The Catholic Monitor was honored and gladdened to have the one and only great St. Corbinian's Bear visit its comment section. Michael Dowd reflected the sentiments of all St. Corbinian's Bear fans:
"It is heartening to see that The Bear is Back with all his wit and
erudition calling 'em a[s] he sees them. Thanks Bear. I noticed you are
no longer St Corbinian's Bear [blog]. What's up with you now?" [http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2020/05/open-letter-to-taylor-marshall_25.html?m=1]
I've had fun with a humorous character I developed called Sheriff Fred. I have thought of making him
into a type of G.K. Chesterton Fr. Brown detective with a cowboy twang. It might be fun if the Sheriff and the Bear teamed up to solve a crime one of these days. What do you think, Bear?
[Sheriff Fred and the Greedy Cave Gang;http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2020/06/sheriff-fred-and-greedy-cave-gang.html]
[Sheriff Fred and the Greedy Cave Gang;http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2020/06/sheriff-fred-and-greedy-cave-gang.html]
In honor of the Bear's visit, I thought it might be fun to share another Sheriff Fred story which is in letter form after which is the Bear post:
Dearest Rosita,
I was visiting the owner of the Matt
Dillon Saloon and restaurant. Matt
Dillon told me that the Sundance Kid
was a saying he was gonna shoot me
in the back of the head because his
friends in the Hole in the Wall Gang
were making fun of him cause ole
Sheriff Fred defeated him by getting
him to laugh uncontrollably at
the Sheriff's slowest draw in the
West sending him helplessly laughing
out of town. Seeing as I had
my ten gallon hat to impress my
pretty gal I was a funning and
borrowed one of the restaurant's
pots and put it over my hat. Wouldn't
you know it, just then I heard a bang
and then a bing sound on my pot and
then a crash behind me. The bullet
boomeranged off my pot and hit a
chandelier making it fall on the Kid.
It didn't knock him out, but he had a
big smile on his face like a kid at
Christmas.
Bears being lazy can’t be bothered with a bunch of Latin. What this Bear
hasn’t seen is the argument he finds most satisfying, to wit:
ONE pope RESIGNING (an extremely intelligent and learned pope, by the way), under highly suspicious circumstances, and in such an odd fashion, and remaining on in a manner he can have no possible doubt is unprecedented, confusing to the faithful and just plain weird would be a mind-boggling event in the history of the Church all by itself.
But wait!
His “replacement” makes Pope John XXII look like the very pillar of orthodoxy by his wildly un-Catholic Magisterium of the Photo Op such as signing off on the Abu Dhabi Three Great Abrahamic Religions Worship Complex and Waterpark with the words “God wills the diversity of religions” (to pick only one scandal, if not heresy, from a list about which volumes have been written). Bergoglio would, again, just happen to be the single most destructive pope in Church history.
So, a Bear must proceed from, “hmm” to “grrr.”
So (for example) a Bear thinks, “To be charitable, that gentleman’s rifle may have accidentally discharged, sending a bullet ricocheting off Bear’s thick skull. Strange things do happen, after all.” But when three seconds later the Bear is shot again, TWO extraordinary, indeed unprecedented, events of great magnitude equal one Very Messed-Up Situation That Requires Courtesy Give Way to Sorting This Nonsense Out Immediately and Bearishly.
This is not canon law or even logic, but mind-boggling exceptions to recorded history do not happen at the same time and place. That’s what makes them “exceptions,” “historic,” “mind-boggling,” and wrong beyond a Bearish doubt. So, besides all the other very good arguments the Bear has seen that there still hasn’t been a “Pope Francis,” he adds one shot might be a curiosity. Two is an attack.
There’s an informal legal standard of argument known as the “straight face test.” Dr. Marshall’s—I’ve seen his shows and like him—half-hearted, hang-dog defense of Bergoglio does not pass the straight face test and I have never read a witness if he doesn’t know this old Bear is right.
ONE pope RESIGNING (an extremely intelligent and learned pope, by the way), under highly suspicious circumstances, and in such an odd fashion, and remaining on in a manner he can have no possible doubt is unprecedented, confusing to the faithful and just plain weird would be a mind-boggling event in the history of the Church all by itself.
But wait!
His “replacement” makes Pope John XXII look like the very pillar of orthodoxy by his wildly un-Catholic Magisterium of the Photo Op such as signing off on the Abu Dhabi Three Great Abrahamic Religions Worship Complex and Waterpark with the words “God wills the diversity of religions” (to pick only one scandal, if not heresy, from a list about which volumes have been written). Bergoglio would, again, just happen to be the single most destructive pope in Church history.
So, a Bear must proceed from, “hmm” to “grrr.”
So (for example) a Bear thinks, “To be charitable, that gentleman’s rifle may have accidentally discharged, sending a bullet ricocheting off Bear’s thick skull. Strange things do happen, after all.” But when three seconds later the Bear is shot again, TWO extraordinary, indeed unprecedented, events of great magnitude equal one Very Messed-Up Situation That Requires Courtesy Give Way to Sorting This Nonsense Out Immediately and Bearishly.
This is not canon law or even logic, but mind-boggling exceptions to recorded history do not happen at the same time and place. That’s what makes them “exceptions,” “historic,” “mind-boggling,” and wrong beyond a Bearish doubt. So, besides all the other very good arguments the Bear has seen that there still hasn’t been a “Pope Francis,” he adds one shot might be a curiosity. Two is an attack.
There’s an informal legal standard of argument known as the “straight face test.” Dr. Marshall’s—I’ve seen his shows and like him—half-hearted, hang-dog defense of Bergoglio does not pass the straight face test and I have never read a witness if he doesn’t know this old Bear is right.
It is heartening to see that The Bear is Back with all his wit and
erudition calling 'em and he sees them. Thanks Bear. I noticed you are
no longer St Corbinian's Bear. What's up with you now?
Mostly mending after a Good Sabearitan act went horribly wrong January
last year then falling into the hands of vivisectionists. No more shall
the Bear chase fat ponies, Glory to God.
Thanks Bear. "Good Sabearitan act" sounds like the basis for, if not another novel, at least a short story.
Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Mass and the Church as well as for the Triumph of the Kingdom of the Sacred Heart of the Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of the Mary.