Tag: Blithe Spirit

Vatican backstabbing: shades of Renaissance Italy . . .

Pope Francis’s man for this season of cleaning up the financial stables is the target. He’s Cardinal George Pell of Australia, who has stirred up the hornets by a variety of actions:

For one thing, Pell clearly hasn’t been intimidated by lower-intensity pushback. On Monday, his Secretariat for the Economy released a set of procedures for closing the books on 2014, which among other things require every department head in the Vatican, for the first time, to sign a legally binding declaration that their reports are complete and correct.

The procedures also stipulate that external assets of a Vatican department have to be certified by the banks or other financial institutions that hold those assets, a classic expression of “trust but verify.”

For Pell, a day of reckoning approaches:

Pope Francis also returned on Friday from a week-long annual Lenten retreat, and sometime soon he’s expected to issue a new legal framework for Pell’s department and other financial oversight bodies he’s created.

The effect will be either to rein Pell in, as his critics hope, or to turn him loose.

While the catfight may continue for a while longer, a make-or-break moment is approaching. Sometime by mid-year, the Secretariat for the Economy will release its first-ever consolidated financial statement covering the Vatican’s fiscal year in 2014.

Which is when the stuff hits the fan. Stay tuned.

Pray for your enemies, advises Jesus in today’s Sermon on Mount selection . . .

Be ye perfect, he also advises. This bothers Fr. Adjuster, who prefers “compassionate,” being nervous about good-better-best thinking, likes to be mushy.

But we are advised to be big boys and girls who can have a goal and work for it, without going all to pieces, when (not if) we fail to achieve it.

Specifically we are to pray for our enemies and persecutors, like Jesus on the cross, “Forgive them, Father,” etc., which is asking a lot.

So pray for the beheaders and crucifiers, Islamic fanatics in Middle East and N. Africa. Pray for their conversion, why not? As we prayed for the conversion of Russia in the ’30s and ’40s. Impossible, you say. Do it anyway, I say.

This says nothing about protecting the innocent by militarily thwarting the fanatics with bullets and bombs, of course, in a just war.

Pretty basic stuff, all this, I agree.

Mainstreamers endorse Scott Walker — in their peculiar manner

Wall St. Journal’s James Taranto, reporting on Scott Walker’s very good early polls-showing, is properly cautious about his prospects, but adds this:

On the other hand, some conservatives and Republicans interpret the liberal media’s recent hazing of Walker as a sign that he is the candidate they fear. Lending support to this hypothesis is John Cassidy of the New Yorker, who weighed in yesterday with an essay titled “The Dangerous Candidacy of Scott Walker.”

Yes, yes, yes. Those bozos smell a threat and jump to it. Not incompetent but meaner than junk-yard dogs. That’s what a palace guard is for. (H/T Instapundit for useful term for media lemmings)

(As for Taranto and his Best of the Web, a longtime Internet denizen, the link is a tease of sorts if you are not a WSJ subscriber, but you can sign up for a good chunk of his columns by way of email.)

Bribery at the Buildings Dept. — Again

Inspectors not letting crisis go to waste:

The New York Times reports:

More than a dozen New York City buildings inspectors and clerks have been charged with exploiting their positions as gateways to the city’s booming real estate industry to obtain hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes, law enforcement officials announced on Tuesday.

This seems to be a recurring problem, and is a wonderful (or horrible, depending on how you look at it) example of the rule that it is the regulation that creates the opportunity for the corruption.

One reason to be for smaller government is that it would be more honest, because there would be fewer opportunities for shakedowns.

Look. You got something the other guys want and are willing to pay for it. So they pay. What’s the matter with that?

I mean, what’s a regulation for, anyway?