Pope opens mouth again

[DMB]

and as usual, nonsense emerges:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article5923927.ece

In his first public comments on condom use, the pontiff told reporters en route to Cameroon that Aids "is a tragedy that cannot be overcome by money alone, and that cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which even aggravates the problems".

Pope Benedict has previously stressed that the Roman Catholic Church is in the forefront of the battle against Aids. The Vatican encourages sexual abstinence to fight the spread of the disease.

I'm not sure what the pope is supposed to be an expert in, but it can't be science or statistics.

[Uthgar the Brazen]

Aids is cheating. If you're about deaf, you shouldn't try to fix what dog gave you.

[RBH]

Man, that church goes past dogma into deep criminal stupidity. Has anyone made any estimates of the number of people who have died of AIDS on account of the Catholic Church's opposition to condom use? Given some estimates of compliance, effectiveness, and populations an estimate should be possible.

[Ray Moscow]

Here's an idea: massive lawsuit against the Vatican in multiple countries for the massive harm they cause through misinformation like this, take a large portion of their vast wealth, and put it into AIDS prevention/treatment efforts.

And refuse visas to these bastards. Build a Gaza fence around the fucking Vatican, for that matter.

[Lisa0315]

Would that really work?

[Ray Moscow]

Would that really work?

Well, the "Gaza wall" is a probably a bit impractical. ;)

I think these guys ought to be held accountable for the misinformation they spread. It costs lives, possibly many thousands of lives.

[Brianna]

Why should the Nazi Pope be any better then the rest?

[David B]

The Times has a number of articles on this today.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article5927921.ece

Many theologians and clergy argue now that this issue has done more than any other to undermine the authority of the Holy See.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article5927964.ece

The Pope’s comments look likely to create further division in a church racked by disagreements on numerous issues from gay rights to Holocaust denials.

A senior lay Catholic, who asked not to be named, said: “It is very hard to be a Catholic nowadays. We are meant to be following the Lord.”

He said that he felt as ashamed now as he had when the mother of a nine-year-old girl who had become pregnant with twins after being raped by her stepfather was excommunicated when she allowed doctors to abort the babies. The doctors were also excommunicated, but the stepfather suffered no penalty from the Church.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article5927208.ece

What came next was the shocker. According to the Pope, condoms “can even increase the problem”. Talking to journalists en route to Cameroon, he did not back this up.

I've worked with HIV prevention data for more than a decade, and I have found nothing to support this except a claim by William Bennett, a former Secretary of Education in the Reagan Administration, who once pointed out that condom use was higher in communities with higher HIV prevalence - clear evidence that condoms aggravate the epidemic. Similarly, more people use treated bed nets in Lagos than in London, and Nigeria has far more malaria than the UK - clear evidence that bed nets spread malaria

The Pope's various attitudes may, as was suggested in another thread, lead to a Catholic Church that is more fanatical and hard-line.

But I'm pretty confident that it will also be much smaller, as more and more Catholics find their shame stronger than their faith.

If any good comes out of this papacy, the moving of many people out of the church is where it lies, IMV.

David

[Anne]

or another split to form a liberal and science friendly church.

And, yes, Bri, I think many people thought that the popes would continue to move towards reason, as they had for a half century. Ratz is scary.

[BioBeing]

I'm not sure what the pope is supposed to be an expert in, but it can't be science or statistics.

Theology. Making unsupported assertions that are countered by science and reality are expected, nay even encouraged. The wackier the better it seems.

[Ray Moscow]

Theology. Making unsupported assertions that are countered by science and reality are expected, nay even encouraged. The wackier the better it seems.

The Benedictine abbey near here publishes some of his pre-pope theological writings. They said that they sell very well now that he's the grand pubah (or rather, "pope").

Napoleon III and family are buried there, too, which is more interesting.

[Mediancat]

Would that really work?


I read a Ben Bova story once where a family sued the Pope -- being God's representative on Earth -- for an earthquake that destroyed their home -- an earthquake being an act of God, after all.

A matter of time before someone tries it in real life.

Rob

[Mediancat]

Theology. Making unsupported assertions that are countered by science and reality are expected, nay even encouraged. The wackier the better it seems.

I'm waiting for Galileo to be unforgiven any day now.

Rob

[DMB]

I'm waiting for Galileo to be unforgiven any day now.

Rob

At the very least, they will never apologise for what they did to Giordano Bruno.

[DMB]

This is good. At least people are no longer pussyfooting away from criticising the old fool.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article5936960.ece

In a passionate interview on French radio, Roselyne Bachelot, the French Health Minister, retorted that the Pope “proffered a monstrous scientific untruth” and was doing a disservice to African women, who already have “trouble making the condom that can protect them acceptable”.

Eric Chevallier, a French Foreign Ministry spokesman, added: “While it is not up to us to pass judgment on the doctrine of the Church, we consider that these statements endanger public health policies and the imperative to protect human life...

...Alain Juppe, a former French Prime Minister, was quoted by French television as saying that Pope Benedict showed a lack of understanding that verged on the autistic. “This Pope is beginning to pose a real problem,” Mr Juppe said.

[Ray Moscow]

Good.

I posted a link to that article on the Dark Side (TR).

[DMB]

A nice quote by Jon O'Brien President of the US-based Catholics for Choice, also in The Times:

It took the church hierarchy 359 years to stop continuing the line taken by their predecessors on Galileo. We hope that this error does not take so long to change.

[Moriah Conquering Wind]

The real tragedy being that those educated enough to recognize the bullshit in this don't HAVE to rely on the RCC to provide charitable aid to address the problem in the first place. It would be the poorer nations, with less stable education levels and large segments of their populations entirely uneducated, even illiterate, who must rely on the charity of outside groups and orgs to help bring modern medical assistance to them, and for the RCC to put itself in a position where it becomes a suckling tit and then refuse to give milk just fucking blows. We need to get some secular orgs in there fighting these battles -- or hell, even some of the SANER sectors of churchianity to counterbalance this DANGEROUS twaddle and deliberate DISinformation.

[DMB]

Impeach the Pope!

http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/guestvoices/2009/03/impeach_the_pope.html

...I am a Catholic and the idea that such a man is God's spokesperson on earth is absurd to me...

...Misogyny may not be "the Church's one foundation," but it is a major part of the base on which it was constructed.

It should be obvious that the sin in an over-populated world is not attempting to control birth, but attempting to control birth control.

[DMB]

Another quite funny attack on the pope:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/hugo_rifkind/article5941258.ece

Is it so hard to become a Pope?
The people at the top of religions don't seem, well, very competent

Infallibility aside, maybe this Pope just isn't all that good. At popery, I mean. At generally poping about ... Frankly, he's starting to look like the most hapless religious leader since, well, the Archbishop of Canterbury...

...The talent pool, is my theory, is getting shallower. How hard can it be, nowadays, to reach the top of any given religious tree? Professionally speaking, I mean. In career terms. Harder, say, than becoming a junior government minister? A middle-ranking film star? The manager of a national football side? Surely it's considerably less hard than becoming the chairman of the Royal Bank of Scotland, and they'll evidently let any old moron do that. Keep your head down, remember not to be notoriously gay or openly married (depending on your flavour), and the field must thin out pretty fast. Nobody even minds if you used to be a Nazi.

[Moriah Conquering Wind]

Fuck the Pope. Especially Ratzinger, the fucking neo-Inquisitioner. We should all pitch in and send him a fat roll of duct tape with instructions how to apply to lips. That might fix the problem of him opening his mouth.

"Priests are made of brick with gold crosses on a stick." -- Grace Slick. :D

[Seven Popes]

I'm a completely lapsed catholic, but I had a friend who delighted in breaking the news that the new pope was a (former) Nazi. I facepalmed, and muttered something like "oooer, lovely", to which he noted, in way of consolation I guess, "at least he's not a kiddy buggerer". Yeah, at least not that, yet. At least he generating lapsed caths, and not prolapsed ones.

[tjakey]

I don't know why anyone would think that the pope is any less a clown than any US TV preacher. They all peddle the same snake oil, and many make a good living while doing it. The pope lives in a palace, has all the slaves he needs to attend to his daily chores, eats and drinks well, rides around on a private airliner and limos, meets Heads of State, is (in fact) the Head of State of his own little nation (That has to be a good gig!) and I'm sure can get around the "celibacy" thing any way he wants.

He may play the fool, hell he may be a fool; but he sure lives well. And all of his holdings are tax exempt. How good a con job is that?

[David B]

The Lancet has gone on the attack.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7967173.stm

One of the world's most prestigious medical journals, the Lancet, has accused Pope Benedict XVI of distorting science in his remarks on condom use.

It said the Pope's recent comments that condoms exacerbated the problem of HIV/Aids were wildly inaccurate and could have devastating consequences.

The Pope had said the "cruel epidemic" should be tackled through abstinence and fidelity rather than condom use.

A BBC correspondent says the Lancet's attack was unprecedentedly virulent.

David

[DMB]

Latest development:

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/03/28/pope.condom.attacks/index.html

Thousands have pledged to send the pontiff millions of condoms to protest the controversial comment he made to journalists as he flew to Cameroon last week...

...About a dozen Facebook groups have sprang up, mostly from European countries, criticizing the pontiff.

"The clergy aren't supposed to have sex at all, but they are free to tell people how to conduct themselves? That's like a girl who wears no make-up as the CEO of CoverGirl," one member posted on the page, "Condoms for Pope Benedict XVI."

"It frightens me that a man who has devoted his life to moral guidance ... and is undeniably a learned, intelligent man can be at the same time so narrow-minded, bigoted and irresponsible," posted another person on a different page.

All very nice, but I wish they would instead donate to reproductive health programmes, which are always underfunded.