As the old saying goes, the best defense is a good offense, which probably explains why the Catholic Church is being as offensive as possible in circling the wagons around new Pope Ratzo the First.
How else to explain this letter in today's Globe and Mail from Lukasz Petrykowski, the president of the Toronto Chapter, Catholic Civil Rights League? (And no jokes about oxymorons here -- it's too easy and you wouldn't get any bonus points for it.)
You can't read the entire letter at that link so I'll just reproduce the good parts.
All Catholics and people of goodwill should celebrate the election of Pope Benedict XVI.
Translation: If you're not a Catholic and you're not celebrating, then you are not a "person of goodwill" and should fuck off and shut up. Good opening. Sort of sets the tone for what follows.
As the Vicar of Christ and guardian of authentic Christianity, however, he will unavoidably face the same enmity and malice that his predecessor did.
And nothing says reaching out and reconciliation like telling others that you're right, they're wrong and that your religion is the real thing and theirs sucks canal water. At least Petrykowski's being consistent -- rather than bouncing all over the place, he's just uniformly being a jerk.
Petrykowski continues:
The teachings of the Catholic Church are countercultural. Thus it comes as no surprise that many individuals and groups espousing the prevailing cultural tenets of nihilism, relativism, materialism and hedonism will reject Pope Benedict XVI and continually cast aspersions on theological and moral orthodoxy.
And, as we all know, nothing says "rejection of hedonism" like the Catholic Church. To paraphrase a well-known rock anthem -- Meet the new Catholic hierarchy, same as the old Catholic hierarchy.
Don't say you weren't warned.
3 comments:
I think that the catholic church should have modernized the selection process for the new pope. How about something hip and modern like say "Vatican Idol"? See, you get a handful of high ranking guys from the vatican, one easy going, one who's middle of the road and one who makes nasty comments to act as judges. Then, you do a cattle call among all the catholics in the world and they audition and do what they think is a good job of presenting their version of being a pope and display some of the skills required, singing, dancing, waving, being irrelevant etc. Then the ret of the catholics get to vote for them and blah blah blah until there is but one victor who is declared the new pope. Think of the TV revenues they'd rake in.
You know, it's really richly funny to see an organization that covered up child molestation by its members for DECADES try to give any moral advice whatsoever.
People who molested kids and the people who covered up for them still have jobs, as well as being out of prison. I guess they've been absolved by the Church for their sins.
That's why the Church is against contraception - they need an endless supply of children to rape.
It's worth noting exactly how stupid and uninformed the letter quoted really is. Nihilism and relativism are mutually exclusive; and neither is (entirely) compatible with materialism and hedonism -- which are also mutually exclusive with each other. Citing the four as a class is flatly unintelligible. And these are supposed to be the four tenets that show the "secular world" is going to hell in a handbasket?
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