I’m a Protestant. The main difference, I think, between my version of Christianity and, say, Side Bar’s and LJT’s (Catholics) is that, to me, what some old dude in a funny hat who got elected behind closed doors in some arcane, secret ritual involving multicolored smoke says doesn’t mean shit.
Today’s winner? Me:
Pope Benedict said on Monday that saving humanity from homosexual or transsexual behavior was just as important as saving the rainforest from destruction.
"(The Church) should also protect man from the destruction of himself. A sort of ecology of man is needed," the pontiff said in a holiday address to the Curia, the Vatican's central administration.
"The tropical forests do deserve our protection. But man, as a creature, does not deserve any less."
The Catholic Church teaches that while homosexuality is not sinful, homosexual acts are. It opposes gay marriage and, in October, a leading Vatican official called homosexuality "a deviation, an irregularity, a wound."
(I wonder if I could make a plowing-down-the-rain-forest/plowing-altar-boys joke here.)
The pope said humanity needed to "listen to the language of creation" to understand the intended roles of man and woman. He compared behavior beyond traditional heterosexual relations as "a destruction of God's work."
He also defended the Church's right to "speak of human nature as man and woman, and ask that this order of creation be respected."
I suppose it is a lot to ask of a former Nazi that he try to view human beings different from himself as human beings not, you know, plants.
Whatever, he’s really old. He’ll be dead soon enough, and we can all watch the funny smoke ceremony on CNN again! Yay!