My Dad would be a better Pope than Francis, at least he would know Matthew 21:12-13
12 And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves,
13 And said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves.
Last week I wrote that I wanted to fight the Pope over his stance on Ukraine. What set me off specifically is when he said that the war between Russia and Ukraine could not be reduced to "a distinction between Good Guys and Bad Guys."
Uh, yes it can. One country is clearly the aggressor and one country is clearly defending itself. It's not as complicated as the Russian Media portrays it to be. This war is 100% on Putin.
But let's give the Pope the benefit of the doubt. Let's say he meant that the Ukrainian people and the Russian people were neither inherently good or bad, just simply people. If you analyse that statement, that's only marginally better, at least coming from a pope.
As with everything else in this world, I said my peace, no one listened, and then I moved on. Days later, I saw this at the Daily Mail UK:
So in the same week that Pope Francis found time NOT to condemn the Richest World Leader on the Planet (Putin), he also found time to meet with the Richest Private Citizen on the Planet (Musk.) Francis should not be inviting moneychangers into the Vatican.
What happened to the head of the church washing the feet of lepers? You know there's still lepers around, right? Over 100,000 people a year are diagnosed with leprosy. (Now that we live in Modern Times, leprosy is easily treated with antibiotics.)
High on Pope Francis' current to-do list ? A reform of Synodal Processes. Possibly the Pope was talking to Elon Musk about corporate structures? Well, that can't be the case either, in 2019 he warned his flock about Unfettered Capitalism and Nationalism.
My Dad is a hard-working, blue-collar Catholic (he's retired now.)
What gives me the audacity to even suggest he'd be a better candidate than Francis to run the largest Christian faction in the world?
Let's see, if my Dad was Pope, he would try to run the Church based on scriptures, he would attempt to interpret God's will, and he'd have the humility to know when to step to the foot of God.
Now me, I would suck at being the Pope. First thing I'd do is denounce every single billionaire on this godforsaken planet. Then, some in my flock would rightfully criticize me, "hey Pope Fred, between gold and land investments, the Catholic Church is one of the wealthiest institutions on Earth. Don't you see the hypocrisy in that?"
"You're right," I would reply.
To rectify that, the second thing I'd do is allow priests to get married. It costs money to have a wife. It costs money to have children. The Catholic Church is currently using priests as slave labor. The biggest scandal in the Catholic Church, and arguably the entire world, since the end of World War II, is the Sexual Abuse of Minors by Priests.
Starting tomorrow, all priests guilty of abusing minors are fired and turned into the local authorities. If you are in the church hierarchy and you re-assigned a priest who molested children, you're fired. I would totally gut the leadership of the church and start over with new, married priests and bishops. Part of the reason the Church never fixed the problem of Bad Priests is because they didn't have new priests to replace the old, corrupt ones. Married Priests allow you to exponentially increase the hiring pool.
Now I understand this would be quite a shock to the Catholic system, but if Pope Francis really wanted to reform his church, he would purge all remaining remnants of a problem that never seems to end. This is from LAST WEEK in a diocese 2 hours from my home: Over 50 Priests Accused of Sexual Abuse in Columbus, Ohio.
Francis would argue that my plan would monetarily bankrupt the church.
Yeah, instead of protecting the institution of the Catholic Church, the Pope should have been talking about filing Chapter 11 based on moral failings. He should be doing a complete scrape and rebuild of his team of priests that administer sacred religious rites. Emissaries of God should be Francis' first priority, not a line on the Vatican's Accounting Ledger.
I'm sure Elon Musk could give the Pope advice on firing bad employees.