... results in a former Hitler Youth being elected Pope on Hitler's birthday.<br /><br />Yeah, I know, it means nothing.<br /><br />It's just some great coincidences. Which is all it is. But it's still fun to point it out.<br /><br />The last thing anyone would expect of a pope would be bad behaviour, of the sort that Pope Pius XII has so often been accused of during the Mussolini / Hitler fascist ascendancy that saw the Catholic Church allow Jews to get killed by the millions around Europe without a bit of serious objection from the Catholic Church.<br /><br />No doubt the new Pope Benedict will avoid having to deal with his refusal as Cardinal Ratzinger to acknowledge, let alone deal fairly with, the clerical sex abuse scandal in the Church.<br /><br />He's my kind of guy for a top pope, carrying on the long and great papal tradition of enforcing religious orthodoxy while ignoring Christian action.
<br /><br />You're perfectly right about not understanding and forgiving. <br /><br />I shall remedy my way immediately by forgiving:<br /><br />The Oklahoma bombers.<br /><br />The people who flew the planes into the twin towers.<br /><br />The Japanese who killed my countrymen on the Burma Railway and on the Sandakan March, as I'm sure Americans will forgive the Japanese who raided Pearl Harbour and on the Bataan March.<br /><br />Lee Harvey Oswald. <br /><br />John Hickney.<br /><br />The Columbine killers.<br /><br />Pol Pot<br /><br />Adolf Hitler<br /><br />Josef Stalin <br /><br />Mao Tse Tung<br /><br />All murderers.<br /><br />All rapists.<br /><br />All armed robbers.<br /><br />All people sentenced to any term of imprisonment.<br /><br />I wasn't there for any of these things and I don't understand any of them.<br /><br />But there's no doubt that because I wasn't there and don't know what the situation was, I'm not qualified to express any moral or other opinion about any of these people and their actions.<br /><br />So I guess I have to forgive them all.<br /><br />As you might forgive me for daring to express an opinion critical of lesser institutional evil by the Catholic Church, in all its glory.<br /><br />I'm sure that everybody on this board will join with me in acknowledging that all these people should be forgiven and, if subject to charges or under sentence, released immediately with an apology and compensation for being so terribly treated by the conservative and liberal governments which have so profoundly deprived them of their civil rights by punishing them for their crimes.<br /><br />Thank god that liberals like me aren't in charge of the criminal process where we might not extend any forgiveness.<br /><br />PS I'm actually involved in running an underground at the moment, for people my government demonises and subjects to worse treatment than our ordinary criminals. Liberals like me have been helping these people for years but nobody wants to hear us. After all, the people we're concerned about are just scum who want a better life away from the countries where they're pressed by fear,like Afghanistan and Iraq which are so bad that we needed to invade them but not so bad that anyone would want to leave them "when pressed by fear" to the extent that we'll allow them into my country. <br /><br />Nobody in the news media or government wants to hear that it's unfair to exclude these people whose only crime is wanting a touch of the life that lets people like us express our views on this board. The only agenda of doom they face, and that liberals like me face, is that my government has set its face against them, and will send them back to their deaths.<br /><br />I apologise for wallowing in these sorts of liberal trivialities.