According to Pope Benedict, saving humanity from homosexuality is as important as saving the rainforests.

[LittleJingleBellas]

So just remember that when you're doing your recycling.

What a fool.

FGS this is exactly why I'm no longer a practising catholic, that and the fact that the catholic church is mega rich but keeps its coffers tightly closed.

Religious tolerance is just great isn't it?

So glad I'm an humanist - Happy Christmas !

thunk.

as lynette says....the biggest risk to us as a human race is population explosion...

by linking it to environmental issues he's just showing up his lack of thinking skills.

I'm off to read another recent statement of his that someone sent me. apparently it's about poverty and human rights....will be interesting to compare

just read his new Year statement. apparently population growth isn't a problem. what else did I expect? I am daft sometimes.

my first response was to be highly amused, but actually it's very hurtful, before you even start unpicking the nonsensical element. I would be SO embarassed if I was RC.

If it was just one old man that would be bad enough, but millions listen to him thinking he speaks for god.

I can just imagine the sermons. "So if you are too busy to recycle god will forgive you, but please do find time to abuse a gay person this christmas"

His statements are always depressing. ANd he looks like the Emperor in Star Wars

Nothing in the link to the Beeb provided that quotes the Pope actually uses the words gay and lesbian, or homosexual. Not sure whether this is just a Rant Opportunity? You'll never go broke hammering Popery on sex, that's for sure. Curious that people who are critical of one man's judgement themselves rush to it so quickly.

I don't think they (gays/lesbians)are implied by 'gender theory', which is actually much more complex than the poor Beeb can get its head around. Not sure the Pope is expressing an antigay view so much as something more global about natural law which would probably leave most heterosexual couples guilty. (Not sure if this is good news or bad?)

Gender theory btw, and donning a donnish manner, is the idea that gender is not natural or biological, but socially shaped, so that hypothetically without society there can be no gender - but that never happens, of course, and therefore gender theory does NOT mean it's possible to revise gender at will or to opt out of its pressures and contradictions, though there can bve moments of somewhat vaguely defined subversion that can with equal ease be coopted (Ie it's basically Foucauldian and partakes of his pessimism). It's NOT necessarily a liberating idea - it's actually fairly pessimistic and would argue for example that eg lesbians are as trapped by gender as anyone else - or at anyrate it could/has been used to argue that. Judith Butler who is its chief practitioner sees human agency in these areas in very limited terms. Her ideas certainly don't go with liberalism or tolerance as such, not underpin those values.

OK, so... this is a man who claims to speak for an invisible, conveniently unproveable god, and to believe that bread and wine are literally a body and its blood, and that a bloke died and very conveniently came back from the dead three days later, and that miracles are literally possible, and generally speaking that a Bronze Age myth system is still applicable and literally believable in the modern world.

And it's only when he says dodgy and offensive things about gays that people start to mutter about him being out of touch with reality??!

I have to ask - you do know that bears shit in the woods, right?

Nutcase.

And I say that as a committed Christian.

(To clarify - Pope's statement is work of a nutcase, wasn't referring to anyone on here.)

So glad I'm an atheist.

Stupid fucking twat.

The horror of it is that there are a billion people who will listen to him.

It's almost hilariously ironic that the leader of an organised religion can spout all kinds of superstitious mumbo-jumbo as long as it's "acceptable" mumbo-jumbo, but when he says something about gay people - offensive, but hardly any more mad than anything else the Church comes out with - that's when the media has a field day.

Why on earth do people expect anything the Pope says to be sensible?

JaneLumley, good post. From what I've read, he's talking about Gender Theory, which is a big old minefield of confusion anyway.

I'll say this for the old fella, he's not going for top spot in a popularity contest.

Gender theory holds a lot more water than organised religion does.

I am catholic, and my first thought is ........what a twat!

Sorry but this is where I struggle with catholicism (and the issue of abortion, oh and the issue of contraception, oh and the issue of no sex before marriage, and the issue of divorce .... oops).

This kind of twaddle is dangerous and wrong, along with the messages of not using condoms, the Pope and the Catholic church should be ashamed of themselves.
Thankfully I think most Catholics would disagree with this crap!

Well, about the only thing I generally agree with Catholic teaching about is abortion, but it's hardly a shock to hear the pope making comment about a topic the catholic church hasn't moved on for the past two millenia.

I'm with UQD on this point, tbh. It's not a change in belief, so I'm not sure why, aside from the juicy opportunity to mention the pope and sex together, it's even an issue.

Newsflash: The Catholic Church believes and teaches some things the rest of us disagree with.

Later today, Is it nearly Christmas? We examine the clues...

i hate the idea of a hierarchy in the catholic church and i am catholic - although recently disillusioned a little.

i never ever put stock in the pope, stupid old bigoted bastard

lol kate - quite!

It seems this has been wildly misreported and the Pope never said anything like what this thread title suggests. Actually if it was a senior Islamic figure who had been misreported, no doubt everyone would be squealing about bigotry and racism.

Pope revealed to be Catholic, shock horror

Catholic teaching is actually that there is nothing wrong with homosexuality. Any kind of sex outside of marriage is frowned apon, however. And gay marriage is not recognised.

actually if is was an islamic cleric, i would say

stupid old bigoted bastard