Sunday 12 April 2009

Darth Ratzinger shows us what is wrong with the catholic church with admirable economy of words:
"We are shocked to see to what levels of brutality human beings can sink. Jesus is humiliated in new ways even today."
Brutality is all around us. There are parts of the world where nobody can feel safe. There are people who lock up and rape their daughters for decades. There are regimes that oppress the majority of the population with extreme, unthinking violence. There are people who seem not to value human life at all and who use suffering as a cold-blooded tool for personal gain. Others rape the planet in various ways, apparently not caring about the implications or the suffering and poverty of future generations. Brutal too is the condemnation to death of an estimated 80 million people from AIDS over the next 15 years on the basis of dubious interpretation of a bronze age work of fiction.

But Ratzinger isn't concerned with human suffering. He's concerned that the lord of all creation, the omnipotent, omniscient master of the universe, might feel a bit sad because people laugh at him. And well they might, with Ratzinger as one of his chief advocates.

Edit: The article also has a typical quote from the Archbishop of York, the equally insane John Sematu:
"[Christians now] have the daily challenge of living by a set of values that the world thinks are mad".
This is very much in the same vein as Ratty. For the most part, nobody thinks that Christian values are mad. The vast majority of people - Christian or otherwise - tend to share them for the most part and even many who don't still seem to regard them as desirable. What we regard as mad is the set of core beliefs Christianity requires, with its magical sky god, pathogenic priestesses, wizards, spells, unicorns, resurrections and so on. The world is starting to recognise that you don't have to believe in these childish fictions to be a moral person. Sematu - as he seems to do every time he opens his mouth in public - is being deliberately disingenuous. He's petulantly creating a strawman, sitting in his palace and pretending to be under attack. You aren't under attack John. You just aren't relevant any more. Don't blame us - isn't it your job to spread the word?

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