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McElroy takes Mencken to Sunday school
How to Avoid Getting Side-Siped
“Yes, Walter, I’m sure I’ll miss this quiet little diocese when I’m off in D.C., storming through the corridors of power. Perhaps you can drop me a postcard sometime and let me know how things are going. Perhaps with a picture of the Mission on the front. A small mission, yes, but the first mission, the first step to something truly significant. Much like my own time here in San Diego.”
FOUNDER’S CHAPEL, USD
Robert Cardinal McElroy: Ah, Walter. Welcome. Have to come to confess, or merely to pay your respects?
Walter Mencken: Nothing to confess except my admiration, Your Eminence, and as for respect, if I hadn’t removed my hat when I came in, I would most definitely tip it in your direction. You Trumped me.
RCM: I did, didn’t I? When you made that little joke about me burning Sipe’s corpse as revenge for costing me my shot at advancing to Washington, I couldn’t help but think back to a few years before, when Obama went after Trump at the White House Correspondent’s dinner. Ol’ Donny certainly had the last laugh there…and now, well.
WM: Now you’ll finally get to spar with President Build-a-Wall on the national stage. I thought I’d have Bob McElroy to kick around until the end of his days. But like Nixon, you came back from the dead.
RCM: I prefer Jesus. But really, you shouldn’t beat yourself up. It’s not like you gave me the idea for D.C. — I was always going that way. I just needed to get my feet wet in a small pond first. Why else would Pope Francis, who’s always saying the shepherd should smell like the sheep, appoint a lily-white intellectual like me to a largely Hispanic, working-class diocese? Optics, my son, optics. He wanted me near the border, so that my words on immigration would have weight. A passionate defense of the dignity of the migrant while standing in front of a wall that looks like the iron bars of a prison — that’s what we in the hierarchy call bella figura. And best of all, it burnishes my reputation for the fight ahead.
WM: Amazing to hear you talk reputation, after the whole Richard Sipe thing. And not one, but two bankruptcies.
RCM: Yes, that bit from you about the diocese declaring moral bankruptcy was cute. But do you know what the opposite of bella figura is? Bruta figura. If a thing is done in ugly fashion, it almost doesn’t matter what the substance of it is. All you have to do is shine a light on the ugly image. Sipe tried to get clever and sneak me his nasty little letter about Cardinal McCarrick’s pattern of abuse through subterfuge. At that point, I had the moral high ground: “Mr. Sipe, it is you who has broken trust.” My handling of the matter showed Rome that I understood political maneuvers. If anything, it made D.C. all the more certain for me.
WM: Of course, it helped that Sipe was dead by the time the story broke.
RCM: The Lord works in mysterious ways.
WM: Godspeed, Your Eminence.
Here's something you might be interested in.
McElroy takes Mencken to Sunday school
How to Avoid Getting Side-Siped
McElroy takes Mencken to Sunday school
How to Avoid Getting Side-Siped
“Yes, Walter, I’m sure I’ll miss this quiet little diocese when I’m off in D.C., storming through the corridors of power. Perhaps you can drop me a postcard sometime and let me know how things are going. Perhaps with a picture of the Mission on the front. A small mission, yes, but the first mission, the first step to something truly significant. Much like my own time here in San Diego.”
FOUNDER’S CHAPEL, USD
Robert Cardinal McElroy: Ah, Walter. Welcome. Have to come to confess, or merely to pay your respects?
Walter Mencken: Nothing to confess except my admiration, Your Eminence, and as for respect, if I hadn’t removed my hat when I came in, I would most definitely tip it in your direction. You Trumped me.
RCM: I did, didn’t I? When you made that little joke about me burning Sipe’s corpse as revenge for costing me my shot at advancing to Washington, I couldn’t help but think back to a few years before, when Obama went after Trump at the White House Correspondent’s dinner. Ol’ Donny certainly had the last laugh there…and now, well.
WM: Now you’ll finally get to spar with President Build-a-Wall on the national stage. I thought I’d have Bob McElroy to kick around until the end of his days. But like Nixon, you came back from the dead.
RCM: I prefer Jesus. But really, you shouldn’t beat yourself up. It’s not like you gave me the idea for D.C. — I was always going that way. I just needed to get my feet wet in a small pond first. Why else would Pope Francis, who’s always saying the shepherd should smell like the sheep, appoint a lily-white intellectual like me to a largely Hispanic, working-class diocese? Optics, my son, optics. He wanted me near the border, so that my words on immigration would have weight. A passionate defense of the dignity of the migrant while standing in front of a wall that looks like the iron bars of a prison — that’s what we in the hierarchy call bella figura. And best of all, it burnishes my reputation for the fight ahead.
WM: Amazing to hear you talk reputation, after the whole Richard Sipe thing. And not one, but two bankruptcies.
RCM: Yes, that bit from you about the diocese declaring moral bankruptcy was cute. But do you know what the opposite of bella figura is? Bruta figura. If a thing is done in ugly fashion, it almost doesn’t matter what the substance of it is. All you have to do is shine a light on the ugly image. Sipe tried to get clever and sneak me his nasty little letter about Cardinal McCarrick’s pattern of abuse through subterfuge. At that point, I had the moral high ground: “Mr. Sipe, it is you who has broken trust.” My handling of the matter showed Rome that I understood political maneuvers. If anything, it made D.C. all the more certain for me.
WM: Of course, it helped that Sipe was dead by the time the story broke.
RCM: The Lord works in mysterious ways.
WM: Godspeed, Your Eminence.
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