On Christmas Eve, the Pope chastised humanity for “selfishness” — while he preached in gold robes that clearly were not purchased at K-mart. Nothing speaks to shared sacrifice during a recession like an opulent display of wealth by the pontiff, who sat on a throne and wore a gold crown. He might do better reaching the “greedy” paupers if he’d given up his Prada footwear for a trip to Payless Shoes. The Pontiff’s sermon was the equivalent of Donald Trump urging New Yorkers to take mass transit — as he gets out of a stretch limousine.
The Pope’s hypocrisy is as pronounced on issues of poverty as it is on sexual orientation. It is increasingly hard to take him seriously on critical matters of the day.
In his Dec. 22 World Youth Day speech, the Pope spoke about the environment — and somehow tied it to his favorite obsession, homosexuality.
On the environment, the pope said: The earth is “the gift of our Creator, with certain intrinsic rules that offer us an orientation we must respect as administrators of creation. … [The church] must defend not only the earth, water and air as gifts of creation that belong to all. It must also defend the human person against its own destruction. What’ needed is something like a “human ecology,’ understood in the right sense. It’ not simply an outdated metaphysics if the church speaks of the nature of the human person as man and woman, and asks that this order of creation be respected.”
The pope went on to opine that if humanity ignores this “order of creation,” it is self-destructive. “That which is often expressed and understood by the term “gender’ in the end amounts to the self-emancipation of the human person from creation and from the Creator,” and as a result “the human person lives against the truth, against the Creator Spirit,” said the pope.
I saw the movie “Doubt” last night. It was a chilling reminder that this anti-gay church presided over a shocking child sex scandal. Clearly, the Pope has little moral authority to preach to those of us who have hurt no one. He ought to get his gilded palace in order before pointing his manicured fingers covered in gold rings at innocnet people.
