Vatican Gives Green Light To Concom Use

This week, Pope Benedict issued new guidelines for the use of condoms. I'm surprised at this for two reasons. First, I'm surprised that old "Nazi Ratzi" even knows what condoms are. Who would have thought. Second, I'm always surprised that there are people who consider these Papal announcements to be important. I suppose that these are the same people whose lives would blossom and whose hearts would flutter if some old airline chef gave out his obsolete recipes for in-flight meals.

The Vatican announcement about condoms comes on the same day that a Catholic Priest in Texas, John Fiala, was arrested for plotting the murder of a teenager whom he had been sexually molesting. Fiala said he wanted to silence the teen to "prevent embarrassment for The Church." I believe that the Catholic trolley jumped the track back when the definition of "Hail Mary" was changed to mean a last ditch attempt to win a football game with a a long, desperate pass to the end zone. Maybe Benedict's relaxed views on condom use are his "Hail Mary" attempt to regain some respect for his troubled and tarnished Catholic Church.

Why Do They Think the Truth Is So Unworkable?

There’s an old adage that says, “In war, the first casualty is the truth.” The problem is that modern institutions (government, business corporations, and religions) all seem to look at everything as a war. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that all these institutions have systemic lying as one of their primary functions or core values, but I will say that the truth is looked upon as their enemy. Whistleblowers don’t get their power and their 15 minutes of fame by lying. Whistleblowers threaten institutions by telling the truth about institutional lies, and that’s considered dangerous.

It wasn’t always this way. During World War II, Edward R. Murrow reported bad news for war-torn and bomb-ravaged London with nightly candor, while Gabriel Heater gave his unvarnished assessment of U.S. setbacks in the South Pacific with no attempt to sugar coat the losses. By honestly admitting some of the truth to the American people, the real and essential “secrets” like the Manhattan Project could be safely kept under wraps. That’s because the American people, and people in general, aren’t totally stupid. When they are fed a constant diet of happy talk, they develop an intense hunger and craving for some real undiluted truth, and this is grounded in a certain kind of intuition that people have about happy talk. They instinctively know it’s mostly a lie. This isn’t being cynical, it’s being wise.

In the last four months, we’ve seen what happens when the truth is finally exposed after all the “happy talk” efforts have been tried, only to fail. Who can forget the images of the Vatican during Holy Week, 2010, as the Pope tried to swim against the flood of pedophilia accusations that poured in from around the world? You could almost sense his frustration that his traditional authority and power to burn heretics at the stake had been taken away from him. And this was followed by revelations about the devious inner workings and vulgar bonus payouts that defined Wall Street, even as that institution demolished a half century of American prosperity. Then came the BP oil spill. If happy talk and lies from CEO Tony Hayward could soak up oil, then the Gulf of Mexico disaster could have been minimized. Trying to repair the corporate image, BP hastily hired some local Cajun goobers to appear in the BP television commercials in the hope that happy talk would still carry the day if it came from someone without a British accent.

Which brings me to Julian Assange and his WikiLeak revelations about the Afghan War. We should ignore the Pentagon assertion that the leaked information will threaten American lives. The military always makes this claim when any truth whatsoever comes out about the conduct of a war. The only thing threatened will be Pentagon credibility. Now we know that at least one helicopter was brought down by a heat seeking missile supplied by Iran. News flash to the Pentagon— the Taliban already knew about this, and if young American servicemen who fly on helicopters don’t know about this, then they have a right to know the truth.

So here’s the question. Why do they think the truth is so unworkable? It’s because the true believers who populate all modern institutions think it’s their God given right to insult the intelligence of others outside the walls of their own particular institutional fortress, and to do so with impunity.

Vatican Stands by Bishop in Holocaust Denial

As a blogger trying to write something new every day or two, I just need to say how thankful I am for the Vatican. If I’m at a loss for words, I simply Google “Vatican” and a door miraculously opens to show me the way. Sometimes it’s a Papal utterance of some kind that condemns birth control and unplanned teen pregnancy at one and the same time. Or maybe it’s a scathing denouncement of homosexuality, timed to coincide with a secular report documenting a level of homosexual orientation in the Catholic priesthood much higher than in any other observable male population. Even when the Church talks about money, it’s usually in the context of sex, as when American Archdioceses are forced to close parishes because they’ve been bankrupted by payouts to victims of priestly pedophilia. Catholicism has just never been able to get its arms around the issue of human sex, and the Church looks dysfunctional whenever the subject comes up.

Sex isn’t the only topic perplexing to the Vatican, however. There’s also the Holocaust and the broader issue of German Nazism. Pius XII, a gaunt Germanophile of dubious piousness, has been dubbed by several WWII historians as, “Hitler’s Pope.” There’s disagreement about whether his relationship with Der Fuhrer was one of appeasement or collaboration, but there’s no denying that Pius XII knew about trains to the death camps and said nothing to diminish or impede the slaughter of European Jews. The modern Vatican now seeks to reward this by making Pius XII into a saint. Go figure.

Then there’s Joseph Ratzinger. This man is the reason for my blog, today, since he’s currently making news around the world. He started WWII as a Hitler Youth, and by war’s end he was shooting anti-aircraft at Allied bombers. In 2005, he changed his name to Pope Benedict XVI, but I just call him, “PappaRatzi.” This former Nazi is now standing by one of his underlings, Bishop Richard Williamson, as Williamson makes headline news asserting that no Jews ever died in Nazi gas chambers. The Vatican is standing firm on a decision that Williamson can be rehabilitated, evidently viewing Holocaust denial as something in the same class with other inadvertent misdemeanors (actually the Church calls them venial sins) like pedophilia. The Church puts a lot of stock in rehabilitation, and much less in responsibility. What probably is beyond rehabilitation is a trusting relationship between the Vatican and Israel,

I love the Vatican. I could never be creative enough to make this stuff up.

Why The Vatican Should Just Let It Go

This week the Vatican, operating under Pope Benedict XVI, updated its official position about the behaviors that are considered sinful in human sexuality and reproduction (the last update was 21 years ago, which tells you a lot about the urgency of this). In-vitro fertilization, human cloning, genetic testing on embryos before implantation, and embryonic stem cell research are considered taboo, along with all the newer birth control measures such as the morning-after pill, the Intrauterine Device and RU 486. These transgressions now join the classic Catholic sex-trinity of masturbation, pre-marital sex, and homosexuality in the category of sexual mortal sins which can lead to an eternal life sentence in Lucifer’s slammer, according to Vatican theologians.

Advice about sexuality and reproduction coming from the Vatican carries the same weight as advice about astro-physics and cosmology coming from the Flat Earth Society. Most American Catholics, and the entire non-Catholic world all recognize this. So why does the Vatican still feel the need to weigh in on such topics? Basically, they just don’t get it. They still think they’re relevant in today’s post-medieval world. Despite the best intentions of the men in the red robes and beanies, the stark fact is that these men sworn to celibacy, and living in the ultimate old boy’s club, cannot fully grasp the subtleties of womanhood and parenthood, and they should just let it go.