Friday, September 08, 2006

The Pope on Line One

Pope Benedict is at it again. Two months ago in Spain, he met with Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero in a quixotic display. He railed against the country's legalized same-sex marriage and liberalized divorce law.

Now he has turned to Canada, apparently in an effort to influence any potential vote to reconsider SSM there. From the Vatican today, he decried the separation of church and state.

As he put it, SSM resulted from "the exclusion of God from the public sphere." He also tried to guilt trip Catholic Canadian MPs and other politicians in saying they gave into "the exclusion of God from the public sphere."

As so many rightwing religious functionaries, he pushes advocacy, even while holding precious that government never interfere with his church. After 25 years as head of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith (the disciplinary arm of the church, formerly known as the Roman Inquisition), Benny just can't stop scolding.

He told a group of Ontario bishops, "In the name of tolerance, your country has had to endure the folly of the redefinition of spouse, and in the name of freedom of choice it is confronted with the daily destruction of unborn children."

He and predecessor Pope John Paul II tried vainly to threaten or cajole world leaders on several political issues. Nearly all their efforts have failed badly.

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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

let him spew, because the joke is on ole man ratzinger, and he knows it. soon he'll be mouldering in his dank vault under some church floor. the flower of love has opened, and there is nothing he can do to stuff it back into the bud. what better symbol of the church's loss of potency in the western world than this hateful old codger scratching and pecking in Canada's dooryard!

massmarrier said...

Great imagery. Thanks for that.

They really chipped away the patina -- or mold -- in retrieving him from the oubliette, eh? God's Rottweiller, as they used to say.

The First World doesn't see to have much use for him and his.