Where do you start? Is it even possible to articulate just how mind-bendingly, face-achingly, skull-fuckingly stupid the Catholic church is, led as they are by the Cretin-in-Chief Ratzinger?
The Pope was reported today as saying “You can’t resolve [Aids] with the distribution of condoms”, and that condoms somehow “increase the problem”. This is nothing new. In 2005, he said “The traditional teaching of the church has proven to be the only failsafe way to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS”. I’d like to see the studies that prove the effectiveness of religion over barrier contraception in fighting HIV/AIDS. He’s heading to Cameroon and Angola, where he’ll possibly ride an all-terrain Popemobile around spreading more words of wisdom. No, sorry, not wisdom. Stupid, dogmatic bullshit. Some 22 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa were living with HIV/AIDS at the end of 2007, 5 percent of the population, with up to 15 or even 25% prevelence of HIV in some countries, and the Pope is worried about a “breakdown in sexual morality”.
The phrase ‘fiddling while Rome burns’ was made for a situation like this, and it is particularly apposite when the fiddle is still being played in Rome while Africa burns. When even condoms aren’t enough to deal with the situation, he’d take them away and leave Africa to protect itself with abstinence and fidelity. Abstinence and fidelity will presumably also prevent mass rape. Abstinence and fidelity will help women who walk for days to be treated for humiliating, stinking fistulas.
It’s a particular talent of the Catholic church that, even in the light of all of the monumental bullshit, persecution, death, cruelty and abuse they’ve been responsible for through the ages, from conquistadors to paedophiles, that they still have the capacity to maintain such high standards of absolute unmitigated shittery. You almost have to admire them.
Posterous
Delicious
Twitter
Vimeo
Flickr
Lastfm
Everything you write is true, but how could he be otherwise? He lives in a bubble surrounded by sycophants who are all the product of the same indoctrination process. The delusions are hard-wired into their poor addled brains. If you were to remove Ratzinger and his ilk, separately, from their environment, and make the live as ordinary Africans do, they’d still be delusional, but relatively harmless. The real scandal is that they’re allowed to continue spreading their lies because of the reverential attitude of world leaders who won’t challenge them, for fear of losing the Catholic vote.
But surely reasonable Catholics must exist, and can’t they respond to this bilge? And is such an irresponsible thing not to be challenged by world leaders on the grounds that it will almost certainly lead to an increase in deaths?
Of course there are Catholics who disagree with the Pope, but I think the difference between Catholicism and Anglicanism, for example, is the emphasis on obedience. If you dissent openly, you risk excommunication – which is what that deranged Brazilian archbishop’s been doling out to everyone involved with the abortion of the 9-year-old rape victim’s twins. Imagine what it’s like for anyone who belongs to a strongly religious family, who chooses to leave his or her religion. You only have to read the testimony of some of the people on Dawkins’ website, as part of the “Out” campaign. Similarly, it’s very difficult, even dangerous, for Muslims to do the same sort of thing. With excommunication, you’re not leaving the church; it’s abandoning you. The disgrace may deter all but the bravest from doing anything to upset the clergy. It’s a form of emotional blackmail.
A significant minority of Catholics pay lip service to the church’s teachings about contraception, but use it anyway. They just don’t admit to it.
Trying to live according to church teaching can be very difficult. Liverpool has a strong Catholic community, and my family were Protestant. Apart from being born in a Catholic nursing home, the first Catholics I had anything to do with were at college. One of my friends, who went to Exeter with me, went to confession every week, and joked that they had to install a loo in there, he spent so long at it. Another friend had a breakdown and was found wandering the streets late one night, stark naked. He could see all the students fornicating, drinking and smoking dope, and I think he desperately wanted to join in, but he was a devout Catholic. It did his head in. It was very sad because he was a sweet boy.
“Reasonable Catholic” is an oxymoron. You can’t be both.
As for world leaders, and their inaction; when it comes to taking a firm stand on ethical issues, they avoid direct criticism of the Pope and the church. I can’t think of any instance of a senior politician openly contradicting his nonsense. George Bush was as bad as the Pope; when he was in power, he stopped US funding for an international sexual health programme because some of the money would have paid for abortions, leaving many of the poorest women in the world without contraception, and many to die in childbirth. If Obama criticises the Pope, even indirectly, it will be a welcome change.
Obama unfroze the international sexual health funding you mention, so an indirect criticism of the Pope could definitely be possible in the future.
Less pressingly, “Ratzinger” sounds like a particularly unappetising KFC burger.