This Week's Sneak Peek

The celebrities I grew up with are dropping like, well, old people these days.

I happened to have listened to my Tom Lehrer album the day before he died, and I have to say that his nearly 60-year-old satire still stands up pretty well. "National Brotherhood Week" mocks taking a break from prejudice and bigotry for seven days out of 365:

Oh, the Protestants hate the Catholics,
And the Catholics hate the Protestants,
And the Hindus hate the Moslems,
And everybody hates the Jews. 

I memorized "Pollution" as a child:

See the halibuts and the sturgeons
Being wiped out by detergents.
Fish gotta swim and birds gotta fly,
But they don't last long if they try. 

Even proto-woke folk singers came in for some zingers:

The tune don't have to be clever,
And it don't matter if you put a coupla extra syllables into a line.
It sounds more ethnic if it ain't good English,
And it don't even gotta rhyme. 

The "Vatican Rag" is absolutely hilarious:

Do whatever steps you want if
You have cleared them with the pontiff
Everybody say his own
Kyrie eleison
Doin' the Vatican Rag

And of course, who could forget "New Math," his ode to his chosen academic field?

[T]he book that I got this problem [342 minus 173] out of wants you to do it in base eight. But don't panic! Base eight is just like base ten really— if you 're missing two fingers!
Shall we have a go at it? Hang on. ..
You can't take three from two,
Two is less than three,
So you look at the four in the eights place.

Now that's really four eights,

So you make it three eights,
Regroup, and you change an eight to eight ones
And you add 'em to the two,
And you get one-two base eight,
Which is ten base ten,
And you take away three, that's seven.
Ok?
Now instead of four in the eights place
You've got three,
'Cause you added one,

That is to say, eight, to the two,
But you can't take seven from three,
So you look at the sixty-fours —
"Sixty-four? How did sixty-four get into it?" I hear you cry.
Well, sixty-four is eight squared, don't you see?
Well, you ask a silly question, you get a silly answer!

From the three, you then use one
To make eight ones,
You add those ones to the three,

And you get one-three base eight,
Or, in other words,

In base ten you have eleven,
And you take away seven,

And seven from eleven is four!
Now go back to the sixty-fours,
You're left with two,
And you take away one from two,
And that leaves?
Now, let's not always see the same hands...
One, that's right. Whoever got one can stay after the show and clean the erasers. 

Q Toon: They're Thee/Thou

So now the search for Pope Francis’s successor begins.

It’s a highly secretive process. On May 7, some 120 cardinals from around the world will hole up in the Sistine Chapel, lock the doors, and nobody is allowed in. Not even the pizza delivery guy (although there happens to be a Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem. He will be allowed inside.)

Any cardinal divulging to the public what goes on within the conclave faces being stripped of his position, excommunicated, and exiled to the Land of Nod.

The cardinals vote by handwritten ballots, and are actually supposed to disguise their handwriting. One imagines that they write upside down, or with their non-dominant hand, or with their eyes closed.

And if that weren’t secretive enough, the ballots are burned in a special chimney. No recounts allowed.

At the end of the process, a senior cardinal deacon will step out onto the balcony of the Basilica of St. Peter and announce "Habemus Papam!" Opening the sealed envelope from the accounting firm of Price Waterhouse Coopers, he will then tell everyone that the new Pope is "La La Land." 

And nobody will be able to contradict him.

Because, you know, of that excommunication to the Land of Nod thing.

Q Toon: Prattville Prattle

Or, The Pastors' Prorogue.

In the interest of drawing about anything that has nothing to do with the impending Even More Corrupt Trump Administration, or the Republican campaign of persecution against transgender Americans, I present to you my annual Christmas Holiday Cartoon.

Prattville, Alabama, population just under 38,000, celebrated its annual Christmas Parade down East Fourth, Wetumpka, Northington, and Main Streets last Friday, with "lights, marching bands, dancers, candy, beads and trinkets" per the town's web page, but not without a bit of litigious drama.

The town's LGBTQ+ group, Prattville Pride, paid their $30 entry fee to have a float in the parade, only to have their application rejected by Mayor Bill Gillespie, Jr. Prattville Pride took the city to court to be allowed to march in the parade. With mere hours before the parade was to start, they won their case.

In his order, U.S. District Judge R. Austin Huffaker of the Middle District of Alabama wrote: “While there are areas of unprotected speech, such as incitement of violence, the City makes no argument and provides no evidence that Prattville Pride has engaged in any speech or behavior that would remotely fall into an unprotected speech category. It is undisputed that Prattville Pride has complied with the City’s regulations.”

“The City removed Prattville Pride from the parade based on its belief that certain members of the public who oppose Prattville Pride, and what it stands for, would react in a disruptive way. But discrimination based on a message’s content “cannot be tolerated under the First Amendment,” the order continued.

Toleration, as it turned out, was in somewhat short supply.

Two participants pulled out of the parade after Huffaker’s order: St. Joseph’s Catholic Church, which initially backed out after Prattville Pride was included only to reverse course after the city’s ban, and Drive-In Park, the headquarters of “mobile movie evangelists” Drive-In Ministries.

“Unfortunately we are back to our original stance of having to forgo the parade since the pride float with their drag queen is back in it,” said Father Den Irwin, pastor at St. Joseph’s. “I am sincerely sorry for any inconvenience. We were trying to support the City after they boldly removed the float. However Prattville pride challenged the ruling in court and won.”

Drive-In Park said in a social media post it was “disappointed” that it had to pull out of the event.

“Our convictions at Drive-In have guided us to decide that we should not participate this year due to the inclusion of the Prattville Pride float,” the post read.

Congregants of St. Joseph and Drive-In Park who had put in so much work putting their floats together were no doubt crestfallen, although I'm pretty sure at least one of them has a parking lot they could parade around and around in.

As for the town's official parade, I have not been able to find any reports of any further disruption thereto. Neither fire nor brimstone has rained down upon beautiful downtown Prattville, according to the latest from the Weather Channel.

Just beads and trinkets.

Q Toon: But Only One at a Time

 

An interviewer from La Stampa asked Pope Francis about objections raised by conservative cardinals, bishops, and scholars in Africa and the U.S. to his approval of clergy blessing same-sex couples. I've included part of his reply verbatim (very slightly edited at the ellipsis).

Lest one mistake the Pope for Revrunt Marryin' Elvis at Our Lady of the Las Vegas Strip, he explained his reasoning in the interview:

"The Gospel is to sanctify everyone," he said. "Of course, there must be goodwill. And it is necessary to give precise instructions on the Christian life (I emphasize that it is not the union that is blessed, but the persons). But we are all sinners: why should we make a list of sinners who can enter the Church and a list of sinners who cannot be in the Church? This is not the Gospel."

His explanation did not sit well with the bouncers of the Roman Catholic Church. A group of 90 of these conservatives published a hysterically-worded letter this month, bemoaning that with this Pope's stance, "The threat does not become smaller but more serious, since the error comes from the Roman See, and is destined to scandalize all the faithful, and above all the little ones, the simple faithful who have no way of orienting and defending themselves in this confusion."

There is a long tradition of Popes summarily making sudden, unilateral changes to church guidelines. Not frequently, of course — consider how long it took them to realize that an omniscient God ought to be able to understand languages other than centuries-dead Latin. But sudden, significant changes in praxis date all the way back to St. Peter, the OG Pope, abruptly deciding that more people would be attracted to his religion if it ignored all those rules about not eating shellfish and pork.

Official changes to Catholic doctrine is not what blessings are all about, according to Father Chris Ponnet, chaplain to the LGBT ministry of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.

"The church continues to maintain that the sacrament of marriage is between a man and a woman for the rest of their life," he says.
Ponnet, who is the archdiocese's chaplain to its gay and lesbian ministry, says he always declines to attend the civil weddings of same-sex couples he knows because he doesn't want there to be any confusion. He says the church is clear that it does not condone or recognize such marriages and that his presence could lead people to think "it's all OK."
What the pope is allowing, he adds, is similar to how priests bless all sorts of things, such as homes, a new school year and pets.
"It's simply saying that we who believe in blessings," Ponnet says, "should be instruments of blessings to others."
And he says it's important to be clear and precise about exactly what priests are blessing and what they are not blessing. "We're not blessing the relationship," he says. "We're blessing the individuals in front of us. And I appreciate the pain that that causes, and I don't know how to get around that." 

It may take more centuries than Fr. Ponnet nor you nor I are likely to witness, but I have faith that someday, even the Roman Catholic Church will figure out how to get around that. 

Q Toon: Holy Matrimony, More or Bless

There must be an appropriate liturgy in the Roman Catholic missal for blessing a same-sex couple; perhaps all it takes is a few Search And Replace edits to the rite for blessing a house or a meal or a football team.

As encouraging as it is to see Pope Francis willing to make this modest accommodation for same-sex couples in the Catholic Church, I'll wait to see what his successor has to say about it before I get my hopes up that his church has entered the 21st Century.

Or that it is willing to hearken back to the medieval and earlier rites of affrèrement or adelphopoiesis, a plighting of troth between unrelated male adults to live together sharing "un pain, un vin, et une bourse" (one bread, one wine, and one purse). No mention of un lit, but different-sex wedding rites seldom mention that, either. 

The priest in today's cartoon might check out the congregational records of the Monastery de San Salvador de Vilanova de Lourenzá for the 1061 church wedding of Pedro Díaz and Muño Vandilaz. I wouldn't be surprised if their union had been sealed with a Holy Kiss.

You couldn't ask for a more traditional wedding.

Q Toon: Couples Counseling

So the Roman Catholic church reiterated its opposition to marriage equality last week, and it was news.

The Roman Catholic Church cannot bless same-sex marriages, no matter how stable or positive the couples' relationships are, the Vatican said on Monday. The message, approved by Pope Francis, came in response to questions about whether the church should reflect the increasing social and legal acceptance of same-sex unions. ...

"The presence in such relationships of positive elements, which are in themselves to be valued and appreciated, cannot justify these relationships and render them legitimate objects of an ecclesial blessing," the statement said.

LGBTQ Catholics, such as DignityUSA, have occasionally gotten their hopes up that Pope Francis will bring a breath of fresh air to the stale atmosphere in the Vatican. His "Who am I to judge?" response early in his papacy to a question on the topic seemed to indicate that he wouldn't be as rigid as his immediate predecessor. Last year, he avered that same-sex and non-traditional couples deserve legal recognition in the form of civil union laws.

But he also wrote, in his 2016 treatise "Amoris Laetitia," "[T]here are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be in any way similar or even remotely analogous to God's plan for marriage and family."

So the Catholic Church's message to LGBTQ believers is this: You are loved by God and you deserve to be in a loving, happy, healthy, mutual, and legally protected relationship.

But not in our house.

Q Toon: #Metousiosis

Transsubstantiation: according to the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church, the change of substance or essence by which the bread and wine offered in the sacrifice of the sacrament of the Eucharist during the Mass, become, in reality, the body and blood of Jesus Christ. In Greek, metousiosis.

For centuries, theologians have debated Jesus Christ's sermon in John 6 and at the Last Supper that bread and wine somehow become his own body and blood. Is it another one of those metaphors you find all over the Bible, or are we supposed to take it literally? In Catholic dogma, the bread and wine are no longer bread or wine; Lutherans believe that the bread and wine are simultaneously bread and body, and wine and blood. Baptists believe that grape juice miraculously becomes what Jesus meant to say.

Some people believe we're supposed to take every word of the Bible literally.

The New Testament calls Christ the “bridegroom” and the church his “bride.” Catholic priests are supposed to consider themselves "married" to the church, forswearing all others. That's not in the Bible, really; it's one of those reforms brought in because priests were making the church a family business handed down from Father to son.

The Catholic Church solved that problem, but was left with a dogma that seems to have attracted more than a few men with unsavory ideas about how to consummate their marriage to the church.

Literally.

Q Toon: Unequal Rites

Last weekend, Roman Catholic Bishop Robert Morlino of the Madison, Wisconsin diocese sent an email to parish priests counseling against conducting funeral services for LGBT persons.

The confidential email, sent Saturday by Vicar General James Bartylla with Morlino’s backing, said rites “may be denied for manifest sinners” if providing the services would cause unavoidable “public scandal of the faithful.”
In Catholic doctrine, the word “scandal” can refer to something that is believed will lead others into sin or cause a confusion or weakening of others’ faith. Other parts of Bartylla’s message, published Sunday in a progressive Minnesota religious blog called Pray Tell, said “general considerations” priests should keep in mind if asked to perform Catholic funeral rites by the deceased’s family or same-sex partner include whether “the deceased or the ‘partner’ was a ‘promoter of the gay lifestyle.’ ”

In the manner of clerical communication, the language is less than direct, with "should" when the intended meaning is "must." Words like "gravely" and "notorious" leave little doubt as to what the local ordinary has to say about funeral rites. From Morlino's email:

You may encounter the situation in which a person in a homosexual civil union (thereby in a public union gravely contrary to the natural law) or in an otherwise notorious homosexual relationship gravely contrary to the natural law dies, and the family wants Catholic funeral rites for the deceased. My short answer to pastors and parochial vicars in these cases is to think through the issue thoroughly and prudently and likely call the local ordinary early in the process to discuss the situation. The main issue centers around scandal and confusion (leading others into the occasion of sin or confusing or weakening people regarding the teachings of the Catholic Church in regards to sacred doctrine and the natural law), and thereby the pastoral task is to minimize the risk of scandal and confusion to others amidst the solicitude for the deceased and family.

Bishop Morlino, then, counsels his pastors to join the priest and the levite in minimizing the risk of scandal and just continue on along the road. Let those notorious Samaritans handle the situation.

✒

A topic I had abandoned for this week's cartoon was the Million Moms' objection to an adolescent character on a Disney Channel program coming out as gay. All the ideas kept gravitating toward punch lines involving Kevin Spacey that I just wasn't comfortable signing my name to.

Back in my early twenties, I used to be involved in local theater, and I recall a (probably) underage cast member who pinged my gaydar. Even at a cast party at which much gin was consumed, I knew enough not to press —ahem— the issue with him. The theater world being what it was in those days before AIDS had a name (the debauchery at cast parties for an earlier production of Billy Budd was legendary), I was less concerned with the ramifications should my estimation of his sexuality prove wrong than should my estimation of his age prove correct.

I was no saint, and I certainly had a lot left to learn about life, but I at least enough common sense to know that no good comes from plucking unripe fruit.

So it's immensely disappointing that Mr. Spacey has come out as gay now only because his inexcusable and crass attempt to seduce a 14-year-old boy three decades ago has become public. Had Anthony Rapp not become an established and respected actor in his own right, Mr. Spacey would no doubt still be able to keep all his secrets under wraps in his closet.

Meanwhile, as the Harvey Weinstein scandal spreads to cover producers, directors, actors, journalists, academics, and at least three presidents of the United States — all men, gay and straight, are bracing themselves for the possibility that some forgotten unrequited attraction was someone else's #metoo moment. I can't think of any in my own past, but there's always a chance I may have told an inappropriate joke in mixed company that scarred you for life. Or perhaps you were offended by my plucking unripe fruit analogy a minute ago.

Please accept my apology.

Q Toon: Kim's Private Audience

While I was busy at my drawing board with last week's National Coming Out Day cartoon, a story leaked out that was a gay editorial cartoonist's dream topic. So, with apologies to editors of weeklies who would rather have seen this week's cartoon last week and vice versa:

Liberals who have felt that Pope Francis was one of their own were dismayed when rumors began to emerge that Rowan County, Kentucky, clerk Kim Davis had taken time away from obstructing the duties of her office for a "private audience" with Pope Francis during his visit to the U.S. Could it be that this Pope, with all his talk of climate change, economic justice, and "Who am I to judge?" is but a cafeteria liberal?

First reports made it seem that Kim and Francis had met as the leaders of Roman Catholicism and American Apostolicism for intense discussions of strategic policy. We now know, of course, that Kim Davis's private meeting with Pope Francis was only private insofar as it was conducted indoors without a live broadcast feed. She met with the Pope along with a couple dozen other people who each had enough time to exchange "Hello, I'm so glad to meet you" greetings, arranged by some Vatican functionary in charge of deciding who the Pope gets to shake hands with.

We also know that Pope Francis did meet privately with a gay couple, half of whom was a student of his back home in Argentina -- a meeting which someone hastened to publicize after Davis started advertising her meeting of him. (And presumably, that someone was someone other than the functionary who invited Davis to that subsequent meet-and-greet.)

In the end, Kim Davis would probably have been better off wrangling an invitation to sit down with Robert Mugabe.

Q Toon: Be Thou Prepared

Last week, officials of the Boy Scouts of America announced that they were officially dropping their blanket opposition to LGBT adults serving as scout leaders. BSA National President Robert Gates (the former Defense Secretary) explained that "due to the social, political and legal changes taking place in our country and in our movement, I did not believe the adult leadership policy could be sustained."

LGBT activists were disappointed that  the new policy will not apply to troops sponsored by religious organizations for whom antigay discrimination is a precious tenet of faith. Given that 70% of Boy Scout troops are chartered by faith-based organizations, the new policy could be of little help to gay scouts nearing adulthood in troops sponsored by evangelical, Mormon, or Catholic congregations.

Some evangelical, Mormon and Catholic sponsors, however, are upset by the new policy as well.

Officials of the Mormon church were apparently on vacation when the policy change was made, and saw that as a problem in an of itself. The church issued a statement complaining, "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is deeply troubled by today’s vote by the Boy Scouts of America National Executive Board. In spite of a request to delay the vote, it was scheduled at a time in July when members of the Church’s governing councils are out of their offices and do not meet. When the leadership of the Church resumes its regular schedule of meetings in August, the century-long association with Scouting will need to be examined."

The Vatican hasn't issued any statement on the matter, and the National Catholic Committee on Scouting has been guarded in its reaction. Some local officials, on the other hand, aren't waiting for Holy Writ. Catholic Bishop David Kagan of Western North Dakota announced that, "Effective immediately, the Catholic Church of the Diocese of Bismarck and each and every one of its parishes, schools and other institutions is formally disaffiliated with and from the Boy Scouts of America."

A number of evangelical leaders reacted negatively, including Dallas megachurch pastor Robert Jeffress, who told the Associated Press, "Look, my advice to parents who are asking me about this is if you are concerned about the safety of your boys, you should run, not walk, away from the Boy Scouts as quickly as possible." Southern Baptist Convention President Ronnie Floyd agreed, telling the Baptist Press, "Sadly and regrettably, I believe churches who stand on the biblical ethic of sexuality will have to cease their sponsorship and involvement in the Boy Scouts of America."

✒

In this week's cartoon, I tried to come up with a name for the fictitious congregation whose council of elders is planning their next move. There are a lot of Catholic churches with "Our Lady" in the name, and "Latter Day" is exclusive to Mormons, but finding a word evoking evangelicals was a little more challenging. "Evangelism" is a core value of all Christian denominations (hence the "E" in the officially LGBT-friendly ELCA), so that word wouldn't work.

I settled on "Fellowship," which appears in the name of many a Baptist, non-denominational, and other fundamentalist church. Of course, other Christian denominations believe in fellowship, too; although, where I come from, the word is intimately associated with coffee and kringle.

Q Toon: Sistine Canticles

Q Syndicate✒Oct 23, 2014

Last week, I drew a deliberately detail-free cartoon: a rainbow, a Lady Justice, and some calligraphy. Anything further would have distracted from the point of the cartoon. As a result, it didn't take a particularly long time to draw once I started inking it.

This week's cartoon is another story altogether, and at one point I emerged from my basement lair in order to let ink dry before going back and adding background details. Chris asked me if I were finished drawing yet. "No," I told him. "I'm drawing the Sistine Chapel."

"Are you going to finish in time to go on vacation this year?"

Q Toon: To Have and to Hold...

I realize that promising to "obey" is out of fashion; most couples replace "obey" with "cherish" these days. But I wanted Hector and Kevin to use the most traditional version of the marriage vows just to point out what isn't there.

This week's cartoon addresses the allegation that the reason marriage is for different-sex couples only is because they can have children and same-sex couples can't.

Aaron Lindstrom, defending Michigan's opposite-sex supremacy laws: “The state has an interest in marriage because marriage is linked to children,” and to how they’re cared for and whether they’re raised by both a mother and a father.

Judge Paul Kelly's dissent in the Colorado case: "It is biologically undeniable that opposite-gender marriage has a procreative potential that same-gender marriage lacks. [Furthermore,] the state could rationally and sincerely believe that children are best raised by two parents of opposite gender."

Virginia's Catholic Bishops response to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court decision: "Indeed, by its very nature this institution is ordered toward the regeneration and survival of the human race. For that reason Virginia's constitution rightly recognizes the unique contributions marriage -- the union of one man and one woman -- makes to children and to the common good."

Ignored by Lindstrom, Kelly and the bishops are not only the fact that marriage has long been open to couples who are infertile, aged, or having no intention to procreate; but also the fact that same-sex couples can also be parents. Some come to their partners with children due to previous relationships, and there is indeed nothing about same-sex orientation that ipso facto negates the parenting drive.

Besides, it's too late now for traditionalists to go back and change the marriage vows to read: "...to have and to hold babies."

Q Toon: Regnum Anatium

One could argue that highlighting Duck Dynast Phil Robertson's antigay comments in GQ Magazine only serves the purposes of Sarah Palin, talk radio, and all the Foxsters out there complaining that A&E is trampling his right of free speech. Not that they ever came to the defense of free speech rights for, say, Martin Bashir, Alec Baldwin, or Keith Olberman.

His opinions regarding African-Americans are the more ridiculous and worthy of censure. But I draw for the LGBT media through Q Syndicate, so I'm afraid I must leave to others his claim that Blacks were happier before civil rights and antipoverty programs ("No one was singing the blues"). I would, however, like to assuage Mr. Robertson's fears that anatomy poses an insurmountable difficulty to gays' and lesbians' ability to have and to enjoy sex. We really are not bothered by it anywhere near as much as he is.

Meanwhile, this Greek chorus of conservative American Catholics makes its second appearance in my cartoons this week. (Here's their first appearance, in September.)

Q Toon: Copulabis Impares

Can two celibate men share the Vatican without driving each other crazy?

Q Toon: Clandestine Gay Network

Pope Francis received the long-dreaded report last week about the Vatican's lobby of homosexual priests, bishops, cardinals, and butlers -- a clandestine network so entrenched that they even have their own dating site.

Say, wasn't Clandestine one of those medieval popes?

Speaking of Gay Bishops

If the election of The Rev. Dr. R. Guy Erwin as bishop of the Southern California Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America hasn't made the front page of your RSS feed, perhaps it's because we've been there before.

Here's a cartoon about what it was like ten years ago when the Episcopalians crossed that threshold:

Conservative Episcopalians had conniption fits (they're called Episconniptions) over Robinson's election, and several U.S. churches went so far as to break away and join the Nigerian Anglican Church.

The bishop received death threats, and was pointedly not invited to the 2008 Lambeth Conference of the Anglican Communion. (This cartoon, however, was drawn three years earlier.)

He was invited to deliver an invocation at President Obama's first inaugural. If you didn't notice, it may be because he was omitted from the live broadcast on HBO and NPR and from the Presidential Inauguration Committee's official live blog.

Bishop V. Gene Robinson retired in January.

As for the Lutheran Church, before Bishop Erwin's election, The Rev. Eva Brunne was elected as Bishop of the Diocese of Stockholm, Sweden, in 2009. And of course, the Catholic Church had gay bishops long before Protestants got all worked up about theirs -- but I wasn't cartooning way back then.

Toon: Francis I

In honor of the first Argentinian Pope, my first cartoon of Francis I:

I was monitoring the announcement of the new Pope on the Daily Telegraph's web site yesterday afternoon; the ladies' Bible study was meeting across the hall and they wanted to be told who the new Pope was as soon as it was known.

As the world waited, a band had marched out and played a couple very brief snippets of tunes that many in the waiting crowd knew and tried to sing along with. When the band abruptly stopped, the crowd kept singing, but the band didn't rejoin them. This was several minutes before the lights came on in the chamber behind the balcony window, so it wasn't because the announcement was imminent.

The initial announcement was made in Latin -- including Latinizing the man's name -- so for a while, all I knew was that the cardinals had elected Georgium Marium Somebody and he had taken the name Franciscum. If there was any mention of Argentinibus or Bonibus Airibus, I completely missed it. I only took one semester of Latin in college, which was enough to figure out qui vicit quem, but the class never got around to learning New World geography.

Once news sites started reporting the name of The New Guy, I went in and broke the news to the Bible study group. They all were surprised that it wasn't Timothy Dolan (who used to be the archbishop in our area, so the local media had been echoing New York media speculation of Dolan's chances).

For my own part, however, that I had suspected that this Pope would turn out to be either Latin American or Italian.

I had no idea he would turn out to be both.

Q Toon: Vale, Benny

The Associated Press may have made last week's cartoon moot, but as long as Benedict XIV doesn't change his mind about becoming Ex-Benedict I, I think this week's cartoon will stand.

As the cartoon states, Italian media have linked the Pope's abdication to his receiving a 300-page report on what is called the Vatileaks scandal, a report which will be turned over to whomever gets to be the next heir of St. Peter.  A report in La Repubblica alleges that Vatican clergy would meet clandestinely for partying and sexual encounters with men, some of them prostitutes, at such venues as a villa outside Rome, a sauna in a Rome suburb, a beauty parlor in city center, and a former university residence that was in use by a provincial Italian archbishop. As relayed to us Anglophones by the Guardian of Great Britain:

The paper said the pope had taken the decision on 17 December that he was going to resign – the day he received a dossier compiled by three cardinals delegated to look into the so-called "Vatileaks" affair. ...According to La Repubblica, the dossier comprising "two volumes of almost 300 pages – bound in red" had been consigned to a safe in the papal apartments and would be delivered to the pope's successor upon his election. The newspaper said the cardinals described a number of factions, including one whose members were "united by sexual orientation".
In an apparent quotation from the report, La Repubblica said some Vatican officials had been subject to "external influence" from laymen with whom they had links of a "worldly nature". The paper said this was a clear reference to blackmail.
It quoted a source "very close to those who wrote [the cardinal's report]" as saying: "Everything revolves around the non-observance of the sixth and seventh commandments."

Panorama magazine followed up with NSFW video footage from their own undercover investigation:

The first [priest], a Frenchman about 35 years old, met the Panorama reporter Friday, July 2, at a gay party in a local neighborhood of Testaccio. In the evening, which included paid escort two men who danced naked with the priest and with other guests (then having sex with some of them), was also Charles, the second priest, who was aged between 45 and 50 years. The night ended at the home of Paul, where the reporter's gay accomplice asked the priest to wear the cassock and then had sex with him, filmed by hidden camera.
The next night, Paul and Charles made ​​an appointment with the Panorama reporter and his accomplice in the Gay Village in Rome, showing that they are comfortable in that environment. On this occasion, Charles was absent, having claimed several times to have had to do to avoid meeting those whom he had recognized as other priests or catechists. ... The next day, Sunday, July 4, Paul celebrated Mass on a table in his own home, in the presence of the Panorama reporter and his accomplice.

In this cartoon, Benedict takes the place of this guy at right in Michelangelo's "The Last Judgment" on the Sistine Chapel ceiling:

It is said that this guy represents Despair, or a person who is surprised to discover that he didn't live as good a life as he perhaps thought he did. Of all the damned souls on the right side of the painting, he is perhaps the most sympathetically rendered, although I've never read anything to suggest that Michelangelo had a specific person in mind (unlike several other faces in the painting). You'll find him below and to the right of St. Bartholemew, whose flayed skin is said to represent Michelangelo himself.

My dilemma artistically was that Mr. Despair is surrounded by a whole lot of open space, so I ended up moving several elements of Michelangelo's masterpiece into the cartoon frame from other places in the painting. The boatload of damned souls, for example, is from well below the character whose left buttock appears on the right side of this detail image.

What a Bunch of Dicks! (The Sequel)

We've all seen the photo of the wall of men testifying before Darrell Issa's committee yesterday on why the Fedrul Gummint shouldn't interfere with the Catholic Church's control over women's reproductive health.

From columnist Connie Schultz, here's a screen capture of the discussion of that event on MSNBC's Morning Joe today:

Q Cartoon: Those Darn Pedophile Priests

And if this turns out to have been a problem in the 1940's and '50's, we can always blame comic books and commies.