Well said. I agree.

Before the inevitable tide of holy rollers arrives, i must thank you for putting the issue so starkly. I've been mocking the hierarchy of the Catholic Church for years, for their ignorance, narrowness and insensitivity, but when you consider their insidious and growing influence in those parts of the world most vulnerable to their lies and distortions, we need to realise they're beyond a joke, we need to start talking about criminal liability. These people know what they're doing, they know the consequences of their shameful pronouncements, and so they should be brought to justice. They are merchants of death. Choose life.

Interestingly, I was chatting this morning with a Catholic priest and nun, neither of whom is at all happy with the Conclave's choice of Ratzinger as the new Pope. Then again, these are people who are working at the coalface of social justice and therefore are very aware of the areas in which the Catholic church needs to change in order to retain its relevance in the 21st century.

I'd imagine many of the clergy here don't want to see a further haemorrhaging of their congregations. And who can blame them? It must be depressing to deliver a sermon to a half empty audience.

Defenders of the Bishop of Rome would not doubt cast him as a principled man needed in these Godless times. Unfortunately having principles (and I'll ignore his Nazi past at this point - after all, he was young and it was early in his career as they say) is not always a good thing. His Holy Inquisition predecessors had principles. Such principles led to anti-semitism, mass murder and torture.

Besides, as we've seen with the issue of child molestation in the Catholic Church, the likes of Ratzinger are not very principled regardless of what their public relations machines say.

A quick reality check: don't know if these figures are accurate but they seem ok to me. My point? I don't thing the world's moral community is completely reliant on Catholisism (33%)or waiting for it to become modernised.

Christianity: 2 billion

Islam: 1.4 billion

Secular/Nonreligious/Agnostic/Atheist: 1.1 billion

Hinduism: 900 million

Buddhism: 360 million

Chinese traditional religion: 225 million

primal-indigenous: 150 million

African Traditional & Diasporic: 95 million

Sikhism: 23 million

Juche: 19 million

Spiritism: 14 million

Judaism: 14 million

Baha'i: 5 million

Jainism: 4 million

Shinto: 4 million

Zoroastrianism: 3 million

Cao Dai: 3 million

Tenrikyo: 2.4 million

Neo-Paganism: 1 million

Unitarian-Universalism: 800 thousand

Rastafarianism: 600 thousand

Scientology: 500 thousand

http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html

What's the big deal here? Surely the passing of one Pope and the arrival of a new one is, in world terms, a wholly underwhelming event. So he was a nice guy, travelled a lot and made a lot of people feel good about themselves. But his contribution to anything of any worth is highly questionable.

In what way did John Paul II contribute to the alleviation of suffering, anywhere in the world, in any real sense? Or make any attempt to improve the lot of even one of his "flock"? I guess the answer is that neither of these is in the papal job description, but if so, why waste so many tons of newsprint on his passing?

And the expressions of vague disappointment with the likely policies of Herr Ratzinger are simply astounding. The whole point of the Pope is to defend his church from any form of modernization, not to engage with anything remotely "modern" or "useful".

The day I see a Pope exhibit one tenth of the humanity and fellow-feeling of the local branch of the Salvos, I might start to take him seriously. Until then he and his cohorts remain just a bunch of self-righteous authoritarians exercising mind-control over people who prefer not to do their own thinking.