Another chorus of ‘Pot, kettle’

The great thing about religion, you know, is that it teaches people humility.

The Vatican has condemned President Obama’s move to restore US funding for family planning clinics abroad that give advice on or carry out abortions. One Vatican official warned against the “arrogance” of those in power who think they can decide between life and death.

That’s terrific, isn’t it? An ‘official’ of an authoritarian moth-eaten hidebound reactionary gang of priests calls a guy elected in a landslide ‘arrogant’…What does the Vatican ‘official’ think the Vatican is if not arrogant? Humbly obedient to god, no doubt, being conveniently blind to the fact that it’s hard to obey someone who never communicates, and that what the Vatican chooses to pretend is what god commands is actually what the Vatican commands – that the Vatican selects its own laws and then pretends they are god’s laws. It’s a common practice, a familiar con-game, but that doesn’t make it any more acceptable.

And don’t forget the arrogance of the Vatican as ‘those in power who think they can decide between life and death’ by ordering people not to use life-saving condoms during an Aids epidemic.

In an interview published in an Italian newspaper on Saturday, senior Vatican official Monsignor Rino Fisichella urged Mr Obama to listen to all voices in America without “the arrogance of those who, being in power, believe they can decide of life and death.”

Mr Obama does listen to all voices in America, including that of Rick Warren, which I and others consider one voice too many; but really…how obtuse does a senior Vatican official have to be not to realize and keep constantly in mind that he is ‘in power’ and that the Vatican and its officials emphatically ‘believe they can decide of life and death’? Do they never embarrass themselves with this kind of brazen absurdity?

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