"I'm looking here because the light's much brighter here."

On a dark night, a drunk was found by a friendly neighbour wandering around looking at the ground under a street light. When asked what he was doing, the drunk replied, "I dropped my house keys and I'm looking for them."


The neighbour joined the hunt, but after an intensive search the keys remained lost. The helper stopped looking, turned to the drunk and said, "Your keys ought to be easy to find, right here under the street light, but they're not here. Can you remember more precisely where you were standing when you dropped them?"

"Yup." said the drunk as he pointed to a dark area in front of a nearby house, "I sure can. I was over there in my front yard."

The neighbour was taken aback. He looked intensely at the drunk and asked, "If you dropped your keys over there, why are you looking here?"

The drunk looked back at his neighbour and replied, "I'm looking here because the light's much brighter here."   I've been thinking about his story during the last few weeks as I listen to and read secular commentators and liberal Catholics telling the Church what it needs to do, what the next Pope must be like, how he really needs to move the Church into the real world, embrace homosexuality and contraception and abortion and priestesses.  Well if you're looking for that sort of Pope, you're looking in the wrong place.   If you haven't seen it do go and watch this short (couple of minutes) clip of outspoken atheist Penn Jillette (Penn & Teller) defending Catholic orthodoxy on CNN's Piers Morgan Tonight  (Hat-tip New Advent).  It's brilliant.  Morgan is the classic modern liberal Catholic - he was all set to trash the Pope who had just announced he'd be retiring.  Morgan thought Penn, the atheist would be well up for it.  What did Penn do?  He thrashed Morgan.  Told him if you're a Catholic you believe what the Pope teaches, nicely defined ex cathedra infallibility and then when Morgan went on a little rant about how Jesus never said anything about condoms and homosexuality and women priests Penn slapped him down and told him he was Martin Luther  who wanted his own private interpretation of scripture instead of the Church's.