Brendan Malone offers a survival guide for the weeks before we have a new pope.
Headline points: ignore the media hype; be wary of the Catholic hype; don’t get caught up in the St Malachy prophesy hype; the Church has been through far worse – and survived; don’t forget the coming papal election is not a political one; remember, this is a moment of great joy.
Joyful Papist 
Excellent advice. We should probably also ignore the blog hype which tells us to ignore the media hype while we are at it..
Naturally, “The Media” will be running speculation about the rather odd, unsought, (except by the Atheists, who are laughing themselves silly) abdication of Ben, and natually the writers will know even less about this subject than you or I do.
That’s how “The Media” selects writers for a subject. By asking the staff if anyone has any knowlege of it, and then choosing someone else who has none.
That’s what I always did, anyway.
Toad’s ignorant two cents worth is there is considerably more to come on this, and it will not be good for the Church. Probably just his cynicism.
And that Brendan Malone is whistling bravely in the dark
Probably so. And yet still the Church will continue, when Toad, Joyful Papist, Brendan Malone, and the editor of the Wall St Journal are nameless motes of dust; and the burning issues of today are no more than footnotes in a scholarly tome.