"To bless people in same-sex couples without giving the impression that the Church is not validating their sexual activity is a charade. No one is fooled . . Attempting immorally to exploit God's blessings makes a mockery of His divine goodness . . " Matt Abbott, RenewAmerica.com, "Pope Francis: Don't pray it away . . Bless Gay!" [?]

THE OTHER POPE, AN ANTI-COMMUNIST: "A Pope and a President; John Paul II, and the Extraordinary Untold Story of the 20th Century" by Paul Kengor, 2017 (regarding the fall of the Berlin wall and the end of the Cold War).

"Reagan and John Paul II almost didn't have the opportunity to forge this relationship: just six weeks apart in 1981, they took bullets from would-be assassins. But their similar near-death experiences brought them close together ' to Moscow's dismay."

"Reagan would share his sense that God had intervened as part of the Divine Plan . . At the National Prayer Breakfast less than a year after his shooting, he would say, 'I've always believed that we were put here for a reason, that there is somehow a divine plan for all of us.'"

"He wrote a 4 1/2 page letter to Brezhnev that came back from the State Department completely rewritten . . He mailed his original letter. The Cold War was never the same." If you want the details as to how Reagan and the Pope, with help from Lady Thatcher, doomed the Soviet Union, read the book.

AS FOR THE CURRENT POPE, This isn't the first time he's made radical, leftist, statements. John Paul II would be sadly aghast.

P.S. Patti Davis, the Reagan's daughter, was suspected of being an agnostic if not an atheist, but Kengor tells a very interesting story about her. She visited her father in the hospital and said, "He looked almost ethereal. There was a light in his eyes that made me think that he saw something ' visited with God, listened to the counsel of an angel ' something . . .

"I give endless prayers of thanks to whatever angels circled my father, because a Devastator bullet, which miraculously had not exploded, was found a quarter of an inch from his heart."

PPS: Yes, "we were put here for a reason" and I hope that you have found YOUR calling. Have a happy new year, not the worst of times.