The Last but One Supper.

One of my many, many personal Monty Python favourites — the Pope and Michaelangelo:

All text © 2009 Gary William Murning

Advertisements

Pissing off the Pontiff.

Oh, dear, it seems that dear old Pope Benedict XVI has gone and done it again — spouting his bigoted, antiquated malevolence, insisting that we need to be saved from a destructive blurring of gender.

‘It was not “out-of-date metaphysics” to “speak of human nature as ‘man’ or woman'”, he said. It came from the “language of creation, despising which would mean self-destruction for humans”.’

Firstly, there are many reasons why it is out-of-date metaphysics to speak of human nature in binary terms. Gender — or sex, if, as I prefer, we’re talking in biological terms — is far more complex than that, and, secondly, to issue a statement which attempts to misrepresent it in this way, throwing in words such as “despising” willy-nilly, isn’t merely irresponsible and unacceptable, it’s evil.

I very much doubt it will be news to my regular readers, but this guy is once again at the top of my 2008 List of Vile Individuals. And as such, I think he deserves a record dedication…

… this one goes out to the ungrooviest dude to ever don a frock and jangle his jewellery, The Deluded of all Deludeds, Pope Benedict XVI. For you, Popey-babes, because I know it’s a personal favourite, I give you, all the way from Greenwich Village — that den of iniquity — The Village People with… wait for it… Macho Man.

All text, apart from quotes, © 2008 Gary William Murning

Pope says world financial system “built on sand” -Times Online

Pope Benedict XVI today said that the global credit crisis shows that the world’s financial systems are “built on sand” and that only the works of God have “solid reality”.

via Pope says world financial system ‘built on sand’ -Times Online.

And, of course, he utters this banal observation surrounded by opulence, no doubt wearing a pretty gold cross around his neck that’s studded with diamonds and rubies and whatnot, the Catholic Church itself worth — what? — trillions? “Works of God?”

Opportunistic and wholly unconvincing. Typically.

© 2008 Gary William Murning

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Madonna makes dedication to Pope

“I dedicate this song to the Pope, because I’m a child of God,” she told 60,000 fans in the Italian capital. “All of you are also children of God.”

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Madonna makes dedication to Pope.

Oh shut up and sing (or should I say lip-sync?), for… erm… Christ’s sake.

Guess Which Airport.

I’m never very good at working out time differences, but I believe that by now Pope Benedict XVI should have landed in Australia. And guess where his plane lands for refuelling… yup, Darwin airport!

Nice.

Anyway, to the real point of this post. The trip is, in effect, a belated apology/damage limitation exercise concerning sexual abuse committed by Australian Catholic priests, and during his flight, he reeled off the usual, by now well practised spiel to reporters about how the Catholic Church has to prevent, heal and reconcile, and then went on to add:

“It must be clear … that being a real priest is incompatible with this (sexual abuse) because priests are in the service of our Lord.”

Ah, so that’s what makes sexual abuse such a bad thing. It isn’t the horrific effect that it has on the abused individual — it’s because it doesn’t fit a priest’s job description and, one assumes, is an offence to the Lord.

It seems to me that these apologies have very little to do with helping the abused. The healing that concerns him most is not that of the victims but of the Catholic Church itself.

Insult piled upon insult. Atrocity upon atrocity. Nothing ever really changes, however much they might like to pretend that it does.