Pontificating Pontiff

Pontiff Admonishes Catholics Not to Lose Their Souls to Science

An overreliance on science has made too many Catholics deaf to the teachings of the church, the pope said in a homily that scolded Western European societies for an increasingly secular focus. Faith is needed to combat diseases such as AIDS, he said.

Science is making Catholics deaf to the lies of the church? Well, that is what tends to happen when people become educated. Faith isn't a necessary weapon in the fight against AIDS. It wasn't faith that discovered AIDS. Nor was it faith that discovered ways to prevent the spread of AIDS (because, let's face it, having faith that people will stop having sex is just silly). And faith certainly hasn't been key to combating AIDS; especially in developing countries in Africa where the papacy has resisted allowing the use of condoms, which are, in fact, effective in preventing the spread of AIDS. Technology may not be able to defeat AIDS alone, but technology in tandem with education can. Sadly, for the Pope, faith will play no role in defeating AIDS.

He lamented cynics who considered "mockery of the sacred to be an exercise of freedom."

One man's sacred is another man's punchline. And, like it or not, poking fun at a ludicrous fairy tale is not only an exercise in freedom, but really ought to be mandated.

"What is said about God strikes us as pre-scientific, no longer suited to our age."

Wait a minute! An antiquated superstition treated as an antiquated superstition. What is the world coming to?!

"Social issues and the Gospel are inseparable," the pope said. "When we bring people only knowledge, ability, technical competence and tools, we bring them too little.

The Church brings knowledge?? Since when?

"People in Africa and Asia admire our scientific and technical prowess, but at the same time they are frightened by a form of rationality which totally excludes God from man's vision."

What friggin' planet does this guy live on? The church has "scientific and technical prowess"?? Compared to whom? This is the organization that punished Capurnicus for daring to reveal the scientific and technical truth that the Earth isn't the center of the universe, merely because it went against the church's ego-centricity.

And this nonsense about people in Africa and Asia being frightened by rationality?? I believe psychologists call that "projecting".

"The world needs God. (No it doesn't). We need God. (Only if you're foolish and feeble-minded). But what God? (Great question!)" the pope asked. One of "healing goodness," he said, one who is loving, merciful and whose "vengeance is...a no to violence."

A god whose vengeance is a no to violence?? That doesn't even make any sense. Who's writing this guy's speeches, George Duh'byuh?

Later Sunday, at a ceremony in the Munich cathedral where Cardinal Ratzinger was archbishop in the late 1970s, the pope stressed the accessibility of God.

"He has pitched his tent among us," he said.

Hmm...so that priest in the corner, the one with his hand on an altar-boy and a "tentpole" in his robes, that's god in there?

Instead of the harangues that some expected from the dogmatic conservative, the pope has attempted to offer what he called in a recent television interview the "positive options" of Christianity.

It has taken some by surprise.

Father Notker Wolf, abbot primate of the Benedictine Confederation who ran the St. Ottilien monastery near Munich for 23 years, has known Ratzinger for years and was skeptical when he was elected pope. But Wolf said Benedict had become more pastoral and was promoting a more forgiving image of God.

"For us, God has always been the bookkeeper, writing down all of our sins," Wolf said Sunday, a short distance from where the pope presided over Mass.

"This is the surprise about the pope. He has taken away the fear. He speaks of a God who loves, liberates and does not create fear."

So, aside from that weirdness about "abbot primate" (head monkey at an all-dudes fantasy camp?), how disturbing is it that even just one church leader is surprised that the Pope isn't promoting an angry, vengeful, fearsome god. This is quite the deity these self-loathing masochists have imagined, no?