he might, and only a very remote might that is, be taken down by the disappointment his policies will cause during the Christmas season is something I might take but it is one of the most terrible of truths about the American public under our Constitution and the culture and legal regime it gave rise to.  It should have happened far faster and over the intentional immorality and consequent amorality of Trump and his supporters and the media, the sacralized "free press,"  which did so much to impose Trump on us in the beginning and reimpose him on us after they sandbagged and forced out Biden, one of the most rarely moral and competent presidents in the history of the country.   

Trump is the worst president in history, our Constitution is doing nothing to remove him as he brings on an economic catastrophe because he is too stupid to learn what a tariff is and how they operate as a consumer tax on the citizens of a country that imposes them - no doubt he learned everything he knows about tariffs from his corrupt fascist dad saying they should replace the income tax, something his idiot economic advisors,  Navarro (his LARP name: Ron Vara),  the idiot Howard Lutnick, the smiling idiot Kevin Hassett . . . tell him because they are whores of Trump and the billionaires who own him.  I'll point out two out of just that three are, like Trump,  products of Ivy League schools.  Just to point out the role that our alleged educational elite played in this. 

Whenever you hear one of the As Seen On TV lawyers talk about the Constitution saving us  you should now start to believe they have gone from being naive to being liars because if the Constitution were going to save us from what the Constitution should never, ever have permitted to start with, letting an insurrectionist, a known asset of Vladimir Putin and whatever corrupt billionaire, despot or not who says they'll build a building he can put his name on, a criminal who stole and very likely sold some of our most important security secrets, . . . . . . . . .  be nominated and elected as president after the most corrupt and criminal first go round, that would have happened long ago. 

Our Constitution had corrupt features installed in it from the beginning, many obvious ones, many less obvious ones and some enhanced or installed later by, for example, Supreme Court rulings - never installed by Constitutional means, the absence of a provision forbidding the Court to do that one of those most dangerous of features - it will not save us.   Republicans, their theorists and, most importantly of all LAWYERS AND LEGAL SCHOLARS have identified and weaponized every defect in that document, intended by the framer-slaver holder-financiers and the more subtle and Court invented ones to install corrupt politicians and TV stars to serve anti-democratic ends.   It is a document and a political system AND A LEGAL SYSTEM which has been so weaponized and once that has been done, the thing cannot be turned back to something less bad that ran on the tolerance of a margin of corruptible voters of sometimes good will and the sense of "honor" among politicians and "justices" of that dangerous court. 

If I sound like a broken record on that it is because you have to repeat the hard truth more times than even a flimsy lie constructed for easy sale in order for that truth to overcome even temporarily told lies.   The lies of our Constitutional lore and civic religion are far more deeply embedded than that and getting that corrupt document changed AND REMOVING THE POWER TO OF THE SUPREME COURT TO AMEND IT AT WILL is going to be a huge job, one which I will almost certainly not live to see happen, short of a disastrous and bloody and catastrophically failed revolution that will teach that lesson faster.   I doubt that will happen, a bigger miracle of a revolution coming up with something better is less likely than a divine miracle doing that.   The putrid and lying civic piety that has been installed in the American public about the Constitution is, itself, a barrier to peaceful change.   One of the reasons I had the reaction to the lying history of "Hamilton" was because it added a huge lie about one of the worst of the framers, one who at least one historian said was one of the three most dangerous men in the United States at the time of his death - his killer being one of the other two.  But he was hardly alone in those who early on tried to game the Constitution they had constructed for evil ends, that is the real history of that document in the hands of the framers, themselves.  

Update:   I can't recall who the third one of the three named by the historian as being the most dangerous men in the United States in 1804 was but I'd put John Marshall, the author of Marbury v Madison the year before in that position. 

Another Busy Week

IF I WASN'T AFRAID THAT I'D JINX HIM I'd announce that I am 100% all in on Pritzker for president.   

Of those being often mentioned, he seems to be the best to me, so far.   He seems to know what is needed whereas Gavin Newsome doesn't.  He has Washington experience which I consider an absolute requirement for anyone who wants to be president.   But I won't jinx him by supporting him until after the convention.   

No, I Have Not Seen "Conclave" I Have Every Intention To Not See It

I DON'T WATCH movies about the Catholic Church because they're either nauseatingly and dishonestly pious or sensationally and dishonestly anti-Catholic.    I never watch movies about real People because they are so unreliable and, so, inevitably bear false witness.  That didn't bother me until I found out in conversations online that many PhD holding teachers at accredited universities and prep-schools mistake movies for history or biography.  If they're so duped by Hollywood why should anyone expect those with lesser educations to make the distinction between reality and make-believe?   Make-believe is dangerous when it's mistaken as reality. 

In the many things I read and heard about the upcoming conclave and about the events leading to it, I was horrified to hear someone say how many People on their plane trip to go to Rome for the funeral of Good Pope Francis were watching the movie INCLUDING A BISHOP.    I mentioned how I suspected the putrid and pious and grotesquely unrealistic  "The Shoes of the Fisherman" led to the election of Karol Wojtyla as John Paul II -  a really bad papacy - so hearing that bishops were watching that movie put me on my guard. 

So far as I know, very little about what has gone on in any modern conclave has been leaked by a reliable source and what has leaked is often tainted by ulterior motives so I doubt much about it is accurate.  Much of the lore surrounding the elections of Popes is sensational and even more obviously ideological and polemic so it's mostly useless if you want to really know.   That is what happens when such a choice is made in secrecy by a small group of insiders - like the legendary smoke-filled rooms where presidential candidates of the major parties were said to have been chosen.   Of course, back then we got a few good ones whereas today good presidents are even rarer than they once were,  The well meaning democratic reforms of the primary system were more than swamped by the Courts opening up the airwaves to millionaires and billionaires flooding the American political system with lies so as to influence voters.   I don't think opening up the choice of the head of the Catholic Church to that would be likely to make things better. Imagine if the likes of Tim Busch and the media operations like EWTN and The National Catholic Register (NOT TO BE MISTAKEN WITH THE GENERALLY EXCELLENT NATIONAL CATHOLIC REPORTER!) and their like around the world flooded the airwaves with American style lying.   

For some ideas of what might be an alternative to that but which is almost certainly not likely to ever happen, you might look at this piece at Religion Dispatches.   Much as I favor democracy as the only potentially valid means of selecting a legitimate secular government,  without major protections against the influence of lie campaigns and prejudice ruling, its capacity for producing better results drastically erodes.  There is no world-authority who could do that for the Catholic Church.  Hell, we can't even protect American democracy at home from it under our Constitution. 

As I said, we'll have to see what the Cardinal Electors give us.  If they give us someone at least as good as Francis was - and while I think he was a great Pope, he was hardly perfect - all well and good.   If they give us someone as timid as Paul VI,  as power-hungry and controlling as JPII or as incompetent as Benedict XVI (dear God, not another academic theologian!) that will be typical.   There have been remarkably few great presidents of the United States, even though we get a new chance to get a new one every four years.   There have been remarkably few great Popes though I think there have actually been a higher percentage of good ones than we've had good presidents.   Some of them like Benedict XV have been far better than they have been accorded by history (the late Richard McBrien convinced me of that) some have been downright awful.   Just like leaders in putative democracies are, it's a mixed bag.   

It's a lot safer and easier for movie makers to make a sensational and false movie about the Catholic Church than it is about secular politics,  the old idea that a Catholic audience is going to refuse to watch a movie if the bishop tells them not to was likely always exaggerated and is certainly not true today.   I don't care to watch fiction when I can read about reality.   I like fiction to be fictitious and not something that tries to risk rational people mistaking it for reality.  I've heard at least two people who believed "Conclave" informed about the truth when it is reported to contain nonsense - an unknown Cardinal presenting himself to the Conclave  as a Cardinal Elector when those qualified to participate have to be publicly declared by the Pope before hand and a Cardinal breaking the seal of confession - which would mean automatic and immediate excommunication if they did it and every other person in the Conclave would know that.   Lord knows what's in it that I haven't read about, yet. 

Here are words to live by,  which come from my favorite comedy series,  Corner Gas "MOVIES AREN'T REAL."