Knock knock! Who's there?

What do you get when you cross a surrealist with a mafia don?

An offer you can't understand.

~

Holy Father, the government is threatening to arrest priests who preach against homosexuality!

That's terrible! We must ban Communion on the tongue immediately! I'll be covering that in my encyclical on the environment!

~

I'm starting to have trouble coming up with appropriate comparisons here... It's starting to seem like this pontificate is just one vast non-sequitur. Is it just me, or is it getting to feel like we've fallen through the looking glass? Things that you expect to match up no longer match up. Corners are detached from their directions and parallel lines converge and tangle.

It is starting to make me do what we do when presented with a totally inappropriate non-sequitur... you just sort of stand there and blink while your brain tries to make sense of it. "Err... hang on a sec, my brain is buffering..."

This is from Marco Tosatti who seems to be doing that standing and blinking thing...

The encyclical on the subject of poverty, environment and climate change will be ready in seven or eight months, the Pope said during his audience at the General Assembly of the Italian bishops, in the part of the session open to the public. It is likely that the document - which will deal not only with creation as such but also of the dangers of a tumultuous environment and in particular its impact on the poorest - will appear at the beginning of 2015.

The bishops were very happy that the pope had given space for questions, saying, 'Ask me whatever you want.' But some of the answers to specific questions seemed rather indefinite.

When asked about the reports of [relations between the Church and] public authorities [Pope Francis] replied that the responsibility of dialogue with the country's politicians is the responsibility of the Bishops. The Holy See has nothing to do with it, much less the Secretary of State.

In the light of past battles ... about who should be the protagonist of the dialogue, the Pope's words may sound like support for the CEI [Italian bishops' conference - this is a huge issue in Italian Church politics but it tends to be extremely arcane to outsiders- ed.]; but at the same time you cannot forget that the Pope is Primate of Italy, and the bishop of Rome, as noted often, is therefore not an office unrelated to the life of the country. And the Secretary of State, in particular in the Second Chamber, is his most direct operational arm.

A bishop posed the problem of how to respond to the ideology of "gender," advocated by the majority party responding to the demands of [the Council of] Europe, where it is happening like a divorce from God the Creator, and where the man wants to be a creator. [No answer here? Tosatti doesn't say what the pope responded to this- ed.]

More explicit and precise instead was the answer to the question posed in "desperate" tones by a bishop of a small diocese (forty thousand inhabitants) who complained that a part of the clergy is "conservative" and does not want to give Communion in the hand. The Pope advised him to take strict measures, because "you cannot defend the body of Christ while offending the social Body of Christ."

Tosatti: One wonders to what extent is the phenomenon (are there reports of rioting crowds in the streets begging for the Host on the hand?) and how great is this prelate's ability to manage human situations...

~