Well, the pope just replaced Hillary as the best "Evil Emperor from Star Wars" look alike. Why do religions think that it is their right to be hateful? There must be a special place in hell for them. The hell that they talk about all the time.

Wayman: "The infallible voice of God,..."
Give me a break. Look at him. Does he look like he'd be the infallible voice of God? Better still, listen to him. He sounds like the "Evil Emperor from Star Wars", as my friend jerindc above suggests.
I wouldn't condemn him to hell though. There is a kind and merciful God.

That was sarcasm, my friend. :)

The Pope is called that in the Catholic faith. I was simply pointing out the hypocrisy of that title.

He only infallibly gets many of us killed and interferes with democracies that he does not like.
Must be a German thing....

It's a Hitler Youth thing. I guess he took some of that training with him when he first became a priest. It's sad that he's the HMFIC of the Catholic Church.

I remember seeing a show that talked about the various people who had predicted things through the ages. It told about a man who came to the Vatican and was struck with a vision. In the vision, he was given the names of all the Popes until the Church ends. Lo and behold, his prediction was right.

Oh, come on! He wrote down the list and every Pope who came up after that would be forced to pick the next name on the list, whether he liked it or not. So much for predicting things.

What I did find interesting is that this Pope is the next to the last. The last Pope will do what Popes are not suppose to do and that is to pick the name of "Peter." He's it. We'll see.

The day I listen to anything the pope says, is the day you know that I have been abducted and replaced by space aliens.

If His Holiness is so against "gay marriage" he can locate for me the places in the Bible that says that a man should not have transferred unto him a friend's Social Security benefits, or pension, or inheritance; nor should he be automatically allowed to visit his friend in the hospital (even though Jesus says that the Father will praise those who do so: "I was sick or in prison and ye visited me"); nor should he help a single parent of the same sex raise his or her child; nor should he take care of that child if the sole remaining biological parent dies; nor should two people living under the same roof and operating as an economic unit be allowed to file joint income taxes; nor should a government in any way recognize a personal partnership between two people of the same sex.

Holy Father, pray tell me: Where in the Bible does it prohibit any of these things?

(Yes, I know about those passages in Leviticus --- and have you noticed how the US Supreme Court said they are irrelevant to civil government matters?)

Apparently, one of the most famous men in the Bible said, "Love God, and love thy neighbor as thyself; within these two commands lie all of the law and the prophets." Are you saying, Holy Father, that this man in the Bible improperly oversimplified things?

Holy Father, you have me very confused --- or is it possibly you who are confused?

The day I listen to anything the pope says, is the day you know that I have been abducted and replaced by space aliens.

Amen, diddly.

*giggles at his own joke*

I'm here all week.

I hold the huge number of closeted gay priests in the Roman Catholic Church as responsible as the Pope for the impact of the Pope's hate speech against gays.

If the closeted gay priests came out and told the Pope that either he stop his hate speech and repression of gays or they would resign, the church would be forced to change.

Prick.

I still can't believe they elected a guy who was a nazi.

I mean... a NAZI.

Josef Ratzinger, Der Pope, was not an accidental Nazi. He joined the HitlerJugend and the Nazi party long before it was obligatory. For that he was given a safe job in a Luftwaffe antiaircraft battery. Meanwhile most of his generation of Germans and Austrians were becoming burnt grease smudges at Stalingrad and Kursk. At a time when the smoke from the camps could be seen over half of Europe PiusXII didn’t raise a finger because Hitler was doing ‘God’s Work” - killing Jews, gays, Russian Untermenschen and trade unionists.

Herr Ratzinger’s strident attacks on the GLBT communities are a desperate ploy to deflect attention from the fact that thousands of priests of raped tens or thousands of prepubescent boys and girls. That, added to the usual list of suspects - high living corrupt bishops, the interpenetration of the catholic cult and far right politics, and the declining number of sheeple able to believe that "The Exorcist' is a documentary - means that catholic cult is in a steep decline. Lets all hope that it slips and breaks its neck.

Curiosity? Has anyone ever approached the Vatican with a case of evidence that they could deliberate? I am not Catholic, but I would assume that a formal deposition would be given full addressment. It is a country and has an embassy.

If someone has taken that approach it would be interesting to see the adjudication.

Ratzinger was the head of the Office that used to be in charge of the inquisition, that should tell you a little something about where he is coming from.

If I remember correctly, it was his office that ruled post-op transwomen were abominations, and not allowed to serve as nuns. He has had a long history of emnity with the LGBT community.

He is a narrowminded, reactiuonary bigot, who would just as soon burn gays at the stake, as look at them.

I wish I was big enough to chase that evil looking nut and his foolish followers off the planet. Maybe Stalin was right about what to do with the churches. It still amazes me that, the Catholic Church and all of its baggage has been able to drag itself into another century. Let's charge the pope with hate crimes, have a trial and send him, his bible, his fellow travlers, and his church packing. Oh, he makes me mad!
Good comment Bill, but remember, "They didn't know about the camps at the edge of town." Nasty things.

All I can say is that we should stand above the hate and show the world our sensibility and sensitivity to their concerns. In so doing maybe we can take the high ground.

Since this is a religious string, I have a religious question. If I were to convert to Islam and I lived a righteous life as per the teachings of Islam, when I die and since I'm a lesbian, would I qualify for the 30 virgins? It could seal the deal.