Fighting to build peace?

“The forthcoming encyclical on globalisation will likely deal with these issues in a more comprehensive way, though it seems that the population question may prove controversial. Hopefully, differences of view on population will not undermine current global efforts to reduce hunger and poverty.”
While a difference of view on population might be reasonable, continued coercion of women into unwanted fertility by papal decree is untenable in civilized society. Unfortunately papal intransigence is sure to continue undermining global efforts to reduce hunger and poverty

Some articles here should have health warnings on them. I nearly choked on my coffee when I read this sentence:

"Curiously the Pope’s January statement received little analysis in the media, despite the papacy being a major moral actor in international diplomacy ..."

This is the same bloke who didn't understand the diplomatic problem involved in rehabilitating a holocaust denier until the Chancellor of Germany was forced to pick up the phone and point it out to him: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jAw8etaq2WFAblaExiQ31ZZuJtPQD967N3DO0

Even his cardinals are publicly stating he got that one wrong: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/why-the-pope-should-use-his-google-20090209-827y.html

The same head of state who didn't see a diplomatic issue in quoting a medieval anti-islamic text http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Benedict_XVI_Islam_controversy

Regardless of what you think of Ratzinger's motivation in these two bungles, they most definitely reveal that diplomatically he's not very sharp. Further, his diplomatic gaffs are having the effect of squandering whatever moral authority the papacy might otherwise have been able to claim.

Pope Paul VI in Humanae Vitae as far back as 1968 (said):
"Responsible parenthood implies therefore, that husband and wife recognise fully their own duties towards God, towards themselves, towards the family and towards society, in a correct hierarchy of values (#10)."
In my view he had the order nearly completely wrong. My preference is for a hierarchy of parental duties which put society and family ahead of themselves and which leaves whichever god they claim to follow out of the picture.
I note that the Roman Catholic Church is reintroducing indulgences in some localities. If there is any money left over after paying the sexual abuse claims could it be used to compensate the unbelievers for the taxes they unwillingly paid to fund the Sydney World Youth Day (week) debacle?

Meanwhile some of the most strident supporters of the never-ending "war on terror", and of the USA military-industrial-"entertainment" complex, and the fight to the death stuggle with Islam, are right wing catholics, especially of the opus dei variety.

Opus dei was very much favoured by the previous pope, and even encouraged by the present pope in his previous function as the doctrinal enforcer of the "faith".

Plus the church has always been an integral part of the western imperial project. Even providing the ideological support to that project via the LIE of bringing "christ" and "civilisation" to the "heathen" unchurched masses.

This panel portrays in graphic starkness the role of the church in the Western imperial project.

http://www.dartmouth.edu/~library/Orozco/panel13.html

This process of conquest is still occurring

To my knowledge the Pope has never addressed the issue of short selling.
Short selling is the fraud of selling what you do not own in the hope of buying it back at a reduced price. It is one fo the major causes of the current financial crisis and is much used by hedge funds to subvert share prices and even national currencies. Short selling has created a few billionaires and massive world poverty.
Social justice will never be with us unless this abuse is banned.