Okay, I’ve decided to return and see how things go.
HI RicOlie_2!
btw, did you see moviefreakedmind’s new avatar? What do you think of it?
Hi!
I saw his avatar, but wasn’t really sure what it was till now. Actually, I’m still not entirely sure what it’s supposed to be depicting.
It is a pic of Sinead O Connor when she tore apart the pic of Pope John Paul II on Saturday Night Live.
Ah. It makes me sad more than anything, that people would think that way about such a holy pope and about the Church. I wasn’t familiar with that particular incident on SNL, so I looked it up and watched part of an interview with Sinéad. What a deluded human being. It’s terrible that she had to suffer abuse as a child, though. It sounds like that was the main source of her attitude towards the Church.
It makes me sad more than anything that that man is viewed a “such a holy pope.” His complicity in the mass child rape and the Church’s cover-up of the mass child rape makes him an accessory at the absolute best, and likely far, far worse. I’d call his defenders the deluded human beings. Before anyone claims I’m being mean or “bigoted” for the use of the word deluded, I’d like to point out that I, since I hold the same position as Sinéad, was called deluded first. This isn’t the thread for such statements so I won’t state how I really feel about John Paul II, but since I’m kind of being implicated in this exchange I felt the need to explain my side. Interestingly, the reason I have this picture is because I was asked to change my old avatar since it made it look like I was a banned user, and for reasons I don’t quite remember anymore I wanted an anti-establishment, fight-the-power image as my avatar so I chose Sinéad.
I don’t want to completely derail this thread, so I’ll keep my responses relatively brief:
I suspect JP II either naïvely gave guilty priests the benefit of the doubt or was simply ignorant of the extent of their wrongdoings. “Mass child rape” is certainly not a fitting expression for atrocities committed by 1% of priests, but I certainly agree that the pope should have done more. I don’t think he was perfect by any means.
By referring to Sinéad as deluded, I was referring primarily to her claim that child abuse is at the root of all the world’s problems, and her belief that she is Catholic despite rejecting the Catholic Church outright. I get the impression that you’re intelligent enough not to espouse those positions.