* QUOTES BY THE POPE *

PRIEST HURT BY INVISIBLE MAN !

2005-06-05T19:56:00.000-07:00

PRIEST “HURT” IN MOCK GAY MARRIAGE

From correspondents in Paris (Daily Telegraph)

June 5, 2005

A PRIEST was supposedly slightly hurt at Paris's famed Notre-Dame Cathedral when clashes broke out between church security personnel and gay rights activists who performed a mock marriage of two lesbians.

One activist - dressed as a priest - pronounced the two women married, while other Act Up members chanted: "Pope Benedict XVI, homophobe, AIDS accomplice."

Monsignor Jacquin said: "They are savages. I was pushed to the ground and trampled, kicked in the neck. It's a scandal for these people to lash out at me and the Pope.”

The president of Act Up Paris, Jerome Martin - who participated in today's demonstration - said he had been hit in the melee, and claimed the priest had exaggerated the actual events. Several journalists and a French politician who witnessed the incident saw Monsignor Jacquin throwing himself to the floor and screaming “They’re beating me! They’re beating me!” even though no actual violence against him by anybody had been witnessed.

Eh, wait: a priest savagely beaten by... the Invisible Man? That might be the "miracle" they were waiting for at the Vatican to be able to start John Paul II's beatification process! Sad story anyway... who would have guessed that the invisible man was gay? The Invible Woman is going to be soooo disappointed.

"...Whether they want it or not!"

2005-05-17T02:48:00.000-07:00

Pope urges missionary zeal during service

‘Pope Benedict XVI ordained 21 new priests for Rome on Sunday. Before the 21 men came forward individually to kneel before Benedict and put their hands into his as they pledged loyalty to him, the pontiff delivered a homily that sounded like a pep talk.

“All of us are part of the network of obedience to the word of Christ,” Benedict said. The church’s mission “must continuously put us into motion, make us restless, to bring to those who suffer, to those who are in doubt, and even to those who are reluctant, the joy of Christ.”

Breakingnewsblog.com, May 16, 2005

Comments: Don't even ask those atheists, negroes, arabs, and other unfaithful ones whether they want to receive the "Joyce of Christ": do it forcefully, like in the good ol' days of colonialism !

WAY TO GO JO' !

Senilo Subito!

2005-05-13T04:50:00.000-07:00

John Paul II on fast track to sainthood
By Chris Johnston, Times Online

Pope John Paul II is on the way to becoming a saint after his successor, Pope Benedict XVI, announced today that he would waive the usual five-year waiting period after a candidate's death.

(…) Vatican experts say that, even with the waiting period lifted, a lengthy investigation into John Paul’s life and confirmation of a miracle attributed to him would be required before he could be beatified.

Times Online, May 13, 2005

Comments: A miracle that can be attributed to the late Pope? Let us humbly suggest two:

a) Responsible for millions of deaths in Africa (and elsewhere) without firing a single shot: just by using the power of latex (and forbidding its use).

b) Made sure his successor would be a vampire-looking, Inquisition-obsessed, progress-hating, former Hitler Youth who is feared and despised by all the non-catholic religious communities of the World; and by half of the Catholics. A move sure to make catholicism a little closer to its final days. It's more than a tour de force... It's a miracle!

Way to go, John Paul! Senilo Subito! …I mean: Santo Subito!

Censorship: The Italian government Says "Amen" to the Pope!

2005-05-12T20:00:00.000-07:00

Italian website banned over 'Nazi' pope picture

An Italian website that published a photo montage of Pope Benedict XVI dressed in a Nazi uniform was told to suspend its activities on Wednesday for offending the Roman Catholic religion, court officials said.

Rome prosecutors accuse the Indymedia Italia site, which is part of a network of alternative media websites, of causing offense to the Catholic religion by publishing the photo montage alongside the caption "Nazi pope".

Under Italian law, the offense is punishable by up to one year in jail.

The website, which is registered under the name of a Brazilian-based company, Indipendent Media Center, was still online Wednesday evening and showing the controversial image despite the court ruling.

Italy's largest press union, FNSI, slammed the decision as an "unacceptable attack on critical and satirical freedom".

"Indymedia publishes without any form of censorship any kind of electronic message -- that is the basis of its editorial policy," said the FNSI's secretary general, Paolo Serventi Longhi.

"I do not agree with the message's content, in fact I find it very serious, but press freedom cannot be called into question," he added.

Yahoo!News, May 5, 2005

Shocking! Buddhists like to "touch the infinite," but not little boys...What's wrong with them?

2005-05-09T20:03:00.000-07:00

"If Buddhism is attractive, it's only because it suggests that by belonging to it you can touch the infinite, and you can have joy without concrete religious obligations. It's spiritually self-indulgent eroticism.''

In the same article, then-cardinal (a.k.a. Great Inquisitor) Ratz added: "Hinduism offers false hope, in that it guarantees purification based on a morally cruel concept of reincarnation resembling a continuous circle of hell."

At the time, Cardinal Ratzinger predicted that Buddhism would replace Marxism as the Catholic church's main enemy.

Ratzinger's 1997 interview with a Catholic French magazine

Comment #1: Auto-erotic buddhists vs. pedophile catholic priests, hum... what to choose? I'll go with the former, thank you! Buddhists 1, cathos 0...

Comment #2: As soon as a senile pope dies, they replace him with another one: A "continuous circle of hell," Vatican-style?

"The New Pope is a Disaster for the World"

2005-05-09T19:45:00.000-07:00

by Rabbi Michael Lerner

"Since the days in which he served in the Nazi army in Germany to his role as the leader of the forces that suppressed the liberatory aspects of Vatican II and purged or silenced the Church of its most creative leadership (including German Catholic theologians Eugene Drewermann and Hans Kung, Brazilian theologian Leonardo Boff, and several prominent American Catholic thinkers), to the present moment in which he is recognized as the leader most identified with the forces of reaction and suppression of dissent within the Church, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger has distinguished himself as a man who can be counted on to side with the most anti-humane and repressive forces, in opposition to those who seek to give primacy to a world of peace and justice,

(...) It was with great distress that we watched as Cardinal Ratzinger led the Vatican in the past twenty-five years on a path that opposed providing birth control information to the poor of the world, thereby ensuring that AIDS would spread and kill millions in Africa.

(...) We can't help but notice that under Cardinal Ratzinger's tutelage, the Church began moves to elevate the infamous Pope Pius XII to the status of saint. Instead of repenting for the failure of the Church to give unequivocal messages telling all Catholics that they would be prevented from receiving communion for collaborating or cooperating in any way with Nazi rule, or for failing to hide and protect Jews who were marked for extermination, Ratzinger has sought to whitewash this disgraceful moment in Church history (...) In fact, Cardinal Ratzinger publicly praised the fascist movement in the Church known as Opes Dei and supported canonization of Josemaria Escriva, the founder of Opus Dei, an open fascist who served in the government of Spain's dictator Franco, and who publicly praised Hitler.

(...) Ratzinger is being falsely described as a conservative, when in fact he, despite his publicly genteel manner, is a raging reactionary. Unlike many American conservatives who oppose gay sexual practices but not their legal rights, Ratzinger in 1992 argued against human rights for gays, stressing that their civil liberties could be 'legitimately limited'."

Published on Wednesday, April 20, 2005, in Tikkun.org

THE STOMPING HAS BEGUN!

2005-05-08T02:19:00.000-07:00

"Leading US Catholic is forced out by Vatican
By Tom Heneghan

A leading Roman Catholic commentator has resigned as editor of an influential Jesuit magazine in the United States amid reports the Vatican doctrinal department formerly run by Pope Benedict had demanded his removal for being "off-message" on condoms.

Father Thomas Reese, aged 60, announced his unexpected departure from America magazine on Friday. The National Catholic Reporter, the US weekly that broke the story later on Friday, said the Vatican had objected to articles in the magazine discussing condom use to prevent Aids, and on homosexual priests and secretive church disciplinary measures.

The National Catholic Reporter, quoting unnamed sources, said: "The resignation caps five years of tensions and exchanges among the Congregation (for the Doctrine of the Faith), which was headed at the time by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, the Jesuits and Reese."

The Congregation, the modern successor to the Inquisition, disciplined many critical theologians under the firm leadership of Cardinal Ratzinger from 1981 to 2005.

According to the paper, Reese's Jesuit superiors told him he had to quit after he returned to America's New York headquarters from reporting on Benedict's election."

The Independent, May 8, 2005

OFFICIAL: THE POPE WILL LOVE OUR WEBSITE!

2005-05-08T02:09:00.000-07:00

GEORGE WEIGEL (Senior Fellow of Washington's Ethics and Public Policy Center): "The new pope has a nicely self-depreciating and intellectually fine-edged sense of humor."

Newsweek Magazine, May 2, 2005

"BECOME A CHRISTIAN... OR THE MUSLIMS WILL EAT YOU!"

2005-05-08T02:01:00.000-07:00

"What offends Islam is [the West's] lack of reference to God, the arrogance of reason, which provokes fundamentalism. Europe appears to be at the start of its decline and fall. It must recover its Christian roots if it truly wants to survive."

Book "Without Root", 2004

RATZINGER ON THE SEXUAL-ABUSE SCANDALS

2005-05-08T01:57:00.000-07:00

"I am personally convinced that the constant presence in the press of sins of Catholic priests is a planned campaign, as the percentage of these offences among priests is not higher than in other categories."

Interview in Zenit.Org, 2002

Conclusion: it's all the fault of the "liberal media"!

RATZINGER ON OTHER CHURCHES

2005-05-08T01:56:00.000-07:00

"They are not churches in the proper sense."

Dominus Jesus Declaration, 2000

OFFICIAL: HAMMER NOT ALLOWED AMONG TORTURE TOOLS

2005-05-08T01:48:00.000-07:00

DAVID O'CONNELL (President of Catholic University of America): "[The pope] will make fidelity to the Church's teachings central to his papacy, but I don't think he will hammer people over the head..."

Ouf! We already feel better: hammer will not be part of the torture tools. Only metal spikes, chain whips, steel barbs, fire and starvation will be allowed.

The "Benedict" name: A reference to Benedict XV, ...or Benedict XIV?

2005-05-08T01:42:00.000-07:00

It has been argued that Ratz choosing "Benedict" as his papal name was a sign that this pope would be as much of a peace-maker as the previous Benedict (the XVth), who was pope during WWI, and actively promoted a cease-fire.
...Strangely enough, nobody mentioned Benedict XIV as a possible source of inspiration for Ratz. In the 1700s, Benedict XIV violently confronted the skepticism and rationalism of the Enlightenment in Europe... Well, you now know what to expect!

Separation of Church and State: such a horrific idea...

2005-05-08T01:38:00.000-07:00

"Secularism is beginning to transform itself into an ideology that imposes itself through politics and that doesn't concede a public space to the Catholic or Christian vision, which risks becoming purely private."

2004 writings

...WE HOPE RATZ WILL BE RIGHT ON THAT ONE:

2005-05-08T01:31:00.000-07:00

"Christianity might diminish into a barely discernable presence."

1996 interview about his book "Salt of the Earth"

A supposedly book-loving Pope... Who ordered books destroyed

2005-05-08T01:24:00.000-07:00

"In the years that he was running the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith [formerly known at the Inquisition], the new pope, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, demanded a church press destroy copies of a book promoting the ordination of women. He also summoned American bishops to Rome to see that their pastoral letter on the role of women toed the church line, and was behind a move to get rid of altar girls."

Newsweek Magazine, May 2, 2005 (p. 74)

A woman's place is in the church kitchen

2005-05-08T01:21:00.000-07:00

"Separate, Not Equal At All
By Anna Quindlen

You need only look at photographs of the pope and his cardinals to see the essential problem. A phalanx of identicals, the closest they come to daily contact with women is with the nuns who keep house for them."

Newsweek Magazine, May 2, 2005 (p. 74)

********* QUOTES BY THE POPE *********