Haters gonna hate. For me, I've got better things to do than obsess over some dried-up old coot with one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel.

I had read that the account is strictly for sending tweets and not recieving them, so no one with the church will be reading any incoming tweets.

Makes sense, as the Vatican is built on telling/forcing and never learning/listening.

Of course, you would be a fool to think that the Vatican's PR team was not keeping tabs and archiving aything that comes its way.

I thought you meant Matt Drudge.

@1: He is not just a dried up coot, he is a dried up coot running what is one of the most powerful institutions in the world, with great influence on millions of people and many nations.

Your comment is similar to saying, "why would I care about Osama bin Laden? He is just a dried up old coot living in a cave."

My apologies to the bin Laden family for comparing one of their members to a nazi, pedophile-protecting, killer of countless people, defenseless women and children especially.

I can't wait to see how they argue papal infallibility after the inevitable tweet typo.

Papal infallibility only applies when the pope is speaking "ex cathedra" -- from his bishop's chair. In other words, when he's blowing smoke out his ass about what he thinks other people should or shouldn't do based on his own lack of life experience with sex, families or trying to earn an honest living. So typos are not subject to the papal infallibility 'get out of responsibility free' card. They just make him look like the bumblefuck he is.

I'm sure he's also instructing one of his personal assistants to handle the twitter feed, just like they handle all the email, snail mail, phone calls, and website maintenance. He's not a second-rate pro athlete or b-list celebrity, after all.

Dan, you might put a NSFW warning on the Minchin video. Great video, I love it, but I wouldn't want that ringing out in someone's cubicle.

Is there hope
That the Pope
Will elope?
Nope.

@4 Bazinga!

I love Tim Minchin

This makes me smile:

https://twitter.com/The_real_pope

How do you click 'like' on this motherfucker?

LOL My new favorite song, especially as a former Catholic.

I can't wait until marriage equality comes to France. That should give the pope a stroke.

Song and video are both brilliant. Brilliant. Mother-fucking brilliant. Motherfucker.

@18 Well, they are fighting it hard, all the religious types.

Muslim, Jewish and catholic "heads" have come together and endorsed a right-wing people commentator female, who's now the head of the anti-gay marriage. She has a site where she collects emails to ask for a referendum on gay mariage...

My own mother has put her name on that site, and asked me to sign on it. I've been extra nice with all her oppositions to gay mariage, and her only sticking point is plenary adoption - she feels it should be forbidden to gays and straights alike, because it suppresses all info about the birth parents of a child. We agreed on that... and then later that day, she sends me some letter written by one of the religious heads.

They really have upped their PR against gay marriage. How much efforts they are putting into this... when did they invest themselves that much in fighting something really horrible for all humankind, like a war ? NEVER.

They can rant and rant, tweet and twitter, blog and bluster.

The fact is that right-wing arseholes and their church-ey minions (or is the other way around) are LOSING. They are screaming. For centuries they have called the shots. The 21st century is the tipping point.

The rise of reason, critical thinking and atheism is making them irrelevant and turning advanced societies into just societies.

As a godless apostate, I should pleased at how awfully the Catholic Church has maintained its brand, steadily dissolving its clout and pushing people from the Church.

Instead I think that the Americas should crown their own pope, make another Western Schism.

Example for above.

Yet another Latin American country legislates for gay marriage despite opposition from said bigot and despite being majority Roman Catholic. Go Uruguay!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-am…

I doubt the Pope has ever fucked a mother.

I'm reminded of a friend's story about the Aryan Nation giving a parade in her town. They never came back, because the entire town, with the exception of it's police force, shut down, packed up, and spent the day at a fun festival at the next town over. The Aryans showed up and had no audience, and couldn't even buy a stick of gum during their visit. They just got to march down the street with only other AN fucksticks watching them. AKA..... no publicity. When they realized no one was watching and no one was paying attention, they never came back.

Maybe it's time to employ a similar policy for the similar fuckwittery of the Pope, the Tea Party, ect. When they get no press coverage, they lose their ability to recruit others. The KKK and similar groups actually RELY on press coverage to reach the less than 1% of the audience who will want to join their cause.

Okay, that is too much. The pope's actions are not consistent with being power-hungry and he's not self-aggrandized. The pope assumed a position of power that had been aggrandized by over a thousand years of tradition, faith and both right and wrongdoing.

Accuse him of things that he's actually done, please. There are plenty. That is the difference between legitimate criticism and just slamming someone else's religion because it's fashionable.

Who are the 7 people he's following?

"No jokes, no kittens". The Guardian nailed exactly what is wrong with the pontifical twit.

@26 Seriously? They got you good. Let me guess, Catholic schools?

The problem with being brainwashed is that you don't know you have been brainwashed.

Google Rat-singer's image. Check out the gold frock and silly hat. He doesn't have to wear that, he is "god's representative" and infallible. (not my sentiment). He could change all of that at the stroke of a pen.

We are not slamming Catholicism because it's "fashionable", but because it's corrupt to the core, it demeans women and minorities, it's anachronistic, it hinders scientific progress, it interferes in politics, it keeps the poor poor, it encourages the spread of HIV, it
s misogynistic and homophobic, and last, and by no means least, it sanctions and protects paedophiles. This is just off the top of my head. Got it?

I think Sinead O'Connor was far more eloquent when she tore up a picture of the previous pope and would love to see her repeat it with this scumbag.

Or Greta Christina's column of more than two years ago: http://gretachristina.typepad.com/greta_…

If I thought he was worth bothering with, I'd tweet him that the Catholic Church killed Savita Halappanavar.

@27 I'll bet you a dollar one of them is his boyfriend Gorgeous Georg.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_cdQiqCoJkfs/TL…

@26:
I agree.

@30:
He could not change all of that at the stroke of a pen. The Vatican is above all bureaucracy.
And no, the Catholic church is not so much sanctioning and protecting pedophiles as child abusers.
And several child abuse scandals and resulting studies have shown that the percentage of child abusers among priests is about the same as among any group of adults who have organised and institutionalised power over children: boy scouts, teachers in boarding school (religious and progressive), sports trainers, etc. And just as the Catholic Church, these institutions and organisations did their best to protect "their own", that is teachers, trainers, etc., not the kids.

@33 What? What in the name of flying fuck is the difference between a pedophile and a child abuser? A pedophile IS a child abuser. There is something wrong with you.

Show me the evidence that priest abuse less than the average. The other major point is the church used its power to cover up this abuse and still does. I have absolutely no doubt that the abuse is continuing in countries where they still hold power.

Child abuser apologetics like you make me want to puke.

If I believed in hell, which I don't unfortunately, I have no doubt it will be full.

@9: Actually, I think that would be fucking hilarious.

@34: The difference is that you can abuse children without fucking them in the ass.

@30 Public school. Science degree. And, like most American Catholics, I'm politically liberal. So, YES, SERIOUSLY.

The Catholic church doesn't support women politically, but it does more to feed, clothe, treat and educate men, women and children across the world than any other human organization. Has it done harm? Yes. Has it done more good than harm? Also yes.

And yes, you guys are slamming the Church because it's fashionable. All the ice has already been broken. All the risks have already been taken. Isn't it so safe and fun and fashionable?

@34 A pedophile is someone who feels sexual attraction to children. A pedophile who never acts on those feelings is not a child abuser or criminal. A child abuser is someone who abuses children in any way. A parent who beats his or her child and breaks the child's bones is a child abuser but (probably) not a pedophile.

@34:
As DRF explained @37, pedophiles are sexually attracted to children, but as long as they don't act on that attraction they are not child abusers.
Sexual child abusers are either pedophiles or people who get off on the power or people for whom children are convenient victims. I don't see how making that distinction makes me a child abuser apologetic.
The correct identification of a problem helps solving it. Permitting priests to marry wouldn't do much good if there were more-than-average pedophiles among them. But if they are mainly heterosexual male, and a certain percentage of them cannot deal with celibacy so that they abuse available children, it seems the best way to prevent child abuse by priests in the future is to permit priests to marry.

@26 DRF I don't know what this Pope's influence has been in America, but I can tell you, as a French citizen, that in comparison with his predecessor, THIS Pope is indeed power-hungry.

He has repetedly urged French catholics to get involved into politics in order to represent the catholic point of view. This is NOT OKAY in France, where the separation of Church and State is a reality. Church has no business pushing its adepts into politics in order to portray their religious point of view.

Religion here is considered as a private personal matter, as a set of rules that one can privately adhere to or not, but all must follow the state laws, and no religions is allowed to try to influence them to make them fit with their own agenda ; the only exception is to protect their members from discrimination. rest assured that there is no discrimination in France against Catholics.

So yes, compared to the humble and human John Paul II, who seemed to give moral guidelines to Catholics only, and worked a lot to get the fanatic fringe out, and to discuss religious matters with the moderates of other religions, this Pope all covered in golden gear, pushing for the Catholic point of view to be represented in politics, that is, not to be provided to Catholics, free to choose to implement it or not, but to be imposed via the State to everybody including non-Catholics as well, IS a self-agrandizing, power-hungry bigot.

And don't tell me, like my mother, that John Paul II was a Saint and that Ratzinger can't be held to such high standards. How hard is it to follow in your predecessor's footsteps, and to keep avoiding the gold clothes and the politics ?

@ 37 "Has it done more good than harm? Also yes."

You should have studied history instead of science. The answer, by all accounts, is a resounding no. If you truly believe your answer, you clearly have been brainwashed (and are unaware of it) and you have no credibility whatsoever on the matter.

Besides, whatever good the catholic church has done in this world, it has done only for catholics. Many great organizations do just has much good without putting limits as to who can get their help.

The Pope urges U.S. Catholics to get involved too, though I'm not in a position to know if his voice is heard as loudly here as it is in France. We ignore him.

@40 Actually, I also have a history master's.

...have you ever looked into Catholic missionary work? What makes you think that the Church only helps Catholics? (Not a rhetorical question; I want to know why you think so.) No, the Catholic church does not only help Catholics. The missionaries in poorer parts of the world are not allowed to restrict their aid to just Catholics, nor would they wish to. The first point is to feed the hungry and help those in need, but the second point is to gain converts. Why would an organization that wanted converts restrict itself to people who were already of the faith?

I am not going to engage with Catholic pedophile apologist trolls on the subject of the vast corrupt empire.

Instead, I invite you to listen to the unbelievable erudite, intelligent and witty Stephen Fry on the issue.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6L1xvdZMC…

@41 He has influence in France, over ordinary Catholics.

Seeing my very moderate but deeply religious mother getting this involved in the Fight against the Gays, and moreover complaining ever since Ratzinger has called for influence, that Catholics' voices must be heard in today's society, and that it's necessary to affirm that we are Judeo-Christian by culture - it's been a real shock.

Concurrently, she hates the "tradis" (traditionnal catholics, read fanatics) and the influence they are gaining in churches in her surroundings. They are judgemental people who are not afraid to criticize ordinary priests, and everything that is not done in latin. She hates it. But she doesn't reproach it to the Pope.