New Pope Semi-Reverses Self, Takes Bold Stand Against War

Sometimes we like New Pope, like when he is all , "The church should stop obsessing about Bortions and The Gays, Jesus Christ!" and "Greed-is-good Reaganomics ruined everything, let's all be socialist communist takers instead" and also that time he washed a lady's feet even though that is not in the Bible, IMPEACH!

Sometimes, alas, we cannot heart New Pope quite so much, like when tries to concern-troll President Obama on Religious Liberty^TMbecause some bling-addicted bishops told him Obamacare forces all ladies to eat abortion pills or something. Also too we are not so down with the overly defensive touchiness (er, sensitivity) about the Catholic Church's whole protecting pedophile priests situation or claims that (good god, are you kidding us?) the Church has done more than anyone else in the world to address that because, um, NO.

Sometimes, however, we just do not even know what to say about New Pope. Like now, for example, when New Pope has to clarify that war is bad, m'kay?

“War is never a satisfactory way to right injustices,” the pontiff said in a message to an inter-faith colloqium being hosted in Antwerp, Belgium by the St Egido community.

“War leads people into a spiral of violence which becomes difficult to control. It destroys what it has taken generations to establish and leads the way to even worse conflicts and injustices.”

We agree that war is bad. (As you may recall, your humble blogger's personal official editorial policy is Fuck War. The End. ) It rarely works out well, as we continue to not learn over and over and over again. Maybe we are naive, but we'd sort of expect that the Official Spokespope for God would naturally agree with us that Fuck War. The End. So why is the pope clarifying his position now? Apparently, it is necessary because in August, New Pope said some words that seemed supportive of warring on The Bad GuysDu Jour:

Amid rising global alarm at the targeting of religious minorities by the Islamic State of Syria and Iraq (ISIS), Pope Francis has ratcheted up the Holy See’s demands for “action” — including limited military intervention — by the international community.

“In these cases, where there is an unjust aggression, I can only say that it is licit to stop the unjust aggressor,” Pope Francis stated, when asked if he supported U.S. airstrikes in Iraq during an Aug. 18 press conference on his return flight from Korea.

“I underscore the verb ‘stop.’ I don’t say ‘to bomb’ or ‘make war,’ [but] ‘stop it,’” the Pope added.

While Francis was clear in being totally unclear about what exactly he meant by "the verb 'stop,'" if that verb does not include "war" or "bomb," Archbishop Joseph Kurtz, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, happily clarified on behalf of the pope that "sometimes force is the only means," which we guess comes from Jesus' lesser-known Sermon on the Battlefield.

Do we know what the solution to Iraq is -- besides not going there in the first place? No, we do not. Do we expect New Pope to have the answers? No, we do not. Would we like to think that maybe the pope -- who heads the same organization that says killing is always ALWAYSALWAYS!!!wrong, even when it is an egg inside a lady's body that isn't a fetus yet but maybe could be one day, or even if it is a very old sick person who is suffering a whole lot and would like the suffering to end please -- would be the one guy on the planet who should be an all-out in-all-cases pacifist hippie who is opposed to "force" of all kinds because we're pretty sure Jesus never actually gave a Sermon on the Battlefield after all? Kind of. But what do we know? We were also under the apparently mistaken impression that Jesus did not say "convert them or kill them" either. So maybe we're wrong about war too.

[ Rawstory / National Catholic Register ]