In which the pond dallies with Fisher of men, hater Devine and a booing Bolter for a Sunday meditation ...

Now the pond is always up, on a meditative Sunday for a little reflection and insight ... especially when it comes from a man wearing a frock ...

After all of the Fisher of men's (some women too) lashings and mortifications and moanings and wailings about how the church and its minions suffered under the weight of current controversies - how they delight in their cilices - the pond couldn't help but notice this contribution to the discussion ...

Oh look and there's a Pellist too. He can join in the discussion at the very end, but for the moment please allow the pond to muse about the sexual revolution ...

So everyone was at sea about identities, expectations and boundaries ... so pedophilia, molestation and sexual assault?

The pond has heard this one before ... it's a favourite excuse, this unnatural and unwholesome co-joining of the 1960s and the Second Vatican Council, and not a mention of the bizarre sexual codes of the Catholic church, which saw unhealthy relationships in Cardinal Newman's day (how much better if they'd been able to express their love physically?) and which to this day sees the likes of Opus Dei devote time to practices which they'd deplore in devotees of SM ...

How much better if they could just enjoy it like anyone with a taste for leather and pain ...

It's a nonsense of course. The pond was being brutalised and tortured by unhappy nuns, though thankfully not molested, long before the notion of the sexual revolution, way back when in Tamworth, had become a gleam in the eye in hippies ...

This sort of dissembling and willingness to blame anything else, the refusal to shoulder responsibility, the refusal to acknowledge the institutional and personal in the crisis, means that the senior clergy in Australia seem to have learned very little from their experience ...

Even when he attempted to front up to some institutional insights, Fisher failed the test ...

Now it's all the fault of lawyers, judges, doctors and politicians?

Now the Royal Commission is an important process? Despite the church having to be dragged kicking and screaming and deploying all the resources of the Catholic Boys' Daily in resolute denial?

Speaking of barking mad Catholics, it is of course Miranda the Devine day at the Terror, though her words spread like cockroaches out across the continent thanks to the single brand the Murdoch tabloids have become ...

The Devine is notoriously celebrated for her impeccable timing ...

This day the reptiles have been making much of the heat, even featuring it on the front page ...

Yet it was only a few short columns ago that the Devine was patiently explaining how mere mention of climate science was a nonsense ...

A hot mess of politics and big money?

That's the sort of big tobacco line that big tobacco patented ... you know, hapless small tobacco suffering at the hands of a hot mess of politics and big money ...

As for the actual contents of the most recent Devine pieces, the reptiles seemed confused as to what might attract the most click bait - yes, they too have fallen for the forced video as a way to boost failing, flailing revenue ...

On the small screen, for a moment it seemed that Pauline was the main go, with Peta on the right, and on the left, the left not able to handle terror ...

But in other iterations, it seems that the left simply couldn't handle Terror, on the left and right, Peta was on the left, and Pauline was no longer just not the saviour, she was no longer an item ...

Of course the pond had to check it all out ...where would the pond be without its dose of Devine hate-filled bile?

Sadly, the Pauline piece was clearly click bait, and short at that ...

As for the other, the Devine set herself - in inimitable Devine way - the difficult task of defending the Donald's woefully inept list of allegedly under-covered terrorist attacks, which in its own way was an assault on the news covering ability of the Devine and all the rest of the Terrorist journalists ... in the Donald's world, it wasn't just the Fairfaxians that failed, it was all the media ...

The Devine hesitated for a moment ... how to defend the Donald?

But then the Devine hit on a good whiz. It seems just the ABC and the Fairfaxians immediately attempt to talk down the notion of Islamic fundamentalism when it comes to violent attacks ...

In the old days, of course, there would have been attempts to establish the facts, rather than roll out jokes about semi-automatic assault cars or seize on events to confirm prejudices and bigotry ... in the way that Hanson and gorgeous George manage ...

In these post-Trumpian, thumb-twitching days, shamelessness and the ability to tell the big and small lie is an important part of the mix, and the Devine can take a lot of credit for her ability to conflate things into a bilious stew of bigotry and prejudice ...

If it wasn't so ugly, the Devine's inability to chew gum and pat stomach at same time might be charming, in the way that drooling infants are reckoned to be captivating ...

The Orlando affair might well have been both ... which is to say a homophobic hate crime, as well as a crime inspired by fundamentalist Islamic thinking ... which incidentally bears a remarkable resemblance to right wing fundamentalist thinking in Australia ...

Cue the Bolter finally facing up to it ...

By the way, Ghan train, the pond notices that you're now advertising on a hate site, and will adjust its expenditure accordingly ...

We keed, we keed, and as for booing Pickering off the stage, the Bolter suddenly realised where his logic was leading him, and he had to beat a hasty retreat ...

Bad speech will be driven out by good speech? The way it's been driven out these past ten thousand years? Tell that to Adolf, Larry and Ross ...

Truly, the Bolter is a monumental fuckwit, and delusional to boot, but that's enough of a Sunday tour, through an institution which refuses to understand in every way possible its deep distortions of human sexuality, and its Devine adherent, who looks the other way when hate speech and homophobia turn up on her doorstep, and the Bolter, who thinks a few stern words will change the likes of Ross Cameron and Pickering and remove from the right wing Liberal world jokes about pillow biters and Hadrian's Wall ...

Well the pond promised that the Pellists would contribute to the Sunday meditation, and around this time the pond would usually end with some sort of illustration ...

But how about a Fairfax story from way back when instead?

So it went, so it still goes ...