Catholic Leadership Continues To Make Friends

Can you really blame him? They told you guys again and again to stop using condoms and you keep rejecting them. I hope you're happy with yourselves. No cardinal Footinmouth for you!

And the busiest airport in the world.

Seriously this visit is going to be a disaster.

They've also had to reduce capacity at several of the open air masses the Pope is holding because no one is buying tickets.

It's already a disaster. On top of the millions it is costing, they are charging people £25 to attend. A great many people I know desperately want to go but just can't.

My mother, a devout catholic, wept when she saw Pope John Paul. She couldn't care less about Benedict.

The whole thing is a farce.

This is as good a place as any to link to this

His 'third world' comments are referring to our multi cultural society, so he's not just an idiot, but a racist idiot?

It makes your blood run cold. There was a very public incident in the town I grew up and it really shook the community.
I remember being very young, but old enough to understand what had happened. Utterly chilling.

Oh my god, the Vatican got Mike's Pants!

Mike! Miiiiiikkkkkeee!!!!!!!

You think Mike would of seen them coming in their multi coloured pyjamas

Reminds me of that Louis CK short about the true purpose of the Catholic church.

"We're very efficient. We get everyone."
"That can't be true. I was a Catholic and nothing happened to me."
"Think back."
"Hmm ... (waits a while) Son of a bitch!"

Thank you for your concern, I successfully fended them off. No one can silence my pants.

I WISH we were rife with aggressive atheism. It makes me sick that the pope gets to come to this country, and instead of being arrested for his part in covering up child abuse he is treated as an honoured guest, and his hate-mongering tour is paid for by public money. Absolutely sickening.

That man needs a slap.

£12m is a lot of money for security, but if it keeps our children safe for a few days then it'll be money well spent.

I'd love to see some examples of this atheist 'extremism'. Did that mean old Mr Dawkins make fun of your invisible sky friend? Aww poor Popey.



I put up a status on Facebook about this whole thing and someone commented "hope you don't get a nosebleed up on the moral high ground". WTF?

We should put that link in the Terry Jones burning the Koran thread to get that baby cooking again!

Atheist extremists don't believe in a heaven in which to get their 72 virgins, so their suicide bombings are pretty lame.

Oh, Emperor Palpatine! You're such a lovable old scamp!

Edit: No, fuck it. I don't want to joke about this. Nazis were extreme atheists, right? So what did the "Gott Mit Uns" and the damn crosses all over their emblems and medals meant? And were not their arguments against the Jews almost exactly the ones the church used against them in numerous pogroms in the Middle Ages? Fuck you Ratzinger, you lying piece of shit. The Nazis were atheists. Fucking lying asshole. When you're someone directly influencing the life and beliefs of millions upon millions of people it is your fucking duty to only speak the truth. It is an absolute moral imperative. Not twisting history to prove your otherwise nonsensical point. Fucking asshole.

Fuck, I'm angry.

Most haunting thing I've seen in a while:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jHqn...ayer_embedded#!

Heartbreaking.

Should have arrested him when he entered the UK. He should live out the rest of his days in isolation, barred from leaving his little micro nation under threat of prosecution. Just because he's a "religious figure" his role in covering up child abuse doesn't merit INTERPOL's attention? How does that work, exactly?

PS And how twisted is it that god's representative on earth was a member of the Hitler youth? Don't even try to make excuses for his membership. If god existed he'd be on Sophie Scholl's side, not on the side of those who kept their mouths shut while human beings were pushed into ovens. It's utterly absurd.

I'm not afraid to admit that got to me.

I've made this point before but while the current Pope was saluting Hitler the previous one risked his life getting people to saftey.

Well, somebody's pissed.

Diplomatic Immunity unfortunately. The Vatican is a seperate nation, and the Dark Lord of the Sith is the man in charge.

We do all our fucking BEFORE we explode, baby.

Pretty sure that can be revoked. If Lethal Weapon 2 taught me anything about international politics and race relations.

I imagine there would be backlash though if you did it to El Jefe.

Well at least we know which miracle they are going to site when they make him a saint.....

.....avoiding blame for the peophile priests.

It's hard to watch but at the same time there's something kind of life affirming about seeing a guy fighting the good fight with that kind of fire and dignity

Ahahahahahaha. Thanks guys. Needed a nice Friday laugh and this was... just the ticket.

Pope's not much of a draw these days.

I wonder why.

Nice editorial, except I then read the comments, effectively ending my will to stay alive.

Maybe he is right about atheism being the same thing as Nazism. He was a Nazi, he should know what he is talking about. I know there are people who say he was a child, its not like he had a choice. He did have a choice about reversing the excommunication of a bishop was a holocaust denier. Fuck' em!

The rather awesome Sir Ian McKellen at an anti-Pope rally. The tshirt is a Photoshop job, but still cool.

I don't care how old and gay he is, I want to marry that man.

And fuck the Pope, seriously. Why are people listening to this crazy old man and letting him drive around in a bullet proof car?

Bwa haha, I love it. That's right, Nazinger, keep telling people that rock is the Devil and Harry Potter sucks. I couldn't be happier that you share my desire to see the world forever turn it's back on the Catholic Church. Good to know agnostics the world over have an ally in a pointy hat

The protest was amazing, I feel bad for anyone who wasn't there, you all missed out. The media is reporting it as 10000 people but the police that were there told the event organizers that they would estimate it at closer to 20000. We were WAY above capacity and they really struggled to fit everyone in at the point where the speeches happened. But because I'm skinny, rude and risked getting run over by a truck, I managed to get right near the front. I was maybe 4-5 people back from the edge of the truck that the speakers were standing on, stood right next to a guy with a camera who I have now realised was filming for the BBC.

I'm still exhausted but it was so worth going along

Lots of great protest signs here:

http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/the-f...-protest-signs

It's clearly not the most clever but the one that said "Go Shit in the Woods" killed me.

I disagree with very little in your post, and my issue is with the broader bigotry towards people of religious faith on the boards, rather than this thread in particular. In retrospect, I was mistaken to have lashed out at this thread, because everything you listed is exactly why I left the Catholic church.

Rath, people are snarky on these boards. They attack each other's opinions. There are certain movies that I think are awful, but I don't post saying that because I know what the reaction would be like. I have real life friends who I can talk about those movies to, who either agree with me or at least can talk about it without nerdraging.

But that doesn't mean I call people around here bigots - I just know my audience.

Just because you have a ~religion~ instead of an opinion or belief about anything else doesn't make you above criticism. If you want people to pat you on the back about how you're going to heaven and you're better than all us sinners then I suggest you find real life friends or another bit of internet where there are like minded people, because it's pretty clear most people around here don't feel that way.

I fucking hate religion. If you think that makes me a bigot, so be it. I call it self defense. If the only difference between me and Christians was that they think there is a god and they believe they're going to heaven, I wouldn't give a shit.

But that isn't how it is. Organized religion is responsible for, in no particular order:

The stoning of women, including rape victims, in Muslim countries
The restriction of women's access to safe, legal abortion
The cover up of the rape of children within the Catholic church
Hatred and discrimination against the GLBT community
Sexual repression and discrimination against sexually liberal people, especially women
The Crusades, 9/11, Witch Hunts, and holy wars world wide
Restriction of sex education and contraception world wide, contributing to the spread of HIV & AIDS in Africa, child sex abuse, and high teen pregnancy rates in the UK & US - particularly via the Catholic church but also through other religions
Interference with sex work, putting sex workers into dangerous situations through bad legislation
Damage to education systems by pushing poor sex ed, creationism and valuing faith above evidence.
Emotional and mental abusive of children through indoctrination, and through allowing bullying of GLBT and non-religious children.

Now lots of people with 'faith' will try to defend themselves. "Oh, I'm not that type of Christian/Muslim/Whateverist so I shouldn't be judged." You know what? I don't care. I don't need to hear it. I've had my rights trampled enough that your thin skin doesn't concern me. If you don't like being painted by the same broad brush, then break off from the lable. Tell your religious leaders that you don't like it, and maybe they'll make some changes. And if they don't - you can still believe in God, and pray, and do all the shit you think you need to do to live forever and be better than anyone else. You can do that without adding your name to the majority that keeps the rest of us down.

Bluntly - I care a lot less about your feelings than I do about children raped by pedophile preists, women dying from lack of healthcare and gay people being executed in Uganda. Your problems don't even fucking rank.

I'm trying to discuss this as articulately as possible with you, unlike some people who just like to make the same points you did because Bill Maher talked about them or you read them on Huffington Post. I like you, I think you are an articulate, passionate person who can often be somewhat scary in your passions, and not in a scary, "9/11 was an inside job" kind of way. When Anderson was effectively calling you a disease-ridden whore who deserved to be raped and murdered in your very educational sex worker thread, I was on your side. I like what you have to contribute around here, and as such, please, don't condescend to me.

There's a difference between snark and bigotry, and and here's a very fine line between attacking someone's religion and attacking someone's cultural background. To attack someone's cultural background, something they may have had very little control over but left an impact on them nevertheless, is bigoted. I'm not talking about religion as a whole. I'm not even talking about "Christianity." In this particular instance, I'm talking about Catholics, though I could just as easily be talking about Jews or Muslims or Mormons or hard-line fundamentalist Christianity. For a lot of these, there's a distinct culture that surrounds them, and it can be incredibly hard for people to break away from internally, even if they externally no longer identify with that religion. That line is what I'm talking about here. To attack someone for their cultural background is bigoted.

I've written in length, at depth, about my history with the Church, including -- why, look at that -- why I left in the first place. ("There are two types of Catholics: practicing, and fallen.") When I was practicing, I was incredibly outspoken about my dislike for Benedict XVI, and I finally left out of my inability to reconcile my passion for human rights, gay rights, social justice, and women's rights with my "faith." I'm not religious. I don't identify with any particular faith, nor do I go to church or temple or a mosque regularly. I'm more of a humanist than anything.

My point, which I went into more detail in the NFL thread, is that for a lot of former Catholics, like myself, who are outspoken against the Church, who are disgusted with what's happened, it is very, very fucking hard to separate who we are as people with our background as Catholics. That shit gets in you, and it don't come out in the wash.

Crikey. You appear to be living inside my head, except I know that I didn't, couldn't write this, as I could in no way express myself as well as you. I agree entirely; it's a very very accurate summation of my feelings and thoughts. Plus: class. Liked it.

I'm what you may call a lapsed Catholic, although that's always been a weird term to me, like my religion (or lack of it) is some sort of library card that just needs to be renewed before I can partake in communion or whatever. I'm never going back to the church. It's archaic, corrupt, and it takes decades, centuries even, before any real change can be enacted. By the time the Catholic Church comes around on gay marriage or women serving in the clergy, we'll be dealing with the idea that aliens from the planet Xygllfhglitz can be married to a human or if they can even join Christianity.

I'm guilty of snark and sarcasm when it comes to religion, that's for sure. The fact is, I feel really great that religion isn't a part of my life. It's like a weight has been lifted. Perhaps if I was brought up in another way, and not raised Catholic since birth, I'd feel differently but frankly the Catholic Church has always been dead to me. Going to church as a kid had all the joy of getting an oil change, without the benefit of your car running smoothly. It wasn't all me, either - maybe it was my particular church but listening to them sing hymns was like a funeral dirge. I still have my morals, my optimistic outlook of the world, my righteous anger at wrongs I see committed, and I don't need the church to be my foundation. It's all me. It feels more honest that way.

Rath, I don't hate religion. I just don't want it. And when people use it to support their bigotry and their hate, to justify their warped thinking, I can't help but call them out on it. Frankly, if more people left the Catholic Church maybe things will change, but people tend to think locally about their own church than the larger picture. "My pastor's alright!" The pastor of the church I went to when I was a kid died of AIDS-related illness in the 1980s. It was a fairly big scandal at my church at the time. But no one would talk about how he got it (although everyone knew) and as a pastor I thought he was a good man and sensitive to the needs of his community even though I was just a kid at the time, and he died in ignominy because of it. That's not a church I ever want to be a part of again. I also had a teacher at my Catholic junior high school who molested children. I had him for science class and I won the science award that year, but I had no idea what kind of person he was until years later, and that he'd been shifted from school to school. I just remember him as a really cool guy who was friendly with me and my friends. It's shit like that, the cover-up, the hiding, that I can't abide, ever.

When my dad died of cancer the church gave me little comfort. They didn't do anything specifically, but at that point, I turned my back on it and pretty much all religion. I'm sorry if my snark has offended you. I just can't comprehend a life with restrictions from some higher being that I can't know about, and I like my life now without it. I wish other religious people could see things like I do. I could easily write a book here about my feelings about the whole thing but I don't have the time, and I hope this clarifies things for you about why I am the way I am about religion.