Hilary’s webmaster here. She’s experiencing some technical difficulties getting to the site from her location. It’s my professional opinion as a webmaster that this is the Internet’s fault. She asked me to let you know that regular pope-bashing will resume shortly.

He’s a gift to the conspiracy nuts. But yeah… um… just what did that thing mean at the UN, anyway? ~

Chapter 1: committees “[Lord Vetinari] was a great believer in letting a thousand voices be heard, because this meant that all he actually needed to do was listen only to the ones that had anything useful to say, ‘useful’ in this case being defined in the classic civil-service way as ‘inclining to my point of view.’ In his experience, it was a number generally smaller than ten. The people who wanted a thousand, etc.

It’s the predictions game… A friend of mine on FB just sent me his personal list that he made up with some friends on March 13, 2013, as a kind of drinking game that night. (We weren’t doing this. We were mostly just drinking. Someone we know who joined us at Roberto’s after we’d got through a couple of bottles already, and were getting tweets and messages from friends in Buenos Aires, said, “You guys look like someone has just killed all your puppies.

I remember the first time I saw an Anglican ministrix dressed up in a priest-collar, black clerical shirt, black straight skirt and black jacket. She came into the cafe-bookstore I took my tea in every day in Halifax. I had trouble not bursting out laughing. It was the kind of place where I just had to walk in and my guy, Peter-who-never-smiles, just started making the tea. They had their own special blend of Earl Grey which was to die for, and had a caffeine kick like a young cart horse.

I heard it put very neatly the other day: “I sigh for the days of Alexander VI. He was a bad guy, and did bad things. Now we’ve got a pope who wants everyone else to do bad things, so he can call it good.” ~ _Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!

There goes another one… “Speaking with the Press Democrat of Santa Rosa, Bishop Robert Vasa called Amoris Laetitia an intriguing, engaging, and delightfully challenging expression of hope for married love.” Vasa, though obscure in terms of his position in the US hierarchy, is well known as one of the shortlist of “good conservative” American bishops. And for liking and frequently celebrating the old Mass. He has gone so far as to have founded a community of sisters who only use the old rite.

Sandro Magister offers us a way back in… Instructions For Not Losing the Way in the Labyrinth of “Amoris Lætitia” “Intentionally written in a vague form, the post-synodal exhortation allows two opposite ways out. A Dominican theologian indicates the right one here.” ~ In other words… “There are two ways out of the Joy of Sodomy labyrinth. One leads back to the Matrix, and the other one leads to the Vatican Bath House.

…because, trust me, no one in your parish is going to help you. Here’s your shovel. Now get to work. The other day, I did a post that quite a few people seem to have read… and shared… and commented on… in fact, it’s been the biggest hit since I started this blog. This puzzles me slightly, because in it I basically said the same thing I’ve been saying from the start (and more or less the same thing I’ve been saying as a Catholic blogger since I started in 2004… only with fewer recipes.

You have my permission to take a day off and sit down with the DVDs and watch the whoooooooole thing. To get you in the mood, here’s all the explosions from all the movies, because, let’s face it, that’s what we love most. (Die-hard anti-prequel fans should skip to 4:17). And a bonus round… Did you freak out? I freaked out. ~