Maybe He's Only Infallible When He's Sober

We are faced with quite the conundrum here in the marbled hall of IM Central today. Yeah, yeah, we know what you're thinking, "Did Grey Goose go on sale again just as the emergency supply of Stoli dropped below the critical thirty day mark?" Ha! How little you know. We have stared into the steely face of teetotaler catastrophe on more than one occasion and held our ground. In fact we have on numerous occasions gone deeply into the den of chaos and battled the forces of sobriety and rationality with only our trusted companion Jose Cuervo at our side.

No, the genesis of this particular conundrum goes clear back to our days as little Ironicii when we were dues paying members of Peter's Posse, dutifully dominosing our vobiscums and patering our nosters. One of the things that the nuns pounded into us, when they weren't pounding other things into us, was that the pope, he don't make no mistakes. Whenever there was a classroom spelling bee in Sister Victorine's class you could count on the word "infallible" being in there and woe to the young supplicant who was unable to successfully navigate his or her way through it without walking into the valley of the shadow of able and ible.

Which brings us to this little piece of jetsam that floated up on the inter toobz this morning.

Pope Benedict XVI will break his own rule this weekend when he beatifies Cardinal John Henry Newman, the renowned 19th Century Anglican convert who greatly influenced the Roman Catholic Church.

Now, you children of the  Reformation out there may read that and think, "Oh, how nice. Popey's gonna let that Cardinal dude in the frat without making him pledge all the way though to hell week. Now watch this drive."

Oh no man. We have to tell you, if you're a catholic, even a catholic as...erm...causal as we are you read that and all of a sudden the room is filled with the spirit of Sister Arnulfa and her twenty pound catechism book, and your brain just goes FFFFFSSSSSZZZZTTTT!! Next thing you know you're looking for a ruler to pound your own knuckles with.

This is big, man, huge. Galileo huge. We mean, think of the implications: The pope is infallible but a rule he made is apparently wrong, or as Aristotle would say:

The pope cannot make a mistake

The pope made a rule that was a mistake

Therefore we must lubricate our centers of reason with 80 proof palliatives.

And he did it for an Anglican ferchrssakes, an Anglican! That's like Yankee stadium sponsoring a Red Sox fan appreciation day. Somebody get Jose on the phone.