Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
Pope Palpatine took a break from resurrecting holocaust-denying priests and restoring them into Mother Church to name a serious wingnut as a new bishop in Austria:
The appointment, which was confirmed by the Vatican at the weekend, comes days after the Pope was criticised for his rehabilitation of a bishop who denies the Holocaust.Gerhard Maria Wagner, 54, is to become auxiliary bishop in the Austrian city of Linz, where he is viewed as a controversial figure by churchgoers and clergy alike. In 2005, he wrote in a parish newsletter that Hurricane Katrina was an act of "divine retribution" for the sins of a sexually permissive society.
You're gonna love some of this:
He said it was worth considering whether environmental catastrophes should not be seen as a result of "spiritual environmental pollution" - a type of "divine retribution" for New Orleans' relaxed attitude towards sexual promiscuity and homosexuality."It is surely not an accident that all five of New Orleans' abortion clinics, as well as nightclubs were destroyed," he wrote, adding: "It's not just any old city that has gone under, but the people's dream city with the 'best brothels and the most beautiful whores'."
In 2001 he warned children against reading JK Rowling's novels about the boy wizard Harry Potter, describing them as spreading satanism.
In 2004 he said it was no coincidence that the Tsunami disaster had occurred at Christmas, inferring that it was punishment for "rich western tourists" who had "fled to poor Thailand".
This is the kind of stupidity usually reserved these days for the Protestant clergy, not Catholic bishops.
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Comments
Come on, if it's OK to be a Holocaust denier and a heretic who denies the legitimacy of the Second Vatican Council, then why not Hagee?
See:
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2009/02/better_late_than_never_the_vatican_demands.php
Posted by: Orac | February 5, 2009 9:50 AM
Please, do take Hagee.
Posted by: heddle | February 5, 2009 9:56 AM
No, no, no. He was mistranslated. What he actually said was that we should love our neighbors, turn the other cheek, and hang out with the poxy folk.
ice
Posted by: ice9 | February 5, 2009 10:28 AM
I agree that God engages in collective punishment of sinners. He has cursed the Catholics with this Pope and this Bishop as punishment for the church's child molestation scandal. Apparently, he's got them on the installment plan.
Posted by: TomMil | February 5, 2009 10:30 AM
Hurricane Katrina actually made landfall just west of Waveland, Mississippi. If Wagner's God wanted to wipe out New Orleans: he missed. So much for omnipotence; that's not even competence.
Then again, since the French Quarter emerged relatively unscathed, perhaps God has a taste for really good food and drunken debauchery.
Posted by: Cynical Pediatrician | February 5, 2009 10:31 AM
Anyone know how many churches were destroyed/damaged by Katrina?
Posted by: Ken McKnight | February 5, 2009 11:04 AM
I can assure you churches were not spared from Katrina--not even Catholic ones. St Clare in Waveland was reduced to a concrete slab where the altar used to be.
Hmmm...what's Wagner's response to that?
Posted by: Cynical Pediatrician | February 5, 2009 11:17 AM
This guy is WAY out there.
The RCC never takes a stance on environmental issues.
Posted by: kamaka | February 5, 2009 11:21 AM
Cynical: That's easy to guess; he ignores it.
Posted by: Julian | February 5, 2009 11:31 AM
So god sent a tsunami to Thailand and killed massive amounts of native Thai just to get the rich white western tourists having Christmas vacation there? Seems a bit excessive to me. Then again, Yahweh of Old Testament fame did tend to use excessive force when he was pissed off, so I guess this is in character.
Posted by: Adrienne | February 5, 2009 11:35 AM
Given how few men are going into the priesthood these days, and how many have been disqualified due to the sexual abuse scandals, Pope Benedict has very few senior clergy to pick his appointments from. Many of the qualified applicants are too liberal for his taste. Accepting the heretics back is part of the same problem. It will get worse. As the pool gets smaller each year, the available clergy will become stranger and stranger. Not to worry. It just gives us more to blog about.
Posted by: Ann Klein | February 5, 2009 11:39 AM
Adrienne: I disagree. For one thing, Yahweh was a god of the desert, not of the sea (in fact, some of his big enemies were Moloch and Dagon, both ocean gods). Only rarely did Yahweh use massive storms to chastise poor worship. Yahweh was primarily a god of war and disaster, so most of the time when he punished the tribes he did it through invasions; the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Persians, ect, ect.
It would have been closer to Yahweh's style to simply incite the locals with homicidal violence, causing them to rampage through the land massacring every foreign Christian they could get their hands on, and, accepting the bishop's logic, leaving the non-Christians untouched.
A Tsunami is really more in line with Poseidon which raises the question; what did Thailand do to piss the Horse-Breaker off?
Posted by: Julian | February 5, 2009 11:50 AM
Boy, this guy's doG is either incredibly clumsy and/or really into collateral damage (I wonder if the Sky Daddy gets Divine Wood inflicting pain and suffering? These disasters must have given Him a whopper!) I doubt all the people who died in New Orleans were that Evil. And surely most of the Boxing Day tsunami victims were not "rich Western tourists." I wonder if the Bish gets an Ecclesiastical Chubby making up all this crap. It surely gives him pleasure.
Posted by: Hal in Howell MI | February 5, 2009 11:56 AM
@Cynical Pediatrician
All the *true* churches were spared. Since these churches were not spared it is obvious that they were not, in fact, true churches.
/sarcasm off
Posted by: NoAstronomer | February 5, 2009 12:11 PM
Why does the headline say "John Hagee"? Is it a joke?
Posted by: FishyFred | February 5, 2009 12:16 PM
@ Fred: Forgive me if I'm wrong, but it seems that the new bishop has been stealing from Hagee's script. So, naming him bishop might seem to be about the same as naming Hagee to the office. Hence the post title.
Posted by: Elaine | February 5, 2009 12:43 PM
I guess he missed this Church Damage Report New Orleans and Church Insurers take hit from hurricanes Katrina and Rita
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | February 5, 2009 12:58 PM
Well my comment is being held for approval.
However I guess he didn't use that little known Internet tool Google to search for "catholic churches destroyed in new orleans"
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | February 5, 2009 1:02 PM
The RCC never takes a stance on environmental issues.
Huh?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/apr/27/catholicism.religion
The Vatican is also the only carbon-neutral state. Yes it's a small state, but it's position on the environment and climate change is more than just talk.
Posted by: Dr X | February 5, 2009 1:05 PM
The claim that homosexuals cause hurricanes by divine retribution is empirically testable. So much for non-overlapping magisteria.
Posted by: AL | February 5, 2009 1:28 PM
Ratzi shrewdly executing cunning plan to cement title as Worst Pope in Living Memory.
Posted by: Gingerbaker | February 5, 2009 1:53 PM
Posted by: FishyFred | February 5, 2009 2:30 PM
The Louisiana state medical licensing bureau also ended up under water and most of the medical and payment records stored at Cigna Healthcare in downtown New Orleans were blown into the streets and destroyed in the deluge.
I guess God hates healthcare?
Posted by: CPT_Doom | February 5, 2009 3:28 PM
Posted by: kamaka | February 5, 2009 3:58 PM
Only took 'em 40 years to catch on
This was fast-tracked. It usually takes 400 years.
Posted by: Dr X | February 5, 2009 4:59 PM
That's perfect! :D
We should all remember to "reframe" religious nattering that way.
--Diane G
Posted by: Diane G | February 5, 2009 5:14 PM
Dr. X - "The Vatican is also the only carbon-neutral state."
Without reading the link, I grant you the point - but does the Vatican produce anything? Besides dogma, of course. It imports everything it uses, and probably exports the trash afterward. So is it truly carbon-neutral, or merely a bunion in the overall carbon footprint of Italy?
Posted by: BobApril | February 5, 2009 6:19 PM
Bob April beat me to my next question. What does the Vatican produce, besides vast quantities of methane?
Posted by: democommie | February 5, 2009 7:02 PM
Maybe it wasn't the consensual adult gay sex that God was pissed about:
http://www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=9&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.snapnetwork.org%2Fnews%2Fvatican%2FTrail_leadsto_rome.htm&ei=oSKMSYGyN9jZkAW-uIS-DA&usg=AFQjCNFuh8xWzC21czOF70fpIk8Ev20MHw&sig2=naE14_lVBbCyEyky5rnTiw
Posted by: Ian Gould | February 6, 2009 6:48 AM
If I were intent on destroying the Church by making it irrelevant, I'd would quickly become apparent that I didn't need to do anything at all, because the Popenfeürher is doing a fine job of it all by himself.
What a douchebag.
Posted by: Paul | February 6, 2009 9:18 PM
If I were intent on destroying the Church by making it irrelevant, I'd would quickly become apparent that I didn't need to do anything at all, because the Popenfeürher is doing a fine job of it all by himself.
What a douchebag.
Posted by: Paul | February 6, 2009 9:18 PM
"It's not just any old city that has gone under, but the people's dream city with the 'best brothels and the most beautiful whores'."
Best. Quote. Ever.
Posted by: Modusoperandi | February 8, 2009 7:53 AM