Wisdom
Let’s pay a nice visit to the pope again. We haven’t dropped in on him in awhile, and he always repays attention. Let’s see what he’s been up to, the dear man. Dylan Evans tells us that religion is beautiful, and a metaphor, so let’s take a look at some beautiful metaphors.
A pope “must constantly bind himself and the Church to the obedience of the word of God in the face of all the attempts to adapt it or water it down,” Pope Benedict told a packed congregation. “That’s what Father John Paul II did when faced by all such attempts which were seemingly benevolent towards man. When faced with erroneous interpretations of freedom, he unequivocally underlined the inviolability of the human being, the inviolability of human life from conception to natural death. “Freedom to kill is not a true freedom, but a tyranny that reduces the human being into slavery,” he added, to applause from the congregation.
There’s beauty for you. Rigourous thinking, too. Obedience to the word of God. Err – which word? How do you know? How do you choose? Are we talking Bible here, or what? The Catholic church isn’t all that literalist about the Bible, but then how does it know what the word of God is and above all how does it sort them? In other words, what’s he talking about?
Nothing, really, but it doesn’t matter, because he’s the pope, so he can get away with it. He can get away with announcing that he is in charge of what ‘the word of God’ is and with separating it from ‘all the attempts to adapt it or water it down.’ Do please take note of that phrase. He means human beings must not take thought and decide what are good useful reasonable laws and what are not – no, they must ask the pope what the word of God is, instead, and if the pope happens to be a benighted conservative like Ratzinger well that’s just too bad.
Make no mistake. ‘That’s what Father John Paul II did when faced by all such attempts which were seemingly benevolent towards man.’ Ah yes – ‘seemingly benevolent’ – but we know better. We here in the Vatican know that telling people not to use condoms, and telling them that condoms don’t work, is not seemingly benevolent but really benevolent – because that way they are more likely to die a horrible death and leave their children destitute orphans, which is obviously really benevolent as opposed to merely seemingly so. What luck that we deluded humans have churches to tell us what the word of God is when we get confused.
And then of course there’s the bit about natural death. Er – what? What natural death? The one ‘Father John Paul II’ had? The one Terri Schiavo spent fifteen years having? That’s natural?
Well maybe he doesn’t mean it like that. Maybe it’s a metaphor? And I’m just too secular and atheist and unartistic and thick to get it. Nothing like a little religion to tell us about our longings for transcendence, is there.
So I guess a natural death is a death that occurs despite taking every technological step possible to keep the heart beating and lungs breathing for as long as possible. Furthermore, it’s our religious duty to keep every (wealthy or well-insured) person’s heart and lungs working for as long as technically possible. Thing is, what if it became technically possible to keep a body “alive” in such a manner for hundreds of years, despite a complete lack of brain functioning? Picture miles and miles of high-rise warehouses full of “living” mummies. Damn the expense. And damn all the little kiddies in Third World countries dying of measles and dysentery: We First Worlders have got much more important things to do with our resources, like outstripping Cheops.
And like worrying about people using contraception, for Christ’s sake, as if that’s one of the more pressing moral issues in the world. Nothing like a sense of proportion, is there.
But, see, that’s mere human thinking, and the word of God is something else entirely.
Oy, oy, oy.
The pope is infallible. What more do you need? Maybe that’s why one shouldn’t criticise. its not so much the principle it, just the general waste of time.
The bullshit of it all is that the pope spouts of the teaching that ‘need not be watered down’ as if the ‘teachings’ were infallible at all.
They stick to tradition without accepting or even thinking about the fact that,perhaps, many of their ‘traditions’ were wrong from the get go.
It’s totally silly to rely on tradition when said tradition may be incorrect or simply outdated. Is there any other aspect of life where such a thing would even make remote sense?
According to some people (Scalia for instance) the Supreme Court is one such place. But of course even he is selective.
There’s something really disgusting about this business of saying ‘no you may not use human standards of what is morally better, you have to use “God’s word” by which of course I mean whatever the Vatican currently chooses to call “God’s word” which of course is different in many ways from what that Vatican has chosen to call “God’s word” in the past but all the same we are not using human standards except of course in reality we are but we’re calling it “God’s word” by way of enforcing obedience to whatever stupid backward irrational prejudice we feel like imposing on as many people as possible.’
Thats correct, all these versions of ‘Gods word’. I am a baptist and it makes me realize that perhaps no one really has clue one about this, if one is honest and objective that is.
To me, tradition is perhaps the worst way to deal with life. Some traditions are nice, but as a general rule they should not be used to stop advancing thought.
Just so. Especially not without further thought – not just on the basis of ‘that’s the tradition and that’s all there is to be said about it. And also especially since hardly anyone, if anyone, actually relies on pure unadulterated unaltered-throughout-history tradition. Not even the pope, whatever he may like to pretend.
The really ironic twist about papal infallibility is that it isn’t a traditional part of the Catholic Church, but a 19th century theological theory that wasn’t regularly asserted until John Paul #2 infallibily adopted & enforced the concept.
Well there you go. The pope has a nerve telling people to heed the words of god instead of human ideas, under the circs. At least the rest of us don’t go around declaring ourselves infallible.
And they get away with this stuff…