#22330: — 04/19  at  04:44 PM
Nazi or non-Nazi, zombie or vampire, bad hobbit or good hobbit, monkey or robot, logic and reason suggest strongly that what we may have on our hands is some kind of Doomsday Pope:

http://www.bibleprobe.com/last10popes.htm

#22331: — 04/19  at  05:00 PM
could you give us a summary? some of us don't have 15 minutes to waste reading so much about religious crap.

#22332: — 04/19  at  05:04 PM
Basically, based on the latest events in Popery, Jesus is coming real soon now.

#22333: DarkSyde — 04/19  at  05:05 PM
The thing is Comm, this cat is supposed to be the infallible voice of morality and the exemplar of strength of ethical character; the highest out of the 1.1 billion they could have chosen, and at least the best out of the hundred or so that were in the running. To choose him makes the RCC look terrible just when they were starting to get past the reputation of being the archetypical sick medieval torturing fucks, and modern day enablers/protectors of pedophiliacs. As an atheist I'm personally happy they made such a poor choice, maybe it will chase out some of their codependent victims. But for my catholic friends I have sympathy; they were all excited, and I can literally hear the let down in their voices and read between the lines as they try to put lipstick on the guy.
On a side note I'll tell you something kind of funny; some of the less cynical democratic folks I know, who it must be said have a good heart, were trying to tell others not to make too big a deal about this clown's shortcomings or the religious right might use it to try and paint critics of BushCo/Delay/Frist as being hostile to religion. Sad I know.

#22334: — 04/19  at  05:14 PM
That end-times Pope stuff has been going on for quite a long time. I first heard about it in the early 90s. Basically what I heard about it is that the next pope (which is now the current pope, Benedict XVI) is going to be evil and do bad stuff leading to bad consequences. Then the pope after him is going to be anti-christ himself. In the flesh.

#22335: — 04/19  at  05:25 PM
"Jesus is coming real soon now."

Sure. Sure he is. Any day now.

#22336: — 04/19  at  05:29 PM
Character in a book says he's coming back real soon, 2000 years of cricket chirping go by, and some people still believe it. Any day now.

Why I didn't go into televangelism, I have no idea. Some kind of 'conscience' crap.

#22337: — 04/19  at  05:40 PM

he'll at least help to diminish the influence of the Catholic church around the world.

If I'm reading things right, the big political worry for the Church at the moment is the South Americans. Voting for Ratzinger was a vote for suppressing dissent. How the South Americans will react to being quashed remains to be seen. How do you spell schism?

Actually, I'm probably over-analysing. The reason Ratzinger got in was the sermon he did before the election where he basically said, "Do God's will and vote for me" while zapping the cardinals with his vampire stare.

#22339: — 04/19  at  06:22 PM
John Paul pretty much screwed the church with his cult of personality. It's not so obvious that any successor can easily undo that.

Ratzinger least of all.

The two of them tried to ignore the pedophila scandal (which started earlier, much earlier and was/is not solely a US Catholic sporting event); and JP only did anything at all when it appeared that the flow of Peter's Pences from the richest Catholics in the world might be intercepted by a bunch of child victims with good plaintiff lawyers.

Terrible misjudgment. By the time the Vatican did anything at all, it had driven out all the decent and informed Catholics, leaving it with nothing but a bunch of charwomen who see Mary in pizza sauce.

The evangelicals are eating Rome's lunch in S. America and even among Filipinos. A bunch of my Filipino friends are Assembly of God now.

The Church accomplished an interesting balancing act for a long time -- date it from 1849, when the French restored Pio Nono, who promptly extinguished those radical streetlights that the '48ers had put up, to around 1950 when Pius 12 issued Humani Generis, which allowed educated Catholics to make spiritual compromises to exist in the modern world.

It was an unstable situation, and it had to fall in one of two directions. With John 23, it looked as if the Church might move away from medievalism, sort of like the change that turned Congregationalists into Unitarians.

I think that 25 years ago, a lot of modernist Catholics thought John Paul would be a modernizer, too, because he had been a pope-in-the-world and was against the side of the devils.

What they didn't realize is that he was all Polish and therefore almost untouched by anything that happened since around 1648.

#22340: — 04/19  at  06:23 PM
Why has nobody mentioned that it was his birthday three days ago, and so Ratzinger was clearly elected as a birthday present?
What do you give the guy who has everything? The Papacy.

#22341: — 04/19  at  06:26 PM
I second the choice of Emperor Palpatine.

And here I was hoping the next pope would take the name Lando II. Or Pope Jesus.

#22342: — 04/19  at  06:32 PM
Dear PZ

I love reading your stuff, and as a raving atheist, I am right in there with you, but I think that giving vent to school-kid vitriol is rather poor taste, as well as tactically bad. Its exactly the ad-hominem mistake the ID/creationist loonys pick up on.

#22343: DarkSyde — 04/19  at  06:35 PM
I for one welcome our new theocratic overlord. I'd like to remind him that as an influential blogger of the godless atheist left, I could be of great use in rounding up heathens to toil in their underground sugar mines ...

#22344: The Commissar — 04/19  at  06:52 PM
PZM, Graham, et al,

I'm an atheist/agnostic myself, a staunch defender of science on my side of the blogosphere.

I don't give a Ratzinger's ass if you want to lampoon the guy for looking like mad Bilbo, Nosferato, or Little Orphan Annie. If you don't like his politics, or his views, slam away. If he should've done more about child abuse in the Church, have at him.

But the "Hitler Youth" bit is a half-truth, inaccurate by omission, a cheap childish propaganda ploy.

"At last, sir, have you no shame?"

If pointing that out makes me, in your view, an "ID/creationist loony," so be it.

#22345: — 04/19  at  07:01 PM
Hope I'm not drifting the thread too much, but the funny thing about the new poop pope (that really was an accident, I'm just sacreligious enough to let it stand) being a former Hitler Youth is that the 9th Circuit just said it's ok for Holocaust survivors to sue the Vatican Bank for profiting from Nazism. So, do you think that the Vatican will settle quickly and generously?

(By the way, I don't think that a radical right-wing world leader is immune from being called a poop just because he's "Holy".)

#22347: — 04/19  at  07:15 PM
Oh, I don't know why I decided to just unload in Your comment section, Dr. PZ; maybe because you're such an infidel. I really had this moment, a bit before they announced Ratz, where I was feeling optimistic about Tutu. I mean, how great would that have been, a black, pro-condom (read anti-manslaughter-of-poor-Catholic-Africans)Pope? That would have been so cool.

#22348: — 04/19  at  07:26 PM
Hypothetically, a zombie, vampire or vampire-zombie could also be a werewolf.

Lycanthropy was considered a prerequisite to being a vampire -- you were a werewolf in life, you died, and you came back as a vampire.

Zombies, not so much overlap, since zombies are Caribbean and vampires are primarily Eastern European, though co-opted by British writers like Byron, Le Fanu and Stoker.

#22350: PZ Myers — 04/19  at  08:03 PM
It's a half-truth that he was in the Hitler Youth? What's the false half?

As usual, the right-winger seizes on an irrelevancy to defend a rotten guy; I wish you all would stop posing.

#22351: PZ Myers — 04/19  at  08:06 PM
And to others: I refuse to take the pope seriously. What am I supposed to do? Treat the appointment of hateful old tight-ass to the top position in an archaic medieval hierarchy reverently? Phbbphbptt.

#22354: The Commissar — 04/19  at  08:28 PM
the full truth is that membership was required, and the ADL has commended him for his post-war actions

the half-truth is "he was in the Hitler Youth," without any clarification, context, or background.

#22355: — 04/19  at  08:32 PM
It's not just that Ratzinger was a Hitler Youth, assisted in firing at the American and British forces fighting against the Nazis, took part without objection in Nazi exploitation of Hungarian slave labor, and deserted the Wehrmacht at the end like the proverbial rat (while many other German youth did find ways to evade service or resist) - it's that, for 60 years afterwards, in the middle of the confessingest culture in the world, Ratzinger has (reportedly - someone pls post a correction if you know otherwise) never apologized for or publicly regretted in any way his affiliation with the Nazi effort. It won't be long until we see a new biography, Hitler's Other Pope.

#22357: The Commissar — 04/19  at  08:33 PM
"half-truth (hăf'trūth', häf'-)
n.

A statement, especially one intended to deceive, that omits some of the facts necessary for a full description or account."


Note that no 'false half' is required.

#22358: — 04/19  at  08:35 PM
The "half-truth" you neglected to include was that he was "forced" to join the Hitler Youth and defend the motherland. Because his official biographer says that his dad was anti-Nazi and that even in his immaturity he didn't want to join and then deserted, it is impossible to attribute a tendency toward authoritarianism and fanatacism to him. Oh yeah, and a Jewish group released a statement in favor of his papacy.

I don't particularly care if he was once a Nazi, since Nazism doesn't exert much control over the populace these days. I am concerned that a dogmatic anitiquarian Catholic is now considered the moral authority to a large percentage of a few continents' population. He can only continue to wreak havoc upon humanity, especially the Third World and women (through his position on contraceptives) and the ability for non-heterosexuals to be treated as humans. He also played a major role in trying to cover up the pedophilia scandal, indicating a tendency to favor the maintenance of power of the church over the well-being of the congregation.

#22359: fwiffo — 04/19  at  08:46 PM
So much pontification on the pontiff... I say we hold a confab of atheist sparrows to elect someone (me) to wear big hats, castigate credulity and prattle about Popper. Get busy forging my angler ring!

#22360: DarkSyde — 04/19  at  08:48 PM
Naw I'm with PZ, Comm and I can't imagine why you wouldn't be if you are as you claim an atheist/agnostic and someone who is a defender of science, not to mention simple morality.
Historically the RCC went centuries on end tearing people into peices while they were still alive and screaming for mercy, burning people alive including old women, retarded people, and kids, stomping on science and reason. They've been corrupted, been caught lying, covering up, and taking advantage of their power all through the years as much as any king or tyrant in Europe did. Kings and tyrants in the western world are mostly a thing of the past, they're still chugging right along.
(And Nate) What's relevent and revolting today is the senior management was shuffling around priests, that were butt-fucking little boys, to keep them from getting caught. They only took token actions when i started being a financial drain as a result of lawsuits. Talk about special treatment: Any other organization that got nailed for enabling pedophilia, the crooks would all be in jail, and anyone who helped conceal it and knowingly put those sick bastards in new parishes to prey on more children again would likely be sitting in prison for life, and the org would probably be either disbanded or have their assets seized by the police and courts. Where they or anyone else gets off pretending these kooks have some kind of sacred mantle of morality is utterly incomprehensible to me. The Hitler Youth stuff simply points out that this particular pedophile enabling scumbag also had nothing unusual in the way of ethics or courage from early on in his life. And that's not an attack on religion, it's an attack on the senior leadership of the RCC, just as an attack on Clinton in 1998 wouldn't constitute an attack on the US or on democracy. I really get sick of these assholes and their incessant apologists hiding behind religion to minimize their criminally egregious acts, be it now, or 300 years ago.