08/15/2008
Respecting God's Creation: The Pope Wears Ermine
Not only does he wear Prada shoes, but he's the first Pope since Pope John XXIII in the 1960s to wear the camauro, an ermine-trimmed red velvet hat. He's also been wearing a cape trimmed with ermine.
TheGuardian reports: "But his use of ermine, long favoured by kings, judges and nobles, has drawn the ire of the Italian Association for the Defence of Animals and the Environment, which had by yesterday gathered 2,260 signatures for its petition. "The pope has often talked about protecting the environment and we are asking that he acknowledges that animals, as God's creation, also deserve respect," said the organisation's head, Lorenzo Croce. Benedict's use of fur was defended yesterday by Cardinal Andrea Cordero Lanza di Montezemolo. 'Aren't there more important battles to wage?' he asked. 'There are human beings who merit more urgent assistance that no one is taking care of. And if we eat animals, we can wear them.'"
The paper notes that before he became Pope, Benedict said "Animals too are God's creatures...creatures we must respect as companions in creation and as important elements in creation."
I'd say watch out for PETA and a bucket of paint.
Posted 12:38 PM EST by Andy Towle in Catholic Church, Fashion Men, News, Pope Benedict | Permalink
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Comments full of hatred and ignorance. But, hey, we're here, we're queer no need to show any respect or common decency.
It's spouting off bullshit bigotry like this that helps keep people in the closet so they're not burdened with your brand of narrowmindedness and contempt.
Posted by: queendru | Aug 15, 2008 8:23:51 PM
Queendru,
you are simply too much.
Posted by: Nick | Aug 15, 2008 9:07:59 PM
Yes, we don't have time to be concerned about animals. We are busy hiding and covering up the actions of pedophile priests.
Posted by: Timothy | Aug 16, 2008 8:42:06 AM
Come off it, Queendru. Why should gays show "respect or common decency" to people who treat us with "narrowmindedness and contempt"? I don't seem to recall gays taking nonstop, influential steps to hurt Catholics. If they don't abide by the Golden Rule, why should we?
You really think that bitchy comments are what keep people in the closet? Seriously? No. It's usually religion in some form or another, and the peer pressure and social strictures that it imposes. Get a grip.
Posted by: Paul Rb | Aug 17, 2008 12:43:30 AM
In addition to being a homophobic Nazi, Ratzinger has terrible taste in dresses.
Posted by: libhomo | Aug 17, 2008 4:49:19 PM
Isn't this the self-righteous irritating the self-righteous?
Let me pull up a chair...
Posted by: Barabas | Aug 18, 2008 7:07:56 AM
A vermin in ermine.
Posted by: John in Manhattan | Aug 18, 2008 9:04:23 AM
it's no wonder he doesn't get any sleep.
Posted by: A.J. | Aug 18, 2008 9:37:19 AM
I can't believe people are defending this monster (you can just tell by looking at him, it's written on his face). Wasn't he responsible for the official Catholic opinion on gays as "objectively disordered"?
Actually the full official line is that WE DO NOT EXIST. There are no gay people or lesbians. There are only people "suffering" from "same-sex-attraction." SSA, which I like to think of as ASS-backwards. Backwards being the key word for the pope's thinking.
Posted by: Kevinvt | Aug 18, 2008 9:52:29 AM
I think he should wear Sable with his Manolo's & La Perla underwear.
Posted by: ROCKY | Aug 18, 2008 10:11:38 AM
"Objectively disordered" ain't the half of it. How about "intrinsically evil"!
Posted by: John in Manhattan | Aug 18, 2008 10:17:25 AM
I know I will get pilloried for this, but who cares. It's just the internet. So here goes.
To me, the most remarkable thing about this comment thread is the apparently completely un-self-aware irony of it. Here's the best example:
If they don't abide by the Golden Rule, why should we?
Well now, someone's missed the point of the Golden Rule, I think.
As I said in my earlier post, I think the institutional Catholic Church, and especially the hierarchy, is a long, long way away from the vision of love and charity that was the heart of Christ's teaching. Regardless of whether he was God or not, and I mostly doubt he was, Christ's teachings were revolutionary and STILL challenge humanity today to be more HUMAN.
And that's what so rankles me about this conversation. Like a lot of the conversations on this site, it feels so hateful and angry. There's no sign in it that in our struggle to overcome discrimination we've become really any better than those we struggle against.
When a person responds to bigotry and small-mindedness with bigotry and small-mindedness of his own, he's no better than the other.
And to reiterate the point in my original post, when an institution that comprises more than a billion people--an institution with what I willingly admit is an appalling historical record of abuse of power both temporal and spiritual, but which also is responsible now and through history for incalculable daily acts of charity and kindness--is singlehandedly and lightly dismissed en masse as bad because that fool pope wears ermine, then that sounds to me like smallmindedness at least and just another form of bigotry at worst.
Okay then, now you can have at it everyone. I'm sure you just know that I'm a self-loathing apologist for all those who would keep us down. So go ahead and say it.
And prove my point in the process.
Posted by: Hermes in DC | Aug 18, 2008 10:25:49 AM
"I'm sure you just know that I'm a self-loathing apologist for all those who would keep us down. So go ahead and say it."
There's no need to since you just did. Next!
Posted by: John in Manhattan | Aug 18, 2008 10:39:08 AM
Too bad George W. wasn't there he could have repeated his "looking good" line.
Posted by: Jim Pyrzynski | Aug 18, 2008 12:25:23 PM
Hermes in DC - you say you're a Catholic whilst acknowledging the Catholic record of abuse, and whilst doubting that Jesus is God. The latter point is heresy as far as the church you claim to belong to is concerned.
Put another way, you're not a Catholic. Put yet another way, if you can be a Catholic whilst spouting heresies, then I can be one whilst not believe in God at all. And if that's valid, then so are comments about the Pope's ridiculously expensive, insensitive wardrobe.
p.s. The best way to be more human is not to follow Jesus but to ignore religion altogether, since Christianity in particular is anti-human. It's control of the sexual impulse alone should prove that.
Posted by: DD | Aug 18, 2008 6:40:30 PM
"That bashing is fast becoming a very distasteful form of latter-day acceptable bigotry against all those people."
Really? You're serious? Gone are the days when bullies can play the victim when people call them on it. It's not bigotry to attack a bully for being a bully...it's self-defense. If one can undermine the moral credibility of a bully by pointing out that the emperor wears fur, or prada; or protects criminal pedophiles and pedophile conspirator bishops from prosecution by recalling them to the Vatican where they will be beyond the reach of the law; or imposes continuing poverty on third world countries by making the use of condoms a moral failing; then the responsible course of action is to do so.
So enjoy your "catholicism" such as it is, Hermes. It's about as twisted as anything else concerning the RCC.
Posted by: KaraokeJoe | Aug 18, 2008 9:35:22 PM
As I suspected, the three responses to my last post really sort of proved my point for me.
And more immediately, they miss the point of my whole argument. It's a shame none of you took the time to read, think about and then respond to what I said. For instance, KaraokeJoe, none of the charges you level at the pope, your self-termed defense against bullying, would or do I disagree with. I think he's a smallminded and petty person, and I regret his papacy. You're of course entitled to disagree with my point, but you could at least respond to it not to your mischaracterization of it. What I wrote, and believe, is that blanket condemnations of the entire church and all the people who make it up are smallminded and frankly bigoted.
And no, DD, having doubt is not a heresy. I won't go into a lengthy explanation that you no doubt will ignore anyway. But as Mother Theresa's recently-revealed longtime struggle with her faith demonstrates, people of unquestionable commitment to the church and all it entails often have longrunning crises of faith and belief. And she's on her way to canonization, so I think you're a little off in your thinking.
Posted by: Hermes in DC | Aug 19, 2008 10:47:13 AM
Hermes,
You make some valid points (and some others with which I disagree), but I have come to realize that this is not a forum that appreciates careful discussion. This is an angry mob, the sort that called for the death of Jesus, screaming 'Give us Barabas". Their anger is justified, but they are deaf with it. Few here want to find a high road, and the few who find it are trampled. Give it up. There is no way you can defend Catholicism in this room without being heard as a Nazi pedophile carnivorous dinosaur. While frequently admitting that the message of Jesus has been horribly distorted by 2000 years of Catholicism, I have tried to highlight the integrity of the message of the real Jesus and to hope that if the Catholic Church were brought to its knees, there might be a rebuilding of it in a good and healthy way, but I have failed to convince anyone of this. They want blood. Fold up your tent and get out of Dodge where there is no sheriff to defend you when they come at you with rope in hand. You and I are assumed to be guilty by association, and there is some truth to that judgement. That is part of the reason why I left the church, while retaining my status as validly and irrevocably ordained. It's all a very sad and dirty business.
Posted by: Father Tony | Aug 19, 2008 3:57:01 PM
"What I wrote, and believe, is that blanket condemnations of the entire church and all the people who make it up are smallminded and frankly bigoted."
Except that they're not small-minded or bigoted. As a member of the RCC (self professed, heretical, or otherwise) you and every other member is culpable for your role in lending the church moral weight on this and every other issue. You don't get to choose what incidental policies your practice of catholicism supports. Your practice supports and underpins them all, the same way and to the same degree that my US citizenship makes me culpable for our actions under a president that I didn't vote for. I find there to be a vast difference in the ease with which I can change my citizenship and geographic location as compared to the ease with which I left catholicism as soon as I was old enough to freely decide to do so. Additionally, government, unlike the church, explicitly derives its power from the people, where the church s uninterested in bootm-up movements to correct its immoral behavior, which has been vetted by a higher power and thus found to be justified, no matter how odious. You enjoy freedom of conscious at the whimsy of the vatican, and there is ample recent evidence that the vatican is happy to selectively remove that privilege with regard to one's public visibility and stance on major issues like abortion. If that doesn't convince you the the concept is a scam targeted at people who wish to support the church and pretend that they can somehow distance themselves from her hatred, bigotry, and crimes against humanity, then perhaps nothing else will. Which I find very regrettable. The practice of catholicism simply doesn't hold up to rigorous moral scrutiny, not when god is available for worship outside of the RCC's purvue.
Posted by: KaraokeJoe | Aug 19, 2008 7:21:14 PM
To characterise me as ignorant/angry is very lazy of you, as exhibited by the fact you offer Mother Teresa's upcoming canonisation as evidence that it's okay to doubt. It's not like she's being canonised by an outside, unbiased organisation, is it?
I have a problem with Catholicism regardless of the travesties they've committed (if such things can be ignored) because I don't believe in God and therefore don't see why an organisation that does holds so much sway over humankind. But Mother Teresa is a great example of a woman who ignored her own human nature and knew the solutions to a nation's sickness and poverty but did nothing about it because it was against the church.
My point stands - the Catholic Church does not allow you to contend that Jesus is not God. But like any other faithful, you pick the bits you can deal with, discard the rest, and then defend the very faith you've bastardised. If you gave me something worth debating you'd find me very reasonable but it really is a no-brainer.
Posted by: DD | Aug 19, 2008 7:21:51 PM
KaraokeJoe and DD,
You are both absolutely correct about the demands of Catholicism for subscription to the COMPLETE set of its beliefs, and about the shared culpability for the sins that church has committed.
I'm sure you do, however, realize, that the vast majority of Catholics do privately pick and choose what to believe in and what to ignore, and that they don't sense communal guilt. That majority will manage to "get into heaven" quite handily by dint of their intention to do good despite their limited perspective. (Not that I actually believe in judgment and heaven and hell, but the metaphor works.)
Posted by: Father Tony | Aug 20, 2008 11:11:38 AM
Thanks to Father Tony and Karaoke Joe for the thoughtful replies.
I don't agree with your argument, Joe, but I appreciate that it is an argument, and a strong one at that. It raises the very legitimate question of the individual's role and moral agency in the actions of a collective body. And I struggle with that every time I call myself a Catholic.
My belief is that the church is too powerful an institution (and important to me in emotional ways, but that's secondary) for all the more progressive people like me to just walk away from. Its critics don't recognize it, but there is debate and dissent within the church. And if all the more modern thinkers just walk away, there will then be no debate. It's difficult for people in a modern, internet-paced age to accept or be patient with, but in a two-thousand-year-old institution the pace of change is painfully slow. That's not a virtue, really; it's just a fact. But there is change. You may not accept that, but it is my reasoning for why it's okay to still call myself a Catholic.
Besides, I don't accept the universal moral agency and collective responsibility argument any more than you probably do. If you did, and if you took your moral standing at all seriously, then you would be forced routinely to denounce your citizenship whenever our elected government in this country does things which you don't wholeheartedly support.
Indeed, precisely because a civil government does derive its power directly from the people (or at least more so than does the church from its faithful) you are the MORE obliged by morality to take steps to distance yourself from that government. You're right, of course, that quitting a church is a lot easier than moving to Canada. But is that relevant from a moral perspective? I think most moral philosophers and ethicists would say no.
All I'm saying is that I don't think the "quit or be complicit" argument you make is as straightforwardly decisive here as you (and, to be fair, many, many others) would have it.
Posted by: Hermes in DC | Aug 20, 2008 12:34:23 PM
DD -- I respect your disagreement with me. And I recognize and accept as valid a lot of the criticism you make of the church. So I don't mean by maintaining my argument to disrespect you or your opinions. The painful fact for those of us who see some redeeming or redeemable qualities in the church is that so much of what is said against the church is true and valid.
But with that said, your argument often makes no sense and is sort of circular. First, take your labeling me a heretic for admitting to doubt. I counter that feeling doubt is not a heresy, and offer a example of that the fact that Mother Theresa, who to her personal confessor over many years openly admitted to doubt, is still on the fast track to sainthood. I don't know how you can then go on to question the church's authority objectively to identify heresy. If the church isn't the authority on heresy then who or what is? The plain and simple truth is that crises of faith and doubt are a routine part of any faith experience (as evidenced by the personal spiritual writings of countless saints, many of them even doctors of the church) and not heretical.
Second, I did not and do not "contend" that Jesus is not God. I admitted that I often wrestle with the question of whether he is God. Those are two very different things. To raise, or admit to feeling, a question (or doubt) about something is not to contend its opposite. This is the point of a very rich, 2000-year-old intellectual tradition of the Catholic Church.
What this comes down to is the old saw of what the Church requires of its members in terms of belief. You are absolutely right, although you didn't put it this way, that in matters of faith and morals, the church requires its members to hold the beliefs it ordains. Those, like you, whose agenda benefits from depicting the church as an authoritarian, take-it-all or leave-it-altogether proposition, tend to leave it there. It aids your cause to depict people like me as either automotons who believe everything we're told or as convenient, cafeteria, pick-and-choose, have-it-both-ways Catholics who are trying to escape personal accountability to and responsibility for the things the church believes that we do not or find inconvenient. That's not an unfair charge if you take the teaching authority of the church at face value. But what you miss, and perhaps don't know, is that the extent of that authority, the so-called "magisterium of the church," is hotly contested within the church. The infallibility of the pope to speak in respect to matters of faith and morals is an artifact of the 19th century and something that many Catholics reject.
I am a person of good will, trying to live my life well and true to some transcendent beliefs that have to do more with goodness and responsibility to myself and others than with theoligical debates like transsubstantiation. A lot of Catholics are a lot like me.
And you'll have to take my word on this one, but I am not self-loathing. I don't have a secret personal agenda that conspires agsinst my otherwise free self-interest. And what I don't get is why these conversations so often deny people like me any recognition for our sense of good will and earnest intention to make ourselves, and the church we consider ourselves a part of, better.
Posted by: Hermes in DC | Aug 20, 2008 1:16:28 PM
Hermes - thank you for responding in the way you did.
I can see why my argument seems circular - the point I wanted to make was that the Bible is fairly clear that Jesus is God and that those who say otherwise are heretics, and that it is simply wrong for Catholicism, or for Catholics, to decide it's okay to do so. Especially when unhelpful, hateful things are retained with the defence that they're in the Bible and are therefore true. Therefore Mother Teresa being made into a saint does not mean it's okay to doubt Jesus is God, it just means that the Catholic church have selectively decided that it's okay to doubt Jesus is God. But it's not the easiest thing to express.
I'm sure there are things in the Catholic - and other - faiths that help people to lead good lives and be better people. But if you are going to reject a huge amount of what is in the Bible because it's disagreeable and keep what you like, why not go a bit further and discard it all? You won't suddenly become a worse person. If you hold on to religion because you find it comforting, then you're holding on to it for the wrong reason.
I won't deny that it serves my argument to depict the Church (or synagogue, or mosque) as authoritation and dogmatic. It also helps that I believe that to be the case. Moderates like yourself don't identify with fundamentalists, but a fundamentalist is following the word of God exactly as it's written. A moderate is denying a lot of what God supposedly says in order to hold on to And you're holding up an institution that spreads hate, even though you don't identify with that side of it.
Believe it or not, I know and love plenty of people who have faith in God. One of my best friends is a Muslim girl who has somehow found a way to accept my atheism and sexuality. But she's done so by denying a lot of Islamic teaching, adapting an apparently unchangeable document to fit it in to the modern world. In my opinion this makes her a better Muslim than one who follows blindly. But no doubt she believes I'm in the wrong.
In truth, I can't fathom how people can have faith knowing what we all know now. Even if there was no church, I couldn't understand someone believing in a creator. I do understand why they want there to be one, but not how they can they go ahead and believe it. The barbarity of the Bible, the illogic of the Bible, the spite and contradiction of the Bible - I don't appreciate it as a work of literature and I certainly don't appreciate it as a moral guide.
I assume you believe in Heaven and Hell. Do you have a clear idea who goes to Hell? Do homosexuals? Atheists? Muslims? Unbaptised babies used to go to Limbo, but the Catholic Church decided Limbo didn't exist. Why?
I don't mean to come across as abrasive. And I never said you were self-loathing either.
Posted by: DD | Aug 20, 2008 6:43:24 PM
The shoes were not actually prada. Please do your research first before you irresponsibily post an erroneous article. It seems clear the reason for posting the article is to discredit the man who tells you that acting out your homosexual impluses is immoral and a step toward evil.
Posted by: ryan | Mar 18, 2009 12:19:59 AM