[lbo-talk] the bloody pope

Wojtek Sokolowski sokol at jhu.edu
Mon Apr 4 12:49:16 PDT 2005


Doug quotes:
> Guardian (London) - April 4, 2005
>
> The Pope has blood on his hands
> The Pope did great damage to the church, and to countless Catholics
>
> Terry Eagleton


> The greatest crime of his papacy, however, was neither his part in
> this cover up nor his neanderthal attitude to women. It was the
> grotesque irony by which the Vatican condemned - as a "culture of
> death" - condoms, which might have saved countless Catholics in the
> developing world from an agonising Aids death. The Pope goes to his
> eternal reward with those deaths on his hands. He was one of the
> greatest disasters for the Christian church since Charles Darwin.
>

While his point about the neanderthal conservatism of the Catholic Church in Poland (and Wojtyla's as well) is largely true (I witnessed it myself), I think his last comment about pope's failure to prevent aids-related deaths in Africa is a long stretch, to say the least. That honor should be awarded to Mr. Mbeki.

Wojtek



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