

As anticipated, the censors were a-smokin' and the thuribles were a-bubblin' with lots of people a-talkin' about the papal. First, though, let's give a shout-out for onetime debate-moderating hero Candy Crowley, for contributing her little somethin'-somethin' in an embarrassing bit of CNN coverage of the outcome of the Steubenville rape trial. First, there was correspondent Poppy Harlow, a recent hire from WDUM in Sparkletown, telling us all what a tough day it was in court for the two young rapists in question, and how "emotional" it was, even for her, hardbitten courthouse veteran that she is. Candy then brought out a legal analust named Paul Callan, who pointed out that the two young rapists would now have to register as sex offenders "for the rest of their lives." OK, if you don't want to have to register as a sex offender, don't offend sexually. Also, too, the sex-offender registration business is the result of previous law-enforcement hysterias against which I do not recall CNN — or any of Nancy Grace's other employers, past and present — standing up.

But when it comes to sympathy for this peculiar form of devil, nobody does it better than the Clan of The Red Beanie, which got some first-class run yesterday due to last week's change in its upper management. We begin at Disco Dave's Disco Dance Party, where Francis Cardinal George put on his obfuscatin' zucchetto and really went all the way to town, the Dancin' Master having put together a group of high-profile papists to make up the pantomime ass that His Eminence rode to Jerusalem. After explaining how happy they both were with the new pope, the two of them got down to talking about how hard the Clan has worked in its efforts to stop being a worldwide conspiracy to obstruct justice.

GREGORY:As a management matter, as a crisis management matter, what does Pope Francis do to come to terms with sexual abuse in the church, that begins to close the chapter for the church?

GEORGE: Well, "close that chapter," none of us can as long as there are victims because you have to accompany them, if they're willing to be accompanied.

Ingrate bastards. We said we were sorry.

Some of them have such deep hurt that they can't trust the church to accompany them, but we have to keep doing that.

Until the checks clear, or they all die, whichever comes first.

As far as the scandal itself, everyone that we know of who has done this, whether bishop or priest, is out of public ministry and will remain out.

The point of the whole matter is that a lot of them shouldn't be "out" without having to report to their parole officers.

That was because we had to change the law to do that, and it took some time.

Because we had really, really good lawyers, and we had to find a laundry truck to get Bernie Law out of Boston.

He supports that. And then we have to be sure that it won't happen again, as much as we possibly can, and then stay with the victims. But the structures are in place now.

At the bottom. In small print. In Latin.

The code of canon law has been changed. The thing is that every time there's a new report, then everything happens "yesterday" instead of 20 or 30 years ago, which is often the case now.

Would you like a fcking cookie?

GREGORY: The issue I think for a lot of American Catholics of the impact that Pope Francis can have on cultural and political debates in America. Gary Bauer, the evangelical leader in the United States, wrote something for USA Today this week that caught my attention, and I'll share with our audience. He writes, "As an evangelical, I was delighted that the last two popes were moral and theological giants. John Paul II and Benedict XVI introduced a new evangelical period for the Catholic Church, an era in which the Catholic Church offered a confident rebuttal to the false promises of the secular world."

And that's why me, Gary Bauer, and mine stopped calling the pope "the whore of Babylon" because he signed onto our sweaty crusade against all the other whoring, and gaying, and birth-controlling.

How would you like to see Pope Francis influence American political debates? And we have so many of them now, whether it's abortion or gay marriage. How would you like to see that impact?

How hard should American Catholics have to work to keep ignoring the Vatican on all this stuff?

Your preaching is now in a context where, in a sense, you could say, "There is no God, and Freud is his prophet." Well, for the sake of sexual liberation, we're willing to let a lot of other liberties go, and I'm not sure we realize what's going on. I think he'll help us to realize it better and we'll see what happens. We can only trust that the Lord is still with his people and loves the world that his son died to save.

Sometimes, I believe you have to have grown up with this stuff to truly appreciate how good the Church has gotten at fundamental weaselspeak over the past 2000 years. I mean, check that out. Notice the cheap, marginally anti-Muslim use of the basic Islamic statement of faith? And how he deftly then moved into the basic formulation by which any unauthorized sexytime in the world somehow offends his basic liberty to walk around with a crozier up his ass, making everyone else's life miserable? I mean, that's the real stuff there.

Gregory:...Whether there's a majority of Catholics in America who support gay marriage, those who call for a greater role for women in the church, who are less opposed to abortion or even contraception; how does he resolve that tension?

George: Well, I'm not sure you can resolve it as a matter of principle. All those issues weren't around 50 years ago. What has happened to our culture that suddenly these become cultural imperatives? And in history, when you take a look at the societies that come and go, and countries come and go, when the chips are down people will always go with their society, usually, not always. And those that don't are the minority, very often. What we want to do is to create a society, through dialogue, that isn't quite as much at odds with the Gospel of Jesus Christ as it seems ours has become, at times at least.

Whoa, there, cowboy. Park that pectoral right here and set a spell. The "issues" that "weren't around" 50 years ago, presumably, were the issues around the sexy sexytime that we were discussing earlier and, unfortunately, the Gospels are pretty silent on them, which is why the Clan keeps going back to Leviticus, and to the misreading of the Onan story that was used in Humanae Vitae, and forward to St. Paul, about whom, in keeping with yesterday's festivities, I yield to the great Flann O'Brien, who had St. Augustine say of him, and underwater, too, "...When Paul shows too much consate in himself, the great blatherskite with his epistles in bad Greek, the chronic two-timer, I sometimes roar after him, 'You're not on the road to Damascus now!' Puts him in his place." I yield back the balance of my time.

Over on Face The Nation, former Fourth Crusade embed Bob Schieffer hosted the chewiest of Wisconsin wingnuttery, bringing us not only obvious anagram Reince Priebus, but also Paul Ryan, the zombie-eyed granny starver and most recent first runner-up in the vice-presidential pageant, and both of them charter members of the new How Much Does A Fella Have To Fck Up To Get Fired Club. The anagram talked to Bob about how he plans to hammer out all the dents that his chairmanship thus far have put in the Republican brand.

Number one, I believe our party has had a real quality of context problem. And what I mean is that we have become a party that parachutes into communities four months before an election. And while that's how we operated for years and years, and we've done well compared to ourselves, in comparison to the other side, the Obama campaign lived in these communities for years. The relationships were deep. They were authentic. So, first of all, one of the major things you're going to see tomorrow come out is that, for the first time in our party's history, we're not talking about having a few people down the hallway working on outreach and inclusion. We're going to be announcing a $10 million initiative, just this year, which will include hundreds of people, paid, across the country, from coast to coast, in Hispanic, African- American, Asian communities, talking about our party, talking about our brand, talking about what we believe in, going to community events, going to swearing-in ceremonies, being a part of the community on an ongoing basis, paid for by the Republican National Committee, to make the case for our party and our candidates.

So, having nominated a Mormon and failed utterly, the Republicans are now simply going to become the Mormons, or perhaps the Jehovah's Witnesses, sending pairs of cheery layabouts out into the world to talk about the glories of a party that can't find a better chairman than a guy who couldn't get elected to the state assembly. Some day, your doorbell will ring, and two smiling young people will be there to ask for a moment of your time to explain the wonderful opportunities to be found in the pages of The Watchtowe...er...in Republican politics. But Bob, who was not born yesterday, was dubious, or perhaps he just wants to be left alone on his Saturday mornings.

SCHIEFFER: So what does that mean, same message but just more people out there to talk about it?

PRIEBUS: For one thing, Bob, if you're not in the community, if you're not talking to people and the level of familiarity isn't there, then things — silly things like Todd Akin and some of the goofy things that were said — when there's a vacuum, the caricature becomes true if you're not there. So if have unscripted moments and you've got no relationship to explain anything, obviously, I believe you're a sitting duck. That's just one thing. Obviously, we've got technology issues...

That's what he thinks the problem with Todd Akin was? That there weren't enough friendly door-to-door Republicans in Missouri to divert attention from the fact that the party's nominee for the U.S. Senate had a head that whistled when the breeze blew in his ears? What possible "relationship to explain anything" would have sufficed to explain the difference between legitimate rape and all the other kinds? I believe that many Republicans now feel their party's primary "technology issue" is that Reince Priebus has yet to stick a fork into a toaster.

As for Ryan, well, suddenly, it's not about the imminent debt crisis, and the United States becoming Greece. It's about the country's trusting him with its future, even though it was made quite plain in the fall that the country wouldn't trust him with the next four years.

So we do not have a debt crisis right now, but we see it coming. We know it's irrefutably happening. And the point we're trying to make with our budget is let's get ahead of this problem. Look, we know that in the debt crisis you pull the rug out from under people living on the safety net. You cut seniors in retirement. This is what we're trying to avoid. The purpose of having a reasonable balanced budget like we're proposing is let's prevent a debt crisis from happening in the first place. If we keep kicking the can down the road, if we follow the president's lead or if we pass the Senate budget, then we will have a debt crisis. Then everybody gets hurt. You know who gets hurt first and the worst in a debt crisis? The poor, the elderly. That's what we're trying to prevent from happening.

Is it even necessary any more to point out that the only thing Ryan is interested in is in making sure that the richest people in this country get a tax break, and that nobody except himself ever has said any of his budgets actually balanced unless you used a Ouija board and cut up a goat on a rock? Again, I say, why does anyone listen to this person?

And we finish up with old friend Martha Raddatz, sitting in the big chair on This Week With The Clinton Guy Shocked By Blowjobs. Startlingly, perhaps while the Dancin' Master was deep in religious ecstasy, Golden Parachutist Carly Fiorina slipped out of the NBC Green Room and made her way to ABC, where she brought her own unique managerial genius to the discussion.

Well, I think there frankly is way too much talk about the Republican Party, its futurist ideas. I think honestly most Americans don't care about the state of either party. What they care about is the state of their job, their family, their community.

Certainly, many former Hewlett Packard employees not named Carly Fiorina do, anyway.

What Do You Think?