Pope Ratzi was in charge of a parade yesterday, where everyone pretends to know every footfall of poorly documented Jewish rabbi’s execution, so they can re-enact it and make portentous comments at every step. The whole thing is online, if you want to read it. The Seventh Station is the interesting one.
But what is it that today, in particular,
strikes at Christ’s holy body?Surely God is deeply pained
by the attack on the family.
Today we seem to be witnessing
a kind of anti-Genesis,
a counter-plan, a diabolical pride
aimed at eliminating the family.There is a move to reinvent mankind,
to modify the very grammar of life
as planned and willed by God.[10]But, to take God’s place, without being God,
is insane arrogance,
a risky and dangerous venture.
I don’t know about any attack on the family, and I think the accusation is just as ridiculous as Bush’s absurd claim that terrorists are attacking us because they hate freedom. He’s simply putting up something that almost all of us appreciate and enjoy and recognize as a good thing, and saying the nameless, inchoate “they” want to destroy it. Does anybody know anyone who wants to destroy the family? Anyone? I hang out with liberal college professors—they have families, and seem to get along with them fairly well. I teach college students—many of them seem to aspire to fall in love (if they aren’t already) and make a new family of their own someday. Could we have a few specifics, please, on who these nefarious family-haters are, and how they plan to mess up my happy home life?
I also don’t get the “anti-Genesis” remark. I’d interpret it as a warning shot against evolution, but it’s in the context of this strange “we like families” truism. The next paragraph makes it clear, though, what parts of Genesis he’s talking about.
The citation [10] that is being interpreted as a condemnation of genetic research refers to Genesis 1:27 and 2:24.: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them” and “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.” Awfully thin, old boy. I hope that the hard-line Catholics aren’t really arguing that we need to leave the genome alone because it is a copy of God’s Holy DNA, which would have some peculiar theological connotations. No, scratch that—I would love to hear the religious argue that. I want to see a mob of theologians argue about the ideal sequence of God’s own Hox genes. I also want to see the theological wrangling over two contradictory concepts: the inviolability of the genome vs. the necessary recombination and modification of the genome caused by sexual reproduction. Is crossing over heretical?
Finally, let me reassure everyone that I do not have a god complex, and do not aspire to take any god’s place. Gods are fantasies, nebulous vapor, words to describe the nonexistent, and I plan to defer becoming nonexistent for as long as is possible.
Although, of course, it is inevitable that someday I will achieve godhood. It’s just not a particularly desirable state, and it’s more than risky and dangerous—it’s lethal.
But, to take God’s place, without being God,
is insane arrogance,
a risky and dangerous venture.
If he really believed that, he’d stay indoors where the thunderbolts can’t get him.
Funny how the pope thinks atheists and gays who don’t give a shit about catholics are a bigger threat to his cult than protestants who actually believe he’s satan’s prince on earth!
For Mr. Ratzinger ‘family’ is not determined by love, or by making a sincere thoughtful effort to raise children to a healthy adulthood. For him family is determined by compliance with the social order that he approves of. If you do something different from the social order that he approves of you are ‘anti-family’ no matter how much love or successful reproduction is a part of your life.
Similarly if the reproduction method that you use (to raise children, to grow carrots, or to grow insulin-producing cells) is not ‘traditional’ (i.e. existed before the discovery of DNA) then you are ‘anti-Genesis’, no matter how sincerely you believe that ‘God guided your hand’ when you used the pipette or the not-yet-invented ‘Cross-Over Controller’. [Mr. Ratzinger probably believes that ‘God works through human beings’, but apparently the All-Powerful God that he believes in is prohibited from working through human beings in order to ‘intelligently design’ living things, apparently his ‘Limitless God’ has to do that himself without intermediaries. Don’t ask why, it is a Mystery(tm)]
Well, Joey Ratzinger is a politician really. He has been involved in lots of attempts to bring Lutherans and Catholics closer together. There isn’t much chance of bringing atheists or gays over to his side, is there? (although considering he’s an adult male without a wife or apparent girlfriend, his championing of heterosexuality seems somewhat ironic)
I have to admit, it cracks me up when people try to claim that Jesus, who encouraged his followers to desert their families and who denied his own mother (the whole “Woman, I do not know you” bit), was “pro-family.” If anything, you could argue that Jesus was pro-chosen-family, since he insisted that we are all brothers and sisters, not just the people who are related to us by blood.
You’d think the frickin’ Pope would know the Bible better than that.
Listen to the bachelor in the dress, folks. If you don’t get married and have children (preferably lots of children), life will end. Yes, humanity is on the edge of extinction. Now I’ll go to my parents’ home for Easter dinner and hope to find a place to sit despite the hordes of nieces and nephews crawling all over. Yes, extinction looms.
Why we shouldn’t do the works of gods ?
There is no one else but us to do it
Well, what do you expect. Vatican ideology (among others) is centered around the apotheosis of suffering. Suffering is both a carrot for the ones who want to be like Jesus and a stick with which to herd the flock to the carrot of divine salvation. So the idea that our children could one day make an appointment at the biodesigner to have their genomes rearranged for indefinite health-spans must seem deeply troubling to the Pope.
Come now. There’s plenty of evidence the Designer made numerous design errors, has at best a limited ability to understand the suffering of others, is selfish and vain, etc, etc. These are human failings. If the Designer were merely human, it would explain so much …
One small correction – the muslim terrorists are attacking “The West” because it is “free” ( Well, freer than a muslim state) and because we do not subscribe to their medieaval mind-set.
In this they have more in common with President Shrub than they do with the rest of us.
What I’m really frightened of is a sort of Nazi-Soviet pact between the muslims and the chritian wingnuts to do in the enlightenment, and THEN have a war between them, to rule the ruins ……
If the Catholic church wants to promote family, shouldn’t they let priests get married instead of molesting young children?
Just sayin’.
I want to see a mob of theologians argue about the ideal sequence of God’s own Hox genes.
Maybe the triune nature of the Christian god is explained by two duplications of the divine Hox gene.
Sean, would you determine that by running a Hox EST (corpus Meum)?
Good point Donna: I have known catholic priests who should never have been let on the same island as children, but many more priests who struggles or coped with celibacy honourably as the price of their vocation. (Jone I heard in Ireland:
‘What dioes Priest stand for?’
Me: ‘Dunno.’
Punchline: Paedophile resident in every small town.
The part of England where I live has some of the richest Catholic heritage anywhere in the world, but the modern Catholic Church is on the slide: in 25 years time they’ll have fewer than 25 priests capable of covering a huge diocese.
As for celibacy: no chance under Benedict 16th. The choice of a Pope’s name send signals as to what will inspire his papacy. One of Benedict’s predecessors (the 8th) introduced clergy celibacy. The 9th and 11th were particularly tasty characters.
For a rundown on the current Pope’s spiritual antecedents have a look here:
http://www.wildbard.com/2005/04/new-popes-pedigree.html
And on a related topic, a rundown of the Papal deaths which were not exactly in a state of grace:
http://www.wildbard.com/2005/04/papal-deaths-retrospective.html
My prize goes to Pope John 12th. I should like to have heard the Vatican spin doctor on that one.
No, scratch that–I would love to hear the religious argue that.
The Mormons believe that our physical bodies (with the exception of the blood) are copies of God’s; presumably this would include DNA. Somehow I suspect that your eagerness to hear more details is a bluff… ;-)
PZ – you forgot those anti-family gays and lesbians who want to get married and raise children.
Donna – two points from a long-recovered Catholic:
1 – the Church has an investment in its image as eternal and infallible. Changing any of the rules is an admission of having been not-quite-right in the past, so we’re not going to see married priests or women priests any time soon.
2 – if the Church allowed priests to marry, each parish would be responsible for supporting priest’s families of 8, 10, 12, even more children. Otherwise, the Church would have to let the priests use birth control. If they let priests use birth control, they have to admit it’s not a sin. See point #1.
That’s a great line.
Actually, I can’t help but think the Da Vinci Code has something to do with this; it is the real threat to families.
One small correction – the muslim terrorists are attacking “The West” because it is “free” ( Well, freer than a muslim state) and because we do not subscribe to their medieaval mind-set.
That’s an interesting proposition. I wonder if you have evidence to back it up?
I ask because although that might be one reason, there are several other plausible reasons a muslim terrorist might dislike the US, even prior to our invasion of Iraq. For instance, we’ve been instrumental in propping up the Saudi regime, which is not terribly popular. We also have some history in Iran that their leaders have not forgotten about yet. Then there’s our support of Israel, which ties us to the hatred felt for Israel. Finally, there’s the indoctrination in Wahabiist madrases funded by our Saudi allies. None of these have to do with our being “free”.
True, I’d wager that our freedom – our at least our perceived licentiousness – ticks off some mullahs here and there, but I doubt it’s a significant recruitment ploy. (If nothing else, I’d assume they’d be more worried about Bollywood than Hollywood, though that doesn’t seem to come up)
“That’s an interesting proposition. I wonder if you have evidence to back it up?
I ask because although that might be one reason, there are several other plausible reasons a muslim terrorist might dislike the US, even prior to our invasion of Iraq. ”
Good point, Daniel.
Of all the free countries in the world, why is America the “Great Satan” (which is a term, when trying to interpret through american pop culture rather than islam, gets misinterpreted…but anyway) and not, say, Finland? Or Canada? It’s not like they threw a dart at a map and it just happened to land on the US or something.
I’m not excusing the blind hatred of an entire country of people who just happened to be born here or anything. But the situation is infinitely more complex than ‘they hate us for our freedom.’
No, they really do hate us for our freedom.
I live in London, and we’ve got a few muslim nutters (even nutier than usual that is) who really want Saria and Kalifah amd the rest.
We are just UNGODLY and WRONG to them, and it’s their holy duty to correct that.
Now imagiune a whole country like that, or one with a ruling elite like that – oh you’re in the USA, arn’t you?
G. Tingey, had to laugh out loud at that one. Yes, you got me, I have committed the classic american-on-the-internet mistake of thinking everyone else on the internet is an american. For that I apologize.
In the US, or at least in the circles I’ve had this discussion in, the “They” and the “us” in “they hate us for our freedom” tend to mean “Middle Eastern countries” and “the United States.” I don’t live in the UK, so I can’t comment with authority what it’s like there.
American muslims, at least, my muslim father and all of the muslims in our local community, don’t seem to feel about the US the way European muslims feel about their countries (or, at least, they way the US news media tells me European muslims feel about their communities.)
I’m not discounting the fundie nutcase factor, but I also think the foriegn policies of the US over the past 100 years have also done a good amount to cause, or at least make worse, the problems in the middle east today.
Eh, that comment did not come out as coherent as I wanted. I’m going to bed.
I want to see a mob of theologians argue about the ideal sequence of God’s own Hox genes.
I had an idea for a short story about that, actually. When you transubstantiate the wafer, it becomes God, right? So, you do a pulse-chase experiment. Take a radioactively-labelled (or BrdU-labelled?) Host, eat it and see which bases it gets incorporated into in newly-synthesised DNA. Since it only becomes *God’s* DNA, it’ll incorporate asymmetrically at any heterozygous locus and tell you which version is the holy one. Do that across a sufficently wide spectrum of starting genotypes, and we can work out the exact SNP haplotype of God.
The punchline of the story was when the scientist took the journalist into a room full of water-walking mice. Couldn’t get the funding for human experiments, you see…
The thing is with the “they’re nuts so they hate us for our freedom” is that the explanation is at best proximate. What makes someone join a fundamentalist organization? And there we have an area where there is some research. And in the case of the Islamic world, yes, a lot of it is the US (and UK, to a lesser extent, and a few other countries) foreign policy issues usually mentioned. Why there are such fundies in the US is another story.
The Holy Ghost thus spoke:
Judging by the sheer amount of mistakes and
junk in the genome, I would say that (the)
God (of Abraham) needs a better proofreader
and editor.
I give God an “F” for the following mistakes:
1. Pages and pages of sheer nonsense-
2. Rampant plagarism from other organisms-
3. Rampant mispelling of critcally important
words-
It is my recommendation that God repeat his
grammar and composition classes until he gets
a passing grade.
Yes, I know I mispelled “critically”
I caught the mistake and will own up to it-
Unlike God.
The Holy Ghost thus spoke:
There is a move to reinvent mankind,
to modify the very grammar of life
as planned and willed by God.
Judging by the sheer amount of mistakes and
junk in the genome, I would say that (the)
God (of Abraham) needs a better proofreader
and editor.
I give God an “F” for the following mistakes:
1. Pages and pages of sheer nonsense-
2. Rampant plagarism from other organisms-
3. Rampant mispelling of critically important
words-
It is my recommendation that God repeat his
grammar and composition classes until he gets
a passing grade.
But according to your definition, almost all non-rich countries are screwed over by American foreign policy.
So why is it overwhelmingly the ones with strongly Muslim populations that become terrorists?
Where are the Vietnamese suicide bombers? Nicaraguan? Mexican? Chilean? Cuban? Haitian?
I don’t think it’s as simple as either side is trying to make out; foreign policy is one factor, and so is Islamic fundamentalism. There are also others.
We stop messing with the Middle East, and, sure, this would be great for any number of reasons and would surely lead to a decrease in terrorism, but it wouldn’t eliminate it by any means – you’d still have fundies and you’d still have terrorists.
You’d still have people like Mohammed Bouyeri, who murdered Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh for his criticisms of Islam, for example.
I’m not trying to defend American foreign policy, but neither will I play down to loony factor inherent in much of Islam (and incedentally, if the relative positions of the two religions were reversed, I think we’d probably be seeing the same thing from a sizable number of Christians, as well).
“if the relative positions of the two religions were reversed, I think we’d probably be seeing the same thing from a sizable number of Christians, as well).”
That’s exactly the point I was trying to make in my sleepyness.
Mormons believe that our physical bodies (with the exception of the blood) are copies of God’s
OK, I want to hear more. Everything but the blood? God has green blood like Mr. Spock’s? Or antifreeze like some cold-water fishes’? What? Saucerlets instead of platelets?
Changing any of the rules…
Buffalo Gal, I still want to know what happened to all those people who went to Hell for eating meat on Fridays way back when. On the actual point there, yeah, I agree with you. Or maybe the RCC has always been at war with Eastasia the way it has always opposed abortion from the “moment of conception,” whatever that means this week.
But then I’ve always been more bothered by the Sixth Station then the Seventh.
It is interesting to notice that there is a rise in fundamentalism in Central America too, like in the Middle East. Here one can see how traditional elites allied themselves with the foreign powers more or less explicitly and thus drove people away. Look at what happened with the liberation theologians, for example.
Ron S – the changes brought about by Vatican II and John XXIII were considered radical and controversial. Many in-the-pews Catholics felt that even trivial changes like the meatless Friday rule shook their faith. The point of Vatican II was to make Catholics responsible for their faith, instead of blindly following dogmatic rules. This was upsetting to many who, being sheep, preferred to have simple rules to follow by rote. While the trivial changes have remained, the Church has generally lurched back to the right – follow the rules without thinking.
And no one ever went to Hell for eating meat on Friday. It was a venial sin, so you’d only get Purgatory.