Pope
John Paul II is going to be canonized. This guy protected generations of child
rapists, which is a crime almost anywhere in the world, and also protected the
Opus Dei cult. He took away the rights of women, gays and lesbians, and blocked
the use of condoms to fight AIDS. By keeping the Catholic world locked
firmly in its medieval past while the rest of the world was moving forward, he
did more than almost anyone in the 21st century to set back the
cause of equality and human rights. There have been third-world dictators on
trial in the Hague who didn’t do as much damage as he did.
But
because some illiterate woman up in the hills claims that he magically cured
her, making her own diagnosis regarding her brain aneurysm, fellow members of
his cult can now send him pagan prayers to magically solve their problems too.
Even though he is not only not magical, not only an unindicted criminal, but
also completely and totally dead.
The
church was in such a hurry to canonize him that they violated their own rules,
to canonize him ahead of schedule. This is the guy they chose to fast-track,
the living embodiment of everything a Christian should be. A coddler of child
molesters.
The
irony here is that the church is also canonizing Pope John XXIII. John actually
did a lot of good. Long before he was pope, during WWII, he saved the lives of
Jews in seven different countries, which obviously was incredibly dangerous.
This, in contrast to his boss Pope Pius, who did considerably less to help the
Jews. And later John worked to fire bishops who had collaborated with Hitler.
But he had to wait half a century for canonization, because he wasn’t “magical”
enough.
In
the religious world, magic is more important than morality, courage or
compassion. So now we know where the church’s priorities are. “Save thousands
of Jews? Go to the back of the line. Conspire with rapists? Step right this
way, no need for you to wait!”
Don't
you wish it were a century from now, when such barbaric superstition will, with
luck, finally be in retreat and decline? When the guy who protects thousands
from oppression and death gets as much respect as the man who turned a deaf ear
to thousands of victimized children?
And
by the way, this magical nonsense is a laughable insult to nature: the concept
of miracles is completely unnatural. Remember that the next time the Jesus
people holler at you that homosexuality, which occurs in more than a thousand
animal species in nature, is unnatural.
