Two recent stories about the state of the Catholic Church deserve repeating here.
The first regarding Pope Benedict’s decision to pull out of a visit to a Rome university. The reason? Students are up in arms over his defence of the notorious trial of Galileo. Yep, that’s right. Ratzinger’s a flat earther and believes it is justifiable to use censorship and the threat of imprisonment to justify his argument.
Meanwhile, it emerges, that he has ordered exorcist squads in every diocese. An exorcism centre has been opened in Poland (hat tip: Fortean Times). All this to tackle an apparent growth in popularity of satanism.
Know any satanists? Thought not. More to the point, I can think of nothing more likely to encourage disturbed young minds into believing such things are real, and thus worthy of worship, than the news that one of the world’s biggest religions is rededicating itself to wiping it out.
Living in a broadly secular world where talk of demons and evil spirits is generally regarded as silly must be a particularly unpleasant form of Hell on Earth for Ratzinger, so it’s no surprise that he has decided his best course of action is to talk up the (non-existent) opposition. We can only hope it will prove a futile route in the long term and that in the years to come this will be viewed as a last hurrah for this particularly nasty brand of religion.
I know a satanist.
Of the Anton LaVey school though, none of this worshiping some Christian fallen angel.
I suppose the odd Crowley fan I’ve come across counts as a satanist for them as well…
I probably should amend that rhetorical question to “how many satanists do you know, other than the ones who wear black polo necked sweaters, affect forked goatee beards and smoke french cigarettes?” 🙂
Well, on the plus side for the Pope he’s managed to get rid of me by letting that Bliar bloke in.
Presumably the EU conspiracists are having a field day over Blair’s conversion and almost simultaneous campaign to become EC President? I must have a google trawl…
Since the Vatican views the EU as an evil liberal and moral relativist construct maybe that’s the price of Bliar’s supposed “contrition” for going against the last pope so decisively.