Pope Benedict XVI: "The Stench of Evil"

The Irish are rightfully angry at the Pope's newest apology for his priests raping their children – his holiness seems good at abject grovelling, but the Irish have noticed that the Pope forgot to kick any of his priests and bishops in the ass. The Irish might understandably want a few priests kicked forcibly out the door, but the Pope apparently forgot.

But if the latest allegations against the Pope himself prove true, things are going to get mighty interesting. It looks like the vicar of Christ on Earth himself was responsible for protecting the very priests who went on to commit some of these terrible crimes.

Did you know that a priest or bishop can be excommunicated for revealing a sex crime to law-enforcement authorities, but not for raping a child? Think about that: two men show up at the Pearly Gates. "Next! What's your sin?" "I raped a child, but I'm really sorry." "No prob, come on in. Next! What's your sin?" "I turned that last guy in to the police." "You jerk! Sinner! You traitor against Christ's own Church! Get out of here!! GOD WON'T FORGIVE YOU!"

And who do you suppose was responsible for this? Why, Archbishop Joseph Ratzinger, the man who is now the Pope.

Catholics and Scientologists: Two of a Kind

There is a feature article about Scientology in the New York Times, which on the face of it says a lot about the decline of Scientology. The terror they once inspired in reporters has waned, they're hardly more than a paper tiger now.

But the article reminded me of something cool: Catholics and Scientologists have a lot in common. This statement will horrify most good Catholics, who look on Scientology as nothing more that quackery and fraud dressed up dressed up in voodoo pseudo-science religion. (I suppose Scientologists would be horrified to learn that they're really just the new Roman Catholic Church, too.)

What is it that binds these two? They believe that they can tell God what to do, and he'll actually do it. They teach that a priest here on Earth can excommunicate someone, and God will honor it. They actually believe that some guy down here on Earth has control of your fate, that if some church guy declares you a persona non grata, you're banned from Heaven forever, denied eternal life, to either die or go to Hell.

The sheer arrogance of it is stunning. It's an insult to the concept of God.

Followup: 'Holocaust Bishop' is Fired

Some good news. I wrote about the 'Holocaust Bishop', a Roman Catholic priest who denies the holocaust yet was having his excommunication lifted by the Pope. Happily, things are being put right. Bishop Williamson was fired from his post as the head of a Roman Catholic seminary in Argentina.

Sadly, although the Vatican ordered him to repudiate his claims about the holocaust, he is refusing. The BBC quotes the Bishop: "I believe that the historical evidence is strongly against, is hugely against six million Jews having been deliberately gassed in gas chambers as a deliberate policy of Adolf Hitler." Let's hope the Pope takes very strong action indeed to distance the Roman Catholic Church from this man.

Tags: catholic holocaust excommunication christian religion atheism

Pope Makes a Mistake??

His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI is supposed to have a direct line to God ... so how is it that the Pope "did not know about British Bishop Richard Williamson's views" about the Holocaust before lifting the Bishop's excommunication?

Maybe I'm confused, but I always thought the deal with being Pope was that you were God's own spokesman for all matters of Christianity here on Earth. Is birth control moral in God's eyes? Abortion? Eating meat on Fridays? Ask the Pope, and he'll ask God, and the answer that comes back is absolute – it becomes a sin when the pope says it's a sin, and nobody can contradict the Pope. After all, that would be the same as contradicting God himself, right?

If the Roman Catholic Church is trying to maintain this claim, then it's hard to understand how the Pope could rescind the excommunication of an anti-Semitic Holocaust denier. Surely the Pope doesn't approve of Bishop Williamson's beliefs. Which can only mean one of four things:

1. The Pope prayed for guidance, and God tricked him.
2. God hates Jews and wanted a Holocaust denier in the Roman Catholic Church
3. The Pope prayed for guidance, but didn't listen to what God said, or
4. The Pope makes decisions just like the rest of us, using the facts at hand, which are sometimes flawed.

I'd like to think it was #1, because if there is a God he surely must have a twisted sense of humor, given how His world came out.

But, realistically, the more boring conclusion that the Pope is really just an ordinary CEO of a big corporation, and sometimes he gets bad advice from his staff. He makes mistakes, just like the rest of us. And while he's praying, he might be hearing something, but it's just his own brain talking to him.

To Pope Benedict XVI's credit, he did the right thing in the end: He is demanding that Bishop Williamson recant his outrageous claims and admit that the Holocaust did happen, before the Church will lift the excommunication. I applaud the Pope and the rest of the Church's leaders for admitting the error and quickly correcting it.

Tags: catholic holocaust excommunication pope Benedict