Five Years

Well, today marks the fifth anniversary of the ascendency of St. Humble the Obtuse.

I still orbit Rome, though it is now of a vastly increased radius and tugged at by many, many gravitational pulls. The strongest, I suppose, is sedevacantism, the belief that the Chair of St. Peter, the papacy, has not been held by a legitimate Pope since Pius XII died in 1958. Other massive bodies pulling upon my soul and intellect range from Zen and Mahayana Buddhism to the philosophy of Sartre and Nietzsche. Toss in the Kantian positivism of modern day physics, sprinkle in a heaping dose of Mary Baker Eddy and Billy Graham, serve with plain old head-in-the-sand ostrichism and copious amount of Foster’s lager, and you got the space between Hopper’s ears, served as a high-caloric delicious dish devoid of nutritional value.

And what has the Humble One done to ensnare my soul – and the souls of millions others – for Christ? Well, he’s brought the Church down to us. Instead of looking up to something transcendent, he’s brought the angels and saints and the otherworldly beauty down to us to – to use a favorite expression of his – to mix with the smell of sheep. Forget about raising your eyes to a higher glory above; enjoy the scent of your fellow fallen man. Oh, and let your conscience be your Christ.

I have never felt more alone and adrift in my life. Perhaps it’s midlife crisis; I did turn 50 six months ago. I have unsuccessfully searched for a solid mooring all my life since my parent’s divorce in my early adolescence, and thought I finally found it, via the wife and children, in my two-decade return to the Catholic Church. But when old Benedict abdicated and we got this snake-oil selling clown, I realize again I am set asea in a raft without oars, blindfolded, spinning around fathom-free poles, lost in the Northern Atlantic depths in the early morning hours as the big ship slowly slides down into the darkness.

What to do, what to do? Keep on keeping on, I suppose. Not much else to do unless I suddenly decide to radically –

…

But I digress.

Why do I dislike this man so intensely?

- Amoris Laetitia and his silence towards the “dubia”

- The false humility for the cameras

- His selling out of the largest group of Catholics in the world, those in China

- The perpetual verbal diarrhea called airplane interviews

- “Who am I to judge?”

- The salivating desire to please the liberal intelligentsia (Laudato Si)

- Those monthly politically correct Vatican videos

- Francis’s Little Book of Insults (google it)

- The constant drive to tinker with millennia-old doctrine

- The syrupy simplicity of his teaching (check his twitter feed)

- The promotion of Fr. James Martin to Vatican communications director

There – eleven reasons, one for each faithful apostle, right off the top of my head. Perhaps I’m being disrespectful. Maybe, maybe not. I take this seriously. This man’s capitulation to modernism is no laughing matter, nothing to shrug off, nothing to sigh about. This is Eternal Life and Death we’re talking about.

Anyway, it’s now been five years. Five long years …