Pope Ratz wants to 're-evangelize' the secular world

[marmar]

By Jeffrey Donovan


Oct. 12 (Bloomberg) -- Pope Benedict XVI created a new Vatican department aimed at “re-evangelizing” the most secular regions of the globe, including areas of Europe that have become “de-Christianized.”

Benedict issued a papal decree today launching the Pontifical Council for the New Evangelization, which will seek to bring Christianity to those whose spiritual lives have become an “interior desert” amid technological and scientific changes in recent decades, according to the document.

While technology has also brought benefits to humanity, there has been a “worrisome loss of any sense of the sacred,” the pope said in the document.

Benedict, the leader of the world’s estimated 1 billion Catholics, has made fighting loss of faith a key theme of his papacy. He criticized “aggressive forms of secularism” during a U.K. trip last month, and called on Europeans “to rediscover the reasons for faith and hope” last year when he visited the Czech Republic, where religious practice is among the lowest in the 27-nation European Union.

The new Vatican office will employ “all the progress of the science of communications” in a bid to restore religion to the secular world. “My first concern is to get a computer on my desk so that I can have Internet access,” Monsignor Rino Fisichella, the head of the new office, said at a Vatican briefing today.


http://noir.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a2NdaaAHNweI

[Cirque du So-What]

1. I know what to call it: Inquisition II

we all know what a success THAT was the first time around.

[GoneOffShore]

3. You beat me to it.

Ratz can kiss his own ring, because that's where he has his head.

[beam me up scottie]

14. Is that what they're going to call the video game?

And will it have more gratuitous violence than Inquisition 1.0?

[eShirl]

21. obligatory link to Mel Brooks "Inquisition" clip

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5McSEU48Y8

[Liberal Insights]

27. "the Holy Office of the Inquisition"

YOU say "Inquisition". The "Holy" Roman Catholic Church, headed by the "most Holy Father", called it "the Congregation of the Holy Office of the Inquisition" !
And they wonder why the more civilized the world becomes, the less it wants of this bunch of holier than thous. See http://JesusWouldBeFurious.Org/ .

[SpiralHawk]

2. Hey, clean up your own rat-hole and model some actual spirituality for a change

instead of your unGodly institutional Spiritual Imperialism which has historically brought so much hate, intolerance, theft, sexual deviancy, torture and war to the world.

When you can actually DO what you are preaching about, folks might be inclined to give you a listen.

[malaise]

7. +one million

Freaking perfect

[Jackpine Radical]

4. I have a great idea.

Make the priests put their collars on forward and their pants on backward.

[Bigmack]

5. Hey leave the guy alone...

he's only trolling for altar boys.

[Angry Dragon]

6. This coming from a man that wears dresses

and sits on a throne.

Perhaps if he got rid of all the trappings and
really went back to what his god taught
then perhaps many would sit back and
listen to him.

[eShirl]

25. What's wrong with a man wearing a dress or a skirt?

kilts especially -R- sexy

http://www.utilikilts.com/customer/photo-gallery/

[Angry Dragon]

28. Point taken

It is the red shoes then

[stray cat]

8. No one has to listen if they don't want to - just like when we try to convince people to vote dem

[caraher]

9. This has no chance

And it's all his fault, personally. Even if somehow "secularized" nations found a new thirst for the sacred, his own inexcusable role in covering the crimes of priests make his church the last institution people with a sense of right and wrong would turn to.

Put another way, Catholic prods toward single-issue voting are full of lectures about a moral obligation to abhor candidates who fail to denounce the "objective evil" of abortion. What can be more "objectively evil" than covering up for criminals who abuse children? There are no shades of gray here, and by their own logic it would be immoral to support the Catholic Church.

[Bitwit1234]

10. Yep he thinks he might pull more money out of the pockets

of the rich as well as the ones contributing now. Poor guy he doesn't have enough caviar and steak. He doesn't have enough gold plated objects in the church. He doesn't think the church owns enough land and wants to rip it away from the poor. I guess this guy is really really as greedy as he is insensitive. That's one of the reasons I left the Catholic Church. I think that they are mostly all greedy grabber uppers. The take but you hardly ever see anything they give.

[Cassandra]

11. I would say that it's the Pope's life...

that's become a spiritual desert. When the hierarchy becomes more important than caring for the poor and vulnerable, they have lost their way.

[beam me up scottie]

12. WTF are "aggressive forms of secularism"?

Good luck with that. :eyes:

[saltpoint]

15. For my part, I kind of like both aggressive secularism

and passive secularism as well.

I think the entire spectrum of secularism should be valued and practiced, not only in and of itself but especially in response to the Pope's impulse to re-religion the planet up.

hey here, beam me up scottie.

Long time no see, and that's my loss.

Happy Autumn!

:hi:

[beam me up scottie]

19. I like the way you think.

Maybe we could go one step further, turn secularism into the weapon that old paranoid rat fears the most - like a quantum flashlight that can be used to ferret out all the skeletons in the the deepest darkest corners of the Church's closets. :evilgrin:



Hey back and Happy Autumn to you! I've been gone a while and it's heartening to see that sanity and reason hasn't left GD. :hi:

[muriel_volestrangler]

16. In particular, it was telling Catholic adoption charities they had to accept gay adoptive parents

Ratzinger said it was his God-given right to discriminate against gay people, and called the law telling Catholics they have to be fair, just like everyone else, 'aggressive secularism'.

[beam me up scottie]

23. So he's having a fit because he thinks he should be infallible like his predecessors?

"Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest."

~ Denis Diderot

[saltpoint]

13. If they do get internet access, they can start

downloading Frank Zappa albums.

So yeah, it's probably a good investment.

[backscatter712]

17. Just what we need...

[Liberal Veteran]

18. Liberal Veteran wants Pope Ratz to crawl under a rock and stay there.

[Arugula Latte]

20. Funny how the least religious places in the world are the most well off and advanced.

Coincidence? No.

[eShirl]

22. Is the endgame to regain the political dominance the church once held in Europe?

:yoiks:

[krabigirl]

24. Lol...good luck with that one. And just now getting a computer on your desk?

Lol, good luck. Leave us alone..i am so tolerant of Christians until they just wont leave people alone. So what if not everyone wants to be in your club. Deal with it.

[OneGrassRoot]

26. I wish modern technology would lead to RICO laws being...

enforced as it pertains to religious institutions such as the Catholic Church.

Allow people to have their faith -- quit trying to shove it down others' throats, which is what I have experienced with all brands of religious evangelism.

[old mark]

29. He should start by making the clergy trustworthy-get them to stop fucking kids

might be a good first step, then maybe a little concern about the poor and sick rather than the income of the church incorporated...amen.

mark