Andy Borowitz says that Cardinal Bonifacius Steuer of the Netherlands, who had dreamed about being pope from his childhood and expected to easily win the papacy, was bitter about his unexpected defeat and blamed the media for misrepresenting who he was.
“Look, I’m not going to lie to you,” Cardinal Steuer said, in his first interview since his bruising defeat. “It kills me not to be there, not to be in the Vatican doing what needs to be done.”
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“People weren’t allowed to see me for who I was,” he said. “They made me look like I’m some rich, rich guy, when you know that I’m as poor as a church mouse.”
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“Look, if you go around saying, ‘the poor this, the poor that,’ you’re going to get a lot of support from people who want free stuff,” he said. “Francis’s campaign, if you will, focussed on giving targeted groups a big gift.”
It is sad how often that happens. However, he gets another shot at it since the Onion has the sensational scoop that pope Francis has also decided to resign.
Note: that line didn’t work very well for Mitt Romney either.
I have a hard time thinking that “Francis” as he is now called mounted much of a campaign. The entire voting block is a bunch of old guys, disproportionately from rich, white countries given the actual distribution of Catholics world-wide who have tried to minimize outside influence as much as they can.
Isn’t bitterness over this sinful? I thought god came down from heaven and told the cardinals who to vote for. Is this guy claiming that their god is wrong?
Perhaps I should have made it clear that Borowitz is a humorist and his piece is parodying Mitt Romney, and the Onion is a satirical site.
According to Catholic dogma God is the one who decides who will be elected pope and influences the electors to vote for the right guy. So Cardinal Steuer should be whining about Jesus, not the media.
I posted #4 without refreshing and reading Mano’s #3. Oh well.
As a Dutchman I understood immediately that Borowitz wrote a parody -- the only two Dutch cardinals are named Eijk and Simonis; moreover Steuer is a German name and not a Dutch one. But I didn’t get it was a parody of Romney.
Have they ever picked a new pope this quickly? I can’t help but wonder if it was already decided going in.
As I understand it, this is not that unusual and I seem to recall the Ratzinger was also elected quickly. It may have helped that the current pope was runner-up to Ratzinger last time and so was already well-known to his colleagues and had a base of support.
“Steuer” may have German origins (although my Google fu has left me in the cold), but it is definitely also a Dutch surname, albeit a not very common one.
Eastern fringe of the Netherlands (like parts of Twente) can be read as being areas of Germans (Saxons) who got Dutchified (Frankicised?) over the centuries, hence the odd dialects spoken there. Its entirely possible seemingly German names passed into Dutch usuage this way, but remained uncommon.
Dutch surnames are interesting though, much much more diverse than English surnames, and an absolute shedload of unique family names too, and its fair share of silly ones 🙂
There is a language continuum from South-East Austria and Switzerland through Southern Germany to North Germany and the Netherlands East to West (to simplify a bit). There has never been a strong dividing line between things “German” and things “Dutch”. However, your claims on Saxons/Franks and “odd dialects” are, at best, extreme simplifications up to a point that I’d call it “untrue”. It is also not very likely that German names passed into Dutch this way, other than through migration (which was quite common around the borders, and still is, up to a point), as there is no record of tradional German-sounding names in those areas (e.g. my family originally comes from Twente and has this surname since at least the 1600s, and it is not German sounding).
Tweants is Low Saxon isn’t it? In contrast with standard Nederlands which is Low Frankonian. I learned Dutch in Twente (pretty much had to learn it within a year, mostly from chatting to friends), later when my family moved to Utrecht, I got told I had a farmer’s accent.
What I meant to say is that it is how seemingly German origin sounding names could have entered Dutch, German names would have been subject to spelling changes more recently (last 2 centuries) with standardisation after unification, so they would be spelt differently.
Just to add, you can abserve a similar trend with Welsh names passing into English, ap Rhys -- Price, common originaly in the border areas. names like words, can jump to other languages.
“Tweants is Low Saxon isn’t it? In contrast with standard Nederlands which is Low Frankonian.” Yes, correct. But the Low Saxon dialects cover a third of the Netherlands, up to the center, so it’s not an “Eastern fringe” we’re talking about.
“What I meant to say is that it is how seemingly German origin sounding names could have entered Dutch” Yes, it’s clear that you meant to say that, but you are wrong. Traditional Low Saxon names do not sound Dutch, period. So although German names could have entered the Netherlands via the Low Saxon territories, that is purely because of the geographical location, and has hence nothing to do with dutchification of Low Saxons.