A Thought From 2007

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Looking for something else serendipity struck and I saw a comment made by Anagnostis in 2007:

"It is this more than anything which accounts for the grotesque, topsy-turvy, parallel-universe quality of TabletWorld (whose Rome correspondent recently sneered that the Pope was not, after all, "a trained liturgist"). What looks like comical, mind-bending hypocrisy and intellectual perversity is merely an indication of people struggling desperately to make reality fit their theories and foundational myths: it's cognitive dissonance on public display. They need our prayers, but they will also benefit enormously in the long run from unrelenting ridicule."

This is remarkably prescient: it is as true today in the reign of Pope Francis as it was in Pope Benedict's.  The precision with which Anagnostis diagnoses the problem and prescribes a solution leaves me wishing I could be as pithy.

The inhabitants of TabletWorld are fighting on two fronts: their once fierce grip on the Bishops' Conference of England and Wales is getting steadily weaker; and Pope Francis is not delivering what they want: he is not nor ever will be the caricature version of Pope John XXIII they are portraying him as.

So let's not be too despondent: they will not prevail.  And remember to pray for them whether or not you ridicule them.
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