The Pope Again……..

Our good buddy SilverFiddle blogged on the Pope the other day.  To me, the only conclusion thinking people could reach, after reading SF’s excellent piece and the comments page, on what the Pope thinks about global warming and other questions, is that the Pope over reaches on matters one could say are clearly not his expertise, to put it charitably.

So, when I ran across this article on the Pope and weapons sales, I wanted to post it and weigh in on it….and I hope to hear your opinions, too.  I’m a little outraged, frankly, because my Mr. Z dealt in weapons (between you and me…ssshhhhh) and he was a very good Christian.

CAN one produce arms and be a Christian?  The Pope says (in front of ‘thousands of young’ ..and I add “impressionable”… people,’)   “It makes me think of … people, managers, businessmen who call themselves Christian and they manufacture weapons. That leads to a bit a distrust, doesn’t it?” he said to applause.”

He goes on to talk about the “Shoah,” or Holocaust, and how countries did little to help the Jews…“The great powers had the pictures of the railway lines that brought the trains to the concentration camps like Auschwitz to kill Jews, Christians, homosexuals, everybody. Why didn’t they bomb (the railway lines)?”

The first criticism I have is that most railroad lines were built before the war;  few people had any reason to know what was going on.  Most people don’t understand that it took a  long time before people realized what was happening to the Jews as they were ‘trained’ to their deaths… I’m not sure countries couldn’t have done more (I know there’s even debate today about whether Jews could have done more to escape the NAZI purge), but I think he needs better information to come to his conclusions and I don’t see that his conjecture is valuable in any way, shape or form.   He also included the Armenians in his condemnation of massacres but, this time, the article says that “Discussing World War One, he spoke of “the great tragedy of Armenia” but did not use the word “genocide”.

Yes, as you all know,  “Francis sparked a diplomatic row in April calling the massacre of up to 1.5 million Armenians 100 years ago “the first genocide of the 20th century,” prompting Turkey to recall its ambassador to the Vatican.”    So, this time,  he avoided that term ‘genocide’;  God forbid he ticked off the Turks again with the truth, huh?  I’d be happier if he had the guts to call it as it really was again, to stand by his words.

Some of you remember my unhappiness when he was picked as Pope.  I’m not Catholic but I follow this all closely and have to admit I love the Pomp and Circumstance…I do.  So, when this Pope decided to ride the Metro and not live in the lovely Vatican apartments, etc., most people looked at it as populist, “a man of the people!” I looked at it as a man who didn’t take seriously the grandeur of the position he’d been put in, something many Catholics look up to as they consider him a representative of GOD, after all.  But, that’s not what I’d like to discuss today.   And yes, I know most of you disagree with me and I’m very happy you got your populist, touch-feely Pope…but………

The remarks above have confirmed that he’s not ready for the BIG TIME, particularly because young people are swallowing it up as they swallow the bull pucky they hear from lib profs in their schools…and, while Catholics view a Pope’s selection as ‘divine intervention,’ and I’d never condemn that or even remotely suggest otherwise, I wonder what God was doing with this one!   But, then, I often wonder what the heck God is doing… very often,  so………..

Comments?  CAN a person be involved with making, procuring or selling weapons and be a faithful Christian?

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