Deace: Pope Francis is woke, but is he awake?

It was the perfect summation of the Tower of Babel that has been Pope Francis’ decade-long papacy when he got on Twitter this week and accidentally flipped everybody the bird.

That’s the most charitable I can be with him. Either he’s a dark vessel for the spirit of the age, or he’s just the bumbling elderly cousin of Joe Biden. So where does naming each finger of your hand with the virtues he believes are the “ingredients of the future” rank?

Good grief. How do I begin to unwrap this bizzarro-world encyclical? First of all, this is Twitter, aka the rock fight of social media, not carpet time in kindergarten class. What am I supposed to do with “the thumb is closest to our heart and symbolizes prayer”? Should this be sung to the tune of “The Itsy Bitsy Spider”? Does Francis also do balloon-animal renditions of the Last Supper? Wait, don’t answer that.

Anyway, we are living in a time of mutilating children who may or may not have a bad case of died suddenly from a poisonous jab issued by a drag queen, so forgive me if I demand a little bit more red meat on my theology bone in order to tame the devilish beasts of the modern age trying to cancel me from every corner of society.

Wake up, Francis! Those are the four horsemen of the apocalypse over there, for heaven’s sake, not My Little Pony.

It gets so much better, though. And by that I mean please, Lord, make it stop. Because when he gets to finger No. 3, Francis writes, “The middle finger, which is higher than the others, reminds us of something essential: honesty. To be honest means not getting entangled in the snares of corruption.”

Yes, this is actually how Twitter woke up one day in the year 2023, with the pope talking about his middle finger getting high. Make sure to tell your children so they can tell their children about this hallowed age. I mean, move over, Psalms. If only Cheech and Chong could be reached for comment.

But back to that honesty thing for a second, because that is something the pope and this evangelical can agree on. I just think – and don’t take my word for it until you check my math with Jesus himself – that one of the fingers should at least stand for a really heavy millstone. After a fair trial of course.

Too harsh? Well, at least it’s not a total fricking joke. Which the Vatican itself realized about this viral nonsense so quickly that it appears to have deleted the entire thread of glorious finger theology from existence. Except it really did happen, and it’s by now an all-too-common occurrence for Francis that whenever he gets done talking, everyone is more confused about what in the hell the truth actually is than when he started.

We don’t have any time for that. The hour is late. So yes, here I am, an evangelical down on his knees begging for a better brand of papacy. The excommunications must continue until morale improves, so stick with the classics. Brood of vipers. Whitewashed tombs. Get behind me, Satan. Pearls before swine. The narrow gate.