Confused Pope Abuses Childless Couples

Pope Francis. Confused.

Pope Francis: 'The choice not to have children is selfish' - People - News - The Independent

In another astonishingly insensitive outburst, just a few weeks after telling Catholics who had been obeying official Catholic teaching prohibiting contraception and effective family planning that they are wrong for "breeding like rabbits", he has now told childless couples that they are selfish for choosing not to have children.

There is no recognition of the fact that some couples

Is Pope Francis Fit For Purpose?

Pope Francis insists Catholics do not need to breed 'like rabbits' and criticises woman for 'tempting God' with eighth pregnancy - People - News - The Independent

Is Pope Francis up to the job? Does he even understand what the job is?

It's beginning to look like his ever-present public smile is not the smile of an affable, avuncular and kindly old man full of the joy of living, but the stupid grin of a confused and muddled misfit not quite sure what he should be doing. His spontaneous little 'pearls of wisdom' as often as not seem like the thoughtless blurtings of someone who can't keep his silly mouth shut as he lurches about like a theological loose cannon.

12 Questions for Punching Pope Francis

"If my good friend Dr Gasparri says a curse word against my mother, he can expect a punch. It’s normal. You cannot provoke. You cannot insult the faith of others. You cannot make fun of the faith of others."

Pope Francis

An open letter to Pope Francis in view of his proclamation that people who insult religion can expect to be punched.

Dear Pope Francis

I saw your recent statement in Manilla in response the the Charlie Hebdo atrocities in Paris, that people who insult religion can expect to be punched. I am surprised that you seem to be excusing Islamic violence, presumably because you feel solidarity with other religions in the face of growing secularism in Europe, and find it confusing in view of official Christian teaching.

I acknowledge your right to determine Catholic Church policy and dogma in this issue, and I am aware that you have been trying to present the Catholic Church in a more liberal, more tolerant and less bigoted light and that you may even have been trying to instigate some actual reforms yet to manifest themselves, but this statement raises a number of questions which I would like you to answer please:

"Jesus Was Wrong. Punch Your Enemies" - Pope

BBC News - Pope Francis: 'Curse my mother, expect a punch'

In a quite astonishing response to the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris, the Pope not only defended those who use violence to deny others the right to criticise religion but reversed centuries of Christian official teaching, and said that people who insult religion should expect to be punched, just as someone should expect to be punched for insulting someone's mother.

In all matters of morality and theology the Pope is considered by Catholics to be infallible and to speak the words of God to humanity, so we can assume that, according to Catholic dogma, God has changed his mind and now thinks Jesus was wrong when he said:

Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.

Matthew 5:38-39

Pope Francis Just Can't Hide His Misogyny

Lost in translation? 7 reasons some women wince when Pope Francis starts talking - Religion News Service

Poor old Pope Francis just can't hide his misogyny no matter how hard he tries to look like a modern liberal reformer. These seven examples of where his prejudices are showing comes from religionnews.com a site not normally associated with religious criticism.

The former Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina, the son of Italian immigrants, comes from a background and a clerical tradition not normally associated with its liberal progressiveness and

Muddled Pope Tries To Face Both Ways

In one of those excruciatingly embarrassing pronouncements Popes are periodically prone to making about science, Pope Francis today announced that the Big Bang theory and Evolution are both right and that God isn't a magician with a magic wand (so far so good), then proceeded to explain how neither the Big Bang nor Evolution would be possible without a magic god to get them going, presumably by doing magic, with or without a wand.

Addressing the Pontifical Academy of Sciences the Pope announced:

Slapdown For The Supine Pope

BBC News - Catholic synod: Gay rights groups 'disappointed'

Any illusions the 'reforming' Pope Francis may have been under that he is reforming the Catholic Church and bringing it into the 21st-Century by injecting a small dose of humanism into its doctrine were shattered today. The synod of bishops meeting in Rome put him firmly in his place and voted down his paragraph containing the mildest of calls to 'accept' and 'value' the contribution of homosexuals to society and replaced it with a reaffirmation of traditional homophobic Church dogma.

It's All Someone Else's Fault - Vatican

Vatican accuses U.N. panel of sowing confusion

If you're expecting radical reforms in the Catholic Church, especially in its attitude to predatory paedophile priests and nuns, don't hold your breath.

In stark contrast to Pope Francis' protestations of regret and promises of reform with no measure spared to root out corruption and coverups and bring the abusers to justice, the reality is hand-washing that would do credit to Pontius Pilate, weedling excuses that would make a rogue market trader blush, and ducking down behind obscure, strict legalistic interpretations of International Law. Anything in fact

Frankly Bonkers Francis

Guardian Angel; Bernhard Plockhorst (1825–1907)

Licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

I believe in angels, says Pope Francis – and they help you make right decisions | World news | The Guardian

Good news for angels!

Pope Francis has decreed that they now exist again and, according to Catholic dogma, because the Pope once infallibly declared himself to be infallible, this means that, even if they didn't exist before, they do now, just as we know that barnacle geese (Branta leucopsis) became fish that hatch out of barnacles in the Middle Ages and have now turned back into perfectly respectable geese, because the Pope said so.

Likewise, limbo existed as somewhere for the souls of dead babies to go to until it was abolished by papal decree by Pope Benedict XVI in April 2007. Apparently, the souls of dead babies can now go straight to heaven despite being sinners who have never been saved by 'accepting Jesus'. Before the 12th-Century dead babies when straight to Hell to teach them a lesson for being born sinners, according to Augustine of Hippo. After that, because that didn't seem very fair, the Pope had decreed limbo into existence as a sort of half-way house.

Now, despite his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI having come out against the existence of angels,

Vatican Still Avoiding Responsibility For Abusive Priests

Top Vatican figure in row over child abuse comments.

A senior Vatican Official astounded the Australian victims of peodophile priests by telling the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse that the Catholic Church had no more legal responsibility for the actions of its priests than a truck firm has for the actions of its truck drivers.

Cardinal Pell, a former archbishop of both Melbourne and Sydney, was personally appointed to a top job in the Vatican, as head of the finance ministry, by Pope Francis

Vatican Complains About Interference

BBC News - Vatican 'must immediately remove' child abusers - UN

Far from being open and putting the paedophile abuse scandals behind the Catholic Church, like Pope Frankie promised, the Vatican is still putting the interests of the predatory priests and the Catholic Church above the needs of the victims and the need to protect future generations from their predation.

And so the scandal which has seen church membership haemorrhage and the reputation of priests plummet from one of the most trusted members of society to being someone most people would avoid leaving their children alone with, continues to fester.

Is The Pope Calling For Holy War?

Let’s learn to lose our lives for Christ, like a gift or a sacrifice. With Christ we lose nothing!

— Pope Francis (@Pontifex) June 29, 2013

In an astonishingly careless tweet today, and reminiscent of a medieval Pope sending tens or hundreds of thousands of people to commit genocide or die for Jesus in the 'Holy Lands' in a 'Crusade', Pope Francis appeared to be calling the Catholic faithful to holy war and martyrdom!

Cardinal Bergoglio with
Junta leader General Videla

Pope Francis, the former Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina, Argentine-born son of Italian immigrant parents, and first Jesuit Pope, is no stranger to guerrilla warfare. During the neo-fascist military junta's 'dirty war' in Argentina between 1976 and 1983, when Jorge Mario Bergoglio was progressing through his clerical career, an estimated 30,000 Argentinians, the so-called Desaparecidos, were murdered by right-wing death squads working for the junta, as the Argentinian people tried to take their country back from the cabal of neo-fascist army officers who had stolen it, and bring it back under the democratic control of the people.

Screen capture of the tweet. These divine revelations have a tendency
to become Desaparecidos when 'clarified' later.

He is widely thought to have been complicit in, or at least equanimous with, the kidnapping and torture of two Catholic priests, Orlando Yorio and Franz Jalics, in Argentina during this period. Both were later found drugged and semi-naked, five months later. Both had been tortured. Although Franz Jalics, having initially refused to discuss the affair, from his sanctuary in a German Catholic monastery, now (two days after Bergoglio became Pope) denies Bergoglio's involvement, Yorio put on record before his death in 2000 that, "Bergoglio did nothing to free us, in fact just the opposite" (Miroff, Nick (17 March 2013). "Pope's activity in Dirty War Draws Scrutiny". Chicago Tribune (Sec. 1). Washington Post. p. 27.)

One wonders where and when Pope Francis anticipates his devoted followers pursuing this jihad holy war and seeking this martyrdom.

Maybe we'll soon see another hurried 'clarification' from the Vatican such as we saw the other day when Pope Francis went off message and forgot his Catholic dogma, telling the faithful that they didn't need to believe in Jesus any more to get to Heaven because even Atheists could get there provided they did good things. Some people saw the hand of the other Pope, Benedict XVI, who seems far from being a 'Desaparecidos', in that 'correction' 'clarification'.

I notice that he isn't offering unrestricted access to any virgins as a reward, so the Catholic Church doesn't seem to have moved that far out into the lunatic fringes under his guidance, never-the-less, his call to Catholics to be prepared to 'lose their lives for Christ' is surely sinister and extreme.

Strangely, 'His Holiness' seems to have forgotten to mention the fact that another Vatican cleric has been arrested over the Vatican banking fraud and money-laundering allegations which have been rumbling on for many years now, and which resulted in the Vatican's bank card account being frozen by Italian banking authorities last January.

The parallels between the Catholic Church and other Italian-based international criminal organizations, who also tend to have a cosy relationship with neo-fascist groups, are becoming more and more marked. Are we seeing the lead up to a new turf war between two of the world's major criminal gangs - the Christians and the Muslims - over who controls the lucrative income from protection racketeering and farming the peasantry for tithes?

Reference:

The Truth Behind Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Pope Francis: Breaking the Silence, the Catholic Church in Argentina and the ‘Dirty War’; Horacio Verbitsky.

Holy Roman Farce

The Catholic cardinals - that is those who are one rung below the Pope in the Catholic Church hierarchy - are at this moment sealed in the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican to elect/select/choose/have revealed unto them [circle preferred option] a new Pope. This can be a complicated process to follow, so I will try to explain the basic principles.

This election is like no other because they are not, officially, deciding who amongst them is the best person to be Pope but are allowing God to tell them who he has chosen. They don't decide by simple majority voting or even by an agreed majority like seventy-five or ninety percent; it has to be unanimous (but see update below). God sometimes has great difficulty getting his decision through because waiting for everyone to get the message often takes many days. The record is nearly three years ending on 1 September 1271 following the death of Pope Clement IV. During this period three cardinals died and one resigned. In the end, having been sealed in and having had their rations reduced to bread and water, and then the roof having been removed from the Palazzo dei Papi di Viterbo where they were meeting, to force a decision, the sixteen surviving cardinals chose a sub-committee for God to reveal his message to, and they duly decided God had chosen Theoboldo Visconti to be Pope Gregory X. One can only assume God was having difficulty making Himself heard above the din of political in-fighting, back-stabbing and wheeler-dealing.

And that was with just twenty cardinals.

On this occasion, there are one hundred and fifteen cardinals, some of them not even white, but, because of the 'Viterbo' debacle, they are still sealed in and not allowed out until they have all reached a decisi received God's Word, nor are they allowed to communicate with anyone outside except carefully selected staff who have sworn to never breathe a word to anyone about what went on in the 'Conclave'. Conditions are not quite the same as in Viterbo in 1271 however. They will probably have to make do with something a little more substantial than bread and water and the roof of the Sistine Chapel will remain on - which at least preserves Michaelangelo's paintings. I understand they also have chemical toilets, and, one hopes, some means of washing and getting some laundry done, as an over-ripe cardinal is probably not the most pleasant of things to be close to.

The cardinals have also sworn oaths of secrecy - something which has taken up a good deal of the day - to never reveal what was said by whom or how they or anyone else voted. Some might see a special irony in servants of Jesus swearing an oath, when he told them to do so was a sin, but I expect there is some good theology behind it.

Now, it might seem strange that the Word of God is revealed to the world by ballot but apparently there are secret votes every day, and usually two, until God has managed to get his message through. It seems not to be within God's powers any more to simply speak out of Heaven or appear as a burning bush, or in a whirlwind like he used to be able to.

But, having by this process discovered God's will, something magical happens: the Holy spirit instantaneously enters the chosen person and he becomes infallible (see Understanding Papal Infallibility) and able to act as a bridge or 'pontiff' between this world and Heaven, with a direct line to God on all matter moral and ecumenical, in fact, on all matters, since whether they are ecumenical matters depends on whether the Pope er... God decides they are or not.

This devise of having the Holy Spirit descend instantaneously (which incidentally means it travels faster than light, like kingship does when it passes instantaneously to the heir on the death of the monarch) was made necessary because of a rather strange fact. In theory, this Holy Spirit was given to Simon bar Jonah by Jesus when he nick-named him 'Peter' and said he was going to build his church on him. It is the same magical ingredient that the Pope passes on to the cardinals when he puts his hands on their head, and this in turn is passed on to bishops and ordinary priests and is the magic power they use to turn wafers and wine into Jesus with a few spells and special magic hand movements, so the faithful can eat him. However, because the Pope is either dead or has lost faith and chucked in the towel like Pope Benedict XVI did, there is no one to pass the magic on, so it has to come anew from God - which all renders the legendary 'Peter' redundant when you think about it.

Mind you, there is a lot of doubt about the authenticity of the claim that Jesus gave this magic ability to Peter, what with there being no actual evidence that Jesus ever existed or that he was the son of God with plenipotentiary powers to hand out special magic abilities, and in any case, 'Peter' probably means 'father' (possibly of the Roman sect) from the Greek 'Pater', not 'rock' from the Greek 'Petra' (I wonder how many other religions rely as heavily on misinterpretations as the Christian one seems to) and the high probability that the account in Matthew 16:16-18 was added later to boost the Bishop of Rome's claim to be the top boss of Christianity - a suspicion reinforced by the fact that, read properly with the hindsight of history, Matthew 16 makes Jesus out to be both a false prophet and a foolish man.

Because they are sealed in, their only means of communicating that they have reached a decisi heard God's decision is via the smoke from the chimney of the stove they huddle around to keep themselves warm. If there is no unanimity on the ballot papers, God makes them burn with black smoke (because obviously, what with black being evil, the Satanic ballot paper(s) - the ones where the cardinals who heard Satan not God wrote their preference - burn black). When there are no more Satanic ballot papers, God allows them to burn in a non-racist white way to signify that none of them were evil and the cry goes up from assembled nuns and wannabee cardinals 'Habemus Papa' (We have a Pope, in an archaic tongue even more archaic than the rituals we are now witnessing). Just to be on the safe side however, and just in case "God is sleeping" (© 2013 Pope Benedict XVI), someone thoughtfully puts some special powder in the Sistine Chapel so they can ensure the smoke is white when God's voice has been heard properly and they are all sure it wasn't Satan.

To me, the most outstanding and enjoyable feature of all this pomp and ceremony is the way the entire charade is based on mutual hostility and distrust at the top of the Catholic Church:

• The only reason they are sealed in is to stop details of deals being passed outside to backers and vested interests for approval and to stop a splinter-group forming and electing their own Pope as they did in 1305 when we ended up with two Popes, one based in Avignon, France and one in Rome. This followed an eight-month deadlocked enclave.
• The only reason everyone is sworn to secrecy is because they don't want outsiders hearing who voted for who, what was said, what deals were done, what promises were made (and broken), who stabbed who in the back, what arm-twisting went on, and who had what information on others he could use at the right time - while listening attentively for God's decision, obviously.
• The only reason the ballots are secret and the papers are burned immediately, is because no one wants anyone else to know what deals were reneged on, which loser came closest to winning, who had to be cajoled and bullied into relenting and going along with the majority, or what the price of the last to capitulate was. Like a tennis match, the game isn't over until the final point, then it's winner takes all. And because it was 'unanimous', and because the papers aren't even there to be counted, the evidence having been carefully destroyed, no one can later say, "I told you so!"

So we are now witnessing the senior tier, la crème de la crème of the church which purports to be the font of morality and an example to us all of how a good, upright, God-fearing Christian should behave, locked in a power struggle made necessary because they know better than anyone, knowing as only they do what they did to get where they are, that few if any of them can be trusted further than you can throw them. And who are we to disagree?

And the one who floats to the top of the cesspit gets to be Pope.

[Update 13 March 2013] It seems the conclave now accepts a two-thirds majority and that voting occurs up to four times a day. Presumably, God chooses to ignore the papers with Satanic votes on them when they are below a magic number and allows them to burn with a white smoke. It's reassuring to know that up to one-third of cardinals officially can't hear God's voice but go with Satan instead.

Press reports that the conclave is deadlocked between those who think the Catholic Church needs a radical overhaul from the top down and those who see nothing wrong with things as they are, are obviously mere speculation as no one is allowed to talk to anyone about what is going on because they have sworn an oath, drawn up by that distinguished lawyer, Solomon Binding, not to... allegedly.

[Further update]. In a breach with the tradition that God, with a couple of recent exceptions, normally chooses a white European male from Italy to be the next Pope, this time God chose a white European male from Argentina, the son of Italian immigrants to that country. Rumours of his cosy relationship with the Fascist Junta which ruled Argentina while he was progressing up his chosen career ladder seem to have had little sway with God, just as the Nazi Party membership of his predecessor wasn't considered a bar to him becoming God's official spokesperson.

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Papal Bull

Readers of this blog will already be aware that it is read in the Vatican (see As Read In The Vatican). It seems we may already have an answer to the question I raised there. In that blog I pointed out that the Papacy had survived schisms, usurpation by gangsters, corrupt, gluttonous, debauched and homicidally psychopathic popes and allegedly even a female imposter, relatively unscathed, but it had never had to cope with a Pope who suddenly found he could no longer live with the lies and self-deception needed to be a Catholic priest, let alone Pope, and who decided to come out as an Atheist.

In short, how would the Catholic Church cope with the first recorded honest Pope?

If this press release is to be believed we may have our answer, although there are some doubts about its authenticity:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

In a surprise move yesterday, after a day or two reading the figures for the latest defection from the Catholic Church and yet more revelations of abuse by priests and nuns of children in their care and other vulnerable people, his Holiness Pope Benedict XVI, henceforth to be known as Herr Joseph Ratzinger, or Benedict Ultimum to his friends, issued the following edict.

ENCYCLICAL LETTER

NON FUIT MAEA CULPA

OF THE SUPREME PONTIFF BENEDICT XVI

TO HIS VENERABLE BROTHERS THE PATRIARCHS, ARCHBISHOPS, BISHOPS AND OTHER LOCAL ORDINARIES
IN PEACE AND COMMUNION WITH THE APOSTOLIC SEE,
TO THE CLERGY AND FAITHFUL OF THE WHOLE CATHOLIC WORLD, AND TO ALL MEN OF GOOD WILL.

LUDUM CONSUMMATUM EST. FINITUM EST PUERI.

Honored Brothers and Dear Sons,
Health and Apostolic Benediction.

The Supreme Pontiff hereby renounces all claims to moral authority and acknowledges that our claims were fabricated and without foundation, rendering us morally bankrupt. We made these false claims for reasons which were selfish and motivated by greed, a desire to protect our privileges and maintain our hold on the power which we have shamelessly used to put us outside the law and free to act as we pleased, with no accountability to anyone but ourselves.

We now accept that these actions were corrupt and immoral and a gross abuse of power and trust; the acts not of guardians of morality but of corrupt and amoral psychopaths. Accordingly we now accept that our claims to moral leadership were fraudulent. For this we are truly sorry and wish to make ammends.

We wish to make the following apologies to the people we abused throughout history and who suffered as a result of this disgraceful abuse of privilege and power. Our crimes against humanity have been frequent and far too numerous to list so the following is a sample of the major ones. We are no less sorry for all the others.

We are sorry for:

1. Forging a book we deliberately misnamed The Holy Bible by compiling it from carefully selected, edited and amended documents, some of which we knew to be themselves forgeries, from various cults then common in the Eastern Roman Empire, and presenting it as the infallible word of a god.
2. Brutally suppressing all the other cults and destroying their versions of the legends in case they took our followers away, and lest anyone used them to show the myths were the fanciful inventions of cult leaders with vested interests who were competing in a market place for members, and that some of them were frankly bizarre and rendered the entire 'faith' laughably absurd.
3. Inserting wording into the 'Holy Bible' to make it look like a man-god had given his personal authority to the legendary founder of one of the above sects to have the sole authority to speak for this god, and for this protection to be passed on to his successors, so falsely insulating ourselves against the charge of being fallible, and making doubt a heresy.
4. Editing historical records, notably that written by one Flavius Josephus, to make it look like the legendary man-god who gave us this authority had a basis in historical fact.
5. Inventing the idea of eternal pain and suffering for doubt, for questioning the authority of priests and the truth of the 'Holy Bible' and for promulgating the idea that a magic, vindictive, man in the sky was reading even people's thoughts, to ensure unquestioned obedience so making it easier to control people and abuse our power.
6. Promulgating the idea of an evil, malignant, demi-god who we could blame for planting doubt in the minds of people who thought for themselves and for planting inconvenient evidence to fool people, and to turn other people against those who dared to question our authority by threatening them with the stigma of being thought in league with this imaginary 'Satan'.
7. Shamelessly using threats, fear of death, and purpose-built superstitions to control people.
8. Brutally suppressing any dissent and giving ourselves the power of life and death and the right to use torture against anyone who raised questions or objections we found embarrassing or threatening, and so killing many tens of millions of people for our own selfish convenience.
9. Delaying human progress by many centuries by suppressing the development of science for fear it would undermine the superstitions on which we relied and expose the lies we had been telling to the people, whom we had conspired to keep in ignorance, because knowledge and reason were the greatest threats to our power and privilege.
10. Artificially creating a climate of fear when convenient to us by persecuting innocent and defenceless women as 'witches' to give the illusion that we were defending the people from Satan.
11. Encouraging trade in human beings and treating some people as sub-human because it suited the greed of the rich and powerful and the expansionist ambitions of the colonial powers who were facilitating the spread of our cult.
12. Encouraging racism, dehumanization and demonisation of people who subscribe to other cults and who had different labels pinned on them as children, and organizing frequent bouts of genocide, confiscation of property and denial of basic human rights against them on the pretext that we were defending people against the 'evil' we had invented for the purpose.
13. Imposing guilt and fear on children before they were old enough to resist it, so ensuring they remained under our control for the rest of their lives, and accepted their position in life, any misfortune and any abuse we handed out, as just punishment for their unspeakably sinful nature.
14. Promulgating the obscene idea that the ruling classes, who defend our privilege and tolerate our corruption in return, are appointed to their position by the legendary man-god who granted us infallibility and appointed us to lead, and who will punish severely, eternally and unimaginably painfully, anyone who questions his divine right to so appoint our rulers for us.
15. Systematically sucking up the proceeds of their labour from the working people of the world and using it to buy privilege and a comfortable life for the clergy and to further the interests of the Catholic Church, and so helping to keep working people a position of poverty and dependency.
16. Threatening poor people with eternal damnation if they planned their family size and so threatened the supply of large numbers of poor people to be inducted at an early age into the Catholic cult and so threatened this lucrative income stream and the large, poor, dependent population off which the Catholic Church and its clergy lives.
17. Systematically demonising and mentally abusing women who demand equality with men and/or the right to control their own bodies and lay claim to reproductive rights because we found the thought of fifty percent of the people not being under the control of men a threat to our power and privilege and an affront to our institutionalised misogyny.
18. Causing widespread famine, lingering deaths from preventable illness, and large numbers of orphans in the poorest parts of the world by lying to them about condoms and telling them that their use would result in an eternity of unendurable pain and suffering, just to ensure the continuing dependency of the people on the 'beneficent' clergy who help to keep them that way.
19. Systematically using our power and authority over people to abuse them physically, sexually and psychologically and then shamelessly using the guilt we had inculcated them with to ensure their silence whilst we protected their abusers and gave them access to more victims.
20. Lastly, we apologise to humanity for inventing the notion of Hell in order to justify creating it here on earth for most of the last two thousand years, to create the conditions in which we could wield unfettered power over people the better to serve our limitless greed and ambition.

The vast assets of the Vatican and the world-wide Catholic Church will be donated to the United Nations for promoting peace and understanding between all peoples and for the relief of poverty, famine and disease throughout the world.

Given at St. Peter's, Rome, on the 7th day of February, the feast of St. Ron the Protection Racketeer, in the year 2013, the seventh of Our pontificate (my how tempis fugit!)

Benedict XVI

END

I understand this was written on the side of a large pig which is currently flying round the world, spreading the good news that at last the Catholic Church has discovered the liberating effects of intellectual integrity.

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As Read In The Vatican

Closet Atheists can be hiding just about everywhere!

Just imaging being Pope and suddenly realising it's all been a lie. What would you do? Give up all that wealth, adulation and power, and the servants who come with the post, or would you be honest to yourself and to everyone else?

The Catholic Church had survived schisms, multiple papacies, corrupt gangsters, debauched gluttons and thieves, violent psychopaths, murderers and even (allegedly) a female imposter Pope, but could it survive an honest Atheist Pope, or would world-wide Catholicism shatter and crumble if an honest Pope told the world that he had come to realise that the 'faith' was founded on lies and that Jesus was just a myth based on Bronze-age superstitions and stories concocted for political purposes.

Or is an honest Pope just a dream too far?
[Update] A couple of weeks after I posted this, Pope Benedict XVI announced his resignation, citing, amongst other things, "hard questions of faith". I'm sure it must have been a coincidence...

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