The Pope’s Latest Pronouncement **edited**

Hey.

Saw this in today’s BBC News online.

Gay groups angry at Pope remarks

Okay.  quote from the article:

"Speaking on Monday, Pope Benedict said that saving humanity from homosexual or transsexual behaviour was as important as protecting the environment."

In other words, the LGBT community is as much of a threat to the world as tearing down the rain forests.

Talk about alienating folks.

If I had ever considered going back to the Catholic Church, they’ve reduced the probability from single digits to zero.

 ***  Edits  ****   (actually, a rather big edit)

Okay, so, a little research, and I also heard an interview with some folks on BBC today.

Here’s an extract from the pope’s address

On ‘gender’

"What is often expressed and signified with the word ‘gender’ leads to the human auto-emancipation from creation and from the Creator. The human being wants to make himself on his own and to decide always and exclusively by himself about what concerns him.

"But, in so doing, the human being lives against the truth and against the Spirit creator. Rain forests deserve, yes, our protection but the human being – as a creature which contains a message that is not in contradiction with his freedom but is the condition of his freedom – does not deserve it less."

So, apparently, the pope’s address never actually mentioned the words "homosexuality" or "transsexuals".  I’m suspecting that those terms came from the BBC interpretation of the original. 

As someone suggested on the radio, the interpretation could be different.  The pope could have been referring to the unfortunate desire of women to be emancipated and have equal rights with men (like, saying Mass.  All the girls want to say Mass.  I overhear those bathroom conversations…)   

The other interpretation is that they (the Vatican) is hiding behind words, and mincing definitions.  "We never mentioned homosexuals in this address" the representative kept saying.  He kept talking about marriage (for procreation, he actually said) and I think he mentioned something about gender roles.

So, he doesn’t like boys acting like girls, or girls acting like boys, or either side doing the other side’s jobs… 

So they weasel-worded a statement that hit everything they don’t like without being explicit about it.  Gay couples violate their gender rules, transsexuals violate their gender rules, women wanting to say Mass violate their gender rules. 

According to the spokesman, the vatican representative, allowing and accepting these changing gender roles will cause our whole society to fail, to collapse.  A bit of a catastrophic vision, I must say. 

But I can see their logic, although I don’t agree.

What’s the worst thing that can happen to them?  Having women priests. That’s just my guess right now.  But, if they give an inch on anyone having different gender roles, then that’s what would eventually happen.  And they can’t have that, so they can’t let allow any flexibility in gender roles. 

So, it’s not just about LGBT.  It’s about women’s rights, men’s rights for that matter (following the logic above, they might in fact object to stay-at-home dad’s for all we know).  They seem to object to marriage that’s not for procreation  – oh, he did mention that the other reason for sex was to "support the couple in strengthening their relationship" whatever the hell that means.

I’m afraid this pope is hanging the church on a very fragile philosophy.  And fragile things break easily. 

I’ll go out on a limb and make a prediction here…   within the next 10 years, if this current pope hangs in there, then the church is going to get more and more strict, to the point of basically requiring pledges of belief from its folks so that they can keep coming to church.  And, there will be a massive protest, fractioning of the church, and it’ll end up with a hard core of very devout, almost dangerous supporters, and everyone else will have to go somewhere else, perhaps forming a more inclusive, kinder version. 

I find the evolution of societies and cultures fascinating, even when it’s not always in my favor.  Just fascinating.  And no, I don’t sit around watching paint dry.  😉