Do you think the Pope should resign?

I don't believe anybody supports child rape or any other rape. I've never heard of NAMBLA before. You seem more in touch with such things that I am so I suppose I'll have to say excepting them.

And I don't think it is useful to suggest that women risk health and life by having a baby. The anxiety you create with that sort of stuff represents a greater risk in my opinion.

You got to be kidding me to come up with the position that women do not risk life itself less alone health to carry a fetus to term!!!!!!!!!

I came damn near to not having been born myself as my own mother hung between life and death for days as a result of a female fetus she was carrying dying a few days before it was to had been born inside of her.

Only good medical care for the time allow her to live and to later had me.

Women to this very day do die trying to bring new life into this world, thankfully not in nearly the same numbers as they once did but still it happen.

I was born green at 8 months and the quack expressed surprise that I was still alive when he got back from his night out.

And look how I turned out.

I still say that reminding our ladies of the risk increases the risk. Tolstoy mentioned it.

One cannot base a principle on what happened to oneself. There's a risk fighting for the country. Or driving a truck. The focus on bad luck is driving us all nuts.

Bad luck or good luck no one should have the power to tell women that they need to run the risks of carrying a fetus to full term if they do not wish to do so.

spendius says:

Don't get me started talking about the benefits of retroactive abortion again, spendi.

How did this get to be a discussion on abortion?

spendius, of course, and those who play with him. Just watch, pages and pages will pass.

No one is claiming that power. For a long time up to 1973 the law claimed the power. It is now simply a condition of membership of the RC Church and has no application to anyone else. I have already explained that Bill. If you can't read it has nothing to do with me.

And I will continue to assert that raising anxiety levels by talking about risks is bound to create greater risk and to do that after you had been told and without you offering a rebuttal simply in order to bang on about the matter is easily construed as gratuitous woman abuse.

There's no need to be shy Jack. Get on with it. Don't hold yourself back on my account.

Well Mags--the topic is whether the Pope should resign. If he was to do so, which is extremely unlikely, it would affect the esteem and authority of the RC Church and as that august institution is the only serious voice in the western world against abortion it is obvious that the promotion of abortion by those who think men should have abortion available as a safety device when they have been unable to control themselves , and I can't imagine a sensible women thinking that, given the physical and emotional stress involved, the latter usually lasting a lifetime, would gather pace from the already extraordinary speed which can be gauged by the 47.5 million abortions which have taken place in the USA since 1973 when the USSC legalised abortion after it had been classed as criminal during the whole of most of the population's lifetimes.

I don't know what percentage of American women who have had an abortion the 47.5 million abortions represents but it seems, at first glance, to be sufficient to make one wonder why we all know so few. I cannot help thinking that the obvious reticence of women to admit to having had an abortion strongly suggests that they consider it to be a matter they are not very proud of given their well known propenity to talk about other operations they have had.

It may be unfair of me but anytime I see someone attacking the RC Church over-zealously I tend to think they have been involved in some way in an abortion or some other activity which the Church condemns.

I hope that answers the question to your satisfaction. If not perhaps you will explain why and I'll go into more detail on the matter.

It's really unfair of you and I would add that's some kind of projection as attributing to others one's own wrong-doing or deep buried feeling of guilt...

Mostly because of a certain poster's love of being a dérailleur.

Unable to answer such a simple question like "Do you think the Pope should resign?" with a simple answer such as "Yes" "No' or "Maybe" he tries, for his own entertainment only, to spin the conversation into some twisted discussion on abortion, certainly a worthy thread topic but not one which is germane to the question, and an equally weird set of pronouncements on the purveyors of fast food and sugared cereals, trying to equate, if I am reading him correctly, that because such businesses have no scruples the Pope should be given a pass for dispensing with his.

He doesn't believe anything he himself says. If that were so, he would appear to be mentally ill in several ways. As it is, I would venture to say that his writing here only serves his own need for, (finally, a situation where it's the only word which is profoundly suitable) pontificating.

Joe(we now return you to the actual discussion.)Nation

As Freud well knew --nobody can get out of that. It's an all purpose, catch-all gambit.

I will readily admit to having engaged in activities which the Church condemns, and on more occasions than is right and proper, but I have never asked a woman, nor expected her, to do anything to herself for my convenience other than to bring her natural self enthusiastically to the tryst in the full confidence that I would take care of any business on her behalf.

You might be surprised by how popular such an approach to the fair sex is and how charmingly rewarded.

And I think, Francois, that you have failed to give due weight to my use of "over-zealously".

I refer you Joe to the answer I gave to mags. And some previous ones.

I suggest you read them more carefully before you get on your high horse for a pontification festivity.

I admit that I've done so...

However, you're guilty of underestimating my deep appreciation of womanhood and social skills..

The Catholic Church will ultimately be resorbed in first and second world nations . It will, by its own inability to see its seeping open sores , be bypassed and relegated to the dustbin of history just like the "Shaking Quakers" .
I get a kick out of the frequent "pastoral letters" That some douche bag archbishop sends to the press which talks of abstinence in pleasures carnal and then, a few months later, some priest in the same archdiocese is being questioned for diddling the altar boys in the 1970's.

"Lets avert our eyes from this problem by equating some bullshit about feeding our kids sugar. I say lets take care of both, while we wean our kids from sugar, lets point out the duplicity of the sick clergy society that feels entitled to commit acts of depravity and then tries to justify it.

Thanks for that.



I don't think I have. I realised a long time ago that you took a broadly similar view to myself on the matter. Perhaps your being still active and me being retired due to general entropy is the explanation of any slight differences.

I call that over-zealous.

I have already stated that priests who do these things should be put to mending the roads. What more do you want me to say?

As regards the alleged cover-up. At the time of the alleged cover-up the actions of the Milwaukie priest, deplorable as they are, and you will be deceiving yourself if you think you have monopolised deploring them, were in the past. Nothing could be done about them. But discrediting the Church has implications for the future. It could cause more abortions in the future if the teachings of the Church are discredited as more people will use the discredit as an excuse to act for their own convenience. More divorce too. More recourse to chemical, surgical and physical alterations to the natural feminine character. In the future.

Such an argument is very persuasive in my opinion.

As regards the bad diet millions of children are psyched into eating by those with taxpayer trained expertise in psyching, it cannot be but admitted that the sheer numbers, and the medical conditions resulting, are of far greater significance than the actions of a small number of priests, however deplorable, and to jump all over the latter with markedly zealous enthusiasm whilst playing down the former, as Media is doing for obvious reasons, is rather suspicious. And the psyching of the millions of children is rewarded by large incomes and high status whereas the actions of the priests is a matter of great shame.

It is a terrible indictment of American Catholics that out of nearly 70 million of them there is not one to come and make a defence of their religion on A2K. One might imagine that they fear the sort of bullying I am getting. They deserve to decline and there are many in Europe who will be happy to see the day when they vanish entirely and let the USA pursue an atheist agenda to its heart's content.

As I have long ago learned fm to expect nothing but highly subjective and unwordly silliness from you it comes as no surprise to see you indulging yourself once again.

Hopefully the rest of the world also.

Hell Europe is already way ahead of us in going down the path of commonsense and rejecting fairy tales.

I'm thinking the pope should require that everyone in the church take a vow before their god of total sexual abstinence. failure to fully comply should result in burning at the stake. (this may have been tried before)