The pope visits Fátima
The pope is telling everyone what to do, again – not that he ever stopped, but still it’s interesting to see that he apparently feels no shyness or hesitation, no doubts about his moral authority, even now that it has been searchingly and thoroughly revealed that he and his church have been protecting child rapists and bullying their victims for many decades.
This is interesting, in its way. I think ordinarily people who have been morally compromised the way the pope has become a little bashful about pretending to be moral bosses. It’s interesting that the pope doesn’t, especially since the content of his moral bossing is so godawful – so harmful for actual existing people, so fretful about imaginary people and arbitrary rules.
Benedict called for initiatives aimed at protecting “the family based on the indissoluble marriage between a man and a woman, help to respond to some of today’s most insidious and dangerous threats to the common good.”
Like that. Pretending that divorce and gay marriage are insidious and dangerous threats to the common good. (You can make a case that divorce can be partially harmful to the common good, but then you can also make a case that indissoluble marriage can be partially harmful to the common good.) Prating about divorce and abortion and gay marriage when he and his tyrannical church have done real harm to thousands of real children. Talking as if he were better than other people because he wears the white dress. Talking as if he were even minimally decent.
Benedict has endeavored to shape a new identity for the church as a “creative minority” in an increasingly secular Europe. On Thursday, he denounced “the pressure exerted by the prevailing culture, which constantly holds up a lifestyle based on the law of the stronger, on easy and attractive gain.”
The law of the stronger is it – as in the all-powerful church that gets to shelter criminals from the law and get away with it year after year? Easy and attractive gain is it – as in the children trained to revere the church and its priests, who are such easy pickings for men who enjoy raping children? That kind of thing?
The pope also told the social service groups to find alternatives to state financing so they would not be subject to legislation at odds with Catholic teaching, urging them to “ensure that Christian charitable activity is granted autonomy and independence from politics and ideologies
Meaning, of course, politics and ideologies that favor equality and frown on discrimination against people for arbitrary reasons. The pope can’t be doing with those politics and ideologies, he prefers “Catholic teaching” that gay people are sinful.
Bust him! Read him his rights, cuff him, book him, let him phone his lawyer.
Why should ‘His Holiness’ have any doubts about his moral authority, after all its comes from God, introspection and doubt is for lesser mortals, the unbelievers. The Church has usually been governed by moral imbeciles for 2000 years,who still have the hubris to preach morality to others–that’s the nature of the beast. What has always puzzled me is why so many people with high intellects still waste their lives in Catholic institutions.
He should have doubts about his moral authority because of what his institution has done and what he himself has done. I’m not saying that’s likely or that his failure is surprising, I’m just saying what he should be doing.
The old vile holiness has swallowed vats of kool-aid if you ask me. So he is perfectly deluded by now. And I say he needs to go to his room for a long time-out and not come back until he’s ready to change his ways.
Also, for the theologians out there, is “the law of the stronger” some kind of muy especial ecclesiastical term? Would it apply to strong adults taking advantage and harming weak children?
“[I]ndependence from politics and ideologies.” SPOING!
Let’s hope the campaign by Dawkins et al to get a warrant for his arrest comes to fruition. He’s coming to Spain in the autumn to preside over the “Holy” year at Santiago de Compostela. All the politicians are delighted.
Surely one of the Three Secrets of Fátima should be: why would anyone would believe such a pile of old codswallop?
I’d actually appreciate it if Catholic organisations stopped leeching off the public purpose. Hard to imagine that I’d ever be in agreement with the popester.
True, but I cheerily support them doing that with private, not public, funds!
Aye, but private funds would be taken from almost penniless parishioners – who are already feeling the pinch – because of all the money taken from them by banks – or because of money already owed/ing to the latter. Does the pope expect to bleed them dry, for the sake of remaining autonomous and because of wanting to continue stuffing them with its ideologies? I believe plates are not as full as they used to be – certainly not in Ireland, anyway, since the demise of the Celtic Tiger and fallout of recent child abuse scandals.
You support them doing that? Why on earth? I can see saying they have a legal right to do that, but that doesn’t entail having to support their doing it, especially not cheerily. These are people’s rights we’re talking about, not some trivial matter of taste.
No, I’d cheerily support a move to alternative funding, not the whole Catholic kaboodle.