at the BBC’s “Have Your Say”:
What impact will the Pope’s Turkey visit have?
How important is the Pope’s visit?The Pope has wrapped up his trip to Turkey by saying Mass in a Catholic cathedral in Istanbul, and issuing a plea for freedom of religion in Turkey.
The four-day visit was seen as an attempt to repair the damage his comments on Islam in September caused across the Muslim world.
Many Turkish papers said he succeeded, with his moment of prayer in Istanbul’s Blue Mosque hailed a “great gesture”.
Was the Pope’s visit a success? Has the visit helped to foster better relations between the Catholic Church and Muslim community? Do you live in Turkey? If so, how important was the visit? Send us your views and experiences.
Typical British responses:
The Pope should rather have stayed in Rome. His visit only heightens tensions and bitterness in that area of the world. There are not that many catholics in Turkey, he should rather go to countries like Ireland
PETER ROSS, LONDON
Let me get this straight. This is a man in a frock representing an organisation that only recently (historically) brutally enforced a program of executions against ‘unbelievers’, forcing people to adopt their structure in the name of a ‘oracle’. And this man has visited a country in which 90 odd percent of the citizens are followers of a rival organization that actively suppresses women, with a just as inventive collection of methods of execution applied with the same enthusiasm on the orders of another collection of men in frocks.
Does this collective blind allegiance to questionably dressed, self appointed maniacs, and the brutal systems they administer, seem strange to anyone else?
Alex Stone, Studying in Moscow, Russia
I’m sure Alex Stone, studying in Moscow, has lots of good reasons for thinking that communism really hasn’t been responsible for any brutality recently (historically).
Fortunately, the Turks and other Muslims responding have been rather more positive.
Now, Dan, everyone knows that Real Communism hasn’t been tried yet. Those mumblemillionsofmumble people killed were helping the Marxists work out the final details. Yeah, that’s it, they were happy to die to help the Dictatorship of the Proletariat… not like those dupes of a religion, foolish martyrs to an unseen, uncaring, nonexistent god.
Stupid Pope. Always going on and on about “religious freedom” and ‘human dignity” Enough already!
Great! Muslim journalists and clerics are praising the Pope’s praying in a mosque. How about reopening Hagia Sophia as a church in return?
Yeah, I bet everybody who lives in Russia or studies in Russia in 2006 is a Communist! Secretly, everyone in Russia is….I bet.
And, because he is visiting a country that a bunch of communists ran 20 years ago, his opinion of the history of the Catholic Chruch is completely impeached.
Trenchant analysis
“Collective blind allegiance” is so much less common than this guy seems to think. His predisposition to see it as a rampant phenomenon smacks of jealousy.
Alex Stone needs some excuse, any excuse, to attack the pope. The only commendable bit of his post is that he doesn’t attack Benedict for being Catholic; he is an equal-opportunity anti-religionist. That he has to dig so far back, “historically”, to find some way of equating Catholics with Islamic kooks explains all we need to know about his studies: they’re not done yet, not for a good long time.
Does this collective blind allegiance to questionably dressed, self appointed maniacs, and the brutal systems they administer, seem strange to anyone else?
Dan just meant that Stone should ask the Russians around him that question. And then they will carefully explain to him that their self-appointed maniacs administering a brutal system never wore frocks—and in fact were famous for being badly dressed—so it was perfectly OK.
They will also explain that Communism collapsed, like, years and years and years ago. Thirteen whole years, dude! It’s not like it was yesterday, y’know, like the Inquisition.
jdm,
So it’s like the real, peaceful Islam doesn’t seem to actually be practiced anywhere. Unlike the real, brutal Catholicism that Benedict appointed himself to administer.
Okey dokey.
“And, because he is visiting a country that a bunch of communists ran 20 years ago, his opinion of the history of the Catholic Chruch is completely impeached.
Trenchant analysis”
Posted by neoconsstink | permalink
No, – his opinion is “impeached” because it is worthless. As is your trenchant “contribution”.
I like Chruch, though. Wonder if that might catch on.
And I’d bet you wouldn’t know a joke if it jumped up and bit you in the ass.
That actually happened to him once. He suffered a brain injury as a result.
On Protien Wisdom, comments to a post about the prayers of the leader of Catholicism took less than a dozen contributions to get to the real issue: ass-biting.
Go team, go!
Bite me!
’zactly, Pablo.
[perhaps my sarcasm was too dry]
Hey, I meant my comment about the ass-biting as a compliment to the commenters. Must be a breakdown of signifier / signified / smartass / dumbass / assbiting. To quote Cool Hand Luke, “What we have here is a failure to communicate.”. To quote Steve Martin, “Sorrrrreeeeeeee!”
jdm,
Or it could be mine. There’s a lot of tentacles on that….thing. I suspect Putin might even have something to do with it.
Not being a fan of organized religion, especially the Catholic Church where I was raised, I’ve got to throw a couple things out here.
First of all, the brutality that me and my classmates endured in grade school in Chicago is so freaking legendary, it’s one of the funniest bits in The Blues Brothers. Hehehe, yeah, look how funny it is to watch a Nun beat on grown men instead of children and watch the men shudder and flinch. Let’s forget the fact that until probably 1979/1980 it was still common practice in the schools. May still be today, I don’t know, I wouldn’t leave my son alone with a member of the Catholic Clergy no more than I’d let him stay at Neverland.
Add to that the fact that Cardinal Law is still living like a freaking prince in Rome instead of rotting in a jail for aiding child rapists, and you’ve got yourself what I would call some recent historic brutality. But who cares? It was just some little kids, and Catholic little kids to boot. Because you know, no one, but no one counts in the Catholic church BUT the clergy. The rest of us are practically non-human. Been that way for centuries.
Seriously though…the clothes are kind of weird.
Keep in mind that I’ve only had one day off this week and I’m just plain cranky. I suppose the old boy did some awesome fence mending in Turkey…I’m just not sure why he’d bothered. Muslim radicals are still going to try to kill him…and you…and me…
Fuck the Pope. How many battalions does he have?
Timmer, I went through 16 years of Catholic education (although eight might be called quasi-Catholic, since it was under Jesuit rule) and suffered none of what you describe. Maybe it was Chicago that was so brutal?
Also, when all allegations involved less than 1% of the total of all Catholic priests (about .55%, to be exact), the national rate of pedophiles in the general population is about 4%, and the national rate of allegations of both types of abuse for Protestant married clergy is about 10%, I’d say it was far safer for your children to be among Catholic priests than among anyone else.
Source: Catholic Answers
It may help to remember that while the press called it “priestly pedophilia”, it was really homosexual seduction of young men – post-pubescent teenagers. That doesn’t excuse things,certainly, but it was homosexual rather than pedophilic in nature. But the press can’t make nearly the bucks on homosexual seduction that it can on priestly pedophilia, can it? And the boys in the press room certainly wouldn’t want the gays to take a hit, would they?
Heh.
One cardinal to another as Napoleon marched upon Rome: “So Bonaparte thinks he can destroy the Church from outside? We’ve been at it for 1700 years and even we have not succeeded!”
Does this collective blind allegiance to questionably dressed, self appointed maniacs, and the brutal systems they administer, seem strange to anyone else?
The difference, of course, being, the pontiff doesn’t demand the head of anyone who doesn’t join up.Attendance, as they say, is volantary.
Chicago is brutal: 82% of its citizens vote Democrat.
And Alex Stone wears pink panties.
Yeah, but they’re the last of the conservative democrats.
By Reuters, via Yahoo News, Il Papa got a pat on the back for “praying while facing toward Mecca like Muslims”.
That should be worth a subject of its own…
http://fullcoverage.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061201/wl_nm/pope_turkey_dc_37