For the Church, It's Red Friday

Even as it feels like some sort of deja vu, yet again – for the first time in the same calendar year since 1929 – Consistory greetings to one and all on this eve of Scarlet Bowl V.

With a nod to the incoming class' "star" Porporato, as you can see, the morning's snack-bags are ready to go. (Lest anybody seeks to gripe about the spelling, though, the house budget doesn't allow for much customization, so we'll work with what we've got.)

The smallest intake to the Pope's Senate since 1977 – a crop which, as things turned out, unwittingly ended up producing the current pontiff – will, as previously noted, be formally received at 11am Rome time (5am Eastern; 1000GMT) tomorrow. As ever, the Vatican player (iOS English link via EWTN) will feature a high-def, commentary-free livestream, with the option for translations or commentary in six languages... and here's the worship aid. On this side, meanwhile, the opinion of this readership will determine whether a live-text feed here would be worth tapping out.

All that said, see you in the morning... yet for now, as an American "lifer" at the Holy See receives the red hat for only the second time in history, the following clip is all the more fitting... its words likely to be even more resonant for no few among us amid these days....


And lastly, as a special, personal bonus – even if the rites of creation have been extensively revised since – here, from the River City archives, video of this scribe's first introduction into an incredible foreign world, given 21 years ago last summer on late-night network TV by the first of the many booming, utterly heroic voices who've since been taken from our midst....


And ever the product of that strangest of ecclesial lineages – the Cardinal and the commentator, both – well, church, here we go... again. 

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