Pope almost right, also, in breaking news, almost pregnant

For those with hopes of world peace, unified efforts at cross cultural dialogs and the end to the conservative's sustained campaign against human intelligence, the Pope's latest atavistic pronouncement is fairly depressing. He pooh poohs the possibility of interfaith dialog and suggests that “an interreligious dialogue in the strict sense of the word is not possible.” In theological terms, added the pope, “a true dialogue is not possible without putting one’s faith in parentheses.”

But afterall, maybe he's almost right. He only needed to change one word:“a true dialogue is not possible without putting one’s faithPope in parentheses.”

Of course, being almost right in this sense is like being almost pregnant. He's not pregnant and he's not right. Papa Ratzinger is flushing ecumenicalism down the tiolet and his conservative, patriarchic and incredibly atavistic view of what should replace it is just plain myopic. If you rule out interreligious dialogs, what's next? Do we exchange spit balls with the Protestants and Muslims or move straight on to a shot of Nagasaki?

This is the same 'world' church that still thinks contraceptives are the devil's work and that has yet to mention AIDS in any of their 'family planning' sessions. So myopic isn't unusual. It's sad, but par for the course.

I've often wondered if I made the right decision when I decided not to take the church too seriously quite a few years ago.

Now I know.