Recently, the Pope went on a crime spree around the USA, leaving christ-dust on the critically ill, his holy fluids on Kim Davis and little Popemobile skid marks in his wake.
“He’s so cool! He took a selfie one time!” I heard echoing across social media.
“He’s the best! Did you know he tweets?” I heard the faithful cry.
“He says all dogs go to Heaven!” the Papal fan club exclaimed.
“He acknowledges evolution! And the Big Bang!” The scientific community celebrated.
“He says the gays are okay, and aliens can be Catholics!” was cried out from every equality-minded page on Facebook.
“He’s so progressive!” Everyone agreed.
He’s so progressive. He’s so progressive…
My, what little it takes to fool some of you. The wool over your eyes is as thick as Ben Stein’s glasses. You trouble me beyond words… especially those of you who consider yourselves critical thinkers.
I don’t consider this goofball progressive. I don’t consider him open-minded. I don’t consider him a breath of fresh air, likeable or even nice. I think he’s a grade-A loser who knows just what to say to give you a progress boner.
So, what would it take for you to endorse him, GM?
I’m glad you asked. I have a 7 point list of criteria that any Pope must meet before I say a single nice word about the cross-dresser (get it? CROSS-dresser? Eh-heh, I kill me). The points are as follows:
1. Instead of blessing the critically ill he comes across in his travels, he needs to use some of his Jeeby bux to pay their medical bills and find them a good, qualified doctor.
This blessing bullshit has got to stop because it fills people with a false hope that Jeebanger’s gonna descend from the heavens and grow them a new limb just because Popey-Poperson laid his hands where their leg used to be. He’s selling false hope to people who need real hope the most, and I think that’s about one of the cruellest things an old fart in a Christ-frock could do to a person. How you can cast your gaze on a man who acts in such a way and call him “progressive” is just beyond all comprehension.
2. The Pope needs to stand up and say he fully supports marriage equality and any Catholic churches who do not want to perform gay weddings can no longer consider themselves backed by the Vatican.
He should have knocked the smirk right off Kim Davis’ face when he met with her or never given her the time of day in the first place. As it stands, he has said the Church should be okay with civil unions, but that ain’t good enough for me, kids. I have no qualms telling anyone who offers civil unions in place of bona fide marriage, to go sit on a papal sceptre and rotate.
3. Instead of taking people’s hard-earned money to upkeep your own damned nation and city, filled with priceless gold, art and architecture, The Holy Roller needs to donate everything of value the Vatican owns to Museums and heritage organizations, live in a humble home with a humble car and a humble security detail and save the church’s money for better things.
I don’t see what good, loving God, would want his most important representative on Earth to be hoarding wealth like Angelina Jolie hoards foreign babies. Especially while half the world lives under the poverty line.
4. With some of the money hard-working people selflessly give to the church, Popester needs to fund schools in the most underprivileged areas on Earth, like Haiti and Indonesia and Guatemala.
These schools should have a state-of-the-art science curriculum and educational materials and under no circumstances should creationism ever be taught in them. Teachers should be trained to stoke the flames of a child’s natural curiosity; teach problem-solving without violence, and teach sexual health and critical thought.
5. The Pope needs to go on a tour of the most poverty-stricken, AIDS-riddled areas of Africa and assure people that using a condom is okay by the big guy in the sky.
Maybe he could even spring for a few billion prophylactics to be made with the holy cross on them just to… ahem… drive the point home... if you feel me.
6. More of the church’s money should be used to build hospitals in areas heavily affected by HIV/AIDS as a result of the Catholic Church sending goons to scare people away from contraception.
These hospitals should offer not only HIV/AIDS treatment and medication free of charge to their patients but also sexual health education to the local populace. In the same areas, orphanages should be built for the many children who have lost their parents to HIV/AIDS. All of this should be preceded by an official apology from the Catholic church for the suffering their war on contraception has caused.
7. The church needs to identify every man or woman in the Catholic church who has ever been accused of touching a child inappropriately and turn them into the local police.
They should be forced to go on leave until the investigation by local authorities is complete and they have been acquitted and found not guilty in a fair trial in a secular court. If they are found guilty, they should be immediately fired and should have no chance of returning to any Catholic church, anywhere in the world, even after they’ve served their time. Further, any Catholic authorities found guilty of such crimes should be ordered by the Pope to pay reparations to their victims, or they will remain unforgiven in the eyes of the church. This safe-housing of known child-molesters is pretty much the clincher when it comes to whether or not this man of God is progressive. You cannot protect a man who has hurt children repeatedly and be considered anything above utter scum.
If his Popiness meets all of these points, I’ll consider calling him progressive. However, I won’t hold my breath.
Progressive folks, generally speaking, don’t try to exclude certain types of people from an institution built on love. They don’t ignore HIV/AIDS epidemics almost single-handedly caused by their predecessors. They don’t offer miracles in place of real science and medicine… especially when the illness is life-threatening. Progressive people do not back private schools all over the world that teach an unscientific worldview. They most certainly do not live in a holy city adorned with gold and art and artifacts that are so valuable, their proceeds could end world hunger. Forever.
Most of all, though, progressive people don’t believe that there’s a magic man in the sky watching over us, judging us and requiring us to believe in him or burn for eternity.
I don’t really know exactly what it is about this Pope that has you all a-flutter. I may have missed something somewhere, but from my vantage point, the man is a medieval relic perpetuating bronze-aged wisdom. The only difference between this silly-hat-wearing douchecanoe and the previous one is that now, he’s pushing it 140 characters at a time, and adds a hashtag at the end.
That may be enough to fool you, but I require a little more. You know, maybe anything that even remotely resembles human decency and values. Anything at all…
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