In which the pond endures the bromancer and prattling Polonius for its Sunday meditation ...

The pond usually tries to keep its rampant atheism under control. 

The pond isn't keen on angry atheists, still enjoys the Galgolitic and Nelson masses (could Leoš Janáček and Haydn write music, or what?) and a dash of mystical Blake, and generally thinks there are more interesting things to do than argue with people besotted by their imaginary friends, whether three in one entities of a weird kind, or fairies at the bottom of Conan Doyle's garden …

But every so often, the pond is unendurably provoked, and trust the bromancer to be the provoker, and at such inordinate length too …

Actually Easter offers no solace at all, because the world is pretty fucked, there's a lot of pain and suffering out there, and the only upside is that it makes the misery the pond experiences reading the reptiles feel like small beer … 

But let us get on with the bromancer before we return to a couple of choice reptiles who graced the pond yesterday …

Easter is love, Christianity is solidarity? Go tell that to the dog botherer …

Easter is time for miserliness and a canny hand in the pocket, or a redback in the handbag …

Oh aye Davie boy, hoot-toot, we must have a steely resolve nae to waste money on candles and such fripperies, and remember to try the stairs here … but do go on ...

Selfless courage? Is that like the dog botherer telling teachers they should head back to school because, you know, who cares if a few of them die?

So that's selfless courage. Sending others out to face the virus, while you shelter in place … but do go on bromancer, preaching the usual Xian guff few Xians actually preach, especially if they go by the name of Jerry Falwell Jr ...

Now it's not the fault of the bromancer that he brought up the Nazis, even if it gives the pond a chance to break Godwin's Law, by citing Dame Slap …even the header gave the clue …

And the follow-up line was even uglier …

It makes the bromancer's waffle sound even sillier … because we've been there before …

Ah yes, burdensome lives and useless eaters, and probably old too, and only good to become Soylent Green ...

But let's give the bromancer some more rope before returning to Dame Slap...

Christian care? Oh yes, it's back to Dame Slap …

Oh yes, we really have been there before …and not just blather about throwing the fat man on the railway track to save lives … we're back with useless eaters and burdensome lives ...

Never mind, the bromancer is still rabbiting on about Xian caring … just don't get the pond started on the cosy relationship between the Catholic church and the fascists in Spain, Italy and Germany during those balmy days leading up to the second world war ...

Indeed, happy easter and a merry Xmas to you, in perpetual adoration…

But at least the pond didn't have to argue with the bromancer … the reptiles did all the hard yards … and so we arrive at the final gobbet about imaginary friends ...

The pond's hope is for the bromancer to take a long holiday and relax …it must be hard scribbling these kinds of fatuities while the dog botherer is snatching money from the poor, and Dame Slap is explaining how it's a kindness and a mercy to put down the aged ...

And so to another pond burden. 

Only a blind person would have failed to note all the carry on and hoopla about the Pellists this week, including but not limited to …

Out of the endless guff, the pond has selected only prattling Polonius, who, with his usual infinite stupidity, blamed it all on social media …

Now before we start, the pond should say right from the get go that it's inordinately pleased that Pell was sent down and did time. He emerged a little more humble and less arrogant - if appearances are anything to go by - and that alone was a good thing.

Pell managed to escape, by hook and by crook, any responsibility for the Catholic church's outrageous behaviour over decades … and yet he was guilty as hell.

Here the pond must drag in the Catholic priest in the family, who had a particular contempt for Pell, and for the gay clique that he surrounded himself with in Melbourne. 

Now it's true the pond's family connection was a liberal, at least as the church understood the term, and so an outsider, but he is an extraordinarily engaging and companionable person, who has done much for his parishes …and he didn't object to the gay clique because they were gay, being gay himself. 

He objected to the Melbourne response, and its sundry and various cruelties and outrageous denials and mistreatment of victims, and to the way that the Pellists soft-pedalled and gave pedophiles easy breaks every step of the way … no better illustrated than that shameful photo when Pell accompanied the criminal Ridsdale to court to help him keep up his morale…

Later Pell would pretend it had all been a terrible mistake, but everyone, including the victims, knew what it really signalled …

More here, including this …

...Cardinal Pell, Australia's most senior Catholic, accepted no responsibility for Ridsdale's offending, telling the inquiry he had no knowledge of his crimes.
Ballarat bishop Ronald Mulkearns was among a number of clergy who knew Ridsdale had a boy living with him, but failed to intervene.
On Tuesday, emotional abuse survivors put their arms around Mr Levey's shoulders as he addressed the media.
Mr Levey said his mother had called Bishop Mulkearns multiple times requesting he be removed from Ridsdale's care, but she was repeatedly ignored.
"I can't believe that those meetings never discussed his paedophilia," he said. "There is no way Cardinal Pell couldn't have known what was going on."
Mr Levey said Ridsdale hadn't been shifted into another parish as a promotion as suggested by Cardinal Pell, but was removed from Mortlake to stop him sexually abusing children.
"He had to have known, he was at those meetings," Mr Levey said. "The church definitely knew I was at the presbytery. It was common knowledge the whole time I was at Mortlake that other clergy knew I was there."
He fought back tears as he said: "This has been the hardest part of it all so far ".

So really the pond doesn't give a fig about Pell or what his apologists have to say about him, or their bleating about injustice. Talk to the hand, or the blank wall Pell's church offered to its victims …

Column after column, Polonius has rabbited on about pedophiles in the ABC back in the 1970s, but when it comes to pedophiles in the church, and the church's response to the victims, Polonius has been as wise as the three wise critters the pond once saw at the Tōshō-gū shrine in Nikkō, Japan …

Get him on to the suffering of Pell, as opposed to the suffering of the victims who formed the basis of the court case, and you can't shut him up ...

Actually, the pond prefers to refer to the precedent of a genuine Pope, with astonishing papal insights …

Well this has gone on much to long, even for a Sunday meditation, and so it's on to the final gobbet of Polonius's prattle, with the pond pleased that a little wild justice at last came the Pellist way ...

The Catholic church and its apologists will keep on blathering on like the bromancer, or talking of collective guilt, as if that wasn't a thing, when in reality, collective guilt has been routinely assigned to lots of groups or nations, fairly and unfairly …

The pond will not ponder on it further … and instead will revert to another Pope to wrap things up …