Darn, they changed the headline. Perhaps I wasn't the only one to notice...

Perhaps related to the Buddha's sermon on meditating to speed up consciousness until one can feel each molecule of air striking the inside of one's nostril. Strangely, he got the right order of magnitude, as if his grad students had figured out Avogadro's Number many centuries early. Oh, wait a moment, the thread on Makinglight insists that Buddha was not a Catholic saint after all. If you believe that, the Pontifex has a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you...

Well, I hope The Holy Father has a living will signed and witnessed ...

I thought a "pope's nose" was that fatty lump of skin on a turkey where the neck used to be.

Wrong end of the bird , Pat. Encarta claims:
Pope’s nose (plural pope’s nos·es)
noun

tail end of cooked bird: the fatty piece of flesh at the rear end of a cooked chicken, turkey, or other bird, to which the tail feathers were attached
Also called parson’s nose
U.K. term parson’s nose ( offensive in some contexts )

Which agrees with what I was taught growing up, although my mother always felt it was likely to be offensive in ALL contexts, and was intended to be so, by the (presumably) anticlerical originators of the term.

The Pope's Contradictions

By Hans Küng
[Der Spegel, English Language, March 26, 2005]

Outwardly Pope John Paul II, who has been actively involved in battling war and suppression, is a beacon of hope for those who long for freedom. Internally, however, his anti-reformist tenure has plunged the Roman Catholic church into an epochal credibility crisis.

Hmm, I grew up semi-Catholic and we always called the bird's tail a Pope's nose. It always seemed a little naughty but not the kind of thing one would face eternal damnation for.

As with pretty much everything related to the Church, I have mixed feelings about John Paul II. Way too traditional, but he also speaks out forcefully on issues like captial punishment and social justice.

I certainly don't want to see the man suffer, and I fear who the College of Cardinals may elevate next. It's an all-around bad situation.

Now, Jerry Falwell, on the other hand, I have much less sympathy for.

Just wait till the Dominionists meet to elect a new Falwell, announcing their result with a belch of sulphurous hot air.

I didn't know the Mingus song title actually meant something.

That's not just "a fatty lump of skin" or "piece of flesh", that's an important gland, that is!

Tho' I don't ever remember hearing it called a Pope's Nose, only ever a Parson's. Probably not related to the curate's egg.

It's being reported here that JP2 is insisting he will stay in the Papal Apartments instead of going to hospital again. Some are interpreting this as indicating he doesn't want the "extraordinary measures" of advanced medicine taken to keep him alive.

I'm now preoccupied by wondering what the gland is and what it does. I'm also trying to remember if i've ever eaten one.

When I first heard the phrase as a teenager, it struck me as odd and archaic. My father had used it at Thanksgiving with a wicked twinkle in his eye. It dawned on me after a minutes reflection that it was really an oblique suggestion that the orifice below the piece of anatomy in question was the Popes mouth, so that out of the Pope's mouth came...