You certainly did little to counter the impression that sparked my tangent.

[/evenmoreofftopic]

I’m still so boggled by the widespread gay-extermination meme in African nations that I have trouble producing coherent thoughts about it. But comparison with Nazism seems entirely appropriate. However, a comparison is not the same as labelling. An African homocidal homophobe may be like a Nazi in certain respects, but they aren’t actually a Nazi, and labelling them as such won’t help defeat the problem. An African homophobe has his own reasons for being a homophobe, and influence by Nazism is improbable. For one thing, a Nazi would have no truck with blacks. You think it’s hard to get in the local golf club if you’re black, try getting into a Neo-Nazi group if you’re black.

Possibly I’m being old and overly pedantic, and ‘Nazi’ is going the same way as ‘vandal’ and ‘thug’, and good riddance to it. But at the moment Nazism is still a live thing, still a weak but present force in European politics, and it troubles me to pretend that it’s so dead that it can be used as a verbal bogeyman, a space-filler reached for when you wish to insult someone. There are people still alive who fought and killed actual Nazis, after all.

It’s no surprise that groups which suppress sexuality have the worst behaviour in this field.  I’m near the centre of the Ultra-orthodox Jewish community in my town and I don’t think it’s a co-incidence that it’s also one of the big centres of sleazy second-story massage parlours.  As Oscar Wilde said “The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful.”

The rule was clearly introduced by people interested in avoiding the establishment of a “holy aristocracy” (for comparison, look at how many Muslims are still killing each other over who was the “right” relative of the Prophet). At some point it stopped to work (see: Borgia), and it’s now counter-productive, a magnet for weirdos and a blackmailing tool (a lot of people inside the RCC nowadays are not-really-in-the-closet gays, and when they are on the wrong side of an argument involving power, threats will be made).

Allowing priests to have a normal life would rekindle the faith among European followers, generating a watershed moment, and go a long way toward re-establishing trust in the organization. 

I say this as a totally-atheist, non-baptised guy married to a Catholic in a Catholic ceremony. My loved one deserves better defenders of her faith.

“Dude, I’ve found out this stuff is a bit different from what we thought.”

“YOU’RE WRONG! Stop talking about this bullshit or I’ll kill you!”

“Ok, ok, but sooner or later you’ll see what I mean.”

… 100 years later …

“Dude, we’ve totally found out how this whole universe thing is moving. It’s nothing like you thought.”

“I’m not listening! Lalalalalala…”

“Why am I talking to you, again?”

… another 300 years later…

“Dude, we are going to Mars! One day we’ll get to some supermassive black hole that can send us back in time!”

“Oh, so the Sun doesn’t rotate around the Earth, does it? I think we owe that guy an apology, after all. But please don’t tell me anything about that evolution crap, I am many things but not the son of a monkey.”

That Ghanaian guy sounds just right for that sort of thing.

You see, the Catholic church has basically convinced its followers that secularism is a great evil and secular governments have created secular societies in the West that are causing great numbers of souls to be lost to evil and decadence. The decline of Catholicism in the West is a source of despair for Catholics while the rise of Catholicism (and Christianity in general regardless of denomination, if you can believe that) in emerging countries is a source of great hope.

The believers in the West convince themselves that their societies are faltering, crumbling, failing. They see themselves as the last bulwarks of civilization while the heathens tear down the pillars of society. This is why they don’t even question the logic of people like Rush Limbaugh when he says Obama is anti-christian because he doesn’t like an organization in Africa called the Lord’s Republican Army (because they don’t know how horrible the LRA is, they only see the word “Lord”). The growth of Christianity outside of the US is a shining beacon of hope to these people who casually ignore the atrocities and barbarism of third-world christianity.

They would love an African pope. They’d see him as a harbinger of “progress” being brought back to the West from the formerly uncivilized third world. To them it’s like Jesus coming back from the desert after 40 days. Not only that, but his regressive views would only make them feel better about their own views, which they’re tired of having constantly challenged by their Western neighbors. He would be a great comfort to them by reassuring them there were right all along.

Lastly, and this is the racist part, they would hold him up as a token of their own inclusiveness. “See, we can have an Obama too. We’re not racists.” A black pope would strengthen the church, not weaken it. One only has to look at the popularity of Desmond Tutu throughout the Catholic church to see this. Be careful what you wish for.

OK, I might have to start a “Pope Pool” for fun. Though I’m pretty sure gambling is a sin. Oh well, not my problem.

Go Canada Pope!

The scholar who wrote that book (Hubert Wolf) is absolutely not in the line of Dan Brown. He’s a renowned specialist in research on the Inquisition (today:Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith), and has access to the Vatican’s archives. And related to the minithread up in the comments about ‘Nazis & Church’: if you’ve got access to the Harvard Theological Review (paywall…), see the review of his book about the relations of Nazi Germany to the Vatican.

By the way, sure as the sun rises, there will be people blaming “tribal” culture and “underdeveloped ethics” for abominable views of African clerics. Racism is at the doorstep, ready to knock. (Discl.: did not read further down yet, might even be the case already?)

It’s going to be very difficult not to pull a Goodwin one direction or the other when someone from Africa gets to be elected in the Conclave. This is not going to help the discussion ’bout how to get rid of these narratives called “religion”.

How rancid does this festering, suppurating boil need to grow before folks realise it’s a blemish?