OK, let’s close some tabs.
First off, let’s start with our old friend, the head Inquisitioner, Pope Benedict.
It appears he’s been a naughty fellow.
A BBC documentary has exposed that Pope Benedict XVI, aka Cardinal Ratzinger, played a leading role in a systematic cover-up of child sex abuse by Roman Catholic priests.
In 2001, while he was a cardinal, he issued a secret Vatican edict to Catholic bishops all over the world, instructing them to put the Church’s interests ahead of child safety.
The document recommended that rather than reporting sexual abuse to the relevant legal authorities, bishops should encourage the victim, witnesses and perpetrator not to talk about it. And, to keep victims quiet, it threatened that if they repeat the allegations they would be excommunicated.
You don’t have to take the word of “bsalert.com” for it, though, you can go right to the BBC documentary in question.
A transcript is online, and at least at the time I’m typing this you can click through from that page to watch the actual documentary. (Click the “Watch Sex crimes and the Vatican” link at the right under the VIDEO AND AUDIO NEWS heading.)
And do remember, of course, that when his Pope-osity was a cardinal, he was the top dog at the Congregation for the Doctrine Of The Faith. (A.k.a. “The Inquisition”). And what was the raison d’etre of that august body again? Well, according to the Vatican it is “the duty proper to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is to promote and safeguard the doctrine on the faith and morals throughout the Catholic world”. So, we can only conclude that the strong-arm men who arrange the protection of pedophiles are actually promoting and safeguarding morals in the eyes of the church. Me… I’m not surprised.
(PLUS: Special bonus Pope comedy.)
Did you see that list of the top 100 quotes from Fundamentalists writing on message boards? It’s been circulating around the Internet for a couple of days, but I’m on the other side of the world, so it took me a while.
I don’t recommend trying to read the whole thing at once, but rather I think you should just leave a window or tab open to it, and then come back to it every now and then for a little blast of ignorance and insanity.
Here, I’ll quote a couple of my favourites from early in the document:
One of the most basic laws in the universe is the Second Law of Thermodynamics. This states that as time goes by, entropy in an environment will increase. Evolution argues differently against a law that is accepted EVERYWHERE BY EVERYONE. Evolution says that we started out simple, and over time became more complex. That just isn’t possible: UNLESS there is a giant outside source of energy supplying the Earth with huge amounts of energy. If there were such a source, scientists would certainly know about it. [emphasis added]
Everyone knows scientists insist on using complex terminology to make it harder for True Christians to refute their claims.
Deoxyribonucleic Acid, for example… sounds impressive, right? But have you ever seen what happens if you put something in acid? It dissolves! If we had all this acid in our cells, we’d all dissolve! So much for the Theory of Evolution, Check MATE!
Apes are just creatures twisted by Satan to mock Jesus by giving EVILolition credibility. Further more they are naturally lust crazed for human women. Since they are not natural creatures they should be exterminated forthwith as the tools of evil they are.
You’ve got to feel sorry for the poor bastards at Florida Citizens For Science. That’s got to be an uphill battle.
They’re reporting now that no less than 12 school districts in Florida have passed anti-evolution resolutions. One suspects that perhaps the last fundamentalist quote above may have come from a Floridian school councillor or something.
I’m sick of pretending this is anything less than barbaric in this century. Let’s just pretend I made a bunch of witty references to Inherit The Wind, and move along, shall we?
But, if your head didn’t explode reading quotes above, you should take a pass over the comments on that posting. Look especially for the one where the Phd candidate has kindly sent a letter to one of the councillors explaining why his comments on the nature of evolutionary theory are wrong, which she quotes along with his (ALL-CAPS) reply. Yeah, I’d want that guy deciding what my kids should learn. <Shudder>
OK, seriously, is a slow moving symbol “too worldly“?
Really?
What does that even mean?
Hmm. “Worldly: of, relating to, or devoted to this world and its pursuits rather than to religion or spiritual affairs”.
For the life of me I can’t see how that could be construed as applying to the sign, except in a way that would also apply to the buggy. And clearly they don’t have a problem with the buggy.
Religious people are weird.
And finally, the latest in the “Holy Roaring Bald-Headed, I really can’t believe that Huckabee is a serious contender for the Republican nomination” sweeps, we have this little bit of joy:
“[Some of my opponents] do not want to change the Constitution, but I believe it’s a lot easier to change the constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God, and that’s what we need to do is to amend the Constitution so it’s in God’s standards rather than try to change God’s standards,” Huckabee said, referring to the need for a constitutional human life amendment and an amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman.
(Oh, and in case you were wondering, I will probably make fun of this later, but let’s not even give Scientology the minimal dignity that would come from acknowledging it as a religion. I’ll do a post on “goofy scam bashing” later.)
