The Pope Throws a Punch

There it is

In all the newspapers

All over the internet

Like a live action Charlie Hebdo cartoon:

A photo showing the pontiff

Throwing a playful punch

At Doctor Gasparri,

A Vatican official;

The leader of one of God’s major franchises

Implying that violence

Is an understandable response to insult.

I know, I know, I know

He was only joking

Lighten up for Christ’s sake.

He was caught in the yes but trap

The rush to qualify, explain, diminish a barbaric act

That seems to follow hard upon the event.

Worse still is the search for equivalent wrongs

The slaughter of innocents by US drones, for example

As if by some weird mathematics

One wrong can reduce the other to zero

That one wrong plus one wrong

Is not equal to two.