A very exciting day for Roman Catholics around the world as we have a new Holy Father, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Pope Francis I. The first Jesuit ever to assume the Chair of Peter as Vicar of Christ in the Western Hemisphere, it truly is a joyful occasion, and I offer my prayers as do millions of other Roman Catholics for a reign where God’s Church on Earth prospers and stands as a light amidst the increasing darkness of liberalism, atheism, post-modernism, and radical Islam.

For those wondering what kind of Pope Francis I might be, Michael Potemra of National Review Online’s Corner blog has this:

The son of a working-class family, he has been the archbishop of Buenos Aires for 15 years. At 76, he can be expected to have not a long pontificate, but an eventful one — he is the outsider they have chosen to clean up the curial mess. An anonymous cardinal quoted in the Allen piece says that four years of Bergoglio would be enough to get the job done.

The choice of the name Francis is a wonderful gesture. Many people, in Italy, as elsewhere, love St. Francis of Assisi and Franciscan spirituality, and that was one reason for the boomlet for Sean Patrick Cardinal O’Malley in recent days. This Jesuit pope is sending a message: I want to be a pope in the line of St. Francis, a pope of whom Francis would approve.

Like Angelo Cardinal Scola, who was considered the front-runner going into this conclave, Bergoglio is affiliated with the powerful lay movement Communion and Liberation. A Jesuit, pro-Franciscan, pro-CL, he unites a lot of tendencies within the current church.

People who worry that, as a Jesuit, he might be too liberal, should relax: A very conservative Jesuit priest of my acquaintance, who is unhappy with the liberal direction of his order, has been telling me for weeks that he supports Bergoglio for pope. Bergoglio is a solid conservative on the hot-button social issues that agitate American laity, but that would have been true of just about any of the cardinals who might have been elected today. The story here is that he is an outsider who is the consensus choice to fix what’s wrong with the church administration, but all in a Franciscan spirit of love and humility, to wipe the face of the church so that its inner beauty can radiate. St. Francis was called to “rebuild the church” — Pope Francis will act in that spirit.

And NRO’s Kathryn Jean Lopez writes of what it was like to be in St. Peter’s Square today when Fr. Bergoglio’s ascension was announced. Truly uplifting and exciting – must have been something to be there!

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The selection of a Pope is something most people in the mainstream media know nothing about, but since it’s still such a big deal they’re forced to cover a story they know or care little about, and it’s both amusing and infuriating to hear such ignorance and liberal bias of epic proportions on display. No one is trying to downplay the sex abuse scandals of the past decades, but no story about the Catholic Church can be written by these clowns without bringing up the sex abuse scandals and the Church’s stance on homosexuality.

* The thousands of parents across the country working hard to stash enough money away to send their children to Catholic schools to avoid the cesspool that are the public schools? Not a word.

* All the charitable work done by Catholic hospitals? Not a word (except criticism for speaking up when the Obama administration tries to force them to perform abortions on demand and provide for birth control in their healthcare coverage).

* The fact that the Roman Catholic Church is the only orthodox Christian faith in the US still adding membership while the uber-liberal Protestant churches hemorrhage membership? Not a word.

* All the heroic work done by priests and nuns in the inner cities? Not a word.

It’s all sex abuse scandals and the poor homosexuals whose behavior (not their orientation) that the Church considers sinful. And here I expect the Church to hold the line. You start allowing gays to marry and all you get is a punch of pissed off trangenders and freaks wondering why not them as well. Because you see, with liberalism it never ends: you’re damned if you do, and you’re damned if you don’t. They’re always something new to protest or be pissed off at. On this, Rush Limbaugh is absolutely right:

They think religion and the papacy is a joke in the first place, and so they’re over there, and in a way mocking this whole thing. Over half them don’t even have a rudimentary education and knowledge/understanding of what this is and why it takes place and why it is meaningful to people. It’s just the latest popularity contest, just the latest celebrity news. Of course to the people involved, it’s far more than that. There it is: “Smoke Expected This Hour.”

And Rush is right about this as well. Why is it always Christianity that has to bend to liberals on homosexuality? Why do you never hear the mainstream media ask Islam to bend its treatment of women and homosexuals? The Catholic Church may have its problems (like any other organization), not allow gays to marry, and consider homosexual behavior a sin, but we don’t stone adulterers and homosexuals to death, and we don’t force women to cover themselves in cloth everywhere. It just goes to show how full of ignorance and horse sh*t in vast proprtions the mainstream media is when it comes to religion – most specifically, the Catholic faith, which they hate and hold with the greatest of disdain.

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But I could care less what the mainstream media thinks. This ought to be a joyful day for Christians (Catholic and non-Catholic) everywhere. May God’s blessings be upon Francis I for the courage and strength to speak and live the Faith in a way that expresses the Church’s teachings in a powerful and personal way, one that stands strong against the forces of darkness and gains converts from all over the world.