Dreams And Ideals

Living a life of dreams and ideals is a guarantee of continual disenchantment, even within the confines of a place of worship.  Does that mean one has to abandon the dream of an ideal and wholesome existence and immerse in a world of possessions, food, alcohol, sex, drugs and entertainment in order to be happy?  Is happiness in life only to be found in the celebration of youth, beauty and decadence?

Wherever happiness is, it often seems to be at places where this blogger does not fit in, but he has not given up seeking it.  It is most certainly not in this blog.  Many entries here show his dissatisfaction with the pope, but his dissatisfaction has nothing to do with the pope personally, or maybe it does, but still the dissatisfaction is not so much with the pope himself but more with the splendor of Original Sin in every man that he manifests.  Blogging is his way to vent his frustrations with the Catholic Church, a place where the living body of Christ resides and supposedly a place for those who seek Christ's peace away from the noises of society and for those who have lost their way among life's onuses.

Even though the Catholic Church still houses the Holy Eucharist, it is no longer a place of refuge, notwithstanding the fact that it was staged as such by this pope for a number of carefully selected and screened Syrian refugees.  The Vatican ought to stand rooted as a pillar of holiness and as an impenetrable shield for all who seek protection from the Enemy, yet it has been transformed into a stage to meet and greet, without much, if any, reverence for or reference to God.  Even acting in the capacity of a state, the Vatican cannot separate itself from Jesus Christ and His Church, since without the Son of God, there would be no Peter, the Apostle, no Catholic church and no Vatican.  This rather secular pope, a monarch of sorts, has under him more dramas, political, social, administrative and secular, being played out over the period of his papacy than all the occasions of royal pomp and circumstance around the world combined.

Based on his observations, which may very well be biased, this blogger concludes that the Vatican is no longer serving God but itself by partnering with interests that have the backing of money and power to keep itself in "business," so to speak, paying only lip-service to the those who are lost, who need a true shepherd to guide them, not from the stage with a microphone or at a staged event, being watched over by a team of attendants and guards, but who in the pope's own words, is a "'[shepherd] living with the smell of the sheep.'" [1]

The CNN article below, dated September 24, 2015, reveals the state of sacrilege at the Vatican [2]:

The Catholic Church is the spiritual home to 1.1 billion people around the world. It's also a big business that handles billions of dollars. 

Here's how it makes money and how it spends it. 

1. The Vatican Bank has $8 billion in assets

The Vatican Bank, which has about $8 billion in assets, has often been at the center of scandal and corruption since it was founded in 1942. Pope Benedict began the process of cleaning the bank up, and Francis has continued that work.

Vatican Bank accounts are only supposed to be held by residents of Vatican City and church personnel. But according to Gerald Posner, a Vatican bank scholar and the author of "God's Bankers," these accounts were often awarded to powerful Italian officials looking to stash money without paying taxes. 

The bank closed over 4,000 accounts to weed out corruption and currently has a total of 33,400 accounts. 

The bank, formally known as the Institute of Works of Religion, has made progress, but still has a long way to go in becoming more transparent. 

2. The Vatican had over €1.1 billion off its balance sheet

The Vatican is a separate entity from the Vatican bank, and underwent its own clean up last year. 

When it released its 2014 financial statements in July, the Vatican said it had more than €1.1 billion ($1.2 billion) in assets that weren't previously on the balance sheet.

The Vatican has two main entities. The Holy See, which governs the Catholic Church and the Vatican City State, which governs Vatican City.

The Holy See reported a deficit of €25.6 million ($27.9 million) in 2014, even though it received over €50 million from the Vatican Bank. Its biggest expense last year was paying its 2,880 employees a total of €126.6 million.

The Vatican City State is responsible for running the Vatican Museums and in 2014 had a surplus of €63.5 million -- nearly double what it was the year before.

3. The Sistine Chapel is for rent - kind of 

In October 2014, [under the Francis papacy,] the Sistine Chapel was rented out for the first time to the automaker Porsche. 

Forty Porsche fans paid $5,900 to attend a gala under Michelangelo's famed painted ceiling as part of Pope Francis' Art for Charity project.

Whereas the average visitor is permitted only a short stay in the chapel, for fear of damage to the frescoes, the Porsche guests were treated to a private choral concert and a dinner in the exhibit. 

Although money did change hands, the Vatican still contends it isn't renting out the chapel.

"The Sistine Chapel can never be rented because it is not a commercial place," Vatican spokesman Monsignor Paolo Nicolini said.

Instead, he described it as being "visible" for private groups.

But don't try booking the chapel for your birthday or wedding anytime soon -- events are limited to art-related functions.

4. It costs how much to become a saint?! 

It's not cheap to get a priest canonized. To wit: The Our Lady of Victory National Shrine & Basilica in Lackawanna, New York, has raised over $250,000 in an effort to canonize its former priest, Father Nelson Baker.  [The unofficial figure is $550,000 [3] so he should almost be (halfway) there.]

The funds cover the publication of materials about Baker, prayer cards, communication between the church and the Vatican, travel costs for visits to and from Rome and the fees of a canon lawyer. 

The cost of canonization can vary greatly depending on the length of the process and the specific evidence needed to prove that a candidate is qualified for sainthood.

The church first appealed to Rome to have Baker canonized in 1987. The case was approved in 2011, but Our Lady of Victory still has to prove that Baker performed miracles. [4]

5. Tourism in Vatican City has tripled under Pope Francis 

Tourism under Pope Francis has nearly tripled since he replaced Pope Benedict in March of 2013. 

Over 12 million visitors have flocked to the Vatican for events featuring Pope Francis. And those figures don't even include the attendance for Pope Francis events that were held outside of the Vatican -- that tacks on another nearly 13 million visitors.

Pope Benedict received some 20.5 million visitors during his tenure from 2005-2013. [5]

Is this the kind of church Christ had imagined that it would become as if He did not already know?  Why did God allow the Catholic Church to deteriorate?  Is it because that popes and cardinals have been given the same Free Will as Adam and Eve and everyone else to sin against God?

It would be a tragedy if a natural disaster flattens the Vatican, but it would be better to start over than to continue down its snaky and damnable road. [6]  Perhaps upon the debris will walk a true saint, like Francesco d'Assisi in the early 13th century who heard Jesus say to him, "'[G]o rebuild my Church, which you see is falling into ruins.'"  [7]  Maybe then will Heaven on earth can become a reality and happiness can be within this blogger's reach without having to live a decadent life trying to find it.



[1] http://www.thecatholictelegraph.com/pope-francis-priests-should-be-shepherds-living-with-the-smell-of-the-sheep/13439
[2] http://money.cnn.com/2015/09/24/news/pope-francis-visit-vatican-catholic-church/
[3] https://cruxnow.com/vatican/2016/09/23/vatican-tightens-rules-miracles-money-sainthood-cases/
[4] This blogger posted an entry on September 25, 2016, entitled New Rules For Sainthood, thinking that this pope wanted the change because he wanted to make certain that unsaintly people do not become saints.  This could be pure naïveté on the part of this blogger.  After writing this entry, he now concludes that the purpose for this change is not to protect the saintliness of sainthood but to make the process even more expensive, i.e, more money for the Vatican.
To prove that Baker performed miracles, follow the examples of those who had JP2 and Teresa of Kolkata canonized.  Find some people and some doctors in obscure corners of the world and pay them lots of cash to say what needs to be said, and pay those who are vested with the responsibility to ascertain the validity of miraculous claims even more cash.
This is how this skeptical blogger views the processes that have led to some of the recent canonizations which can be as corrupt as some individuals that were canonized.
[5] This blogger does not understand why so many more people go to the Vatican under this pope than his predecessor.  Had God been replaced?  If no is the answer, then the large number of people who have gone to the Vatican under this papacy could not be because of God, since God has not changed, but because of a persona, since that is now different.  A show of love for God by visiting the the Vatican ought not to be dependent on the persona of a pope.
Those who serve God are supposed to be as invisible as they can be, to act as conduits for the Holy Spirit to shine through to the people, but the people do not seem to care about the Holy Spirit; instead, they prefer a human being emboldened by a common popularity, even if the commonness is feigned and the popularity belongs to a person who is a savvy meglaomaniac politician fluent in the language of environmental and social secularism.  This blogger doubts that many of these people who enjoy this pope would be just as enthusiastic in the presence of the Son of God, Who spoke God's Truth (not the language of relativism and hypocritical secular egalitarianism that they like to hear) and Who was so unpopular in His time that He was crucified.  This blogger doubts that the mass mentality back then was any different than the mass mentality today.  If Christ were alive in this world, he would not be nailed to a cross (not even by members of ISIL) but he would be crucified with words by the secular media and by Catholics who find Him too (ironically) "unforgiving."
[6] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+5%3A29-30&version=NIV
[7] http://www.capuchins.org/stfrancis.html

Vatican Conference On Sport And Faith - The Conclusion

It is Saturday, October 8, 2016, in Rome, Italy, and the Vatican Conference On Sport And Faith that began on October 5 to October 7, 2016, [1] had ended.  The purpose of the conference was described as follows [2]:

To unite people from every faith, nationality and culture through sport, in a common goal: To help the ones who need it most, especially the marginalized and the disadvantaged, and to encourage everyone to develop their life skills, character, values, and enjoyment of life itself, through sport.

The purpose seemed worthwhile, but since when is the Vatican the proper venue to host such a conference as if the Vatican were a secular conference center to advance a secular purpose, however noble? [3]  Were not the merchants at the temple trying to earn a living to support their families noble? Perhaps, but the temple was not the place to be noble, and neither is the Vatican built in the name of God.

On the contrary, both the temple in Jesus' time and the Vatican in the present are places for those who stand upon their grounds to be humble, not noble.  In Jesus' words [4]:

“It is written,” [H]e said to them, “‘My house will be called a house of prayer,’but you are making it ‘a den of robbers.’

Were the conference participants along with the pope and his entourage robbers?  Not in the sense that they were taking the Vatican Museum's priceless paintings for their own use without permission but in the sense that they were robbing the sanctity of the place that ought to be a place to supplicate before God with deep faith and reverence and to meditate what the Son of God had gone through as man for the salvation of souls.

In this blogger's opinion, the Vatican is not to be a backdrop to advance a social or political cause, a conference center or a place to host a gala reception for secularists and Catholics alike.

The conference was not in the least a religious event nor were the pope's remarks particularly ecclesiastical.  The pope did mention God in passing in his statement on October 5, 2016, [5] that opened the conference but did not quite make God the central part of his statement.  He ended his remarks by delegating the faith part for God to work on, as reported in the Summary of Bulletin  by the Holy See Press Office [6]:

I trust that these days of meeting and reflection will allow you to explore further the good that sport and faith can bring to our societies”, concluded the Holy Father, commending to God this task, its hopes and its expectations.

The pope's hope was that "sport and faith" could be combined to further the good in society by the end of the conference, and that God would help realize that hope, but God did not accept the pope's delegated responsibility.  God left women's pre-existing dissatisfaction with the sports world intact the entire time.  The conference did, however, provide "[Ms] Ackerman with an audience full of world sports leaders to listen to her message [about gender inequality] — from IOC president Thomas Bach to Arsenal soccer club CEO Ivan Gazidis to New York Giants co-owner John Mara." [7]  In regard to the number of women in leadership roles in the sports world, Ackerman said, "To me anything less than 30 is not good, and 50-50 is the ideal. So the hope is that over the next 15 years we can get closer to equality," as reported by Foxnews.com and other media outlets. [8], [9], [10]

Gender equality became at some point an issue at the conference.  What is next?  Transgender equality, sexual orientation equality, racial equality, religious equality, age equality?  When will the pope address all of these secular issues within the walls of the Vatican?  Will he simply ignore them?  Using a cliché, the blogger thinks that the pope opened "a can of worms" with this conference, and now he does not appear to know what to do with all the worms that have become snakes crawling all over him.

Maybe he will have all this figured out by the second annual sports and faith conference next year, if there is to be a repeat misuse of holy grounds.  Or, maybe God will consent to doing the work the pope delegated.


[1] http://www.cultura.va/content/cultura/en/dipartimenti/sport/risorse/gratuity.html
[2] http://www.sportforhumanity.com/2016-conference/
[3] Perhaps the Vatican had been used for secular purposes in the past but having such precedents does not make it right.
[4] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+21:12-13
[5] http://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/en/bollettino/pubblico/2016/10/05/161005e.html#
[6] Ibid.
[7] http://www.foxnews.com/sports/2016/10/07/female-sports-pioneers-carry-message-to-vatican-conference.html|
[8] Ibid.
[9] https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/religion/female-sports-pioneers-carry-message-to-vatican-conference/2016/10/07/7cebdd98-8ca2-11e6-8cdc-4fbb1973b506_story.html
[10] http://reviewtimes.com/national-sports/2016/10/07/female-sports-pioneers-carry-message-to-vatican-conference/

Pope On "Short," "Clear" And "Non-boring" Homilies

From the Hawaii Catholic Herald  dated May 23, 2014: [1]

[The pope] also warned [seminarians] not to give “boring homilies,” saying their reflections should be brief, powerful and address the problems and concerns people are really going through.

From The National Catholic Reporter  dated April 30, 2015: [2]

Pope Francis told 19 new priests earlier this week to make sure "that your homilies are not boring."

From the Catholic Herald  dated November 10, 2015: [3]

Pope Francis has pleaded with priests to give short, clear homilies, after ordaining a Rome pastor as an auxiliary bishop of Rome,

Ordaining Bishop Angelo De Donatis, 61, yesterday at the Basilica of St. John Lateran, Pope Francis reminded the new bishop of something he had told him earlier.

“Let your words be simple so that everyone can understand. Don’t give long homilies,” the pope said

Now, the pope's own homily, from EWTN News  dated October 6, 2016: [4]

The Holy Spirit is the “great gift” of God the Father who helps us avoid the stupidities of a legalistic faith while leading us forward in Christian life, Pope Francis has said.  

“May the Lord give us this grace: to open ourselves to the Holy Spirit, so that we will not become stupid, bewitched men and women who sadden the Holy Spirit,” the Pope remarked in his homily at morning Mass at Casa Santa Martha Oct. 6.

More on the same homily from Vatican Radio  dated October 6, 2016: [5]

The Spirit, Pope Francis said, “is the protagonist of this ‘going forward’ of the Church.” Without the Spirit, the Church would be shut up within itself, fearful.

The Pope pointed out three “attitudes” that we can have with regard to the Spirit. The first is that which Saint Paul rebuked in the Galatians: the belief that one can be justified through the Law, and not by Jesus, “who makes sense of the Law.” And so they were “too rigid.” They are the same kind of people who attack Jesus and who the Lord called hypocrites:

“And this attachment to the Law ignores the Holy Spirit. It does not grant that the redemption of Christ goes forward with the Holy Spirit. It ignores that: there is only the Law. It is true that there are the Commandments and we have to follow the Commandments; but always through the grace of this great gift that the Father has given us, His Son, and the gift of the Holy Spirit. And so the Law is understood. But don’t reduce the Spirit and the Son to the Law. This was the problem of these people: they ignored the Holy Spirit, and they did not know to go forward. Closed, closed in precepts: we have to do this, we have to do that. At times, it can happen that we fall into this temptation.”

The Doctors of the Law, the Pope said, “bewitch with ideas”:

“Because ideologies bewitch; and so Paul begins here: ‘O stupid Galatians, who has bewitched you?’ Those who preach with ideologies: It’s absolutely just! They bewitch: It’s all clear. But look, the revelation is not clear, eh? The revelation of God is discovered more and more each day, it is always on a journey. Is it clear? Yes! It is crystal clear! It is Him, but we have to discover it along the way. And those who believe they have the whole truth in their hands are not [just] ignorant. Paul says more: [you are] ‘stupid’, because you have allowed yourselves to be bewitched.”

The second attitude is grieving the Holy Spirit. This happens “when we do not allow Him to inspire us, to lead us forward in the Christian life,” when “we don’t let Him tell us, not with the theology of the Law, but with the liberty of the Spirit, what we should do.” That, the Pope said, is how “we become lukewarm,” we fall into “Christian mediocrity,” because the Holy Spirit “cannot do great works in us.”

The third attitude, on the other hand, “is to open ourselves to the Holy Spirit, and let the Spirit carry us forward. That’s what the Apostles did, [with] the courage of the day of Pentecost. They lost their fear and opened themselves to the Holy Spirit.” In order “to understand, to welcome the words of Jesus,” the Pope said, “it is necessary to open oneself to the power of the Holy Spirit.” When a man or a woman opens themself to the Holy Spirit, it is like a sail boat that allows itself to be moved by the wind and goes forward, forward, forward, and never stops.” But this happens when we pray that we might be open to the Holy Spirit:

“We can ask ourselves today, in a moment during the day, ‘Do I ignore the Holy Spirit? And do I know that if I go to Sunday Mass, if I do this, if I do that, is it enough?’ Second, ‘Is my life a kind of half a life, lukewarm, that saddens the Holy Spirit, and doesn’t allow that power in me to carry me forward, to be open?’ Or finally, ‘Is my life a continual prayer to open myself to the Holy Spirit, so that He can carry me forward with the joy of the Gospel and make me understand the teaching of Jesus, the true doctrine, that does not bewitch, that does not make us stupid, but the true [teaching]?’ And it helps us understand where our weaknesses are, those things that sadden Him; and it carries us forward, and also carrying forward the Name of Jesus to others and teaching the path of salvation. May the Lord give us this grace: to open ourselves to the Holy Spirit, so that we will not become stupid, bewitched men and women who grieve the Holy Spirit.” 

This blogger does not find the homily above to be short, or clear or riveting.  In fact, he remains unenlightened and stupid after reading it twice trying to decipher it, and keeps wondering who are the ideological witches, which of the witches' ideologies are bewitching and who have become not only bewitched but also stupid as well.  Without naming names, how would people know who to stay away from to avoid becoming bewitched and stupid?  Is it possible that the pope himself is an ideological witch, or is he merely a savvy ideological politician that "grieves the Holy Spirit" just as much an ideological witch does?


[1] http://www.hawaiicatholicherald.com/2014/05/23/pope-francis-to-seminarians-dont-be-princes-dont-give-long-boring-homilies/
[2] https://www.ncronline.org/blogs/ncr-today/pope-francis-says-no-boring-homilies
[3] http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/2015/11/10/makes-homilies-short-and-simple-says-pope/
[4] http://www.ewtnnews.com/catholic-news/Vatican.php?id=14387
[5] http://en.radiovaticana.va/news/2016/10/06/pope_at_mass_be_open_to_the_spirit,_who_carries_us_forward/1263299

Vatican Conference On Sport And Faith

"The Vatican is presenting a conference on sport and faith to world leaders from Wednesday [October 5, 2016,] to Friday [October 7, 2016,] in Rome." [1]  Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, President Pontifical Council for Culture said, "'We need to return to when we used sports as a moral instrument. We need to go back to the ethics of sports because it's both a moral and spiritual principle.'" [2]  Who is he kidding?  Does he know how much money is being generated in the sports market globally?  If not, maybe he should read the paragraph quoted below [3]:

Over the next five years to 2015, global sports revenues will grow to US$145.3 billion at an annual compound growth rate (CAGR) of 3.7 per cent due to an improved economy, a rebound in TV advertising, the on-going migration of sports to pay TV and the resurgence of financial services and automobile companies to sponsorship.

With this much money involved, is there room for morality and spirituality in sports?  Listen to the seven-time le Tour de France winner cyclist Lance Armstrong's doping confession here [4] and read about the New England Patriot's quarterback Tom Brady's deflated balls here [5].  The very long article concluded that "it was 'more probable than not' that Patriots employees were deliberately releasing air from footballs and that [Tom] Brady knew about it." [6]  Then there is infidelity.  Read about golfer Tiger Woods' extramarital sexual escapades here [7].

On the other side of the Atlantic Ocean from the United States, "[t]he Sunday Times ... [on April 3, 2016,] published claims that a British doctor, Mark Bonar, had prescribed performance enhancing substances to some 150 athletes, including Premier League footballers. Arsenal, Chelsea, Leicester City and Birmingham City were all named by the newspaper as having current or former players prescribed medicines by Bonar." [8], [9]

As an aside, Lance Armstrong's net worth in 2012 was estimated at US$125 million [10], Tom Brady's 2016 net worth was estimated at US$172 million [11] and Tiger Woods' 2016 net worth was estimated at US$825 million [12].  Was any one of these sports figures particularly moral or spiritual?  The hope is that not every sports figure is like these men, that many are moral and spiritual, even those whose paychecks are big.

What about faith?  Is faith hidden somewhere in the sports world in between the billions and the lies, and the lies and the doping?  Perhaps it is.  The Vatican conference on sport and faith starts today, October 5, 2016, in Rome.  This blogger is waiting to find out from this pope how faith can be an ingredient in a concoction of wealth, deceit and illicit drugs.


[1] http://www.romereports.com/2016/10/04/vatican-presents-world-conference-on-sport-and-faith
[2] Ibid.
[3] http://www.big4.com/pricewaterhousecoopers/pwc-global-sports-market-to-grow-to-us145-3-billion/
[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_0PSZ59Aws
[5] http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/25/sports/football/deflategate-new-england-patriots-nfl-science.html
[6] Ibid.
[7] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/sportsnews/article-3078432/Tiger-Woods-CHEATED-ex-girlfriend-Lindsey-Vonn-real-reason-split.html
[8] http://www.goal.com/en-us/news/85/england/2016/04/05/22041582/soccer-is-one-smoking-gun-away-from-a-real-doping-scandal
[9] http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/news/insight/article1684584.ece
[10] https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=lance%20armstrong%20net%20worth%202012
[11] http://moneynation.com/tom-brady-net-worth/
[12] http://moneynation.com/tiger-woods-net-worth-why-its-not-a-billion-yet/

Pope Equated Himself With The Holy Spirit

The Vatican Radio  reported that the pope celebrated Mass in the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Baku, Azerbaijan (located on the coast of the Caspian Sea across from Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan to the east, Iran to the south, Russia to the north and Georgia and Armenia to the west), and led the faithful in the Angelus prayer afterward. [1]  "In off-the-cuff remarks delivered after his prepared Angelus address, the Pope stressed that he is not 'wasting time' travelling long distances to visit such a small community of Catholics in Azerbaijan and explained why it is so important for him to travel to these nations 'on the peripheries.'" [2]

First of all, the blogger doubts that Azerbaijanis Catholics think of their nation with "an area of 33,436 square miles and has an estimated population of 9,165,000," [3] many times the size of Vatican City State measuring only 0.2 square miles with a population of 770, [4] as being "on the periphery" or for that matter, themselves as being "on the periphery" because whoever has faith in God is always at the center, never the periphery.

From a architectural standpoint, do the images below give the impression that Azerbaijan is a nation on the periphery?

http://img.sia.az/uploads/20131127_120921061931-gb-flame-towers-panorama-horizontal-gallery.jpg

Heydar Aliyev Centre, Baku
Design: Zaha Hadid Architects
photo : Hélène Binet 

The modern buildings shown above are in Baku.  "Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, is the largest city of the country.  It covers an area of 822.4 square miles and has an estimated population of 2,064,900." [5]  "There are about 570 local Roman Catholics in the country as of 2016." [6]  The relatively small number of Roman Catholics in Azerbaijan probably appreciated the pope's visit, but perhaps not so much his "off-the-cuff" remarks.

The first paragraph of the pope's "off-the-cuff" remarks (translated by Vatican Radio) is quoted below [7]:

Someone may think that the Pope wastes so much time: travelling so many kilometres to visit a small community of 700 people, in a country of 2 million.  Yet it is a community which is not uniform, because among you there are several languages spoken: Azeri, Italian, Spanish… many languages.  It is a community on the peripheries.  But the Pope, in this, imitates the Holy Spirit: he also descended from heaven to a small community in that closed periphery of the Cenacle.   And to that community, which was fearful, felt poor and perhaps persecuted or rejected, the Holy Spirit imparts fortitude, power, and bold eloquence to go forth and proclaim the name of Jesus!  And the doors of that community in Jerusalem, which were closed for fear or shame, were thrust wide open releasing the power of the Spirit.  The Pope wastes time as the Holy Spirit did in those days!

This skeptical blogger finds it hard to believe that the pope's remark was "off-the-cuff;" rather, he thinks that the venue was deliberately chosen so that the pope's carefully scripted "off-the-cuff" speech could be recited.  His mistake in recalling Azerbaijan's population as 2 million instead of the actual 9 million is understandable since in his mind at the time Azerbaijan was a nation on the periphery, even though it could be said that he was thinking about the relatively small group of Catholics, numbering roughly between 570 and 700 (see above), to be a community in the periphery within the larger Azerbaijanis population of 2 million in the city of Baku when he misspoke.  Regardless of what the pope was actually thinking, the off-the-cuff remark or prepared text was well-staged to provide the pope with the opportunity to equate himself with the Holy Spirit.

Admittedly, the translation of the pope's "off-the-cuff" remarks was an enjoyable read but on closer examination, the comparison the pope was trying to make ended before it began.  In the pope's imaginary upper room in Azerbaijan where the pope appeared, the Azerbaijanis in attendance already spoke different languages: they did not need to experience "tongues of fire" [8] to have that ability.

Furthermore, in the pope's imagination, the Azerbaijanis attendees were like the apostles in the Cenacle, possibly "fearful, felt poor and perhaps persecuted or rejected," and like the Holy Spirit that spent time imparting "fortitude, power and bold eloquence," this megalomaniac pope said with a tinge of sarcasm that he wasted time just as the Holy Spirit had wasted time in "those days" to "thrust wide open" the doors of "fear or shame," implying shamelessly that his presence had bestowed upon the Azerbaijanis Catholics the ability to release "the power of the Spirit."

The pope's imagination was indeed rich; this blogger can no longer claim that his own is crazy.  In comparison to the pope's, his ought to be re-diagnosed as normal.

For the pope's next appearance as a stand-in for the Holy Spirit, the blogger recommends him to go into an upper room in Aleppo, Syria, to give "fortitude, power and bold eloquence" to those those Syrian Catholics who are truly fearful, poor, persecuted and rejected. [9]

[1] http://en.radiovaticana.va/news/2016/10/02/pope_encourages_azerbaijan_catholics_at_sunday_angelus/1262270, accessed October 3, 2016.
[2] Ibid.

[3] http://www.mapsofworld.com/azerbaijan/facts.html, accessed October 3, 2016.

[4] http://geography.about.com/cs/countries/a/smallcountries.htm, accessed October 3, 2016.

[5] http://www.mapsofworld.com/azerbaijan/facts.html, accessed October 3, 2016.

[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Catholicism_in_Azerbaijan
[7] http://en.radiovaticana.va/news/2016/10/02/pope_encourages_azerbaijan_catholics_at_sunday_angelus/1262270

[8] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Acts+2
[9] http://www.churchmilitant.com/news/article/syrias-christians-under-siege-in-aleppo

Vatican's New Outreach Office

"On Oct. 7, [2016,] Bishop Farrell will lead a new Vatican office focusing on ordinary Catholics throughout the world. It is part of the Vatican’s effort to reach out to more people in the pews." [1]  "[He] has been promoted to a new position at the Vatican where he will be the highest-ranking American working directly with Pope Francis." [2]  "The bishop of the Diocese of Dallas is still taken aback by the news. How did he get the attention of the pope?  'I don't know. I would love to know why,' Farrell said during [his] last interview in his Dallas office."

"Bishop Farrell says he has always promoted lay people. When he arrived in 2007 to a diocese with increasing tension after years of turmoil, he replaced most of the clergy in the administration with ordinary citizens." [3]  Running a diocese with 1.3 million Catholics [4] is very different from running all the dioceses in the world with 1.27 billion Catholics [5] under approximately 5,133 bishops [6] but one needs to start somewhere.

That somewhere is probably not hiring and paying ordinary citizens a salary to perform administrative work for a diocese, but to have more members of the clergy spending time with people in the pews.  Sadly, in the United States, "the number of priests (as well as nuns) has declined steadily over the past 50 years [see chart below]." [7]



This trend is not uniform globally.  "The number of Catholics in the world and the number of deacons, priests and bishops all increased in 2010, while the number of women in religious orders continued to decline, according to Vatican statistics." [8]

Statistics is an informative tool.  Sometimes what is being revealed by statistics which tracks the past is no longer relevant in the present.  Finding a way to change the trajectory of statistical graphs is ineffective at best, and too little, too late at worst.  In the case of the Catholic church, it has been in decline for quite some time, plagued with financial mismanagement and sex scandals.  As an institution, it has lost its compass which ought to be pointed in one direction only, which is toward God.  Instead, the strong magnetic attraction of Sin in all of its splendor has the church's compass pointed toward Satan.  No statistical study, however unbiased and accurate, can change that.

In its weakened state, the Catholic church cannot hope to reverse the course of its destiny toward defeat by the relentless advancement of secularism and the pervasiveness of Sin and its variations, not even with a new outreach office, regardless of who is being appointed to it.


[1] http://www.wfaa.com/news/local/dallas-county/dallas-catholic-bishop-prepares-for-move-to-vatican/327894646
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
[5] https://www.ncronline.org/news/vatican/vatican-statistics-report-increase-baptized-catholics-worldwide
[6] http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/2014/05/05/vatican-statistics-church-growth-remains-steady-worldwide/
[7] http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/11/06/the-number-of-u-s-catholics-has-grown-so-why-are-there-fewer-parishes/
[8] http://www.catholicnews.com/services/englishnews/2012/vatican-says-number-of-catholics-priests-bishops-worldwide-increased.cfm

The Future Of Female Catholic Priestesses Could Be In The Making

The National Catholic Reporter  on May 12, 2016, reported that the pope "announced he will create a commission to study the possibility of allowing women to serve as deacons in the Catholic church, signaling an historic openness to the possibility of ending the global institution's practice of an all-male clergy." [1]  On September 30, 2016, the Crux  reported that "[l]eaders of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith spent three days in late September [2016] listening to women theologians, canon lawyers, Scripture scholars and specialists in other academic fields talk about roles women have played in the Catholic Church and roles they could play in the future." [2]

"Cardinal Gerhard Muller, prefect of the doctrinal congregation, opened the meeting, which involved about 50 people, mostly women, and officials and consultants to the congregation, the statement said." [3]

This blogger does not understand why women want to be like men, doing the things men had been designated to do, such as being apostles of Christ and engaging in the things men had been biologically predisposed to enjoy, such as certain types of sports, especially combat sports such as wrestling, judo, karate, boxing, and mixed martial arts.  Is it the money or the power that women seem to crave, that seems to be absent from the traditional female roles such as motherhood and as the family's teacher and mediator? [4] Is the role that affects the future of a child so insignificant and unimportant that women see it as inferior to the work that men do?  Is the Blessed Virgin Mary, the forever humble and loving Mother of God and humankind, so repulsive to women that She has to be rejected in order to elevate Eve who was the mother of Original Sin to become the woman to be idolized, the first woman who craved for power (over God) so badly that she convinced Adam to sin against God?

Women are not to blame as long as there are men who finds Eve more convincing than the Blessed Virgin Mary or God.  Eve was smart, sexy and seductive and men who fall for women like Eve as opposed to the opposite of Eve who is intelligent, beautiful and humble in the ways of God are the men who are inclined to commit adultery and to break the vow of celibacy.  Would it be out of the realm of possibility for this pope to have previously engaged in sexual intercourse with females as a priest and as a result become a biological father?  This blogger cannot be certain even though he would not be surprised one iota if it were true just as he was not surprised to read about lesbian nuns [5] and gay priests [6] in the Catholic church.

To have women play pronounced and pivotal roles in the Catholic church's hierarchy and to have women become priestesses is not the end of the world, even though it could be the end of a cohesive Catholic church.


[1] https://www.ncronline.org/news/vatican/francis-create-commission-study-female-deacons-catholic-church
[2] https://cruxnow.com/vatican/2016/09/30/vaticans-doctrine-watchdog-ponders-women-church/
[3] Ibid.
[4] Women who had already raised their children to adulthood or who could not have children could continue to be faithful spouses, caring daughters, sisters and aunts and loving caretakers for the many orphans and elderly in society.  Is any of these positions degrading to womanhood whereas doing a man's work upgrades it?
[5] https://www.thelocal.it/20160928/former-nuns-to-tie-the-knot-in-civil-union
[6] http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2013/07/29/catholic-priests-its-empirical-fact-that-many-clergy-are-gay