To hell with the Pope

Now they want to make the deceased Pope a saint, and put his beatification on the Mother Theresa fast-track (only three Popes have made it to sainthood). Already some cardinals claim that his presence magically healed them from illness.

Phooey. Listen, I’d trade one Andrea Dworkin for every Pope that ever existed. Not that I agree with her about much, but at least she was on the side of women, which no Pope has ever been.

What does the Pope stand for? Let’s see.

The Pope is one man in charge of an organization of over a billion adherents, who are ruled by a cabal of men, and men alone. It’s governed by some hundred and twenty something male cardinals, all appointed by one man, the Pope. We’re talking male domination here, the very definition of patriarchy, a circular one in which one man appoints the men who elect his successor.

In other words, a self-propagating dictatorship. A one-man dictatorship. The Catholic Church is the most undemocratic organization ever invented. If they were a country, and they are, with U.N. representation, they'd be regarded as the worst dictatorship ever.

Then they have the gall to glorify their ruler, the Pope, as nearer to God than the rest of us. A one-man dictatorship ordained by God. Yeah sure, God sanctions dictatorships. We have here a relic of the Middle Ages, alive and well in the 21st Century. They're as out-of-date and medieval as Islam, and as set against modernity.

Besides being totally undemocratic, the Catholic Church is totally peculiar. Its office holders are not allowed to have sex. Not allowed to live a full life. They can eat and work and sleep, but not screw. They're cut off from one of the most basic activities that humans are biologically designed for. How warped can you get? No wonder the Catholic Church is against women, against sex, and against condoms -- and no wonder its rulers are cross-dressers.

Many of these rulers are gay, yet they hate gays, and call being gay “evil.” Even so, these homophobes have spent centuries protecting their gay boy-bonkers from the law, until the scandal was blown wide open in the U.S. But one of their pedophile protectors, Cardinal Law (a name dripping in irony), is living in the Vatican where he gets plum assignments, when he is a criminal who belongs in jail. Why isn’t he in jail? Because he’s a Cardinal. If he were a human being, he would've been charged and imprisoned.

Why is the Catholic Church exempt from the laws and disdain of men? Because they believe in the Bible, which is the word of God. Does this make sense? Hey, I know kids who believe in the movie Star Wars as much as anyone believes in the Bible. If a book can be the word of God, why can't a movie be the word of God, too? Both are superstitions. See The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason by Sam Harris for a discussion about the danger of faith in our time.

Today the Catholic Church is losing ground in the civilized, industrialized, progressive world, a world that doesn't need religion to feel moral or secure. So what does the Church do? It goes forth to proselytize and prey on the poor people of the earth in Africa, Asia and South America. Just like the big tobacco companies.

And there, like the tobacco companies, it kills people. It kills people because (like the Bush administration), it preaches against condoms, and this fundamentalist ideology causes people to die of AIDS. Because of its archaic sexual attitudes, it and its Pope have the blood of millions of suffering women, children and men on their hands.

Who are these sex-hating boy-bonking superstitious perverts to tell the rest of the world what to do about sex and women and homosexuals and condoms? Why are they allowed to preach in favor of death -- this cabal of self-righteous, warped, male psychos, this criminal organization of women-haters and killers, this gang of sexist fundamentalists?

Women of the world, unite against the Catholic Church! You have nothing to lose but your lives, which you're losing every day by the thousands because of this all-male dictatorship. It's a pity there isn't a hell, because if there were, these killers would be burning in it.