#513

So! The fuckin pope died. Made it to one last Easter after a dramatic wind-down, faced down one last daemond on that sacred day, and punched his ticket the morning after. As my friend Valentine quoth, "too plot-heavy."

Plot weight is essentially the main reason the Roman Catholic Church can claim it is the one true church though, and every time something like this happens, the mystic power only grows. It is banal at this point. 

It's a pope post! Don't read my blog. Factually Pointless is not kidding about its title.

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My big takeaway from Francis' papacy is that I didn't appreciate him enough when he was alive. Another terrible cliché. Yet indeed, behold: it is so. He was just a guy, only a dude, simply a man, as well as a pope. 

He was as much my pope, representative of me and who I am and what my values and hopes are, for this world and for the church, as I had any right to hope or expect in this or any lifetime to date, and I acted entitled to him. Acted as though his humility and self-effacement was a given at best, a hypocrisy or smokescreen at worst, and I doubted his commitment to the full scope of our shared humanity and his willingness and his ability to do the job as, in my arrogance, I believe it should be done. The fact that he was not superhuman, was not able to flex his muscles and with one swift gesture put asunder the entire hierarchy and establish peace and justice for all on this world, I interpreted as failure, and I turned my nose up at him.

But it's just a job, done by a guy. As one experienced in dealing with murderous, autocratic regimes and not getting his ass poisoned or shot, he navigated the treacherous whirlpools and breakers of being a pope. He made mistakes, but he was as much the pope he set out to be as the realities of this world allow for, when nothing would have been easier than to settle into a the most luxuriant possible retirement while momentum and the will of others took care of everything. 

Important to remember that a pope, if such is is his whim, can literally eat food all day long. If the pope wants to golf or look at fine art all damn day and let a couple of their favorite cardinals be pope, it is wholly within their power--moreso perhaps than any other worldly power, the pope has the power to let Jesus take the fuckin wheel. I mean, look at all the pedophiles. These guys don't get in because the church loves pedophiles. They get in because motherfuckers don't bother to make absolutely sure they don't. And it's not possible to get them all out at once because sometimes if you use knives instead of chemo you would cut a person into quivering chunks instead of curing their cancer. It seems like the same, but it is not the same. 

So. Much more could be said, but concentrating on the main takeaway. The whole time the best pope of my lifetime and maybe the most authentically Christian pope ever, like ever, like having popes is unchristian actually but here we are, getting away from but bringing it back to me being an asshole about it, and only now that he is gone do I see the miracle.

Typical. It really is just basic. This just goes to show that I probably would have started worshipping a golden farm animal in the few hours Moses was up the mountain. Sad!

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Now it seems to me like the big historical question is whether we will get one pope in the Vatican and one pope in Washington by executive order, Henry VIII-style, or the next pope is such an asshole we all just settle down and go about our other business, secure in the knowledge that the church serves power and is absolutely irrelevant otherwise, as is correct and proper and easy to digest.

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Happy Pope Remains Dead Day 2 or whatever it is. Rest In Peace Francis, you were alright and I love you and I'm sorry in my heart I was mean to you in thought and spoken word and in writing too. It is down to my childishness and hubris, and I will once again work on my humility and sublimation of ego in hopes of being a better person than the one who keeps thinking that the work ever ends or that the world has solutions instead of being God's perfect infinite story.

Do wish I'd written you that letter. Though it may be for the best that I did not.

Book of Job! Book of Job! PAX INFINITUM

--JL