I admit to being surprised and puzzled almost every day in modern America, which is beginning to seem more like the home of the Queen of Hearts in Alice and Wonderland, whose dialogue and tyrannical rants keep reminding me of our President/king, who shouts “off with their heads almost every day while quivering Senators line up to kiss his feet and get toys to bring home.

“Curiouser and curiouser,” said the Queen’s valet. And curiouser yet.

I had to laugh when the King’s young acolyte warned the new Pope Leo that he should “be careful” when talking about theology.

I am naive in many ways, perhaps getting too old to understand the world around me or believe what I see.

I did wonder for a second just what a Pope is supposed to do. I’m still working on it. He wouldn’t do well on Wall Street or in Congress.

When I think of theology, I tend to think of Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas, or John Calvin and Martin Luther, or  Augustine or Thomas Merton.

I still think of Thomas Aquinas, who said: “All the efforts of the human mind cannot exhaust the essence of a single fly.”

The great theologians are often incomprehensible to me, but the great ones, like Merton or Aquinas, always say things that stick in my mind even if I don’t know what they mean.

It’s easy to laugh at some of the things Donald Trump says and does these days, but we are not tough enough or far enough away to find them funny yet. Wait a few years.

Watching him on the news yesterday, I couldn’t stop thinking that he laughs at himself more than anyone laughs at him, as great performers sometimes do. He is his own joke.

As surprising as President Trump can be, our newest theologian, Vice President Vance, really threw me by scolding Pope Leo by warning him to “be careful” when talking about theology. Not like him.

Vance’s leader clearly sees himself as a King, but I never quite saw him as a theologian, calling the first American Pope too weak and a pussy when it comes to grasping the danger of nuclear war. They only picked him to handle me, said Mr. Trump.

Well, it was a good choice. Except, says the President, he is weak on crime. Woke, perhaps. The Pope even dresses in woke.

One day, we will all be laughing over and over again at those fake images of Trump as the new Jesus. Perhaps that’s why he’s so anxious to get a giant ballroom and a giant arch just down the road. That will not be nearly enough to honor him. I bet he won’t be demanding one of those white Papal outfits (maybe with some gold). Or maybe he will.

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Does he look like anyone we know?

Ah, a President. He was weak on crime.

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I could almost hear Aquinas sobbing in his tomb.

The Pope is one of the very few people on earth who have more power and weight than an American president.

He has a lot of ground to cover, almost all of which revolves around theology. I looked it up. His main job is to serve as the spiritual leader of the Roman Catholic Church, the largest Christian denomination in the world. His titles are Supreme Pontiff, Roman Pontiff, or Sovereign Pontiff. He is also the Vicar of Christ on earth, the earthly representative of Jesus in his absence on earth, and is the pastor of the entire Christian Church.

Wow, that is almost as impressive and burdensome as being the Vice President of the United States and almost as busy.

The vice president, like his mentor, is turning it around, hoping the three billion worshippers of Pope Leo aren’t paying attention.

It turns out he is in charge of the Pope when it comes to giving orders about theology; he gets to decide when the Pope can talk about it and when he can’t—a humble man, our VP, a true man of the people, just like his boss.

I’m not sure that any theologian in history had the nerve to caution a pope to be careful when talking about the Catholic Church and its God-chosen leader. That is a superego. I’d be afraid to ask him about the weather.

The vice President, who converted to Catholicism a decade ago, had a nice sense of self, which he will need. I wish him luck with his spiritual journal through Catholicism. He’s off to quite a start. He might not make it as Pope.

I can almost picture Aquinas, Luther, and Christ himself joining one another in the tomb, shaking their heads in wonder, sharing a beer, and thinking about the possibility of returning to earth to talk theology with Mr. Trump and his vice president.

I would certainly turn on the news for that.

And I can see it:

“Who’s been painting my roses red?” yelled Jesus when he first hit the ground.

The Mad Hatter was the first to greet him when he stepped out of Pope I.

“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast,” he said, smiling.

Only we’re not smiling yet.