Yeah, the pro lifers are very concerned with the rights of a bunch of cells and far less concerned with the lives of intelligent and emotional people.

However, the Pope DOES enjoy a good Jr. Bacon Cheeseburger, and for the value, can you blame him?

Actually, I think the popes word on anything (thumbs up, thumbs down on the Passion of the Christ, etc etc), is questionable considering the fact that he's approximately 800 years old now.

If we lived in the bad old days, Popes would be dropping like flies left and right, assasinated here and there... but, nonetheless... Why can't we have a new Pope when our old Pope has worn out?

Growing up Catholic, I don't remember any of my life being based on what the Pope said, even though my mother was a Sunday school teacher.

Wait, what about child molestation?

oh it's about voting ok i'll be sure to take what the church says about that into consideration.

[Edited on Oct 04, 2004 3:12PM]

i hate the catholic church!!

<--- Used to be Catholic

Voting for Bush

Would you give it a damn rest allready? Catholics aren't paedophiles, there are paedophiles who are Catholic. If you mix paedophiles in situations with young boys, you get bad results.

I'm tired of this yawnsome bashing, it's not quite as tiresome as the entirety of western religion bashing but, it's still boring as hell.

There is a brilliant comedy over here called 'Father ted'
about 3 priests living on a desolate island off the coast of Ireland.

There is one joke where the main character (Father ted) tries to defend against the paedophie priest accusations
"ah come on now, we're not all like that, look at it like this, if there are a hundred million priests in the world, and 5% of them are paedophiles... then that's only 5 millon priests"

While I generally find open season on Catholics to be little more than de rigeur fashion politics the fact is that if you're going leverage peoples immortal souls for a bit of retrograde electioneering while ignoring a whole raft of equally theologically significant issues then you're opening yourself up to some pretty valid criticism.

"No No, The catholic church isn't fucked up, it's the people who run the church who are fucked up."
That's my favourite defense of the institution from my theologen friend
You can't really argue against it (because its stupid)

The thing is, that there aren't as many fervent Catholics as people think. People didn't want to vote Kennedy into office because they thought he'd have to consult the Pope, which just wasn't true, and isn't true for the majority of Catholics.

My grandmother was a by the books, every sunday, midnight mass Catholic, and I don't recall her ever basing anything she did on the religion, other than to practice it.

I've met far more Baptists, and other types of Christians of all sorts who had something to say about Gay marriage or whathaveyou based on their religion, than any Catholic I've ever been around. My mother was devoutly Catholic and she divorced, you don't sign a contract that makes your soul null and void... It's just that people think that if some Arch Bishop says 'blah dee blah' the entirety of the Catholic religion follows the lead.

Catholicism is much more cmfortable when it's the dominant religion in a country, hen it has control over the government and the education system.
This is how it wsa in ireland up until 25 years ago and there are some horror stories to be told. Institutions where unmarried mothers were sent to (after the babies were taken away), laundries, where they worked in slave conditions for the church.
There were orphanages and schools where the children were tortured and raped and it was systematic. 1 in 4 children in Ireland from a generation ago were victim of sexual assault, many of them by authority figures in one or other institution.

Any religion that has such a pervasive control over a society will commit these crimes, whether it be Islam, or baptist christianity or catholicism

man, father ted rocks!

Ummm, since when is your wholly subjective take on whether or not a despicable and opportunistic action will be sucessful the barometer for criticizing it?

they only response to "vote right or your everlasting soul will be damned" is fuck you! rescind all churches' tax exempt status.