Pope billboards defaced

[Lace Neil Singer]

Which is why the billboards are being defaced. If there was the slightest evidence that the Pope was going to deal with the scandal in the right way, there wouldn't be so much of a backlash from everyone else.

[Talon]

If all was right with the world, defaced signs would be the LEAST of the Church's problems.

I cannot imagine how stressful this must be on practicing Catholics.

Play them the world's smallest violin.

Whatever "pain" Catholics have to endure in holding on to their delusion that the Pope speaks for God amounts to pocket change, compared to what the Church's victims have to endure.

[Fryk]

The scary thing to me is not that Catholics believe that the Pope speaks to God, or whatever. The scary-as-shit thing is that they believe that the minute he becomes Pope, a man becomes incapable of error.

[HYHYBT]

If all was right with the world, defaced signs would be the LEAST of the Church's problems.



Play them the world's smallest violin.

Whatever "pain" Catholics have to endure in holding on to their delusion that the Pope speaks for God amounts to pocket change, compared to what the Church's victims have to endure.

If it were *just* the Pope, I might just possibly agree with you. But it's who knows how many trusted people from local priests all the way up. And Fryk, I've asked before and that's not what they mean by 'infallible.'

[Ghel]

Although I expect that many Catholics do believe that the pope is incapable of error, the doctrine of papal infallibility is limited to certain statements that the pope makes where he specifically states that they are "ex cathedra" (from the chair). And those statements are few and far between.

The scandal(s) involving the Church's deliberate hiding of pedophile priests is an excellent example of a place where the pope is fallible. Granted, the majority of his involvement occurred before he became pope, but his recent attempts to avoid blame, or place the blame on others, shows exactly how guilty he is of being an accessory after the fact.

[Fryk]

I know what a solemn papal definition is. But Ghel is right, many people in the catholic church hold the pope up as infallible in everything, no mattr what.

Although that brings up another, related sad thought. What is and is not ex cathedra seems to be determined after the fact, allowing the church to pick and choose when their popes were infallible.

[Hyena Dandy]

http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles...line-sensation

Apparently, at first it fell rather flat cuz people in Malta thought that the grafitti depicted pandas. The vandals also defaced the Pope's face with a Hitler mustache in protest at the ongoing child abuse scandal.

The pedobear is understandable, even if I think there are better ways of expressing your position then sensationalism and internet memes.

The pedobear thing is at least understandable. I don't get the Hitler 'stache though. I mean, say what you like about Hitler, there's no evidence he was a pedophile. o_O Maybe because the Pope was in Nazi Youth? But every kid his age was in Nazi Youth... Combining the two just confuses the message, anyway.

To me, that takes the message of the billboard from "I'm going to express my opinion using this internet meme. I think the Catholic Church supports pedophiles by simply shoving them aside instead of taking any measures against them." To "They're all PEDOPHILES! NAZI PEDOPHILES!" It makes a perfectly reasonable (if perhaps a little obscure) way of expressing yourself and makes you just look like you're a random vandal.

Also, Graffiti is, you know illegal.

Edit: Honestly, though, I'm more annoyed that they put on the Hitler 'stache. The Catholic Church can afford to put up more billboards, honestly. But it take away the message and just makes the whole work seem immature. Not a great protest, in my opinion. Keep it to pedobear.

[HYHYBT]

As I understand it, the mustache wouldn't be a reference to Hitler as a pedophile, but to the Pope as a former Nazi.

[Hyena Dandy]

As I understand it, the mustache wouldn't be a reference to Hitler as a pedophile, but to the Pope as a former Nazi.

Nazi Youth, not necessarily supportive of the regime. Nazi youth was mandatory for his age at the time, and the only thing it proves is that he was German and under (16, I think. What was the age?).

In either case, though, it completely muddles the message. I don't have a problem with protest art, and while I have a problem with graffiti, I understand the motivation and I'm not going to condemn the people who did it, but I don't approve of graffiti. As I said, though the church has the money to replace a billboard. But I've always felt that protest art, while it can be obscure, should at leas stick to one message and not confuse people. Unless I'm misinterpreting and Hitler 'staches and pedobears were on different billboards, in which case I think they're expressing themselves immaturely, but I don't really have a problem with them.





And as for what is and isn't Ex Cathedra, if the Pope makes a statement, he's the one who says whether or not it falls under the infallibility rules. Just like if the president says 'we will do this' he's not always issuing an executive order. Anything else is just what one, admittedly highly respected, and supposedly wise, priest thinks.

Catholics who think EVERYTHING the pope says is part of his infallibility simply don't know the religion they claim to practice. Which doesn't surprise me, there are 'fad' believers in every religion. I've met 'Catholics' who think the church no longer has saints, and others who think that Catholics don't believe in the holy trinity. In other words, I'm sure there are Catholics who think everything the pope says is right. They're just wrong.




As for my opinion on the sex abuse matter, I'm highly disappointed in the way the church has handled it. Its been a total debacle, and it was handed worse than it was in the previous group of accusations. Before the church had said 'we did something wrong, we fucked up, we're sorry, but please don't blame the whole organization.' The position now seems to be "If they report on this THEY HATE CATHOLICS." And while I'll admit some things have been overly done, sensationalist, and not every article was necessary (I seem to recall one front page, above the fold article which was simply about how there hadn't been any development in the last two days since the paper was published, and seemed that this was somehow the fault of scheming Vatican officials that the papers hadn't found any new priests to accuse) I'm yet to see any reports which were actually FALSE. And it seems to me that the unnecessary articles were just written to sell papers, not out of any malice against the church. But even if the reporters or editors or whoever DID hate Catholics, THEY'RE STILL NOT LYING. Paranoia's a mental disorder, but if you're a mob boss and you have it, there probably really ARE people out to get you. If you get my drift. In other words, they may hate you, but that doesn't mean they're lying. I know there are people who hate the Catholic Church, I recall there were plenty of boos during the inauguration when it was announced that Biden would be the first Catholic Vice-President. So yes, people hate the Catholic Church. And I'd feel free to dismiss them if they said that ALL priests were pedophiles. But there's still priests who are pedophiles, who Cardinal Ratzinger, head of the group which should handle that, knew about, and which at best he denied (which shows he was lying and didn't have the best interests of the Church or its followers at heart) and at worst he honestly DIDN'T remember (And while it might seem better that he forgot, if he forgot he either didn't think pedophiles were worth remembering, which means he didn't think abusing children, or in this case fourteen-fifteen year olds was important, or he did think it was important, and is suffering from dementia or senility. And honestly, I don't want a guy who's issuing edicts that the whole church has to follow to be CRAZY.)

[Lace Neil Singer]

I too think that the vandals should have stuck with Pedobear. Even tho there was a delayed reaction while Malta was puzzling over the significance of the "panda".