The Pope would like all of us bloggers to shut the fuck up.
Pope Benedict XVI on Tuesday hailed the benefits of silent reflection to stop being "bombarded" by information from the Internet but said social networks could be useful modes of communication.
"People today are frequently bombarded with answers to questions they have never asked and to needs of which they were unaware," the pope said in his now-traditional yearly message on the Vatican and social comunications.
Yeah, people get on the internet and discover that there are child-raping priests in their midsts, and that the Vatican struggles to cover up their crimes…and they never thought to ask, “Is Father Flaherty a buggerin’ child molester?”
But apparently, the Pope likes Twitter.
“In concise phrases, often no longer than a verse from the Bible, profound thoughts can be communicated,” the 84-year-old pope said in an apparent reference to the micro-blogging site Twitter.
Concise phrases, like “there is no god” and “you can be good without god” and “fuck the pope” — I agree. There is more profundity on Twitter than in the Bible. Which doesn’t say much about the Bible.
I also discovered something interesting: on the internet, Pharyngula is far more influential than the Bible.
The Vatican’s news website is getting between 8,000 and 10,000 hits a day with peaks of up to 16,000 hits over Christmas, the head of the Holy See’s social media department said on Tuesday.
Uh, really? This is news to be proud of? Pharyngula’s traffic is an order of magnitude greater than that. And I’m just a guy on the internet, with no infallibility or other magic powers.
What will they make of BoingBoing, and aren’t they worried that the anti-christ will spring out of Cute Overload?