Hey, Ipstenu! What year is it?
2008. You been asleep 15 days?
I’m jetlagged.
Don’t I know it. Flying in from France on New Years Eve? Woooo! Also? France rocks! I want to live in Europe.
Me too! Listen, I have a question about the Pope.
Still Jewish. About the current Pope or my boy, JP2.0?
Benny. I know you don’t like him, but why is Italy pissed at him?
Oh. The dumb ass said, mind this was 15 years ago, that the trial against Galileo was “reasonable and just.” and “At the time of Galileo, the church remained more loyal (or faithful) to reason than Galileo himself.”
Mind you, it really begs the definition of ‘reason’, but basically he says the Church was right to prosecute Galileo back in the 1600s.
Didn’t they admit they were wrong?
My boy, JP2.0, did that in the 1990s. “Thanks to his intuition as a brilliant physicist and by relying on different arguments, Galileo, who practically invented the experimental method, understood why only the sun could function as the centre of the world, as it was then known, that is to say, as a planetary system. The error of the theologians of the time, when they maintained the centrality of the Earth, was to think that our understanding of the physical world’s structure was, in some way, imposed by the literal sense of Sacred Scripture….”
In other words ‘Don’t take the Bible literally’?
Something like that. It’s more complicated than that, obviously. The problem is that the Catholic Church really isn’t good at admitting to wrongdoings. Like the silent consent of the slave trade and their position of non-involvement in the Holocaust. John Paul II did a lot for the Church by restoring their ‘values’ (and I use the term loosly based on my lack of Catholic education), and was massively popular by just being a good person. I mean, god, the Dalai Llama liked him. If that isn’t an upcheck in your ‘good person’ list…
And Benedict XVI?
Asshole.
He’s a backwards step by the Church, and they’re putting out ‘fires’ every week. If he’s not dissing Muslims, he’s pissing off science. It’s like … Bush. The Pope.
I’m glad it’s an election year.
Ditto, man. Ditto.