This old strip of Jesus and Mo has new life; it came to Patreon members and I’ll put it up ’cause it’s relevant. It’s called “Twitter”. The caption was “A Friday Flashback today, from 2012.” That was when Joseph Ratzinger was Pope Benedict XVI.
The new Pope is all over the national news, not just the Chicago news, and I’m surprised given the waning power of Catholicism, it’s still the top news every day on NBC and occupies a good deal of the NYT’s front pages. At any rate, it looks as if Pope Leo is going to focus on the “peace and love” message, and will also show a lot more consideration for the poor. But he won’t relent, I think, on key parts of Catholic dogma, though I don’t think he’ll say that homosexual acts that are unconfessed will doom one to hell.
Yesterday, I went out to brunch with a group of my former colleagues. We all taught at the same catholic high school for most of our careers. Of course, the talk came around to the new pope and it was all very serious and respectful. Except for me, an atheist. I made a lot of jokes, which everyone laughed at, but deep down, I know that they are all still believers who attend church regularly. Except for one person, the retired music teacher. When we were still teaching, I once lent him my copy of Hitchens’ “God is Not Great”. He read is over that summer, along with other ‘new atheist’ books and in September, he told me: “I’m an atheist now’. So yesterday, we had a good laugh over how our colleagues were seemingly spell-bound with love over Pope Leo, or “Bob” as I call him. (The last pope was “Frankie”.) But we did not laugh behind their backs. We are out and proud! And they accept us and laugh at themselves along with us. There is hope yet for them. That’s why I absolutely love each and every Jesus ‘n’ Mo cartoon.
Just an affirmation that we enjoy these posts!
Jesus and Moe cartoons are quite provocative, entertaining and for some viewers, enlightening, but I can’t shake the disturbing thought that millions in Islamic strongholds throughout the Middle East and elsewhere, would find them blasphemous. It’s a shame as they are pithy assessments of religious hypocrasy portrayed as a pure art form.
I thought of PCCe when I saw a screenshot of a tweet that read: “Are you adequately prepared for a pope who has a LOT of opinions about what goes on a hot dog?”