The Pope Has a Dream Today
The Pope, not for the first time, seems to be a little confused. A trifle misguided. At least according to one of his interpreters.
John Allen, a columnist with the National Catholic Reporter and one of the most respected Vatican watchers, said: “The Pope wants to make sure that everything he does is grounded in fundamentals in terms of objective truth.”
Does he? Well he’s in the wrong line of work, isn’t he. Precisely the wrong line of work. He happens to have chosen for himself an avocation that is as distant from fundamentals in terms of objective truth as an avocation could be. It’s funny how muddled people can get, isn’t it? Trying to walk up the down escalator, asking for fried chicken at Starbucks, wearing their underpants on their heads, eating ice cream for lunch. The Pope must be like that. Just back-assward about everything. Sad.
“The encyclical is his attempt at being a compassionate conservative. In his mind, you can’t really be free and happy unless you accept God’s plan for human life.”
See what I mean? Pure underpants on the head, that is. You can’t really be free unless you accept the rules of a reactionary, hidebound, delusional, authoritarian institution which disguises its unfounded whims and prejudices as ‘God’s plan’ – oh yes, that’s freedom all right. Just the way living in a tiny cupboard under the stairs and coming out for exercise once every two years is freedom. Fiat libertas.
“It is not totally negative on eros,” a Vatican source said. “It argues that eros under the right circumstances is OK.”
How thoughtful! Ratzinger is telling us that certain of our traits may be not be wrong if they’re exercised under conditions of which he approves.
“In his mind, you can’t really be free and happy unless you accept God’s plan for human life.”
A better reason I never heard for going nowhere near Ratzinger’s mind. You can’t be free and happy unless you accept the dictates of his – extremely nasty – imaginary friend. I think I’ll take the risk of not accepting this threatening character into my life.
OB, you didn’t quote the bits at the end of the piece in which they talk about how much money the Vatican rakes in from selling copies of the pronouncements it makes forbidding people to act naturally.
Drives me nuts that people assume that as long as they’re not physically molesting young children (which, of course, we keep on learning that many of them are), men or women “of the cloth” deserve some kind of respect. You said it differently, but I’ve had this thought for quite a while. A politician just might be honest, you can have doctors, engineers and lawyers with varying degrees of proficiency, integrity etc., but the folks who have decided to devote their lives to spreading nonsense… Some may be quite genuinely deluded, but surely it is correct to assert that they constitute the only professional group for which respect must, a priori, be out of bounds.
Enough. I’ll drive myself up the wall thinking about it. Some of you, I hope, are familiar with Christopher Durang’s “Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You.” I know it’s only a play, but he didn’t pull this stuff out of thin air; Dawkins is right: religious education is child abuse.
I hadn’t thought about Sister Mary Ignatius in a long time, so I googled to see how others saw it. This ten-year-old account of a production at Princeton is very relevant to so much we’ve discussed here (“… a good joke never attacks the dogma…”):
http://www.princeton.edu/~sentinel/nov96/sister.html
What’s wrong with ice cream for lunch?
I second that question.
Nothing’s wrong with ice cream for lunch. That last example was meant to be a kind of surreal wild card, a sort of weird ‘huh?’ to finish the series off with, a random Dadaist nonsequitur.
Jeez, you guys are so literal.
“OB, you didn’t quote the bits at the end of the piece in which they talk about how much money the Vatican rakes in”
I know. I did think of it, but decided to keep it pure – just the nonsense talked by the hack.
At the risk of lowering the tone, the next time I get a shot at some eros, I’m really going to make sure I tick he Pope’s boxes.
Thanks for the link to the Princeton review – one of the funniest things I’ve read in ages!
I thought it would be appreciated here and it predates B&W’s inception. All the same themes we’re so used to and with the business of the rights to criticise a major religion and/or a minority sexual preference, it just seemed extraordinarily topical. That it’s so funny is both undeniable and rather sad, isn’t it?
What a relief there’s no actual argument against having ice cream for lunch. I may pass on it today, though, as all the snow outside somewhat reduces that kind of appetite.
That review is a great find; thanks, Stewart. I’m embarrassed to say I don’t know Sister Mary Ignatius – clearly a lacuna in my education I’ll have to fill in right smart quick.
I’m also embarrassed to say that – perhaps primed by Chris’s reaction – I can’t tell if the P’ton review is satirical or not. It reads like satire, but perhaps it wasn’t?
I’ve never seen a production of the play, but I have read it in full. Given that knowledge, I regret to say I fear the Princeton report is 100% factual, with no satire intended. If you believe in Catholic dogma, you are likely to be highly offended, because you probably also believe you shouldn’t be forced to think about the issues the play raises. No need to be embarrassed at not knowing it beforehand; B&W facilitates exchange of information and I’m happy to say I’ve been coming away from it with great spoils for almost as long as it’s been around. My pleasure if I’m able to contribute something not everyone knew already.
from the link:
‘Why is there suffering if God is all-good and all-powerful? Sister Mary sort of shifts nervously to the next card, implying that the Church has no answer to that question. And of course that’s totally false.”
‘
No it’s not totally false and the churches answer is not good.
‘Free will’ is not a good answer? Why, Uber, how can you say that?
Hey, Stewart, here’s a thought – why not write up Sister MI for In the Library – for Favourites? A place to find great spoils is exactly what that is intended for, and I haven’t been keeping it up nearly as well as I meant to.
Nice little challenge – the first part of which is finding a copy, which is not on the shelf, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have the text here somewhere. Good practice for the anti-religious play I have in gestation…
Can I play the lead can I huh huh huh?
Let’s ask questions in the right order: first, can I find a producer once it’s written?
I’m sure your not swayed by a free will argument OB whenever that next tsunami kills all those ‘innocents’ or maybe they aren’t:)
Interesting that in a website dedicated to reason – one which I rather like – I should find no evidence of thought, or knowledge, or intelligence in these “arguments” about Catholicism. They’re full of blind prejudice. You all write as if the arguments had already been made for you, so why should you have to bother working things out from first principles?
In short, you sound like the kind of believers who base their views solely on faith.
Well, LL, that could be because this discussion has been going on for quite a long time. It doesn’t really seem necessary to start the argument from the beginning with every single post.