The death of the Pope

This correspondence was prompted by a conversation between myself and my mother which was prompted by her expressing sorrow at the death of pope john paul II. Me nasty ;>

Previous to this message, I had sent her a story from The Age about the pope arranging anti-condom education in Africa. There are an estimated 30 million people living with AIDS in Africa according to unsubstantiated internet sources.

---------- Francine

Yes, Tone, I agree with you that this was a very bad judgment and indeed as with many of his beliefs this was grossly irresponsible. However the bond that he created among people of all colour, religion and creed has to be admired. He had a belief that we are all equal, which would have been the teaching of Jesus. It is very often not the leader who was wrong, but those who proclaimed to follow in his footsteps.The hipocrits of this world.

Example, at St Bridgets one day I witnessed a young man, obviously in great distress begging the Priest for assistance. He turned him away. He was very wrong to do this, to pass judgment on this young man was wrong and I'm quite sure is Jesus did exist he would not have done this. It is against his teaching. However not all said Christians would or should have acted in such an unsavory manor. So that doesn't make all Christians tarred with the same brush, does it?

We can all be leaders and attempt to make changes for the better.

On the subject of the new Pope, it is quite possible that he will be black. When interviewed tonight a Priest was asked if he felt that some Catholics would object. He replied, yes very likely, however, People with such narrow minded belief have no right to belong to the Church....I think he is absolutely correct. As I said today, you cannot claim to be a Christian and be racist at the same time. When asked if he thinks one day there will be a female priest, he
replied, yes of course we are moving that way. We must move with the times. When asked if he believes one day priests will be able to marry, he replied yes, otherwise we will have no priests will we?

Perhaps, at one stage in history the great man did exist and did indeed write the gospel, however man himself has taken the written text and changed it to suit his own ideals, beliefs and interpretations. However that doesn't make all wrong, does it?
Do you know that many muslem people who have read the bible claim that they are amazed at how alike the teaching of the bible and Koran are. Perhaps once upon a time it was one but has been interpreted as man wishes to suit himself, segregating Christians into many religions as he goes along. Why don't you set yourself a interesting challenge, write to the new Pope in a polite manner and express your feelings as you have conveyed them to me. It will indeed be interesting to see his response!

I don't condone the churches denial attitude toward pedophile Priests and indeed believe that the catholic church has not done enough to protect children against these rock spiders. However Pope John Paul did try to address this problem, but not all Priests are bad, just the ones that hide in the cracks and are given refuge.

I shall be interested in your response

I also know that the catholic church is insanely wealthy and this is
also very wrong. I would not believe for one moment that this was the origional plan. Perhaps the Pope himself belonged to the wrong clan and just didn't know it???? However it is man himself that has made these mistakes and there are in fact many "good christians" who live poorly among the poor to help the poor.

love Mum.

p.s Did you know that Grandad was a Christian, attending church twice daily when a child because his parents were of different religions, albeit almost the same. How insane is that? However as the years wore on because of the way he had witnessed people behave, lie and steal, he had become dissolushioned eventually leaving the church.
In those days the churches were so segregated husband and wife were not permitted to be buried together and indeed were planted far apart.

---------- Tone

I'll let Douglas Adam's do the talking for me for the moment. This is part of a speech he made in 1998....

------- Start of Douglas Adam's Speech

Where does the idea of God come from? Well, I think we have a very skewed point of view on an awful lot of things, but let's try and see where our point of view comes from. Imagine early man. Early man is, like everything else, an evolved creature and he finds himself in a world that he's begun to take a little charge of; he's begun to be a tool-maker, a changer of his environment with the tools that he's made and he makes tools, when he does, in order to make changes in his environment.
He looks around and he sees a world which pleases him mightily: behind him are mountains with caves in—mountains are great because you can go and hide in the caves and you are out of the rain and the bears can't get you; in front of him there's the forest—it's got nuts and berries and delicious food; there's a stream going by, which is full of water—water's delicious to drink, you can float your boats in it and do all sorts of stuff with it; here's cousin Ug and he's caught a mammoth—mammoth's are great, you can eat them, you can wear their coats, you can use their bones to create weapons to catch other mammoths. I mean this is a great world, it's fantastic. But our early man has a moment to reflect and he thinks to himself, 'well, this is an interesting world that I find myself in' and then he asks himself a very treacherous question, a question which is totally meaningless and fallacious, but only comes about because of the nature of the sort of person he is, the sort of person he has evolved into and the sort of person who has thrived because he thinks this particular way. Man the maker looks at his world and says 'So who made this then?' Who made this? — you can see why it's a treacherous question. Early man thinks, 'Well, because there's only one sort of being I know about who makes things, whoever made all this must therefore be a much bigger, much more powerful and necessarily invisible, one of me and because I tend to be the strong one who does all the stuff, he's probably male'. And so we have the idea of a god. Then, because when we make things we do it with the intention of doing something with them, early man asks himself , 'If he made it, what did he make it for?' Now the real trap springs, because early man is thinking, 'This world fits me very well. Here are all these things that support me and feed me and look after me; yes, this world fits me nicely' and he reaches the inescapable conclusion that whoever made it, made it for him.

This is rather as if you imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in—an interesting hole I find myself in—fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!' This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, it's still frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for. We all know that at some point in the future the Universe will come to an end and at some other point, considerably in advance from that but still not immediately pressing, the sun will explode. We feel there's plenty of time to worry about that, but on the other hand that's a very dangerous thing to say. Look at what's supposed to be going to happen on the 1st of January 2000—let's not pretend that we didn't have a warning that the century was going to end! I think that we need to take a larger perspective on who we are and what we are doing here if we are going to survive in the long term.

------- end of Douglas Adam's Speech


My main problem with religion is simply this... it is UTTER NONSENSE. I was an agnostic for a while... but the idea of a god as the creator of the universe never satisfied me. So I thought, and thought, and thought, and eventually I realised that the only logical conclusion was that one may as well assume the world is an egg laid by a giant chicken from mars.

I have no problem with belief, I think people are free to believe whatever they like. But... for example... if you were to tell me you believed that the the world was an egg laid by a giant chicken, I would probably think you were mad. And I honestly don't see the difference. Sure, religion has it's uses, it's a good way to keep people stupid, to stop them questioning life, the universe and everything, and it's a good way to force people to stick to church (state) approved morals, but i'm afraid I cannot respect ridiculous and nonsensical belief.

Having said that, I am perfectly happy for people to be mad, I may feel a little sorry for them, 'they know not what they do'. I find the form pope john paul's inaction regarding the molestation of children in his organisation completely unforgivable. I'm sure hitler did some good things, in fact, there is a reason that he was so well respected before he lost his mind and tried to destroy the world. He was a fantastic leader right up to the point he went mad. I really don't care about the good things the pope did in his time because I consider his inaction regarding the molestation of children COMPLETELY UNFORGIVABLE.

Lets pretend for a moment that the pope was "The Boss" and his priest's were "Employees". And lets pretend that his business was "Child Care'. It's not that far off the actual situation. OK, so lets say that one or more of his employees is caught molesting the children.

I would expect, and I'm sure anyone would expect that the employee would be reported to the police, and would be fired instantly.

If the employee DID NOT report the crime and continued to employ the person, then I would consider THEM to be guilty of a crime.

The pope had massive influence on millions upon millions of people, and this put him in a position of enormous influence, and hence enormous responsibility. And I think, as a leader with such influence, he failed dismally. I know people are ultimately responsible for their own actions, but we are all influenced by other people, and we're particularly influenced by people that are considered by society to be "spiritual leaders" (hence the name).

And I have come to the logical conclusion that, through action and inaction, the late pope failed the world.