Yeah, and I’d have got away with it too if I’d been the pope… Oh wait… Do you know that movie cliché wherein after chasing the bad guys for half the movie, the team finally has him cornered only to have one of their own take their pointed gun and slowly turn it on our hero, dashing hopes that this stupid movie would be mercifully short? Even in the best-made movies that employ this story mechanism, it should have been obvious to anyone paying attention that the mole’s loyalties lay elsewhere, that perhaps he is even the story’s true antagonist.

**“We cannot get out. We cannot get out. They have taken the bridge and Second Hall. We are still holding…but hope … The end comes soon. We hear drums, drums in the deep. They are coming.” -The Book of Mazarbul** “In facing ills or the problems of the Church,” the Pope went on, “**it is useless to look for solutions in conservatism and fundamentalism, in the restoration of practices and outdated forms that even culturally aren’t able to be meaningful.

Rumours of my demise… We’ve got some red hot stuff coming from Pat Archbold and Ann B. Stay tuned. ~

**“Totalitarianism didn’t come quickly, it took 5 years from 1938 until 1943, to realize full dictatorship in Austria. Had it happened overnight, my countrymen would have fought to the last breath. Instead, we had creeping gradualism. Now, our only weapons were broom handles. The whole idea sounds almost unbelievable that the state, little by little eroded our freedom.”** Kitty Werthman is president of the South Dakota Eagle Forum.

True story: one day when I was at Boston College, I left a classroom with my head spinning. A classmate joined me in the washroom and said something along the lines of “You know, I just cannot believe all the heresy the profs teach and how many of the students just repeat it.” I was floored and delighted because finally someone else had said it. Someone had seen it, and someone was talking to me about it.

Aye, the haggis is in the fire now for sure. Steve copies What’s Up With Francis-Church? because he’s a big copy-cat stealer. What reasonable person could believe that Pope Francis feels any disdain for the way Scalfari represents his opinions in La Repubblica? Where is the evidence that having been burned before, he has made an effort not to be misrepresented again? Five interviews over two years. As someone wrote elsewhere today, “Once is a mistake; several times is a preference.

“Wait! Where are you going? It’s only the half-time show!|   Alas, I can find no preliminary report on how many Catholics have fled from their parish churches, in the wake of the Synod, and taken refuge in churches administered by the FSSP, the ICK or the SSPX. Of course, it’s early days. The month isn’t over yet. But I do wonder if anyone is counting. ~

It’s the little things that count, don’t you think? It says, “…fast or slow, all divorcees who request it will be admitted” to Holy Communion. True to his pattern, Francis is already talking to his buddies and giving the game plan away in plain terms. Which no doubt will immediately be vigorously denied by everyone but him. Scalfari has been the first to hear it from the pope’s own lips, and the choice of outlet was perfect since Scalfari has already created the plausible deniability so beloved of the North American Catholic bloggers.

  Cardinal Wuerl is back home in DC and is talking to the press:** ** Q: The final document achieved consensus but did not provide many specifics about how bishops and priests will be able to proceed in “accompanying” people. Do you expect the pope to answer those questions, to put some flesh on those bones in some concrete way? A: I think the first fruit of this synod will be the idea that we have to be reaching out.