The Pope, the clerk, the neurosurgeon, and the Congressmen

I’m not Catholic and I usually feel uncomfortable commenting on the Vatican. It somehow feels like spying on next door neighbors and then gratuitously denouncing(or praising) their family behavior.

But underhanded events at the Vatican have spun so far into the realm of the Borgias  that it’s a wonder if there isn't somebody tasting the Pope’s food before each meal.

First there was the visit, evidently arranged by some malevolent Vatican politician, to embarrass the Pope by throwing him together with Kim Davis, the Kentucky clerk who refused to issue marriage licenses to gay couples.

Now it’s even more sinister than that. Somebody in the Vatican is putting out a rumor — already refuted but still persistent — that the Pope has a brain tumor.

The reports have all the earmarks of a bile-fueled fantasy of some conspirator or conspirators, people who have lots of time on their hands and not much of a life. The stories involve a mysterious yellow-bannered helicopter, a doctored photograph purporting to show a private handshake between the Pope and a Japanese neurosurgeon, and even a “description” of the fantasy tumor. All refuted.

What it boils down to is, the hardest of hard line conservatives don’t like change. The present Pope is spearheading change, however mild, of what kind of morality the church chooses to emphasize.

Like conservative everywhere, the Vatican conspirators seem more anxious to intrude into other peoples’ bedrooms than they are to alleviate human misery. The Pope chooses to overlook or downplay same sex marriages? Out come the stilettos. The Pope talks about the poor, the malnourished, the miserable? Who cares?

You’re not alone if you notice a parallel between the Vatican’s conservatives and the Congressional conservatives — say those who keep holding and re-holding the same Benghazi hearings to smear Hillary Clinton while governmental services go down the toilet.

I don’t know what else to say about it — except that perhaps the Conservative wing of Congress ought to start dressing in long robes and red hats.

Cross-Posted at No More Mister Nice Blog