People are always so eager to fall all over themselves with excitement because the pope manages to say one sensible thing once in a blue moon. It’s very hard to say all absurd things all the time – naturally the pope slips up now and then. If he says “this milk has gone sour” when the milk has in fact gone sour, there’s no need to interrupt anyone with a news bulletin.
So yes, just because he thinks it might be worth not frying the planet we live on to a crisp, that doesn’t mean he’s not still a catholic. He is still a catholic. He wouldn’t be a pope otherwise. I promise you that’s a major criterion for the job.
He’s still a catholic, and he still thinks women should be forced to continue every pregnancy no matter what.
The publication of the Pope’s first solely authored encyclical has been widely celebrated by environmentalists, climate change campaigners and other religious leaders.
However, the text confirms the Pope’s views on abortion and the sanctity of life in line with traditional Roman Catholic teaching.
Of course it does. Did you think he would include a paragraph saying, “Oh and also, abortion is allowed, because after all it’s the woman who has to deal with it, not me, so it’s really none of my business”?
Kate Smurthwaite, vice-chair and media spokesperson for Abortion Rights UK, told The Independent that she was “unsurprised” at the Pope’s recent remarks and labelled them “terrible news for the planet”.
She said the remarks were an important reminder that “he’s not the great transformer that people would like him to be.”
“The reality is that one of the environmental problems is over-population,” she continued. “That’s not really a reason to or not to allow people their reproductive rights, but they are a basic right which many women around the world would like to have.”
And which the pope would like them not to have, and he has a lot more power than they do.
The Dalai Lama, too. It is amazing how many people forget that he his the ruler of a theocratic government (in exile, but still) what sees women as less than human and was one of the last countries on the planet to permit slavery.
https://www.facebook.com/144310995587370/photos/a.271728576178944.71555.144310995587370/1003286626356465/?l=56de76b3f0
Ophelia, you might appreciate this panel. It’s not on exactly the same topic but I think it’s on the same wavelength.
http://pictoraltheology.blogspot.com/2015/06/demons-be-gone.html
I liked it. Gave you a h/t, Pliny. Thanks.
Because population has absolutely nothing to do with humanity’s impact on the planet, popey.
Heartily agree, but I still love that he said this. Because it makes our Catholic climate denialist PM squirm. Delightful.
Why does a celibate male bachelor think he can dictate about womens’ reproductive rights?
Al Dente @7, first, he’s not dictating but (literally) pontificating, and second, the very concept of “reproductive rights” is inconceivable in his theology*.
(Or to directly address your ostensible point, he thinks that because his authority over Catholics is an undeniable reality, and he’s not so disengaged from reality that he fails to realise this)
—
* In its place, ‘reproductive duties’. 😐
Of course he’s dictating. He’s the pope. His word is law. People are meant to obey. He can’t use an army to force them, but that doesn’t mean he’s not dictating.
PG Genesis 3:16.
Hahaha that’s great Pliny. Shall I share it here?
Ophelia (& Al Dente), fair enough, I concede he’s functionally dictating to those who have granted him fealty (Catholics), and arguably even to those who grant him moral authority.
Well quite, which is obviously what Al Dente meant.
Enough with the pointless nitpicking, ok? It’s getting intrusive.
Ophelia, Glad you liked it. You are always welcome to use any of my stuff.
Still going to count this as a net positive. If only because, as Alethea Kuiper-Belt said, it makes the faithful squirm. Perhaps something will come of that. There’s got to be something useful in all that authoritarianism!
Of course, not going to start in on the Pope love-in myself.
The guy who personally took confessions from Argentine pilots and gave them absolution (*) isn’t saying it because it’s right, he’s saying it to pander to populations in rich countries. The catholic cult is increasingly becoming a religion of poor countries and people (Africa, Philippines, etc.) and its membership in rich countries is seriously in decline.
He’s changing his tune for the same reason many US churches change their tune on LGBTQ rights and other issues: revenues are decreasing, and they need to keep seats in the seats, keep filling the collection plates.
(* The pilots who threw conscious political prisoners out of helicopters into the ocean from a thousand metres in the air.)
@ ^ left0ver1under : I hadn’t heard that claim before although I guess it makes histrocial sense. Having checked quickly I found this :
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2294580/Special-report-The-damning-documents-new-Pope-DID-betray-tortured-priests-junta.html
Which seemingly confirms that :
Plus makes a number of other disturbing allegations.
Wow. Okay. news to me and likely many others.
@Al Dente asked : “Why does a celibate male bachelor think he can dictate about womens’ reproductive rights?”
Because he’s the Pope appointed by God who can and indeed should tell absolutely everyone what to do on anything and everything!
That’s why – its totally wrong, I think as do most others, but still you did ask!
Thing is people, well mostly Catholics people but others too do take him seriously and he does have influence including over people like my Prime Minister “Captain Catholic” Tony Abbott – who is Climate Denier. So hopefully this acceptance of Climatological reality by this Pope may help and actually do some good so its a good thing in that sense.
Meanwhile in other tangentially related news after the recent Indian heatwave which killed literally thousands we’re now seeing another in the same South Asian region :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Pakistani_heat_wave
Reality generally incl. the reality of Global Overheating tends to make itself very obvious after a while. The Pope at least has finally accepted it a bit quicker than the centuries to took them to recognise the astronomical heliocentric Copernican so, yay? At least he’s still ahead of a lot of the far right Republicans and TeaBlaggards. Given some of them like “Frothymix” Santorum are Catholic, again, perhaps this’ll help speed up the shift towards recognising reality here? Can hope.
It also has me wondering who and when the last Deniers standing will be and how much longer anyone is going to be able to deny that Human Induced Rapid Global Overheating (HIRGO) is fact.
PS. Re : the title here, my inner pedant can’t help but note that Ursus maritimus aka the Polar Bear actually defecates on the sea ice or into the Arctic ocean and the Sun Bear (Helarctos malayanus) defecates in the tropical jungle biome which I ‘spose at a long stretch could be described loosely as “woods” but .. yeah, nitpickuing, sorry.
It’s not exactly a victory, but I’d still count it as progress when the most regressive organizations in the world are forced to change in order to survive. Call it a negative marker, maybe?
They were known as death flights. An unknown number of Argentinians were murdered in that way. Some estimates say 200, but it could be much higher.
“Barbequeing”/”Grilling” was a common method of torture in Argentina (and other places that the CIA trained fascist governments in torture, like Chile), tying people to latticed bed frames (steel sheets, metal springs) and electrocuting them. Such tactics are well known outside the US, where people knew about the “School of the Americas” in Fort Benning, Georgia. The Spanish Inquisition could only fantasize of having such tortures at their disposal.
As for being news, it’s news in the US where Philip Agee and his book “CIA Diary” were banned (but not in England or Canada where my old man had a copy). Agee didn’t work for the CIA in Argentina, but he did in Uruguay and several other Latin American countries.
https://archive.org/stream/pdfy-DAzR701tP2dL_DNu/inside-the-company-cia-diary-philip-agee#page/n513/mode/2up
If the rest of 2015 goes the way of the first 5 months, they may still deny that warming is human-caused, but the global average temperature for the year will stop all the it’s not warming fools in their tracks. For a year or two anyway.