Pope “Not in the face! Not in the face!” Francis has been offering advice on child-rearing, based on his deep experience with the process, I’m sure.
One time, I heard a father in a meeting with married couples say ‘I sometimes have to smack my children a bit, but never in the face so as to not humiliate them’,Francis said.
How beautiful.he added.He knows the sense of dignity! He has to punish them but does it justly and moves on.
In case you think he sounds a bit Protestant here, you can always spot Catholicism by the way it praises humiliation as dignified and punishment as beautiful. They think of the Passion of the Christ as a scenic and elegant art film, you know.
If advice on child care from an old celibate isn’t your thing, how about economic advice from a pampered archbishop? Luigi Negri, the Catholic archbishop of Ferrara-Comacchio, knows exactly what’s wrong with Italy’s economy.
On Tuesday, Italian newspaper Corriere di Bologna quoted the archbishop as saying:
The law against abortion has stopped more than six million Italians coming into the world and the shortage of children has made us fall into this economic crisis,according to a translation by English-Italian news site The Local.
The Italian unemployment rate is at 13.4%. The population of Italy is roughly 60 million, so pumping that up by 10% with children by unwilling mothers would somehow have solved all of their problems. I don’t know how, but you know Catholics…always loving a good Mystery.
If Italy so desperately needs a population boost, they could allow a few more immigrants in instead of barring them in Lampedusa.
Pope Frank threatened to hit anyone in the face who insulted Frank’s mommy.
I continue to be repulsed that I was even briefly Catholic.
Can we change his regnal name to ‘Pugilistic’?
Well, but to be fair, the Pope isn’t Italian.
He’s Vatican. There was an intersting question during the times of Razzi: Is he still allowed to vote in Germany? While he still has the German citizenship, he also was the head of a sovereign state…
Al Dente, #2
And presumably would have expected them to turn the other cheek for a second one.
Daz, #4
Pope Pugilistic the Hands-On
I’m all for it.
The Catholic church is well know for giving out hostias
to which, the Good Bishop asserted:
uhh, Bishop, dear Bishop. If 6 million more are needed to boost the economy, doesn’t that mean the unemployment rate should be Negative? I.E. more jobs than people, to fill the openings? Unemployment rate of positive numbers mean there are too many people and too few jobs. Me thinks you gots your numbers backwards. If you don’t like the REASON fewer children are being birthed: say so. Don’t muddle it together with a separate dislike.
And EVEN IF, you is correct, I gots to ax: Won’t more children _increase_ the unemployment rate as more good women stay home to raise their little wooggums, being good mothers and all? I just dont gets it. How would all those babies fix the Italian Econ Crisis?
Maybe he’s thinking that taking all those poor women off the job list, and shackling them to their unwanted kids at home, will help more men get work.
I’m sure it’s a mix of less women=more jobs for men with the idea that more kids means more money and jobs associated with kids things. Which of course is overly simplistic. If Joseph and Josephine have a kid the money they were going to spend on starting a small business will be spent on the kid instead. Their neighbour Tony will end up having to get a second job when his wife Maria gets pregnant, because they were just making ends meet with both of them working. And that Garibaldi kid down the road isn’t going to get the part time grocery store clerk job Maria vacated, because they think his engineering degree makes him overqualified, and that he’ll jump ship at the first opportunity. The fact he’s been looking for any sort of job for two years won’t change that.
The argument I hear a lot is not related to jobs but pensions – in countries where one adult is paying for several pensions, the argument goes that more kids will eventually mean more adults to pay pensions for the retired since those are eating up a lot of money.
Beatrice
Only that of course the fault with that one is the same as the one with unemployment: more people don’t automatically create more jobs. People who work earn money for pensions and healthcare and everything else. People who can’t find a job otoh create costs that need to be paid (unless you take the Liberthuglian stance of “let them starve”)
Giliell,
Of course, the argument has more holes than Swiss cheese, but it’s pretty much the only way a conservative who wants to argue for more children while acknowledging the economic problems can wrap it all up together.
Words fail me to describe the profound contempt I feel for this person and the institution he presides over, sooo obligatory Tim Minchin.
Tim Minchin’s is good, but Lehrer’s is still my favourite.
[And apropos of it also being a rag, being pretty darn good, and showing up in the related videos, Britannia Rag by Winifred Atwell.]
@Daz
A very warm heartfelt Thank You for introducing me to Lehrer. I didn’t know him, and I’ll enjoy the time catching up. While his Rag is more sophisticated and witty than Minchin’s song, it does not reflect the white-hot rage I felt when I first heard about the Motherfucker™’s latest jabbering (I was driving to work when I first heard it on the radio – the needle of my rage-meter slashed the roof lining; tbh, even Minchin doesn’t come close). In conclusion, I’ll be humming Minchin in my Head everytime I hear some extraordinarily insightful comment form the pope regarding contact with other human beings, but I’ll refer to Lehner whenever the opportunity arises.
Nah, that’s nothing new for us, here in Italy there’s a priest every few days or so coming up with something along those lines. This one here just got (un)lucky and the WP smelled (or smelt ?) that out.
Don Quijote – love the joke about ‘hostias’. What a cracker!
“The law against abortion has stopped more than six million Italians coming into the world”
Uh… was that translated right? I would think that a law against abortion would result in more births, not stop them.
It’s generally frowned upon to hit adults for transgressions, with the exception of defending oneself from violence, and even then it can be legally iffy.
What, then, makes it “okay” to hit a child?
Is it because children are — relative to adults — small, weak, and powerless?
Marginal note: in the news I just read that Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst (aka the bishop of bling has been given a new job in the Pontifical Council for Promoting the New Evangelization.
So, if you’re a bishop of extravagance, you get a new (probably also well paid) job, if you’re a paedophiliac priest, you get a new parish, but if you marry a homosexual couple or dare to have an abortion or divorce while working for a clinic tied to the RCC, you get sacked.
Yep, they got their priorities straight. *puke*
Did Mary ever smack Jesus to keep him in line? Or was it Jesus’ step-father Joseph or his real father god who did it?
@John Small Berries #20
No. What he said was «La legge contro l’omofobia è un delitto contro Dio e contro l’umanità. La legge sull’aborto invece non ha consentito di venire al mondo ad oltre sei milioni di italiani e la scarsità di figli ci ha fatto sprofondare in questa crisi economica»
“The law against homophobia is a crime against God and against humanity. The law on abortion on the other hand prevented the births of over six million Italians and the lack of children has plunged us into this economic crisis.”
Abortion has been legal in Italy since 1978.
randay
It’s not specified in the bible, but there’s a great deal of Christian folklore dealing with Jesus’ childhood, according to which yes, Mary and Joseph both used corporal punishment. For instance, there’s a tale in which several rich kids wouldn’t play with young Jesus because he was poor, so he built a bridge out of rainbows and ran across the river on it. He dared them to follow him, then dissolved the bridge when they were halfway across, letting them fall in and drown. Their mothers complained to Mary, and she beat Jesus with a birch bundle.
Spanking? Reflects the xian fascination with prepubescent butts. That and burning. Xians just love burning (see “burning at the stake”, Hellfire). How does this medieval cult persist? Brainwashing…inciting fear…cultism.
Were there birches in Palestine in those days? Then the world is really warming up, now.
To be fair, it’s an extremely frustrating job. :-)
Um, that’s an apocryphal childhood gospel which was only rediscovered recently. It’s considered utterly heretic. Officially, Jesus never sinned.
If Jesus snuffed them, they deserved it.
So, no Sin by Jesus.
David Marjanović
No, that’s a synopsis of The Bitter Withy , an English folk song a few centuries old.
chigau @29
William Lane Craig would certainly agree.
I’m off to look for Bitter Withy.
sounds like a fabulous song
Chigau, I think you will find it on a recent Thistle and Shamrock show, check out the Listen Again links for the playlists.
David Marjanović is probably thinking of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, where Kid Jesus kills a couple of children who annoy him.
No punishment is meted out to Jesus in there, IIRC.
@8 Don Quijote
xDDDDDDDDDDDD
————-
The Catholic Church…weighing down society with archaic and barbaric morals to guarantee enough missery in the world their arks won’t run dry.
perodatrent
Turns out I was misremembering; it was willow branches she beat him with, not birch. Also, he made the bridge out of sunbeams, not rainbows.
chigau 32
Here’s the version I grew up with.
Dalillama, Schmott Guy #36:
Kinda reminded me of this, though I’m not sure why.
Daz
Probably the presence of Dave Swarbrick on fiddle and mandolin.
To clarify, Swarbrick wasn’t a member of the Young Tradition, but he was a guest on Galleries, the album with Bitter Withy on it. He has a very distinctive style.
Dalillama, Schmott Guy
… though not on that track. :-)
I’m fairly sure my dad, who was something of a folk fan, must have had that album, as I distinctly remember hearing their version of Stones In My Passway long before I’d even heard of Robert Johnson.