Yeah, cool week in news. A couple I hadn't heard of - thanks for the compilation. The video of the guy with the rocket wings is very cool.
Not to get off on a rant here, but what percentage of the world's population is Catholic? I'm sick of hearing about what the Vatican or the Pope thinks. What did they think of Copernicus, Galileo, and Darwin? Whenever the Pope makes a decree it's always newsworthy apparently. I suppose Protestants care about what he says so maybe there is a lot of interest and it should be front-page stuff.
I'm Catholic. Which is quite a lot more complex than that initial, bald statement suggests.
The thing is, I've been part of the church since I was twelve and on a personal standpoint have had nothing but good experiences all the way along. My faith's helped me a lot in some very bad situations but that does not mean, under any circumstances, that I blindly adhere to every belief of the Catholic Church.
Clerical celibacy? Bad plan.
That Archbishop lobbying to pull out of Amnesty International because (gasp) they support ABORTION? Oh HELL no.
There are others. In fact, that second one genuinely nearly got me in trouble. I remember reading the headline in the lobby of the Church on the way out and getting the 'Oh what the HE-' of 'Oh what the HELL is this shit?!' out before being frogmarched out the door by my Dad. Turns out a 6'1 guy unloading on the Catholic newspapers with both barrels? Might frighten old ladies. Who knew?
The delineation that I make is that there is the Church and the faith itself. The Church is the admin, it's the humans, the politicians. They're the ones who make mistakes, who are at times horrifically broken human beings, who clearly have a vast cognitive dissonance between what they think is right and what everyone else on the planet thinks. The Church is responsible for the Inquisition, for the lousy time Galileo had, for the countless mistakes and crimes down through the centuries.
I am pleased that they're officially cool with life on other worlds now though.
Then there's the faith. The faith is what taught me to help people who are in trouble, what taught me to be polite, to be nice, to be compassionate. The faith tells me that it's okay for me to fuck up, which I do, repeatedly because in the end, the fact that I'm trying and that I'm sorry when things go wrong is in fact the most important part. It's not a perfect relationship and if I'm being a hundred percent honest I've had two occasions in the last three years where I've felt more than a little adrift, but it's something I keep returning to.
Much like your point, up post:)
Oh by the way? I think science is AWESOME. Huge science fan. And I can reconcile my faith with science pretty easily, at least in my head.
Anyway, yes I understand completely why the Papal news coverage can be irritating and unfortunately it's kind of the fault of history. The Catholic church is unusual in several ways and I'm sure people who are much better scholars than me will be along to explain that any minute, but not the least of them is the fact it's also a Government. The Pope is effectively a head of state and that's one of the major reasons why he gets a lot of coverage when he does speak. Throw in the rigidly stratified nature of the church and that means he seems, and probably is, over exposed.
