January 19, 2024

It may seem that elements of this page are making a negative statement about the Roman Catholic Church, and it is a fond critique, but then again, it is full of a sense of humour that points not to the obvious, but to the complex. Every human institution is a mess of contradictions and conflicting methods and complex motives and no one knows this better than Italian Catholics and, I would argue, the Romans most intimately. Their relationship to the Church is certainly familial, with all of the twists and turns and pushes and pulls inherent in any family. It’s quite a refreshing change from the American Catholic Church, which has been tainted from the beginning with the humourless Puritan ethic and lately by the praise-and-worship styles and goofy round-eyed idiocies of Prosperity Gospel evangelicals. It’s so crass, it clanks. God spare us all.

Except the Putins and Jong-uns.