Thanks for keeping this topic alive! Otherwise would likely never have found it and learned to much useful information.
Lots of thoughts occur, reported in somewhat random order.
Pope Pius IX, "Pio Nono," is the one who proclaimed the doctrine of infallibility, which is much more limited that popular perception suggests, especially among "cafeteria Catholics" who like to pick and choose what "God's Vicar on Earth" (aka God's deputy") can speak to authoritatively. Not that I buy the Roman Catholic story, but those who do presumably believe that the spokesman, the mouthpiece, of "the one, true God" needs to be listened to.
Which makes it v amusing for some of us to watch leading members of the dying political party of white racism, warmongering, and hatred saying the current bridgemaster (pontiff) of the see of St. Peter (a "rock" of a pun not possible in the original languages invoked) is just wrong on simple factual matters like climate change because he's "not a scientist." Actually, he is, but who cares, right?
Besides, he speaks for that commie pinko Kike with his silly message of "lovingkindness" and, ick! "compassion" and, ick! "empathy, both much mocked by "the usual gang of idiots," some of who recently began preaching that their god ordains gun ownership as a divine right for all citizens of the allegedly "Christian nation" that is unknown to history.
Despite all the actual contradictions of the Wholly Babble, including conflicting stories of the death and resurrection of their exalted demigod, the essence of the New Testament message is clear, except to those who prefer legalisms. The current pope seems to think the entire Christian thing was not started and promulgated as a bunch of legalisms and proscriptions, but as an optimistic and progressive message in which the primary duty is to love the one true god and then act like it by loving and caring for everyone else.
"Namaste" is one way that can be internalized. The Religious Society of Friends ("Quakers") talk about responding to "that of God" in everyone. There is a Hindu story of the old woman who told her guru that as much as she liked the idea of loving god, she did not actually, honestly, have that experience. After pondering, he asked if there was anyone she did love and was told "I love my little nephew." Aha! "There it is," he said. THAT is your love of God."
"Even though ye have done it unto the least of these, ye have done it unto Me."
Also, as my hillbilly grandmother used to say, "Your righteousness is as filthy rags" in God's eyes. Why would anyone think that the creator of all space and time could possibly be impressed that YOUR shit don't stink? Not as if he's never run into saints or martyrs before you came along to wise him up. More like, you get straight with everyone, which is a full time job and not exactly one that leaves room for you to deal with the mote in your neighbor's eye rather than the log in your own. Etc.
All of which Ted Logan (impersonated by Keanu Reeves) summaries, to my mind anyway, as "Be excellent to one another."
And now, with all this Fascist freakout over refugees, blogger Oliver Willis notes, " If only we had a seasonally appropriate story about middle eastern people seeking refuge being turned away by the heartless." To which wingnut christianists reply, yeah, well, that family wasn't wearing suicide vests." Oddly, while trying to out-religion their competition in hypocritical sanctimony, some of the notorious Gang of Plutocrats party have not been onboard with this kind of rhetorical hijacking, pointing out that "we are all God's children" (St. John McCain) and the idea of a government office of christianist propaganda is an idea that has already been tried– called The Crusades (confirmed bachelor warmonger Lindsay Graham).
Wasn't it St. Paul, the first mortal head of the Roman church, who said that "faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen"? At any rate, he did not say that faith is a great substitute for empirical evidence and that the one true god gave us both brains and sex organs, but forbids us to use either.
It suddenly occurs to me that the universe created from the mythy mind of God has to be the way he wants it to be or he would have done things differently. And, being omniscient, he knew when he started, what was going to happen-- hence all those supposedly fulfilled prophecies. (Pay no attention to the failed forecast of an imminent return of the itinerant carpenter of folklore, the great Non Event of history.)
Anyway, spintendo asked, "Can you imagine the science of aircraft design or cancer and AIDS research not progressing, but going backwards, where things are no longer as useful as they once were?" Well, yes.
Considering the the GOP has named the head of its Science and Technology committee in the US House of Representatives a religionista who says the Big Bang Theory, evolution, climate change, etc. are "lies straight from the pit of Hell," and there are actually people seriously competing for the most powerful elected office on Earth who believe vaccines as dangerous as the great Global Warming Hoax... yeah, that's pretty reasonable to believe, actually.
Who cares about objective facts? COMMIE facts, to be precise, because "Reality has a well known liberal bias." --Stephen Colbert, the man who named the "truthiness" we all see around us. And that is why the failed technology officer responsible for HPV (the deadly Hewlett Packard Virus) and several leading political contenders can claim with a straight face, with their teeth in their mouth and looking you in the eye, they never said what we can clearly see and hear them saying on videotape. For example, there is a certain clueless doctor who insists China is at war in Syria and that at 13 he was reading the magazine "Psychology Today" even though its first issue was not published until a decade later.
These are the people who believe they are each called directly by their god to assume higher secular office, perhaps so they can create a christianist caliphate of their own. In any case, they cannot all be right about who is listening to the one true god and who is following the murderous orders of Son Of Sam's legendary dog. And I'm sure they all agree that the only viable morality is based on religion, otherwise we would all rape, rob, and kill without constraint. Or at least, apparently, they would. Because, without (their) religion, how would anyone know how to behave?
As for homosex, that was known for millennia as part of "sex," just like fapping and sucking, John Boswell as conclusively demonstrated that the Roman Church did not have a problem with same-sex canoodling until well into the Middle Ages. Which, if I recall correctly, is also the general historical period where any pronoun referring to divinity got a capital letter-- let His wll be done, etc. (As if His will could be NOT done!)
One amusing story the late Yale professor tells involves a story he says all RC divinity students know-- the pope who saw a slaver walking his possessions through the streets of Rome, perhaps on their way to being sold. "Who are those angels?" he asked in Latin. They're not angels, he learned, but English. "Non angeli sed angli." Yeah, well, what gets overlooked in this admiration of golden boys is that these minors were all SLAVES. Not worth mentioning, apparently.
(If you have not encountered polylinguist Boswell, take a look at some of his informative, authoritative, and witty talks on YouTube.)
There is a facetious question that says we "know" the sins of Sodom, but what exactly were the sins of Gomorrah? LOL. Yuk, yuk, yuk.
Interesting to learn they had five sinful sibling cities. And Jesus doesn't seem to think the sins of the cities of the plains were much different from those of God's chosen country's Wall Street and Xenophobic party, but if they keep praying loudly in public against the parts of the divinely authored Constitution, perhaps no one will notice. Lot of progress has been made since First Century Christians did not think they had a mandate to make Earth into their idea of Heaven, but one consequence of that is the latest (final?) human generation seems to think Christianism means hatred, violence, and judgmentalism. Whyever would anyone think that? Oh, right....
There is a reason these fools are called Talibangelicals. They forcefully argue for a version of Sharia law for the nation, just under a different rubric. Same principle.
It certainly is difficult to talk about the people and activities interested in same-sex orgasms based on the English language itself. There is a Greek passage-- no, no, I mean a text in the Greek language-- that says something like "and then the men fucked" but which Robert Graves, the great British novelist known for "I, Claudius" and "Claudius the God," translated that as "and then they committed the disgusting and abominable crime against nature."
As if Penguins, Giraffes, and literally hundred of other species routinely practice "unnatural" behavior.
Cannot find the quote online and my books are still packed away inconveniently, but Robert Duncan, considered "the finest high art poet in America" during his lifetime, has a pretty wonderful poem that ends his argument, "The city known as Sodom is blessed in the eyes of the Lord."
