Pope squared

Recently there was a satirical Catholic/Protestant meme war on Facebook. That generated feedback in the combox. Here's one of the exchanges on one of the memes:

Daniel Vecchio 

If only Jesus could have anticipated that some of his sayings would appear obscure to us, and could have established, in a solid, granite-like way, a teaching authority who would help us to "be of one mind".

Raymond Blaine Stewart 

If only Jesus could have anticipated that his teaching authority would not be accepted by all people and could have established in a solid granite like way a meta teaching authority who would help us "be of one mind."

Daniel Vecchio 

Meta teaching authority?

Raymond Blaine Stewart 

Yeah a teaching authority that would help us accept know which teaching authority to accept. That would have been nice.

Did you have something in mind?, because my point is that Jesus did anticipate such things.

Yeah I'm thinking we could call him the Pope squared, or maybe the straight dope.

My point is this: division happened. So if you're saying that Jesus gave us this rock solid granite teaching authority to prevent division. Well then what Jesus gave us to prevent division failed.

Daniel Vecchio 

Well, the only meta-teacher I think we have is the reductio of rejecting the teaching authority we have.

Raymond Blaine Stewart 

The meta teacher thing was a joke. The whole point was the teaching authority didn't do its job. So if Jesus was interested in preventing this kind of division he should have left us a teaching authority about the teaching authority.

Daniel Vecchio 

So I am saying that Jesus did enough... you, a Protestant, are complaining that Jesus didn't do enough. ;-)

Raymond Blaine Stewart 

Do you understand how jokes work?

Daniel Vecchio 

When we get to heaven (and you may have to wait 10,000 years for when they release me from Purgatory), I am going to remind Jesus how you wanted a meta-teacher, and were complaining.

The "if only" joke is funny because he did, not because he didn't.

Raymond Blaine Stewart 

No I wasn't. Like I'm not sure whether you're joking or really don't understand the point. The whole point–as with all parody arguments–is that if your reasoning were correct, something obviously false would be true. The joke was that we would have a meta-pope. We don't do your reasoning is bad. I wasn't actually suggesting that we should have a metapope any more been Swift was actually suggesting that the Irish should eat babies.