Well it's finally official, most of you might have had your suspicions, but now it's a definite yes. According to the Vatican anybody who criticizes the pope is now officially a terrorist.When I saw the headline for this story I was naturally intrigued.
What horrible things did someone say about Benedict that got the Vatican so upset?
What kind of things could be considered the equivalent of a car bombing or flying a plane into the World Trade Centre?
It seems that an Italian comic named Andrea Rivera helping to host a May Day celebration sponsored by Italian labour unions made two comments that got the Vatican's official newspaper's editorial staff's knickers in a knot.
According to L'Osservatore Romano the fact that Mr. Rivera said that he could tell Pope Benedict doesn't believe in evolution because the Church hasn't ever evolved is an act of terrorism.
If that wasn't bad enough he also said that he couldn't stand the Church for not allowing Piergiorgio Welby a Catholic funeral but had no problems letting Francesco Franco and Augusto Pinochet have them.
Welby had campaigned for the right to die to be legalised, as he lay paralysed with muscular dystrophy. When he finally found a doctor who unplugged his respirator his family was informed he would not be allowed a Catholic funeral because he had sinned.
On the other hand the Fascist, General Franco, dictator of Spain for forty some years and responsible for the death of thousand of political opponents and the torture of thousands of others and Pinochet, former dictator of Chile, who upon assuming power had school teachers, labour organizers, and poets rounded up and held in Santiago soccer stadium and machine gunned, were both considered defenders of the Catholic faith and given full Catholic ceremonies.
Well obviously they only killed other people, they didn't allow themselves to die.
That would have been a sin. Obviously if you can't cause other people to suffer, you have to suffer in order to be a good Catholic according to the Church's logic.
Now according to the Vatican this type of talk is stoking blind irrational hatred against the Pope that will lead to a return of the terrorist attacks that plagued Italy in the 1970s.
I guess we know where former Bush staffers go to work; they get jobs in the press department of the Vatican rehashing their former boss's arguments to scare the population into obedience.
Instead of saying, criticizing the President gives aid and comfort to the enemy and encourages terrorists to believe Americans are easy targets, they now say being critical of the Pope will encourage people to stage terrorist attacks. If you do that you might as well be picking up a bomb and throwing it yourself according to their way of thinking.
Well, golly, if that stuff constitutes being a terrorist what does calling the Pope a homophobic, misogynistic, perpetuator of AIDS make me? Or what about saying that he's responsible for overpopulating the world, and aiding and abetting mass pedophilia?Would that qualify me as a terrorist?
What happens if I'm critical about their history and remind people that no other institution has been directly responsible for cultural genocide and actual genocide than the Catholic Church?
Would it upset them if I remind people that they help oppress people the world over by saying it doesn't matter what happens here on earth as long as they go to church every Sunday?
Who cares if you don't make enough money to feed your family and that you live in abject poverty; you'll have pie in the sky when you die. But don't practice birth control because you have to create more and more souls for God. What happens if we don't? Is he on a quota system or something? God has to eat forty-five souls every nanosecond?
But according to the Pope any form of birth control is a sin, and that all life is sacred.
Except of course pregnant twelve year old girls who were raped by their fathers and if they give birth will not only be scarred emotionally for ever, stand a good chance of dying; or all the people in Africa who wouldn't have caught AIDS if they were using condoms; and Homosexuals whose existence is an aberration. I guess their lives aren't as sacred as others.
Oops that could have been construed as a terrorist attack.
I guess I'll have to learn to be more careful or the Swiss Guard could be showing up at my door to take me to the Big House for questioning.
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