Comments on: Pope promotes priest who claimed hurricane was God's punishment for tolerating gays

By: Flapjack

Flapjack — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 17:53:56 +0000

Peter – well when you can shoot lightning from your fingertips as Darth Ratzinger did in "Return of the Jedi", it's bound to give you something of a god complex

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By: Peter

Peter — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 16:31:18 +0000

The Pope has too much power! How is it that a man can speak what God feels and says? That to me says someone is too full of themselves!

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By: Steve

Steve — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 05:00:45 +0000

Things like this and they wonder why their churches sit half empty across the globe. People are turning away from this kind of hatred and bigotry. The church will need to start a war soon to cleanse out those with any common sense. If we had no religion, this world would be a much better place. More people die in this world because of someones religous belief than all than any other cause known to man.

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By: Rich

Rich — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 04:16:11 +0000

Remember and keep remembering – the Roman Catholic Church is a business and a very successful business just like any other business – nothing more and nothing less. So don't expect from the Roman Catholic Church what you won't get. I was told by one Roman Catholic Church priest who had refused to put sand onto an icy driveway on the church grounds leading to the church and that was used by old people comning to church, 'So what! it is not my problem!'

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By: Flapjack

Flapjack — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 20:24:35 +0000

Keith – Well you may be against what you take to be sins… I'm personally against prudes. So what?
"These persons are called to fulfill God's will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord's Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition."
I have zero compulsion to act according to the tennets of a religion I neither believe in or adhere to. No god called me – ever.
I have no more right to veto your chosen lifestyle than you have mine, so please put a sock in it.

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By: alexi

alexi — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 20:17:54 +0000

Keep preaching, man!
How do you justify this promoted bishop's wry interpretation about hurricane Katrina then?
Why do 'mos have to remain celibate for their entire life while heteros won't even be excommunicated or openly condemned for adultery? Besides, lots of priests, bishops, cardinals and Popes coudln't even keep their PANTS on! Until leaders (and followers)of every major religion act as they preach, they should stop acting all hollier-than_thou.

Mind you, recently the Vatican also reinstalls a bishop who claimed Holocaust was a pure made-up story. Shame on papal state!

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By: Keith

Keith — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 16:47:27 +0000

I don't know if it was educated to say that "Religious hatred of gays is based, as they say on the scriptures" At least when it comes to the Catholic Church, hating gays as a doctrine has never existed. You don't have to be part of a religion to hate people, or even hate their sexual preference. What does the Catechism of the Catholic Church have to offer?

We are against sin, sins against chastity:
Grave sins against chastity differ according to their object: adultery, masturbation, fornication, pornography, prostitution, rape, and homosexual acts. These sins are expressions of the vice of lust. These kinds of acts committed against the physical and moral integrity of minors become even more grave.

2357 Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex. It has taken a great variety of forms through the centuries and in different cultures. Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained. Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity,1 tradition has always declared that "homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered."2 They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.

2358 The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God's will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord's Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition.

Catholicism DOESN'T HATE homosexuals.
As you read you did notice the homosexual acts part.
All it is to these passages is sins against chastity.
Homosexual acts is just another of the many.

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By: wossname

wossname — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 20:49:19 +0000

Well, I suppose all this snow is down to us as well. No rest for the wicked…

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By: Flapjack

Flapjack — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 14:25:24 +0000

@ Simon – I always have to laugh when people describe the Bible as "The Greatest story ever told". The longest perhaps, but even in terms of good literature it fails. There are great tracts of the Old Testament dedicated to paragraphs like "and Esau begot Ebediah, and Ebediah begot Jeremiah, and Jeremiah begot etc. etc. etc." It goes on for page after page. They don't even describe the act of begetting in any spicy detail, it just sounds like reading out the football results or a protracted shopping list. Where the hell was the book editor when he was needed? Someone to say "Yeah all that can go, it's just filler" would have improved it by at least 50%. And when it does finally get to the point it contradicts itself every few paragraphs. Homer's Odyssey is much more fun, and it has some half decent monsters in it.
The Bible bores me to tears…

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By: Simon Murphy

Simon Murphy — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 13:52:26 +0000

The old and new testaments are written by many different people over a long period of time. And they are entirely fictional. It is also absurd to claim that these badly written works of fiction have any universality considering they were written to instruct a bunch of illiterate peasants living in a tiny area of the dessert. The fact that the christian; muslim and jewish cults use these awful books as the basis for their morality shows how deranged they are. Personally I think Jackie Collins is a better manual for moral living than the bible – it is certainly more relevant.

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By: Ric

Ric — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 11:35:05 +0000

Religious hatred of gays is based, as they say on the scriptures. Well just to put a few misconceptions right:

These days, 641 of the old laws from the bible are ignored. Can you guess which topic the religious fundamentalists still cling to?

The Old Testament was written in ancient Hebrew and by the time people got around to translating it into other languages, the meaning of lots of words had changed. The sin of the men of Sodom had nothing to do with gay sex, but everything to do with the way they treated their guests. The confusion stems from a mistranslation of the Hebrew word which means to "know". In the New Testament it could mean having sex with someone and when you wrongly carry that meaning back into the Old Testament you get the well-known, but false, interpretation that Sodom was destroyed because its men folk were gay. The men of Sodom were punished because they treated their guests like slaves. This interpretation of the events is mentioned in several other parts of the Bible.

The vigorous condemnation of gay men in the Koran stems from the fact that the Koran takes over – lock, stock and mistranslation – the Sodom and Gomorrah story from the Bible. Let us also remember that in this story, Lot offered his daughters to the men of Sodom. Later on Lot had sex with his daughters … and Lot was supposed to be the good man who was spared.

St. Paul, of course, wrote in Ancient Greek. His translators talk about "unnatural acts" between men i.e. it's unnatural and therefore bad. How natural is playing the piano? How natural is an iPod or a DVD? If you have appendicitis, the natural thing is to die, but we generally prefer the unnatural process of being anaesthetised, cut open, having the appendix removed and being sewn up again.

St. Paul actually uses the words "para physin", which can translate as unnatural. It can also translate as "unusual" i.e. being different, but not "wrong", like having red hair or being left-handed. In one description St. Paul refers to God acting "para physin". One can't have it both ways. Was St. Paul saying that God was acting unnaturally and was therefore bad?

hope this clears things up!!

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By: Simon Murphy

Simon Murphy — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 11:29:08 +0000

What an evil old bastard Pope Ratzinger is. And in light of 5the recent news that he is reappointing Holocaust deniers to the church it seems clear that he is now applying the lessons he learned about homosexuals and jews which he learned as a member of Hitler Youth. It's quite clear that he agrees with the theories of Hitler Youth.

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By: Ric

Ric — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 11:19:14 +0000

In any other area but religion, these type of people would be in a secure unit within a padded cell. It is about time this type of deranged thought was removed from modern society. There is enough hatred out there without the church joining in. They can get away with saying whatever the hell they want and its ok, because they pretend that god told them to say it. Yet if we stand up for our rights or pass comments on the church they attack us with an outdated blasphemy law. I'm sorry but religion has had its time, if all it can offer is to attack certain areas of society. They quote the bible, but the bible also says:

You must not:
harvest the corners of a field
shave or get a haircut
wear clothes of a mixed textile blend
have a tattoo
eat shrimps

You must:
kill adulterers
kill a child which curses its parents (3 cheers for Leviticus)
permit slavery
observe the Feast of Trumpets ….

no where does it say, if ye suffer the gays to live, i will mess up the earth's weather pattern and kill heterosexuals in a flood!!

GET REAL!

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By: Riondo

Riondo — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 11:06:40 +0000

I am pleased to see the Counter-Reformation Pope consecrating as Bishops people who are even crazier than he is. Urban II (who called the first Crusade) and Pius V (who called for the overthrow of Elizabeth I and ordered masses to celebrate the massacre of French Protestants)would heartily approve. What's also fun is that the only other groups who agree with them are Protestant fundamentalists and Muslim extremists who think they are as damned to hell as gays and lesbians are. I don't suppose Benedict xvi will lead the RC Church off a cliff (if only!), but he might help it seriously to fragment. Fingers crossed.

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By: Tony Lambet

Tony Lambet — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 11:00:28 +0000

Sure, why not start promoting people in lunatic asylums to bishops? That's all that's next for this old fart of a man.

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By: djamel

djamel — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 08:29:49 +0000

I AM NOT SURPRISE EVERYONE IS TURNING AWAY FROM THIS RELIGION,NOTHING TO DO WITH ME, MY NAME SPEAKS FOR ITSELF VATICAN BUNCH OF HYPOCRITES….THEY YILL NEVER ACCEPT THAT GOD HAVE CREATED ALL US THE SAME, AND YET DIFFERENT…..ISLAM SAY!

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By: Rob Alexander

Rob Alexander — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 08:10:10 +0000

Homophobia by gays is a direct result of self-loathing, inculcated by nonsense teaching by such as Bendict XVI. If LGBT people have shorter lives on average, that is also too often the reason.
Time to change? You bet.

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By: Chris

Chris — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 00:22:02 +0000

This is a serious question…

throughout my life, the biggest homophobes have been gay. In school, at university, one at work. He was caught by his girlfriend with a man in bed. hé hé

Is Pope Benedict XVI gay?

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By: Sister Mary Clarence

Sister Mary Clarence — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 18:09:07 +0000

No doubt he'd interpret that as 'not having been hard enough on them', flapjack

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By: Flapjack

Flapjack — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 16:12:32 +0000

Begs the question, if the Vatican suffered a tornado, flood or somesuch catastrophe, would the Catholic Church have to revise their position of gays triggering divine vengeance?
Then again, when Carlisle was flooded a few years back, the similarly homophobic Bishop of Carlisle didn't seem to think that could be a reflection on him!

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