Habemus Papam.

Literally…we have a Pope. (excuse my Latatian – Latin)……mea maxima culpa and all that.

Like many people I kind-sorta followed the events and coverage of the recent Conclave that voted on the choice of a new Pope. While being, like many observers, a complete outsider – after all i’m not even a baptized and catechized Catholic – I found it both moving and somehow important.

I feel that I should start with an apology and that is, like many English blokes of my age, we often use humor when we’re being serious and politeness when we’re being mean and sarcastic. I take the neologism ‘Latation’ (Latin) from the late Terry Pratchett who had a lot of fun kicking religion in the goolies while being. sometimes. quite serious about meaning and belief.

Some readers will remember that I took Catholicism seriously enough to sit through an RCIA course a few winters back but was in the end a kind of Catholic reject because of my long term unmarried with partner status. What I didn’t say at the time was that the course hadn’t been very good although that might sound like sour grapes on my part. Part of the reason, I think, is that English wasn’t the parish priest’s first language and my background in terms of doing any course that was medically related demands a large amount of involvement and study on the part of the student ; some, such as ALS (advanced life support) are even difficult to pass for many medical registrars.

I did though end up with greater respect for the Catholic church because they had, in my view, stuck with their principles and I still have a kind of affection for them and find some of their teachings such as Papal encyclicals very clear, well written and having great importance. A minor example here is that when I was watching one of the many reaction videos, it was the one by Ben Shapiro – who isn’t a Catholic but an orthodox Jew, that he mentioned the new guy’s Papal name as Leo and immediately associated it with the Papal encyclical Novarum Rerum – one of the few that I have read – at least in part.

For my part I took the course seriously enough to attend a mid week mass several times and with that to go and re read some sections of the Bible. At the same time I was following the website of a couple of Franciscan friars, following some of Dr Jordan Peterson’s work and at the same time as all that reading a long history of Catholicism in England – Roy Hattersley I seem to remember. In my mind at least I was doing the work and I slightly stuck on Peterson’s arguments about what constituted belief : he seems to have often been challenged as to whether he believed in God and his first, rather obtuse, answer was to return with “What do you mean by God and what do you mean by belief ?” – at the time I found that response frustrating and maddening. Later on I watched more of Peterson’s work after his recovery and at that time started to grasp his meaning ; right now I have his book ‘We Who Wrestle with God’ and it’s still open on the page I left it several months back.

My late mother once said to me that she mainly read my blog to know what I was thinking about, when it was that I was describing making part A (of the boat that I was building) and attaching it to part B she found it tediously technical. Today, my partner does much the same thing and often questions me about something I have said ; in this case we both watched the appearance of the new Pope and both us reacted much the same way.

For my part it reminds me nothing so much as the time when Pope John Paul the second first appeared on the Vatican balcony – my reaction then was remarkably similar to what happened this week (as I write). With Pope John Paul I had a very small and secondhand link to events when I found that my first medical boss – the head of our ICU often disappeared for a few days and other consultants had to cover for him. Only later did I find was that one of his roles was to be in the medical car behind the Popemobile when he traveled – notably when he came to England on tour although that was before the time I qualified as an SRN.

Both of us, Jackie and I had the same immediate reaction to the new guy – I jokingly refer to him as Pope ‘Bob’ as his birth to cardinal name was Robert – thus ‘Bob’ as he was born in the USA (slight echo of Sprinsteen there) and it kinda/sorta fits as he comes across as a plain speaking kind of man – the kind of man that you could speak with and relate to.

Like many outside observers I was surprised when the conclave decided on a second cardinal from the Americas, although cardinal ‘bob’ was born and raised in Chigago he later worked in Peru and took Peruvian citizenship alongside his north American one. As with most people I also knew absolutely nothing about him and only now am I learning a bit about his background and like everyone, cardinals and bishops included, i’m hearing his first words as Pope and thus far I like what i’m seeing and hearing.

For a little bit of context here I would like to contrast with what i’m doing physically this week with what i’m doing mentally and at the same time.

Many readers will be aware that the physical work I am doing is that I am slowly digging out my workshop floor as the first stage in a total workshop rebuild, it being some 24 square meters and being dug out some 300 mm but only after chipping away at the concrete screed and heaving out the large granite rocks that comprised the original (damp) floor. Right now i’m on the second month of work and the second 6 yard skip – I think that will just about do it. My usual routine is to go out and do it in sessions that last around half an hour to first hack away at the dense clay layer and then carry it out a bucket at a time – today I got through 5 sessions or rounds totaling 50 buckets which means that iv’e dug and moved some 750 pounds of muck.

The funny thing about the work is that it takes a huge physical effort, day after day, but it takes very little thinking once iv’e done the initial hack and cut with the mattock. Once iv’e got started for the day I can largely let my muscles do the job while my mind goes for a wander around anything i’m thinking about that day : obviously the Vatican conclave and the election of a new pope is something I thought about even though I have no skin in the game. When I come back in for a physical break I either write for a while or watch one of the current reaction videos going around the internet. Some of the media based reaction videos have been dead funny, at least in my mind, as some of them seem to be shocked that this pope is indeed a Catholic – for some reason some of the media are both shocked and offended by that thought.

The question ‘is the Pope a Catholic’ seems to deserve a resounding yes this time although I was always less sure with the previous one – former cardinal Jorge Bergoglio. I did one drop a comment on another youtube video that I thought that he had been a divisive Pope and of course I got very mixed responses for that, some people agreed and some, more liberal Catholics. said that it was only a hostile media and ‘tradcaths’ (traditional Catholics) that portrayed him as unclear and divisive on many issues. As I said above I have no skin in that particular game although one of the main things I got from watching other channels is that it was some of them that thought that way.

Back to our man (Pope Bob/Leo) though. It’s highly likely that I read the previous pope (Francis) all wrong and a lot of what I was seeing and reading was via the distorting lens of the media ; as a slight diversion here I often enjoyed watching the White House press secretary (Karoline Leavitt) giving some of the more ‘liberal’ press a good roasting when they are trying, as often they are, to twist the facts to fit their own narrative.

For anyone, as with me, following Vatican events, you may have heard some of Pope Leo’s first press conference given to journalists outside of the Vatican. Some readers may know that he started in a quite disarming way when he received standing applause and that was in the form of telling a joke to start off with. Another thing that I heard is that in one of his first conversations while talking off camera he was asked about gender identity and the way I hear it is that he thought that it only caused confusion. In my mind the mix of that and of his first press conference is that he is a plain speaking kind of man who speaks unambiguously and clearly – all praise for that rather than causing media wiggle room with every statement.

Steps back for a moment…..

I hope everybody understands that this is a companion piece to my recent workshop post in which i’m trying to deal with a MOAB and digging out the end of the workshop, next to the door, that is one huge rock pit. This post, it’s other half, is the one where I get to yak about whatever iv’e been thinking about while my body has been doing the hard stuff. For those of you that know the world of film my reference is a small section of an old film ‘The Shipping News’ in which the character played by actor Kevin Spacey goes to confront hss boss, played by the actor Scott Glenn – who is as usual bunking off by going fishing aboard his little motor boat. In the scene, fledgling reporter Quoyle goes to complain to his boss about editorial interference and his boss gets him aboard to start gutting fish and as he says – to do something useful with his hands while he’s exercising his jaw. My version is that iv’e spent several hours each day hacking away at heavy clay and recalcitrant granite so I let my mind off the leash a bit and it goes off ‘fishing’ I can then start to write about anything that iv’e been thinking about.

During the weeks covered by this post it was the death of one Pope and the election of his successor as the main act and then in my own world the investigation into the salvage of a superyacht that capsized in the Med taking with it several of it’s guests and one crewman. As I said earlier I have no skin in the game when it comes to the choice of a new Pope – and that’s a good thing honestly but there again although I know a little about yachts and stability I have no skin in that particular game either.

Right now and having announced the end of my life as an outdoorsman and sailor I don’t know where my life will go next ; at the moment it feels a bit like our garden which has finished it’s early summer color and is now doing weeds !….. One early idea (concerning the workshop) came this week when I had to move some books around and I came across a coffee table kind of book about film producer Guillermo Del Toro’s writing/modelling studio – actually a house he named bleak house – it’s anything but and filled with everything from his copious notebooks to models and life sized mannequins. In a way it’s a lot like film prop maker Adam Savage’s workshop used to be before he took most of the display element out. Having once started on my own cabinet of curiosities (also the name of the book) I quite like the idea that that is what the workshop might become as it could easily become a walk-in display of everything I think about or work on.

Edit/postscript (1)

Working on this post, almost my first post sailing life reminds me of the time I started blogging, had loads of enthusiasm but zero writing skill such that my posts tended to go all over the place until I learnt to write about just one subject or one small part of a subject, per post. This post, I hope demonstrates the ways in which my mind is going off in all sorts of new directions since iv’e stopped having to think about boats all of the time. This post was to have been some semi intelligent thoughts about the papal election but as with my really early posts it went for a wander.

Right at the end, in fact in the edit stage, I figured I should say something about the subject which doesn’t just refer to something you could easily find in a quick internet search so I decided I should start my new blogging life by making some comments about what the new Pope means to me.

I hope you all realize that iv’e been thinking about this every day that I work for several weeks now. At first I was pretty stunned when the conclave vote went to an American but then he actually has Peruvian nationality as well plus he worked as a missionary in Peru before taking up a post in the Vatican. From the outset he seemed to be a straight talking kind of man -the kind that says what he means without apology or favor and says it simply and clearly. I happen to think that that is a great start and just what the RC church first and the rest of the world second needs from any leader.

I know that a papal election is nothing like a political election and that’s very good in my view because what we seem to get in any political election are disagreeable characters that are tough and nasty enough to float to the top of systems that create that : think people such as Trump in the USA and both Starmer and his opposite (Farage) in the UK. If asked to describe any or all of them I would instantly have to describe them as tough to the point of hard and yet ultimately only in it for themselves and their ideologies – or in the case of Starmer only there for the power and the votes as I don’t see him as having any base of morality and justice.

Rather than any of that the new pope seems to come across immediately as a leader, possibly the only world leader with a strictly moral and faith based view. I would suggest that he is the only chance of genuine leadership in a world that is crying out for it. That is a huge contrast to the small minded narrowness of nearly all political ‘leaders’ and the near total self created irrelevance of the politically minded Anglicans. Once again though I have to say that this is my view only so if you disagree then please do so.