The Pope is dead, long live the Pope!

The Katholic Kardinal’s Konklave has picked the man who is perhaps the most exemplary person to lead the church down the über-conservative road to eventual ruin - at least in the first world. Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger is the man who led the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, that same fun bunch who brought the Spanish Inquisition. He apparently gives moderate to liberal Catholic theologians the heebie-jeebies. At the same time, the nutjob conservatives are getting moist shorts. Why? He’s been squashing original thought for the late Pope for at least two decades. And? Forget women in the clergy; forget married priests; birth control -fuhgeddaboudit; tolerance for gays - no way. This guy actually says that he understands violence against gays. Unbelievable and unforgivable!

Forget any loosening in anyway. He also is a dour, unpleasant man, where J-Paul Deuce at least had some stage presence before he got sick. What a great choice to drive away the borderline American and European Catholics who were hoping for a pope to whom they could relate - at least a little. Oh, and lest we forget, as J-Paul’s enforcer, he was at a minimum complicit in getting Bernard Cardinal Law, the Boston Koverup King, a cushy job at the Vatican - instead of a job cleaning toilets, which he deserves… demonstrating once again Rome’s contempt for American Catholics.

BTW, here’s what Ratzinger said about anti-gay violence: "When civil legislation is introduced to protect behavior to which no one has any conceivable right, neither the Church nor society at large should be surprised when other distorted notions and practices gain ground, and irrational and violent reactions increase."

What would Jesus do with a Christian like this? Jesus would forgive him. I’d feed him to the pigs, a la Hannibal Lector.

Issues, yes indeed, I’ve got issues. I was raised a Catholic, and I have no respect for the organized Catholic Church - but you might have guessed that.