Dear Benny
The Pope is in England for the first official visit in a few centuries and a British rapper decided to write him a letter:
Vatican tries to hide Pope’s condom remarks
After some bitching about the response to the pope’s absurd remarks about how condom use can increase the spread of HIV, the Vatican edited the interview on their site to make it seem as though he was misinterpreted:
Taken aback by outrage worldwide, the Holy See altered the Pope’s remark yesterday to read that condoms merely “risked” aggravating the problem.
The Vatican website published an edited text of the Pope’s comments the day after a question-and-answer session on his flight to Cameroon. It was a question from a French reporter that elicited an unqualified response about condoms.
By introducing the word “risks” the Vatican softened the message. The website at first also altered the Italian word the Pope used for condoms, from “preservativi” to “profilattici”.
It’s now switched back to what he actually said with his spokesman stating that he’s just saying what his predecessors said as if that makes it okay.
Irony meters explode worldwide
I missed this when it first came out, but a top official at the Vatican had this to say about President Obama getting rid of the global gag rule:
The same day, the secular Milan daily Corriere della Sera published an interview with a top Vatican official lashing out at the new U.S. President. Archbishop Rino Fisichella, head of the Pontifical Academy for Life, told the newspaper that the repeal of the abortion-funding ban was done with “the arrogance of those who, having power, think they can decide between life and death.”
This would be the same Vatican which not only opposes the use of condoms in African countries such as Kenya, which is plagued with high rates of HIV infections, but has bluntly lied about the effectiveness of condoms in combating HIV in it’s irrational attempts to stop people from using contraception.
The “arrogance of those who, having power, think they can decide between life and death”? Perhaps someone placed a mirror in front of the archbishop, eh?
Pope Benedict: Don’t fire me, bro!
The Bishop of Rome has once again opened his mouth about science, this time declaring that science must be accompanied by research in “anthropology, philosophy and theology” to give insight into “man’s own mystery, because no science can say who man is, where he comes from or where he is going”, the Pope said.
Science, of course, has already answered those questions. Thanks to some brave folks (theist and atheist) we know we’re nearly hairless apes who evolved from other primates in a “line” that stretches back billions of years and after a very brief stretch of time we die and and the atoms that make up our bodies go on to make other things.
That the pope and other like minded individuals and groups don’t like those answers means absolutely nothing. Of course, the truth of the matter is theology has lost so much ground over the centuries it’s almost amazing. The ground it lost is now occupied various branches of science.
Theology really has only one factual issue left and that is where life itself came from and the scientists are closing in on the answer to that question. Theology is quite at risk at being the things fairy dust and magic men are made of and is in fact one of humanity’s greatest testaments to the sheer arrogance we are capable of.
Why does the Bishop of Rome rail against (implicitly) godless science? Because various branches of it undermines the theological idea that our species is the center of everything that was, is and ever will be. We cannot be “”respected as the centre of creation” because we are not.
Science has humbled us and it’s essentially kicked theology’s arrogant little ass and one day we may finally get to the point where we look all the theologists in the eye and state in a clear voice:
“Dude, you’re fired.”
Pope gets censored?
What’s the first thing that pops into your head when someone says “censorship”? My first thought is that someone in a position of authority has misused that position to silence someone in a manner that is unfair and unjust. As you may have guessed from the title of the post, people are claiming that the pope has been censored in a most undemocratic and intolerant manner.
What happened?
He was to give a speech on abolishing the death penalty at La Sapienza during a school ceremony a couple of days ago. Students and faculty members protested his appearance. They hung up signs stating “no pope” and “science is secular”.
Sixty of the schools 4500 faculty members even signed a letter protesting his appearance. As a result the pope canceled the engagement without explanation.
Pope Benedict XVI has canceled his visit to a Rome university following protests by secular professors and students, the Vatican said today.
Such a cancellation of a scheduled papal event is extremely rare, and the few times it has happened in recent decades, the Vatican cited security concerns. No specific reason was given in a brief Vatican announcement and Vatican spokesmen could not be reached for comment.
“It was considered opportune to skip the event,” the Vatican said of Benedict’s planned visit and speech Thursday at La Sapienza, a public university. Instead, the Pope will send his speech to the university.
When news of the cancellation reached the campus, students in a political sciences hall broke into applause.
About 60 of the 4,500 professors at the university had signed a letter to the university rector, opposing the visit. Banners reading “Science is secular” and “No pope” have been strung from university buildings and posters plastered on walls objected to the visit. Students had announced several days of demonstrations this week. The university has 145,000 students.
Censorship, eh? Seems like good ole freedom of speech to me. Of course, religious people (especially majority religious people) have different definitions for various terms such as the ones used to described the protests:
- Censorship: what you call any action that results in you not getting your way such as having a religious authority speak at a secular school during an official ceremony.
- Undemocratic: what you call any otherwise democratic action that results in you not getting way such as public protests in the form of sit-ins, banner placements and signed letters.
- Intolerant: what you call any form of disagreement with your group by a usually smaller group that lacks the social, political and economical resources that is a requirement for the privilege of practicing tolerance.
Nothing new really, but I enjoy pointing out how they brazenly redefine and misuse terms to persuade listeners/readers that they’re the ones in the powerless position despite the actual facts one can easily learn about their respective groups.
For example, how does one go about “censoring” and being “intolerant” of a group that self-reportedly accounts for 90 to 95 percent of the country’s population and 1/6 of the world’s population (somewhere around six billion) as members?
Especially when that group’s seat of power is a independent city-state, ruled by an elected monarch, that has it’s own security force and is recognized throughout the world as a national territory which allows it to operate in the same manner that recognizedly countries (ie, Canada) operate?
It’d be like trying to climb Mt. Everest in a bikini with no supplies at the height of the Himalayan winter.
Pope Benedict refuses to fire rapists, encourages prayers instead
Yes, you read that right. The pope has essentially refused to enact any policies that will, at the very least, make the Catholic church less friendly to sex predators. Instead he’s chosen to state that Catholics need to pray for deliverance from the rapists in their midst. They’re also to pray that their god will show “mercy” to the victims of those rapists.
The pope asked Roman Catholics to pray for the “mercy of God for the victims of the grave situations caused by the moral and sexual conduct” of clergy members in daily prayers of penance and purification, The Times of London said Monday.
Church leaders at the Vatican said each parish or diocese shall designate a person or group to conduct daily and continuous prayer services to cleanse the church of the scandal.
I’m no fan of the Catholic church, but this is a new low even for the Pope. He’s the goddamned leader of the church and claims to be a leader for all of humanity and he can’t bring himself to fire fucking rapists? It boggles the mind. Why do people keep looking up to this man? He’s such a flaming hypocrite it’s almost impossible to look at him without going blind from the brightness of the flames.
