Wonkette: New Pope Already Pissing Off The Santorum Wing Of The Catholic Church

[caseymoz]

74. Except for your title.

He is wrong and persists in his wrongness for the sake of himself and of his own, without regard to the harm done to others. That's easy to understand if a person has a soul and some ethics.

And I agree with you all this. Then you say this:

Every bigot that ever breathed has 'reasons' in their mind for what they do, the details are irrelevant.

So, deconstructing how they trick themselves into evil it isn't relevant . . . to what? To your judgment of him? I never intended my post to be an argument against your judgment, which in fact, is the same as mine. Something that you can't seem to wrap your mind around.

Notwithstanding Wonkette's dumb statement-- which I never addressed-- I never said this Pope wasn't bigoted. I never said he wasn't practicing bigotry. That's exactly what he did and what he'll likely do.

However, there's also not a thing I can do about this guy no matter how I feel. Since my only option is to watch what he does, listen to what he says, and hope this guy is better than his predecessors and better than he first looked, that's what I have to do. Maybe that's too wistful for you to understand.

So, my idle question while I'm waiting to see what he does is what brain-damaging mental gymnastics is he performing so he can be bigoted? How is he doing it to himself? That's important, if for no other reason, to make sure I never do it to myself.

In addition, 'infallibility' is only applied to formal pronouncements not every stupid thing some Pope says. Francis is not himself 'infallible' the RCC says certain specific forms of Papal speech are infallible.

No, you have that wrong. According to the church, speech is true or false, but infallibility is a personal quality. If he speaks while he's infallible, what he says is true.

I'm tempted to sneer at the absurd notion that it's possible to narrow down (or perhaps distill) a humanly judged quality like infallibility down to just one category or situation, but you are generally correct that this is how the church defines papal infallibility.

However, since the entire concept is stupid and the effort misguided, in practice, it means that there's creeping infallibility, where everyone is confused about when he's infallible and when he's just one of us. So as not to offend God, Catholics tend to treat everything a Pope says as infallible unless proven otherwise. My own opinion? I think confusing people about infallibility is deliberate. It allows a Pope to have power without responsibility.

In fact, the infallibility doctrine is so untenable that I'm stunned you would try to argue whether the last three Popes were really infallible when they spoke out against homosexuality. Are you Catholic? If not, why are you trying to parse doctrines you have no obligation to believe, which are stupid to believe if you're not obligated to? Why sink yourself into the morass of legalistic minutia that's the infallibility doctrine? Nobody is infallible at any time, period. Why go any further into it?

What if gay people were calling YOU Satanic? Hmmmmmm? Do ye therefore unto others as you would have others do unto you.

I guess whether you're offended at being called Satan depends on 1) If you believe in such being, or even believe he's possible; 2) if there are consequences to being called that. Or you can simply be offended because you don't like the character.

I'm an atheist and I don't believe in the Christian myth. As long as there are no consequences, I'd feel much the same way about being called Satanic as when guys at my grade and high school said I was gay. That is, I'd feel they were stupid and their gay-dar sucks. (Well, not the second thing.) But there were consequences of being mistaken for being gay at a Catholic School. Consequences like harassment, like concussions. You have me wrong if you think I have any sympathy for bigots.

But that's just me, so you picked a poor example. Very lazy of you.