9 November 2015

Should Popes be celibate?

There is evidence that Popes should not be allowed to be celibate. A campaign for Married Popes, then? Let me lay some evidence before you.

Exhibit 1: The Great Facade, which I and some of you have been reading, recounts the episode which Chris Ferrara calls "Rabbitgate": when the Holy Father spoke thoroughly blokishly about a woman who had a lot of children

(Do you have the term and concept of Blokishness in North America? Did Plato envisage an Idea of Blokishness? What might it be in Attic Greek? Or Spanish?)

Exhibit 2: Chris might profitably also have mentioned another hilarious example of this same tendency, when our much-loved and greatly respected Sovereign Pontiff likened Europe, to Europe's considerable disadvantage, to an old and now infertile Grandmother. I have privately christened this glorious gaffe "Cronegate".

Suppose it were to chance that Papa Bergoglio were to be marooned (which Heaven forbid) on a Desert Island alone with a Grandmother who had had fifteen children ... gracious, how I would love to be a Fly upon the Wall.

If Pope Francis were, like myself and many of you chaps out there, to have a wife who had been a large part of his life for more than half a century, it is conceivable that he might have picked up from her, however gradually and however imperfectly, slightly more nuanced ways of doing linguistic business with the other half of the Human Race. Indeed, you might tell me that he would need to be stone deaf not to have done so.

You still don't think he would ..... ?

You don't think (I dutifully employ here the terminology of the Vatican I Decree Pastor Aeternus) that the Holy Spirit was promised to the Successors of Peter in order to teach them how to be polite to women?

 ..... No ... you're probably right ... some things are just too ... er ... y'know ...

5 comments:

Mick Jagger Gathers No Mosque said...

Suppose it were to chance that Papa Bergoglio were to be marooned (which Heaven forbid) on a Desert Island alone with a Grandmother who had had fifteen children ...

The possibility alone is cause never to leave Vatican City

John H. Graney said...

Have you heard of mansplaining? It seems related. I would never use the word though.

Anonymous said...

A lady quoted by Alice Thomas Ellis (Serpent on the Rock) said that she thought all priests ought to be married, "then they'd know what it was like." Ellis comments that the lady spoke with some asperity, suggesting that she (the latter) thought too many men had been having things too easy for too long.

I couldn't possibly comment.

JARay said...

I rather think that if Papa Bergoglio were to be marooned on a desert island with or without an elderly grandmother who had had fifteen children (vide Amateur Brain Surgeon above) there would be many who would heave a loud sigh of relief.

Fr. Michael LaRue said...

Here in Southeast Texas, the land of Spanish moss, and live oaks, and oil refineries, we would call a Bloke a "Good Old Boy", or, if we were being less kind, a "Redneck". However, Ladies in this part of the world are not used to being ill treated, and are not only equipped with a large arsenal of deadly cutting repartee, but also have pistols in their purses.