Friday, April 22, 2005

New Pope Lies From the Getgo

On April 20th, the day after Joseph Ratzinger became the 265th leader of the Roman Catholic Church, he said he would work to unify all Christians and reach out to other religions. No he won’t. He can’t. Papa Ratzi (as a Brit rag called him) is more conservative than JPII. JPII made Ratz the prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith because he knew he would safeguard and promote JPII’s policies. Ratz does not intend to change any of the ideologies of the RCC that rankle churchgoers in other religions. He’s not going to say the Jews are right that the Messiah has not yet come. He’s not going to tell Protestants they are right that pro-choice is a righteous concept. He’s not going to tell Muslims that believing in the words in the Koran is just as good as believing in the Bible. Ratz will only give lip service to unifying Christians and reaching out to other religions. He will spend his time in popedom trying to convince all Christians and those in other religions that they are sinning and should convert and that only Jesus Christ can save a sinner from hell. This is what he has to teach. This is what being Pope entails. What act would the Vatican allow Ratz to carry out that would unify all faiths? Nothing. He can DO nothing. He can only talk about it. He can’t take any action. He can't produce any encyclical or enact any canon law that would actually have the effect of unifying all religions. And that is because the Roman Catholic Church has a core belief that all religions other than Roman Catholicism are in error. You may hear some lofty and high-flown ideas from Papa Ratzi, but you won’t get any substantive actions to back it up. This is what Benedict XVI won’t do: He won’t say that the world has become overpopulated and it’s a good thing to use contraceptives. He won’t say that the RCC must try to alleviate suffering in the world and that it will use its considerable resources and money to get behind any and all efforts to counteract starvation, genocide, and the spread of disease. He won’t say that the ongoing sexual excesses of priests in the RCC has been aided and abetted by the Vatican and it has to stop. He won’t say that your belief in God is more important than man-made rules about God. And he surely won’t say that a Pope is only a man whom God loves as he loves any other human being, but no more than any other human. He won’t say that all religious leaders HOPE for the guidance of God but no religious leader can know for sure he has gotten God’s message. He won’t say God loves and respects all religions equally. The new Pope will do nothing to unify all Christians and all religions because Canon Law of the Roman Catholic Church won’t allow it.

1 comment:

Barry Schwartz said...

I think the Pope is onto something, and agree with him that all religions other than Roman Catholicism are wrong. I differ in that I also believe that Roman Catholicism is wrong. Furthermore there is no way religions can all be joined, because religions each have some content that is not objective and so does not provide a basis for agreement. To put it another way, you can't demonstrate a religious doctrine's "correctness" empirically, so mere opinion reigns; you cannot affirm or refute a mere opinion to the satisfaction of everyone.

Of course Pope Benedict is lying and malicious, and of course I don't have such a negative opinion of any and all clerics, but still joining all religions is a futile task--they are all wrong in different ways and are guaranteed to stay that way. Some religions, though, are much more _tolerant_ than others, and the RCC isn't one of the better ones.