pope
gregladen | June 18, 2015Michael Mann was interviewed by Michael Smerconish about the Pope's recent letter on climate change:
Here's the NYT piece by Justin Gillis mentioned by Mann.
The graphic at the top is form here.
gregladen | September 23, 2010Andrew Brown has written a blog post about the atheist rally in England at which Dawkins gave his now famous speech. Brown quote mines Dawkins in a way that is utterly abominable. Dawkins, in his speech, discusses a somewhat complicated relationship between certain facts ... not too complicated but complicated enough that an ignoramus would misunderstand, as Brown had demonstrated. Here's what Dawkins was saying, nice and slow:
1) Pro-pope interlocutors have stated that even if Adolph Hitler was baptized as a catholic and went to church and stuff, he really can't be counted as a catholic.…
gregladen | September 16, 2010
Summary of Hitler's Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII from Library Journal:
Relying on exclusive access to Vatican and Jesuit archives, an award-winning Roman Catholic journalist argues that through a 1933 Concordat with Hitler, Pope Pius XII facilitated the dictator's riseAand, ultimately, the Holocaust.
gregladen | April 17, 2010In his first foreign trip since sex abuse scandals in Europe and the US broke, Pope Benedict has said the Church has been "wounded by its sins".
msnbc
The pope did not directly refer to the sex abuse or its cover-up, but it is clear that this is what he meant. And, clearly, the pope has it backwards. Th church is not wounded. The church is the wounder.
The President of Malta, however, has it right:
Maltese President George Abela made the first direct reference to the abuse crisis in his welcome speech at the airport.
The Republic of Malta, whose population is strongly Catholic, has no…
sciencepunk | April 17, 2009Has the head of the Catholic Church been meddling in your politics? Perhaps you'd like to be the one pulling his strings? Live out your God fantasies with your own Pope Benedict XVI puppet, courtesy of artist Rob Nance.
palmd | March 27, 2009Pope Benedict, the former head of the same Church body that ran the Inquisition, has done it again. He just committed an act which is morally equivalent to involuntary sodomy, and did it to an entire continent.
Africa, the epicenter of the AIDS pandemic, sometimes seems to have not all that much going for it---AIDS drugs are expensive, some leaders have been idiots, but there have been some bright lights, such as Botswana's comprehensive HIV prevention program.
So when some German dude walks in and tells everyone that condoms are wrong and may make the problem worse, one might consider…
amillikan | March 22, 2009Pope Benedict XVI provoked outrage amongst health officials last week when he stated that condoms were not the answer to Africa's fight against HIV and Aids, and could even worsen the problem. His comments came during the Pope's first visit to Africa, highlighting the Catholic Church's controversial stance which places a strong emphasis on sexual abstinence and fidelity to prevent the spread of disease. Professor Susan Wood, co-chair of the advisory committee for women's health, has indicated that the Obama administration is likely to reverse many of the Bush-era policies requiring…
palmd | January 28, 2009Look, the Pope gets to make the rules---it's his club and he gets to decide who plays and who doesn't. The Vatican does not claim to be democratic. That being said, all decisions rest on him, and him alone, and cannot be blamed on "the will of the people". The buck really does stop with Papa. So when he invites rabid anti-semites back into the fold, it's a reflection of his personal beliefs. Catholicism, and Christianity in general, places a premium on forgiveness---it's some good shit for the soul, and the story of Pope John-Paul II reconciling with his would-be assassin is truly heart-…