"To All The Popes I've Loved Before..."
Pope John Paul died a couple of months ago, and I was astonished by how the media and people in general responded to this guy dying. I would be considered Christian by birth, but not by faith… so to me, all this whoopdidoo was completely unnecessary and quite frankly it was all shoved down our throats. I know that there are a metric shit-load of Catholics out there in the world, and that’s great for them, but keep in mind that I’m not. I could give a flying crap about the Papacy, and I would rather have the news networks that I have to pay to watch show a little more than 24 hour coverage of a corpse! What exactly is this man’s relevance in the world that we live in today, other than to encourage others that using a frickin’ rubber is a sin (think about the AIDS pandemic, and how it has spread so extensively in countries such as Thailand and the entire African continent, and the large number of African Catholics and Coptic’s that strictly adhere to the dogma that is taught to them) or that two men shouldn’t lay together in greasy, sensuous congress (I threw that in just to get homophobes to squirm a little in their seats).
This is one of those things that in particular irritates me more than severe case of chafing induced by wearing a pair of corduroy jeans that are a bit too tight on a hot day. This country may be largely Christian, but not all of us are… so I feel that the whole “Death of the Pope” media extravaganza is an imbalanced representation of America’s views. His death was viewed with the grandeur of the death of an actual World Leader, which he wasn’t. He was a little man given bogus authority over a sea of sheep-like followers who truly believe that he has God on speed-dial. How can any rational Human Being think that this guy – whom I can guarantee you is chemically and biologically no different from you or I – is so damn important? He’s like the Queen of England, but unlike the Queen he actually talks and people actually listen to him! Next up in the line is the new Pope, Benedict XVI (why do these idiots give themselves new names, anyway?) aka Joseph Ratzinger who was once a Nazi Youth, for Christ’s sake!
Most people know that the Catholic Church went out of its way to not get involved in the Holocaust and was once not opposed to the slave trade when it came to largely Catholic countries, such as Spain and Portugal, but openly condemned owning slaves in public forums. We also know that many of the present denominations of Christianity exist solely because of the many layers of corruption of the early incarnation of the Catholic Church. Lutherans, Episcopals and the like are, in reality, not all that different from your run-of-the-mill Catholics when it comes to ceremony and tradition. But, that doesn’t mean that the news organizations should go out of their way to make such a garish and ostentatious display of the death of a leader of a religious group. Did we have a round-the-clock series of coverage of the death of Yasser Arafat? How about Ronald Reagan? Oh, that’s right… they had the whole “Reagan World Tour” of his corpse for five days… my bad. You see, as much as I didn’t like either of the previous two men that I mentioned earlier, they were at least leaders in one capacity or another.
The Pope is the same as the Queen of England; but instead of being a literal figure of authority, he a leader of spiritual matters, a figurehead for others to look up to. How many normal people can say that they had a meaningful conversation with the Queen or the Pope? Not many, unless you include all the media hype-men that are constantly writing reports and taking filmed interviews with them to keep people thinking that somehow these two people still have any relevance in today’s world. Think of the Pope as the king of Catholicism, and it’s the 21st Century; I think it’s time for what the Republicans would call a “Regime Change”. Time for the Catholic Church to move on from making others feel inferior and ashamed for being who they are and be more progressive. I mean, do you really need an old man telling you that contraceptives are bad in a time when, by simply using a satellite you could count the hairs on the top of his head and send him an e-mail about his liver spots? I don’t think so, either… time to move on.
This is one of those things that in particular irritates me more than severe case of chafing induced by wearing a pair of corduroy jeans that are a bit too tight on a hot day. This country may be largely Christian, but not all of us are… so I feel that the whole “Death of the Pope” media extravaganza is an imbalanced representation of America’s views. His death was viewed with the grandeur of the death of an actual World Leader, which he wasn’t. He was a little man given bogus authority over a sea of sheep-like followers who truly believe that he has God on speed-dial. How can any rational Human Being think that this guy – whom I can guarantee you is chemically and biologically no different from you or I – is so damn important? He’s like the Queen of England, but unlike the Queen he actually talks and people actually listen to him! Next up in the line is the new Pope, Benedict XVI (why do these idiots give themselves new names, anyway?) aka Joseph Ratzinger who was once a Nazi Youth, for Christ’s sake!
Most people know that the Catholic Church went out of its way to not get involved in the Holocaust and was once not opposed to the slave trade when it came to largely Catholic countries, such as Spain and Portugal, but openly condemned owning slaves in public forums. We also know that many of the present denominations of Christianity exist solely because of the many layers of corruption of the early incarnation of the Catholic Church. Lutherans, Episcopals and the like are, in reality, not all that different from your run-of-the-mill Catholics when it comes to ceremony and tradition. But, that doesn’t mean that the news organizations should go out of their way to make such a garish and ostentatious display of the death of a leader of a religious group. Did we have a round-the-clock series of coverage of the death of Yasser Arafat? How about Ronald Reagan? Oh, that’s right… they had the whole “Reagan World Tour” of his corpse for five days… my bad. You see, as much as I didn’t like either of the previous two men that I mentioned earlier, they were at least leaders in one capacity or another.
The Pope is the same as the Queen of England; but instead of being a literal figure of authority, he a leader of spiritual matters, a figurehead for others to look up to. How many normal people can say that they had a meaningful conversation with the Queen or the Pope? Not many, unless you include all the media hype-men that are constantly writing reports and taking filmed interviews with them to keep people thinking that somehow these two people still have any relevance in today’s world. Think of the Pope as the king of Catholicism, and it’s the 21st Century; I think it’s time for what the Republicans would call a “Regime Change”. Time for the Catholic Church to move on from making others feel inferior and ashamed for being who they are and be more progressive. I mean, do you really need an old man telling you that contraceptives are bad in a time when, by simply using a satellite you could count the hairs on the top of his head and send him an e-mail about his liver spots? I don’t think so, either… time to move on.
posted by Todd Tobin at 7:59 AM
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