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Pope Benedict XVI, visiting the Fatima miracle site of 1917, has left all accountability behind. Earlier this week, he still admitted there was "sin within" his sorry excuse for a church. Yesterday, not so much. The two greatest threats, "insidious and dangerous" no less, were birth control and same sex marriage. That's what he told thousands of assembled health workers.
If I fail to address his words point by point and with reasonable arguments, it is because we have heard these lies so many times before. It is one more attempt of the Roman-Catholic upper clergy to channel the hate against child rapists with a froc, into hate against sexual minorities and women who insist on using a condom. If people believe that a rubber preservative and loving committed couples are somehow more dangerous than a child rapist abusing his position of authority, I question their ability to so much as prefer one set of crayons to the next.
Worse than that is, the pope is launching that lie in front of the Portuguese (Fatima is in Portugal). Portugal is going through some rough times at the moment, financially. According to Niall Ferguson (British historian), intolerance to minorities increases in times of economic volatility. So the pope is essentially launching a hate campaign when the Portuguese are vulnerable to such words. And the victims will be the LGBT community.
The fact he is telling this to health workers makes it even more sick. It could set back women's emancipation by decades, if these workers decide to take a "principled" stand on condoms.
It just gets worse and worse. This is a deliberate attempt by Benedict to continue the "History of Exclusion" - Foucault's thesis that the Western Church (and societies) of the Middle Ages has defined itself primarily by excluding others. The "Pantzerkardinal" just plows on in this track. And just as his many predecessors, he does so "in the name of God", as he is "the Representative of God on Earth".
Full disclosure: I am a Calvinist, so I have been brought up to grind an axe against popes. But to my opinion, anyone truly inspired by God would remember God's words on "what you do to the least of my brothers..." and than think of the children. He would remember what happened to the gay people in the thirteenth century, what happened to the Jews in the fourteenth through 20th century, and make very sure his words could not be constructed to visit some such thing on the gays again. He would remember Jesus told Martha to get out of the kitchen, instead of into it, and open ecclesiastical positions to women. More than anything, he would realise that obsessions about sex are not an excuse for sexual predators - but rather the very thing that makes them think of sex all the time.
May God forgive you, blaspheming Benedict, for you have taken His holy name in vain when you spoke those "insidious and dangerous" words about women and sexual minorities. No voice in Heaven is inspiring your opinions. Take them back to wherever you found them and ask for a refund.
As for me, I'm just going to cry a lot. I've had it with remaining calm and dignified.
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