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Apr. 3rd, 2005 08:29 pmThe Pope is dead, and that feels weird. I mean, dude. The Pope. Popes aren't supposed to die. That's why they're Popes.
I'm kind of torn between feeling really bad about it, and thinking all the media coverage is sort of off. Because, while the Pope was very important to a lot of people and was actually pretty liberal for being the leader of the Catholic Church and all- opposed the war in Iraq, etc.- he also banned condoms during the AIDS crisis, compared abortion to the Holocaust and gay marriage to the work of Satan, and effectively said that a women's place in the Church could never be one of leadership or power. It's hard to reconcile the kneejerk reaction of "OMG THE POPE :(:(:(" and the more critical "I find it kind of sickening that people think the natural death of an eighty-four-year-old is more tragic than the murder of a fifteen-year-old girl by an twenty-one-year-old man who got pissed because she refused to kiss him."
In any case, bon voyage, John Paul II. You weren't as big an asshole as many other popes we've had and you did good things for Poland, but you weren't quite as cool as that woman who dressed up like a man, became the Pope, and then got kicked out when she went into labour during a ritual.
I'm kind of torn between feeling really bad about it, and thinking all the media coverage is sort of off. Because, while the Pope was very important to a lot of people and was actually pretty liberal for being the leader of the Catholic Church and all- opposed the war in Iraq, etc.- he also banned condoms during the AIDS crisis, compared abortion to the Holocaust and gay marriage to the work of Satan, and effectively said that a women's place in the Church could never be one of leadership or power. It's hard to reconcile the kneejerk reaction of "OMG THE POPE :(:(:(" and the more critical "I find it kind of sickening that people think the natural death of an eighty-four-year-old is more tragic than the murder of a fifteen-year-old girl by an twenty-one-year-old man who got pissed because she refused to kiss him."
In any case, bon voyage, John Paul II. You weren't as big an asshole as many other popes we've had and you did good things for Poland, but you weren't quite as cool as that woman who dressed up like a man, became the Pope, and then got kicked out when she went into labour during a ritual.