Top six reasons why I am happy the Pope has resigned: gallery
Bruce Gorton | 12 February, 2013 11:05
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Photograph by: TONY GENTILE
Pope Benedict XVI waves as he leads the Sunday angelus prayer in Saint Peter square at the Vatican. File picture
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6: He accused atheism of being the cause of Nazism. The fact that Hitler actually banned all of Germany’s atheist organisations and boasted of having stamped atheism out makes this charge ridiculous enough. What makes it worse is that Pope Benedict XVI is himself a former Nazi. Maybe he should have read that bit in the Bible about looking at the splinter in your brother’s eye.
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Photograph by: CHRIS KEANE
5: According to the Pope, some people are more human than others. The Catholic Church holds that a person who does not have faith is not ‘fully human’ – in other words atheists aren’t fully human. See 6 for why this is particularly awful. Pictured is a member of the U.S. Army's Golden Knights performing during the "Rock Beyond Belief" festival at Fort Bragg army base.
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Photograph by: ALESSANDRO BIANCHI
4: The Pope would rather gay people got murdered than married. When France wanted the UN to pass a resolution requiring member states to not sentence gay people to death in 2008, his representative to the UN declared that such a move would “add new categories of those protected from discrimination” and lead to gay marriage being legalised.
H/T to Michael Nugent for this one.,
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Photograph by: JOHN MACDOUGALL / AFP
3: He did not do enough to deal with the child abuse scandal. Barbara Blaine, founder and president of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests said it best: "He has made lofty statements. He has not matched those statements with deed or action. Under his reign, the children remained at risk."
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Photograph by: DARREN HAUCK / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / AFP
2: Embryonic Stem Cell research. The Vatican under Pope Benedict XVI has voiced its opposition to embryonic stem cell research, essentially holding blastocysts to being equal to human life, with Benedict saying ‘The destruction of even one human life can never be justified in terms of the benefit that it might conceivably bring to another.’
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Photograph by: CATHAL MCNAUGHTON
1: His church opposes medically necessary abortions. After Savita Hallapanavar died due to Irish doctors refusing to perform an abortion for her ectopic pregnancy, the Catholic Bishops of America continued to threaten to withdraw support for Catholic hospitals that perform abortions when they are necessary to save lives. To be pro-life is one thing; to be pro-life at the price of the life of the mother is another, to be pro-life when it means both the foetus and the mother die? That’s being a good Catholic according to the hierarchy.
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Photograph by: STRINGER/BRAZIL
A reveller holds a sign that reads: "Former Pope", while kissing a woman at the Sergeant Pepper's Carnival block party in Rio de Janeiro. This picture pretty much sums up how I feel about the Pope's retirement.
In each of these cases the Pope demonstrated precisely how empty any claim to moral authority he personally had – either through not using his post to intervene and prevent moral horrors, or actively committing them himself.
