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Lorna Mills and Sally McKay
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This is my last post to the main page of Sally's blog. Several weeks ago I booked a flight to a relentlessly Catholic country and I have to leave town soon, plus it will be really hard to get a good wi-fi signal in a gothic cathedral. Thanks to the generous loan of Sally's powerful laboratory microscopes I am able to leave you with this image of the College of Cardinals balancing on the head of a pin. (quite comfortably too!)
Personally, I like the Italian prospects, they seem to be the most endearing autocrats in the whole conclave. On-line bookies give the best odds to Dionigi Cardinal Tettamanzi, Archbishop of Milan. You look at his picture (photo #1) and think, what an old darling, vote him in. (He'll officially disapprove of us doing whatever we want, but I suspect we would still get away with it.)
The other Italian, a major long-shot, is Carlo Maria Cardinal Martini, retired Archbishop of Milan. (photo #2, surrounded by drinks that are not martinis). He speaks 11 languages and is in regular correspondence with Umberto Eco. There is one impediment though, he is a WILY COYOTE JESUIT (photo #3), and the moment his papacy is announced he'll go and start Vatican III.
Most people are under the illusion that the big Vatican councils produce reform, but they mostly produce documents to be ignored. (one of my favourites was written on the subject of the rhythm method, by a panel of laity, married men and women, several of them declaring that method of birth control to be unreliable and idiotic. They went on to speculate that if all the Bishops had to stick a cold thermometer up their butts every day ... I paraphrase, but these sentiments were actually expressed.)
What Vatican II did produce was the spectacle of Nuns, suddenly dressed in navy blue a-line skirts, white blouses and sensible shoes, playing 12 string guitars and singing Hava Nagila. A Vatican III could result in something even more weird and wonderful, with the added benefit of pissing off Cardinal Ratzinger, Mel Gibson and Mel Gibson's dad. That's probably a good enough reason for Digital Media Tree to offer all its all its moral, financial and political backing to endorse the candidacy of Carlo Maria Cardinal Martini, WILY COYOTE JESUIT (photo #3).
I just discovered that you find out the most obscure things when you google Fiddleback Chasuble Sightings. At this site, I learned that they were considered forbidden and reactionary in some circles. (Exactly who is in these circles, is unclear, also I don't know where I stand in relation to this controversy. I am not currently oppressed by this issue, but perhaps I will be in the future if I give it some more thought, and if so, a scathing indictment will follow on this blog. All I can say for the moment is that it just made me go all soft and squishy on them.) (but I could easily turn on a dime) Don't forget to check his link for the
wildly popular biretta sightings.
A further indictment of Maradiaga's prospective papacy is that he has been known to display a cavalier and blatant disregard for certain other Cardinals that he believes to be of little consequence.
Another very interesting candidate is Oscar Andrés Cardinal Rodríguez Maradiaga from the Honduras. According to the ADL's web site:
"The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) today expressed outrage at comments made by a Honduran Catholic Cardinal that implied an alleged Jewish manipulation of the American media. Cardinal Oscar Andres Rodriguez Maradiaga, in a May interview with the Italian-Catholic publication 30 Giorni, claimed Jews influenced the media to exploit the current controversy regarding sexual abuse by Catholic priests in order to divert attention from the Israeli-Palestinian crisis."
More on him from The Panama News.
Is he good for the Jews? I think not. (He's also bad for the children.)
b/t/w Bernard Francis Cardinal Law, former Archbishop of the Boston Archdiocese (former, because he wasn't good for the children either), is eligible to vote in the papal elections. But, he is not considered to be in the running because he is an American.
Next on our media favourites list is Francis Cardinal Arinze, the Nigerian Cardinal. A sweet old guy by all accounts. His African background sensitises him to the aids epidemic on that continent and he holds the belief that the church must immediately change its stand on condom use.
HA HA! JUST SCREWING WITH YOUR HEAD! Cardinal Ratzinger (who I am becoming quite obsessed with) is a major supporter his candidacy, so no condoms for you!