You all were wondering how much he would be willing to sacrifice to preserve his reputation among the seculars… And were we perhaps wondering what would happen to someone who caused serious damage to his programme. Now we know, eh? He’ll sacrifice an entire episcopate to deflect attention from his own guilt. Those expecting a retraction, correction or apology for the Barros disaster, here’s your message from the pope.

Every Chilean bishop in Rome resigns

That’s commitment, at least…

Meanwhile, it’s a message: Cause trouble? This is what happens.

Someone needs to tell Bergoglio that the Evil Overlord List of things not to do when you want to be an Evil Overlord precludes sacrificing loyal underlings to make a point.

It’s a rookie mistake. Like monologuing about your Evil Plans for world domination when you think you’ve got the hero strapped to the table…

A friend who Knows Things sends me this comment: “Unless this is one great big orchestrated exercise in deflection, [not to be ruled out] and a publicity stunt…to simply remove them as Bishops, without doing a canonical investigation and trial of all those who are guilty, let’s everybody off the hook.”  And of course, now gives him the opportunity to make some, shall we say, strategic appointments in Latin America…

One thing for sure, it does send a message. One I’ve helpfully reiterated in plain language: Dear bishops; your wishywashy brownnosing is NOT GOING TO KEEP YOU SAFE.

Meanwhile anything bad that happens to bishops – particularly anything bad happening to them from the man who most embodies their own monstrous compromises – puts a smile on my face, so it does.

Smile you generation of vipers, while we take some selfies over your steaming cor…

~

[Administrative note: my innernet has died at home. Attempts to revive have failed. Been pretty sick for about a week, so posting has been light while I availed myself of the hilarious cartoon menu on Youtube. Expect posts to be light. I’ve more or less recovered, but the internet hasn’t. Apparently it’s pretty easy to run through 30gigabites of internet when you’re watching falling anvils and exploding penguins all day.  It won’t be on full blast again until the end of the month. I’ll try to keep up with posts written in the internet equivalent of the dark. Meanwhile… who left all these weird flat, rectangular paper things lying all over the place?… What _are _these things, anyway? Huh… there’s some good stuff in here… who knew?]

~