More Catholic evil

The joke who is known as Pope Ratzinger – sorry, Pope “Benedict XVI” – seems to go for the idea that God chose to punish New Orleans in 2005 for its tolerance of gays.

Clearly, he doesn’t think that idea so preposterous as to distance himself from it as much as he can, or else he would not, presumably, have promoted a similar joke, Father Gerhard Maria Wagner, as assistant bishop of the Austrian city of Linz.

For it was Wagner – an ultra-right-wing type, probably with a hard-on for powerful Teutonic gods and maybe a secret penchant for the odd Valkyrie – who actually expressed some pleasure at the destruction wreaked by Hurricane Katrina

“He wrote in a parish newsletter that the death and destruction caused by the hurricane in New Orleans was divine retribution for the city’s tolerance of homosexuals and permissive sexual attitudes,” the BBC news website tells us.

“The future bishop said he was glad that Katrina destroyed not only nightclubs and brothels in New Orleans, but also five of the city’s abortion clinics.”

Wagner is on record as saying that the Harry Potter books promote Satanism. How would he know – even assuming there were such a creature as Satan? Has he actually read Potter books? Has he witnessed people turning to Satan as a result?

Why is it that, in spite of the fact that this absurd organisation continues to show itself to be so asinine and evil, governments and others with influence take it seriously? The Vatican even has a status within the United Nations.

This farce comes only days after Ratzinger revoked the excommunication of a Holocaust denier. This was the British-born Bishop Richard Williamson, who has apologised for shaming the church, but not for his views, completely missing the fact that his refusal to apologise for his views could continue to shame the church.

Not that the Catholic Church gives a tinker’s cuss about how shameful it is perceived as being. How could an organisation that allows its generals to spout such evil about gays even recognise what shame is, let alone experience it?

You may remember from the post just linked to that the lunatic Bishop Joseph Devine, a leading light (and leading bigot) in the Catholic Church in Scotland, accused gays of aligning themselves with minority groups to present themselves as people under persecution, citing their attendance at Holocaust memorials.