Papa Francesco

 Posted by at 11:14 am  Holy Fool/Hero  Comments Off
Mar 152013
 

 

 

photo-2Habemus papam! I don’t know about two naughties. But I guess that you having just been wrapped up in nappies for the last two weeks, naughties just about gets to the point. Naughties must be those little tykes that get to sit on the naughty step. Not together either. Separately. Two steps at least fifty metres apart. Talking back to their betters probably. What would Papa Francesco have to say to them? A long lecture in Latin perhaps. Or a bus ride over the Roman cobbles. Mind you we have to be a little careful about priests and children these days. Meanwhile Jon Snow of Channel 4 news fame waxes enthusiastically about the new pope – see @jonsnowC4 blogs: bit.ly/YcV0Vp  -  and Lizzie Davies from the Guardian tweeted: Vatican confirms that Pope Francis said to the cardinals, gathered for dinner, may God forgive you for what you have done. It is not exactly clear what he intended by this remark. What came to my mind was, firstly, some reference to the accumulated issues facing the church and then, secondly, having voted him in as pope, this pope dragged in from the ends of the earth, as he put it, to come and sort out the mess.

Like a man of steel. Maybe even stainless steel. He champions the poor, lives a life of humility, but could he have done more to counter the ‘dirty’ war of thirty years ago. Do we have a longing for superman to come and rescue us? A father who is not fatally suspect? But how is the Church to bring women into the picture; women as militant angels? Or simply how does the Church respect it’s own traditions and at the same time embrace the thinking around equality. Not all modernism should be rejected. The Church already possesses a social teaching which provides the ground for resistance to the excessive depredations of consumer capitalism with its ideology of rampant individualism but on the other hand the issue of individual human rights is never going to be stuffed back into the bottle from which it was liberated in 1948. Added to which there is considerable spadework to do in relation to the complexity of human sexuality. Complex and messy.

What a lot of work there is to do. Where are the two imps? Still on the naughty step or have they sneaked off, run off to the nightlife down by the docks. Chancers. We used to call them ne’er do wells. Off to Naples to try their luck. Living dangerously even as they advance into the peculiar territory that is growing old.