This is Peter, and I stand with him!

THAT is a line from "The Shoes of the Fi-sherman" where the fictitious Pope Kyril makes a decision to meet with the premier of what is undoubtedly China, a plan to which most of the cardinals staunchly object. It would, they characteristically fear, endanger the Church.

The disagreement comes to a head and Pope Kyril takes off the fisherman's ring and offers to abdicate. Cardinal Leonie — who was not always the friendliest to the Ukrainian Pope — gets the ring from the table, slips it back into Pope Kyril's finger and utters that memorable line: "This is Peter, and I stand with him." At a time that Raymond Arroyo of a supposedly Catholic EWTN spends most of his programs lambasting the Pope — why does the Holy See not declare that EWTN has ceased to be Catholic? — and people like Archbishop Vigano, former Apostolic Nuncio to the United States, seize every opportunity to take a swipe at Pope Francis, I make the lines my own: "This is Peter, and I stand with him."