Pope suggests 'better to be atheist than hypocritical Catholic'

[progree]

I would say better to be atheist than a religionist of any sort, but then I'm not the Pope.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/pope-suggests-better-atheist-hypocritical-catholic-131306690.html

... "There are those who say 'I am very Catholic, I always go to Mass, I belong to this and that association'," the head of the 1.2 billion-member Roman Catholic Church said, according to a Vatican Radio transcript.

He said that some of these people should also say "'my life is not Christian, I don't pay my employees proper salaries, I exploit people, I do dirty business, I launder money, (I lead) a double life'."

"There are many Catholics who are like this and they cause scandal," he said. "How many times have we all heard people say 'if that person is a Catholic, it is better to be an atheist'."

... Less than two months after his election, he said Christians should see atheists as good people if they do good

[Goblinmonger]

1. He's such a douche.

That is just another way of saying, "If that's the kind of asshole you are going to be, you might as well be this asshole over here."

I hate Frank so much.

[tenorly]

2. I'm pretty sure he meant it solely as a dig against Opus Dei types

with whom it should be noted, he's had struggles since the days of the last dictatorship in Argentina in the late 1970s.

One of his closest friends and most lasting influences on him was his supervisor in the lab he worked in as a young man: a woman named Esther Ballestrino who was both a Socialist and an Atheist - and outspokenly so.

Bellestrino went on to be one of the co-founders of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo - the renowned activist group initially formed to demand the return of family members illegally detained by the dictatorship, and which later became the foremost advocates for prosecutions against Dirty War perpetrators.

She herself was detained and killed - thrown alive from an Air Force transport plane onto the Río de la Plata bay - in 1977.