Comments on: Everybody Say His Own Kyrie Eleison

By: Doug

Doug — Wed, 20 Apr 2005 17:20:50 +0000

Nat, nope. Beyond civil debate, I have no obligations to you in this forum.

By: Jack Lake

Jack Lake — Wed, 20 Apr 2005 13:50:25 +0000

Benedict Arnold II

By: Nat Whilk

Nat Whilk — Wed, 20 Apr 2005 13:33:35 +0000

Doug wrote: “Someone who seriously thinks that a plural society is a dictatorship is someone I wouldn’t trust to recognize what color a cloudless sky is.”

So if I google up a list of individuals and groups who have used the word “dictatorship” in a similar manner, you’ll distance yourself from each of them?

By: goesh

goesh — Wed, 20 Apr 2005 12:28:26 +0000

whew! alot of words from so many secular agnostics, but does anyone really know how much money and influence the church really has?

By: Doug

Doug — Wed, 20 Apr 2005 10:14:40 +0000

sd, even B16’s sermon from Monday gets us more than 500 words. And at first blush “dictatorship of relativism” reads a lot like the Rote Armee Fraktion’s 1970s diatribes about “consumer terrorism.” Someone who seriously thinks that a plural society is a dictatorship is someone I wouldn’t trust to recognize what color a cloudless sky is.

By: dsquared

dsquared — Wed, 20 Apr 2005 09:04:22 +0000

Liadnan, thanks. Also, Reuters article on the movement in betting odds, albeit that they appear to think they were speaking to Paddy Power himself!

By: Dave F

Dave F — Wed, 20 Apr 2005 08:55:18 +0000

Few Catholics nowadays follow the church doctrine on condoms and other forms of birth control. And the problem in Africa is not so much that the Church forbids French letters but other factors including, notably, “traditional” African macho, defended as custom.

By: Liadnan

Liadnan — Wed, 20 Apr 2005 08:18:30 +0000

Minor pedant re: dsquared’s comment at 12 above: Paddy Power’s bookmaker on this was actually a woman.

By: dsquared

dsquared — Wed, 20 Apr 2005 07:51:24 +0000

I think a sentence like this out of Ratzinger’s mouth could save millions

Highly unlikely. There are only a couple of hundred million Catholics in the whole of Africa, and it is not obvious from the numbers that the states where the Catholic Church is strong (Congo, Burundi, parts of Nigeria) have higher AIDS prevalence than their neighbours.

By: Chris

Chris — Wed, 20 Apr 2005 04:20:43 +0000

Ratzinger is in fact the spit and image of Boris Karloff in Roger Corman’s The Raven; see
http://images.allposters.com/images/MG/144075.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.digitalhit.com/posters/p/936773&h=425&w=275&sz=58&tbnid=0q9fFxNFEjwJ:&tbnh=121&tbnw=78&start=2&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dkarloff%2Braven%26svnum%3D50%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26c2coff%3D1%26safe%3Doff%26sa%3DG

By: Uncle Kvetch

Uncle Kvetch — Wed, 20 Apr 2005 02:14:54 +0000

In 1986 Ratzinger issued a letter to the Catholic Bishops in which he wrote that homosexuality was a ‘tendency’ towards an ‘intrinsic moral evil’.

That’s the phrase I was trying to think of!
“Intrinsic moral evil.” It was lurking at the back of my brain in shadowy form, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Phew.

Somehow that phrase has stuck in my mind over the years. Maybe it’s because I came out in 1985.

By: adam

adam — Wed, 20 Apr 2005 02:05:08 +0000

nat –
There’s a bit more about Herr Ratzinger’s views on homosexuality here, although still not a whole lot of context:

In 1986 Ratzinger issued a letter to the Catholic Bishops in which he wrote that homosexuality was a ‘tendency’ towards an ‘intrinsic moral evil’. A few years later, in 1992, he rejected the notion of human rights for gays, stressing that their civil liberties could be ‘legitimately limited’. He followed up by remarking that ‘neither the church nor society should be surprised’ if ‘irrational and violent reactions increase’ when gays demand civil rights.

By: Uncle Kvetch

Uncle Kvetch — Wed, 20 Apr 2005 02:04:16 +0000

Crap. The italics end after the first line.

By: Uncle Kvetch

Uncle Kvetch — Wed, 20 Apr 2005 02:03:43 +0000

Is this as hateful as it gets?

At another thread on this site, Katherine helpfully posted the following:

“But the proper reaction to crimes committed against homosexual persons should not be to claim that the homosexual condition is not disordered. When such a claim is made and when homosexual activity is consequently condoned, or when civil legislation is introduced to protect behavior to which no one has any conceivable right, neither the church nor society at large should be surprised when other distorted notions and practices gain ground, and irrational and violent reactions increase.”

It’s a shame when perverts get the shit kicked out of them, because no one deserves that—but really, it’s to be expected, isn’t it?

“Hateful” doesn’t begin to describe it.

By: Ronald Brak

Ronald Brak — Wed, 20 Apr 2005 01:26:36 +0000

So is it too much to expect him to say, “My own personal feeling is that god doesn’t won’t you to have sex at all, but if you do have sex, then using a condom is an extemely effective way to prevent contracting HIV.” I think a sentence like this out of Ratzinger’s mouth could save millions. It might even make me think there really is a god.