Comments on: Top Africa cardinal: next pope could well be black

By: Drewski

Drewski — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 04:59:53 +0000

No reason a non-European can’t or shouldn’t be elected Pope. The issue is whether they’re culturally compatible with believers in Europe and North America. The Church keeps trying to copy the Southern Baptists with groupthink and silencing dissent; we know very well where that got the Catholics before–not only the Reformation, but also the rejection of Catholic-based authoritarianism and repression in places like Quebec and Spain. (I won’t even start speculation on how kooky this could get in Central and South America.)

The more the Vatican pushes to control people, pushes for rigid adherence to dogma and doctrine, the more they risk losing the rich Westerners. When the Catholic Church starts being as controlling as it’s shown itself capable of being, then it’ll lose followers in the US (maybe join the Episcopals, HAHAHAHA). Also, start enough of that crap in Europe, and they’ll start forfeiting property and other interests. Since many churches are already government funded for historical purposes, it’s not that far a stretch. Moreover, just as the long-term trend in Lutheran countries has been disestablishment of state churches, and that’s already happened in much of the EU, the next step may be state (or NGO) takeover of operations like Caritas social services in Germany. Then the Catholic Church can spend its time–and greatly reduced wealth–competing with fundamentalist Protestants across the Third World.

By: secrity

secrity — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 20:58:30 +0000

It doesn’t matter who the pope is; he is still going to do all he can to repress gays world-wide.

By: randy

randy — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 20:49:51 +0000

Turkson is evil. He advocates the same condoms to a serodiscordant couple, that he denies to everyone else.

He claims these condoms break. In other words, he is almost guaranteeing HIV transmission within couples.

I don’t think he really wants that. I think he lies, and that the condoms are actually safe for this purpose, and therefore safe for the general public as well.

Further, by his own admission, he would rather help the rich pharmaceutical industry by selling AIDS treatment drugs, rather than permit simple and cheap tools proven to prevent HIV transmission, and AIDS.