Why is everyone so snotty towards old women? Why is "This is not your mother's or grandmother's …. a perennial advertising catch line? Why do so many Catholics act like the elderly don't have souls to save? I know a parish needs young families but heaping contempt on the elderly who survived the 70s and 80 and still come to Mass doesn't build up families. It just sets a bad example for your children who will one day turn a jaundiced eye towards you.
When I saw the photo of the Australian policeman walking up and down the aisle of a church during Mass and demanding to see people's vaccination status I immediately was reminded of a movie that I saw as a child. I think it was filmed the end of the '30s or the 1940s about English pilots whose plane is shot down in what I think was the Netherlands. The pilots are saved by a gallant local family and arrangements are made to get them safely out.
On the day of their escape the pilots, dressed as locals go to Mass with the family and will discreetly blend in with the Sunday crowds filling the square and roads to the rendezvous point afterwards. An SS officer and soldiers come in. The armed soldiers stand at the back of the church but the officer walks up and down the aisle intimidating people. The camera shows the priest, and a few of the appalled parishioners. The pilots sitting with the family are nervous and although they don't appear to be Catholic, the close ups of their faces show that they are disgusted at this strutting SS officer and the desecration.
People keep saying that Francis is dying of colon or pancreatic cancer but I don't buy it. My grandmother died of colon cancer. I don't think she weighed as much as 100 pounds at the end and Francis appears to weigh quite bit more than that. I've never seen a fat colon cancer end-stage patient.
As for pancreatic cancer, my father-in-law, Big Daddy had it and when I saw him after his Whipple surgery I found that I had to struggle to maintain my composure. He started out as a hugely fat man and was still large at the time of his death but he was visibly sick and shockingly half the size he had been a few months earlier. He looked like the cancer was gobbling the fat right off him.
Both my grandmother and my father-in-law were no longer interested in the world towards the end. Big Daddy had enormous charisma and normally commanded attention wherever he went. On the last day I saw him alive, that spark was gone. He just didn't have the will or strength to dominate anymore. When you are seriously ill life gets very basic. Francis is still active and obviously cares very much about worldly affairs.
He may have a serious, chronic condition. At his age, that's highly probable but I don't think he's actively dying. Even if he were to die tonight it would not matter. Unless there is a miracle the next man to be elected pope will be no better than him. Look at the crop of cardinals we have. The good ones are weak and timid and the bad ones are riding high.
I don't want to come off as Negative Nelly but there is deep to the bone infection in the Vatican and is not just about Francis. He is the visible crown of the cyst, but there is so much more beneath the surface.