Vatican plumbs new moral depths.

I have an extremely low opinion of the Vatican and the morally-challenged Cardinals and Bishops that make up the bureaucratic structure of that corrupt institution. So you would think that the Vatican could do little to actually lower my estimation of their character. You would think that but you would be wrong.

It seems the Vatican just has not yet reached the bottom of the moral barrel and they continue to explore new depths of moral depravity.

A resolution is about to be introduced into the United Nations on behalf of the 27 members of the European Union. Note that nothing here is a commentary on the UN and whether it ought to exist (I’d abolish it by lunch time if it were up to me). France, on behalf of the EU, will introduce a resolution calling on governments around the world to decriminalize being gay.

Now note what this measure does not do. It does not call on nations to grant equality of rights. It merely asks them to stop executing people for being gay, stop arresting them for being gay and stop imprisoning them for being gay.

The Vatican is against that. The Vatican faux state has a “permanent observer” at the UN, one Archbishop Celestino Migliore (Celestino sure sounds like a gay name to me and I hear he runs around town in a dress). Migliore, who as archbishop has reach a status that Jesus couldn’t accomplish in his own life, says that the Vatican will oppose the decriminalization of homosexuality.

And the argument he uses is two fold. First he said that if you don’t make homosexuality a criminal offence it will lead to “reverse discrimination against traditional heterosexual marriage” He claimed that unless gays are treated like criminals “states which do not recognize same-sex unions as ‘matrimony’ will be pilloried and made an object of pressure.”

Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi offers a second Vatican reason for criminalizing gay people. “It’s not for nothing that fewer than 50 member states of the United Nations have adhered to the proposal in question while more than 150 have not adhered. The Holy See is not alone.” So, they are in the majority.

The two arguments are: 1) letting gays live unmolested by the police is a threat to marriage and 2) the majority supports it. Sounds like the same false logic of Proposition 8 writ large. I guess the Vatican figured that such irrational positions worked with Prop 8 so they can try it with other things.

Of course this puts the Vatican in the majority with such enlightened states as Saudi Arabia, Iran and Zimbabwe. But you know what they say of birds of a feather. There seem to be three things that manage to get the blood flowing through the veins of the old farts who run the Vatican.

The first is denying women the right to control their own reproductive abilities through contraception or access to abortion. The second is any excuse for treating gay people like shit. The third is covering up the buggering of children by their priests. Truly the Vatican is a paragon of virtue -- at least by the standards of the Third Century.

Indicative of the church's moral authority here are a few news stories from the last few days.

Catholic priest pleads guilty to molestation charge in LA.
Arizona priest who skipped out on parole over molestation charges arrested.
Priest denied bail in trial for murder of nun.
Priest goes into hiding after being caught in love triangle with married woman.
Priest apologizes to children he abused.
Priest jailed for sex crimes against young girls.
Preist charged with new sex abuse charges, church helped cover up for him.
Priest arrested for sending threatening letters.
Parish priest arrested on sex charges.
Priest arrested for indecency.
Priest jailed on child porn charges.

These are just a few cases in the news in recent days. Apparently the Vatican has trouble prioritizing their conserns.

Motes and Beams

The Roman Catholic church leader, who has the audacity to claim to be the vicar of Christ on earth, has attacked “insatiable consumption” while visiting Australia. This was not long after he “toured Sydney Harbour on the city’s must luxurious crusie ship.”

It really is hard to take this man’s sermons seriously. He’s worse than Al Gore lecturing us on energy consumption while being an energy pig himself. Here are a few photos illustrating the Pope’s lifestyle.

Here is the Pope on his throne. Notice the lack of "insatiable consumption".










On the left is the entrance to the Pope's living quarters within the Vatican Palace.









On the right is a glimpse of the ceilings within the Papa apartments.






















What you have to the left is a little summer place that the Pope keeps. It is a massive castle, this is just one part of it.









The man travels the world by jet, rides in limos on a regular basis. He doesn't do his own laundry, doesn't have to clean his own toilet, and walks around in silk carrying priceless gold objects.

Yet he has the gall to preach to middle class working people about the small comforts of life that they have. They don't have his servants, his limos, or his palaces. The Pope spends more on lifestyle per year than most people can spend in a lifetime. But that doesn't stop him from pontificating (literally in his case) about the evils of insatiable consumption.

When it comes to consumption the Pope has a much business lecturing others as his church does when it comes to preaching sexual morality.

I'm not prone to quoting this guy very much. But some preacher, a few centuries back, is alleged to have said: "Judge not, that you may not be judged, for with what judgment you judge, you shall be judged: and with what measure you mete, it shall be measured to you again. Any why seest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye; and seest not the beam that is in thy own eye? Or how sayest thou to thy brother: Let me cast the mote out of thy eye; and behold a beam is in thy own eye? Thou hypocrite, cast out first the beam in thy own eye, and then shalt thou see to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye." And just to be on safe ground I quote from the preferred Catholic translation of the Bible, the Douay-Rheims version.

The new collectivistic sins.

You’re all a bunch of sinners! So says the Vatican, which has invented a new list of sins. I guess the new sins were necessary since they were having such a hard time with the old list. Of course, one problem is the Vatican has lost all moral authority over the old sins -- things like adultery and fornication. It’s pretty hard to take them seriously after the massive cover-ups they engaged in regarding the actions of their own clergy. So they have a new list of deadly sins.

They also argue that the old sins have a “rather individualistic dimension” to them and the new sins are collectivistic. Many of them come from the Church of the Greens. Monsignor Gianfranco Girotti, head of the Apostolic Penitentiary, argues that becauses the “new sins” are more collectivistic, “it is more important than ever to pay attention to your sins.” Gee, Father, shouldn’t the church pay more attention to it’s sins? This priest, a close ally to the Pope, said: “While sin used to concern mostly the individual today it has mainly a social resonance.”

These “sins” are a combination of Luddite thinking, moral conservativism, environmental alarmism and socialism. Count on the Vatican to take the worst ideas floating around in society and combine them all into one odiferous batch of intellectual excrement. The sins include:

1. Bioethical “sins” such as birth control and genetic modification.

2. Experiments on “stem cells”

3. Drug use. I assume the drugs they refer to don’t include alcohol, a favorite drug at the local rectory and at the communion rail. Apparently it doesn’t include tobacco either.

4. Pollution.

5. “Contributing to the widening divide between rich and poor.” Please note that if you work harder and earn more money you are contributing to the “widening divided between rich and poor” since your increased wealth doesn’t benefit someone who didn’t earn it. However, if you quit your job and go on welfare you are lessening the divide. Of course don’t expect the Pope to give up his palaces, satin robes, jeweled crows and gold trinkets.
6. Similar to the neoMarxist assumptions of sin #5 is the the sine of becoming wealth.

Girotti repeates the demonstrably false claim that: “The poor are always becoming porrer and the rich even more rich, feeding unsustainable social injustice.” That is just bullshit. The reality is that the wealth of poor countries is growing much faster than rich countries. And more people have left poverty in the last two decades than at any time in human history. But facts and theology rarely go together. And the Vatican is now just taking the Gospel According to Marx as it’s new Bible.

7. The final sin is “creating poverty” which is a nonsense sin. Poverty is man’s default status. It is how man was created -- by God if you a believer. Man is born with nothing. All wealth is created by human endeavor. You don’t create poverty. You create wealth. The Vatican wouldn’t know this since it doesn’t produce wealth, it merely redistributes it from poor congregants to a very wealth church.

These sins are genetic modification, experiments on humans (what does this mean?), pollution, social injustice (a meaningless term), poverty, wealth and taking drugs. See, not a single mention of altar boys in the entire batch.

Though this Vatican spokespriest was asked about “scandal and sin within the church”. Apparently that was a reference to the priests sexually attacking children. He did acknowledge the “objective gravity” of these incidents and then turned the tables saying that reporting on such things much be denounced because it “discredits the church.” Gee, I thought it was the cover-ups by the Cardinals and Bishops that discredited the church?

Photo: This is a Papal trinket. It is a large sized replica of a church made out of gold and platinum, surely that is a sign of "excessive" wealth.