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Choosing a Pope is a Job, but Someone Has to Do It

Before I say anything else, I think I ought to explain how I got to this subject.  

 In a large context--probably not the largest--I once was a clergyman, but no longer, and no longer religious.  Farther down the train of events, the Pope has just resigned.  I have been curious about the Pope ever since I attended his lectures in Tubingen, Germany, in the 1960s.  And then, still on Huffington Post, I saw an article in which Christiane Amanpour interviewed an "openly-gay" former Dominican friar.  And farther down the page, I spied a list of things forbidden by the Bible.  

 Ham is forbidden, of course, and tattoos.  I had not remembered that a man who is "wounded in the stones, or hath his privy member cut off" shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord.  
(Why should I remember that?)  

 But this is brutal:  If two men are fighting--apparently with their pants open, or off--"and the wife of one draweth near for to deliver her husband out of the hand of him that smiteth him, and putteth forth her hand, and taketh him by the secrets, then thou shalt cut off her hand."  I guess that for an opponent to be taken suddenly by the secrets, in the midst of a fist fight, would be distracting:  advantage, husband; long-term disadvantage, wife!

 It is adultery for a man to divorce his wife, and marry someone else.  Probably--perhaps, especially--if the first wife hath only one hand.  

 Working on the Sabbath demands the death penalty.  Women should not speak in Church.  (I have personally heard several sopranos who should have been silenced, but the Good Word is not clear on women singing in church.  

 "And all that have not fins and scales in the seas, and in the rivers of all that move in the waters, and of any living things which is in the waters, they shall be an abomination unto you."  That may be why I am not religious any longer:  I like crustaceans!  (No, that is not the reason, but it consoles me.)

 And, of course, damsels who are not virgins, shall be stoned with stones.  Being religious is a dangerous pastime.  

 As you see, it is easy to become distracted by the demands of a good life while trying to keep up with the news about the Pope, and all the rules about how priests ought to be celibate and quit buggering each other, and . . . oh, it gets worse!  A lot worse.

 But even though I am not religious any longer, for reasons that seem curiously abstract and rational, given the goings-on among bishops and cardinals and seminarians and friars, I certainly wish the Boys in Red--that splendid radiance of holy men in Rome,  good luck in identifying a Vicar of Christ, someone unwounded in the stones, of course, who does not eat crab or lobster.  


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