Snoqualmie

Just to tie the two halves together, here's an article written by a Catholic priest (and vice-rector of a seminary) about how tattooing is iniquitous.

Heh heh heh. Catholicism is awesome because just about everything's a sin from one point of view or another. I bet I could find an article about the link between blogging and the seven deadly sins if I tried. Oh hell, let's do it right now.

• Pride: bloggers think too highly of themselves, they think they are worthy to share their "thoughts" with the world
• Envy: everyone with a blog is trying to "one-up" the people on their link lists
• Wrath: ever read a blogger on a rant?
• Sloth: most blogging is done to procrastinate at work
• Avarice: many bloggers have ads or donation buttons
• Gluttony: ummmm... people go on the Internet to "consume" information... if you use RSS feeds and an aggregator, that allows you to "consume" more information more efficiently... that's gluttonous!
• Lust: Duh, blogs are on the Internet, everyone knows that place is like 99% porn

Ergo facto duco exeunt recto all bloggers will burn in Hell for all eternity.

Now how did you just happen upon that? I know you didn't Google "tattoos iniquitous" because the word doesn't appear in the article (thank you Ctrl+F).

Also, I'm giving you the evil eye over that list. Not because I think blogging is morally pure and above reproach, nor because I think it's a bad list (it's a fucking great list, particularly the last item), but because I'm incredibly suspicious of what ergo facto duco exeunt recto might approximately mean. Exeunt recto in particular worries me. Erik, can you shed some light here?

I just figured that any good Catholic tirade needed a Latin phrase, so I made it up. Unfortunately I don't know any Latin. I was going for "Therefore, because I pulled this out of my ass..."

You know, there's a lot of stuff that churches can do. Like, a lot. I mean, there are TONS of things that churches can do for people. Helping the poor, providing meaningful spiritual guidance, building community togetherness, you know, all kinds of things. I don't understand why it always has to be about the gays with church leaders.

I had just had a big fight with my housemate Juli about this new pope and how much worse he's going to be because he's the one who pretty much drafted all the anti-gay stuff that John Paul was signing off on, when lo and behold, the seraphim blew their little trumpets and we got to see that his first papal act is to take the war on gay families to Spain. Thanks, fucker - I win the argument, but what a Pyrrhic victory.

But did you know that there is actually an office of Antipope? As I understand it, the job of Antipope basically entails disagreeing with everything the Pope does. Of course, if the Catholic church officially recognizes you as holding the office, it involves eternal excommunication, which I think would actually be quite an honor. So I think I'll throw my hat in the ring.

I think if there's no schism, nor a situation where there are rival claimants to the office of Bishop of Rome, then any office of Antipope can only be self-proclaimed. There's a number of antipopes right now; none of them have any followers. Some antipopes even get sponsors to support their efforts, which I like to imagine is a lot like NASCAR, only with pointy hats instead of stock cars.

What I'm saying is, if you can dream it, you can do it.

Katie for Antipope! Katie for Antipope! Really, I don't know anyone more qualified. Actually, according to your description of the duties of the Antipope, aren't you pretty much already in office? All you lack is a funny hat. I've got a pirate hat and a couple of sets of bunny ears if that helps.

I have to admit that I was kind of relieved to hear that it would be this guy as the new pope, because I was afraid that it would be Francis Arinze and I would have had seriously conflicting opinions about that. I mean, I would have had to vaguely support the idea of someone who wasn't a white European guy getting into an office that's always held by white European guys, in pretty much the same way that I'd have to be happy if we managed to elect a President who wasn't some fucking white Christian guy. But an African pope who'd continue this bastard crap that the Catholic church pulls by telling people in AIDS-ravaged countries that God hates condoms would make me tear my hair out even more than a European pope pulling the same crap.

See, Ratzinger's kind of like Emperor Palpatine; you can just hate him unconflictedly because he's a bastard. The other guy would have been kind of like Darth Vader: there's one or two redeeming things about him and that makes it all the worse that he's such a bastard. Life is easier when it's one-dimensional, that's the lesson here. Besides, maybe now everyone with an ounce of progressive sense will desert the church and go volunteer to hand out pope-shaped condoms in Lagos.

Don't forget about Ratzinger's age. He's 78, two years shy of the limit for papal candidates.

From what I've read, there's a strong feeling that after a long papacy like John Paul II's, the Church needs a while to figure out the direction it will take in the future. So you would want the oldest possible Pope for right now, with the expectation of making the real choice in a few years.

Undoubtably there are many cardinals who chose Ratzinger because they agreed with his conservatism. But not necessarily all 2/3 + 1 of them.

I think this is definitely a transitional Pope. And as Evangelism continues to grow in Latin America and the anti-contraception policy in Africa becomes more destructive, pressure may build to change direction when it next comes time to send a smoke signal. Cardinals pride themselves on "thinking in centuries," but they may recognize that they need to pay attention to a few decades to keep the church alive.

Here's an interesting article by a progressive American Catholic, basically saying that the new Pope won't drive him out of the church just like Bush II didn't drive him out of America.

Speaking of the comparison I was drawing above, this is truly brilliant. I note with glee that the article has been "locked to deal with vandalism" and the picture replaced with something sensible.

Holohan, that was an excellent article that you linked to. Unfortunately I'm likely to forget its many wonderful points and only remember the fantastic joke about his first words in office. Heheh.

Pope Benedict rules. It is Zapatero who sucks ass (both literally and figuratizely)

I love it. I absolutely love that the universal knee-jerk reaction by conservatives when a politician takes a supportive or accepting attitude toward homosexuality is to announce that he, meaning the politician, has got to be one of them queers. I wonder, when female suffrage was a big political issue in the US, if a man mentioned that women should be able to vote did people snicker that he must be a woman?

I think Abe Lincoln was an undercover brother.

Must've been. And the people who run PETA are all chickens... no, wait, sheep... no, pigs... geez. Okay, they're ducks, all right? There aren't any significant connotations to being a duck. Ducks it is.

Hey, that's totally essentializing. Just because it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck...

Oooh, ooh, and if any of them are doctors and say that a vegetarian diet is healthy then they're quacks, right?

You haven't responded to my bitchy email from the other day. You're not really going to let me have the last word, are you?