BAM Goes Boston!

 And Kerplop Goes the Pope! 

It's a Bad Day!

I was going to blog a nasty one about Pope Francis not backing up a bunch of nuns who really needed his support, but events superseded that, so this one is a rather confused missive about hatred.

We were talking about war and hatred last time—and this is just a continuation of that. Well, the Pope was not too nice to a bunch of nuns who just wanted to go out and help the disenfranchised people in the world—the poor, the minorities, and also the "sinners." Evidently, the Pope's homophobia came out instead, and he supported what Pope Benedict's Council said against the nuns.

Not so nice, not so nice. Not helpful in reducing hatred, which continues to fester in this evil world.

2 (or 3?) bombs went off in Boston a while ago, disrupting the Boston Marathon. Runners and watchers just wanted to enjoy a festive Boston holiday, and, instead, they were treated to explosions, injuries, deaths, and fear.

We don't know who did it yet. 

I remember how it was on 9/11. I remember saying that "we are at war, but I don't know who we are at war with." That same nasty feeling overtakes me. Is it Al Queda? Some splinter group in the United States, like the Minutemen? The KKK? Is it the Koreans, who are spewing fury at us every day now? Or some gun nuts who are angry at the U.S. Senate for a bill on gun restrictions? 

I don't know. Nobody knows yet.

What I do know is this? Pope Francis started out with some very lovely actions that were designed to bring people closer to G-d. He reached out to everybody outside the Catholic Church, and that felt very good. But for, some reason, when it came to his own (a bus full of nuns), he rejected them. What example can we get from that? Be nice to outsiders but behind closed doors, be rejecting and cruel.

In my view, that only leads to more hatred. If we cannot love people within our own circles, how can we love those on the outside? How can we embrace our diversity?

With prayerful respect, I would hope that Pope Francis might reconsider. There is too much hatred in the world to even want to spread any more hatred and rejection.

Sigh. . . .