Oh, joy!

The last cardinal who will participate in the conclave to elect the next pope arrived in Rome on Thursday, meaning a date can now be set for the election.

The fun is about to begin! I tell you, I'm all fired up. A new popey guy! What fun it'll be to play with him, no matter who he turns out to be. Speaking of the election, who do you think they'll choose? Here are my thoughts.

First off, I doubt they'll pick me as the new pope. For a while, I thought there was an outside chance. But no. I've accepted this. Moving on to other possible candidates, I think the cardinals' childish understanding of sexuality, coupled with the church's monstrous history of preying upon children, will drive them to choose the worst possible candidate.

Yup, I'm talkin' Turkson. A gay-hating, totally straight African pope who's ready to trounce on nuns and other feminine and feminine-like atrocities such as gay people -- would appeal to these cardinals, all of whom were appointed by Ratzinger based on their thick-headedness. 

Or they could go the Disney route and pick Timmy Dolan. I know people are poo-pooing this notion but I think Timmy's got a good chance. After all, he honcho'd the church's pogrom against gays in the US. And he seems to be trying, of late, to become the Mr. Rogers of cardinals. I mean, have you heard the stuff he's said lately? He sounds like Tinkerbell on PCP.

Anyway, those are my two faves for the job of Popey Guy of Planet Earth. What do you think? Got any hot candidates? I'm not familiar with all the cardinals (and neither are they), so there could be another gem in the bunch. But however it goes, we are in for some newfangled fun! Hooray for the (next) popey guy!

The vapid words of priests

The pope sent the following message to the grieving families in Newton, CT:

"I assure the families of the victims, especially those who lost a child, of my closeness in prayer," the pope said in his first public comments on the massacre by a lone gunman. "May the God of consolation touch their hearts and ease their pain." 

Thanks, pope. Your meaningless words mean...nothing. But what does fat, red-faced Cardinal Timmy Dolan have to say about the massacre? (I knew he'd worm his way into these events somehow.)

“Even in moments of tragedy, God gives us light,” Dolan said. “We have to seek the light in the darkness that God gives us. Goodness will always trump evil.”

Yes, let's all look for that light from god, and the goodness that is surely all over these events. It must be there...somewhere. Priests offer meaningless words. It's what they do.

Yesterday on CNN, I heard a dreadful pastor speaking nonsense. The anchor asked him what we should tell the parents. I didn't get the pastor's name, but he said we must remember that we are "fallen" and must "seek redemption." You know what, pastor? Fuck you and your filthy faith. Fallen indeed. That's just what the parents need to hear right now. What disgusting words.

Religion is empty. It's a magic fence constructed around nothing. Thus the words of priests are always meaningless. It disgusts me the way these "men of the cloth" cluster around disasters to reap their own Earthly rewards, such as camera time, adulation and donations. They make me sick.

Timmy Dolan is rip-roaring mad

Guess who?

You already know about Cardinal Dolan paying off the rapist priests, and the brouhaha this caused when it was reported in the NY Times. Yesterday the NY Post printed Dolan's rebuttal, such as it is. Timmy waved his hands in the air and tried to confuse the issue by focusing not on what the church should or shouldn't have done, but on whether the payments (some as high as $20,000) were "charity" or "payoffs".

In discussing Dolan's response, Ed Brayton says it plain and clear:

The real question here is not whether those payments were payoffs or charity; the real question is why the church chose this route rather than turning any information they had over to the police. We know why they didn’t — because the current pope, when he was a cardinal, explicitly ordered them not to do so. And that’s the real problem.

It all comes back to the popey guy. No wonder they don't want to talk about it. If they spoke honestly about the scandal, it would bring the popey guy down in flames. That's quite a church they've got there, where the main culprit is their supreme leader. It speaks volumes about the Roman Catholic church.

Dolan rewarded for anti-gay bigotry

The popey guy pays his debt to the man who leads the church's anti-gay bigotry in the United States.

Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan will be among those elevated to cardinal in the Roman Catholic Church in a Vatican ceremony next month, the Archdiocese of New York announced in a news release on Friday.

Hitting on the homos really pays off. Dolan's going to get much better clothing out of this deal. The gold content will go up dramatically. I can just imagine the smile on his fat, stupid, sleazy face when he heard the news. God is good. Hallelujuah!

More fun from the bishops

Today from Associated Press:

BALTIMORE (AP) — The president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops says the church should not be dismissed as an outmoded bureaucracy. Archbishop Timothy Dolan says the church is a spiritual family that has much to teach the world.

. . . The archbishop . . . said bishops repent daily for their missteps . . . [b]ut he says the church should not be defined by its problems.

Indeed. The church should be defined by its actions against children, gays and women -- and that is exactly what's happening. It's the reason why Catholics are leaving the church in droves. In fact, we can hope that the church will soon collapse -- and good riddance.