Dude, look in the mirror. You didn’t have any children (that we know of), so why are you shouting at Europe for having too few of them?
Pope Francis on Sunday criticized Europe for becoming what he called “tired” because of low birth rates and the increasing numbers of young people who neither work nor study.
Mirror. Mirror.
Hey. Heyheyhey. Who’s the authority here? That’s right, not you. ME. And *I* get to say what people have to do, and, since our numbers are dropping and donations are drying up, that means that the faithful have to have more babies. So that my empire does not shrivel or crumble. So shut it, Ophelia.
Love, Francis
Say, Ophelia – any chance you can shut off the Mormon ad on this page? No, I’m not interested in discovering the teachings of the book of Mormon. A more batshit crazy religion, with such a level of dangerously despicable, clannish, and hostile-to-humanity followers, you’ll be hard-pressed to find. At least the snake-handler/poison-drinkers aren’t advertising. Here O_O
This makes no sense.
“We have too many young people not working so you need to make more young people”
Well, if there weren’t 800 kids who died or were killed at an “catholic home” in Ireland, that would be another roughly 1500 people alive because of themselves and the kids they would have had.
This is not about the economy, employment or another surface issue. He’s talking to Europeans because the catholic cult is becoming a “third world” religion, mostly non-white and with a smaller financial base. Those are people more worried about having enough money for their dinner plates than church collection plates.
http://mediamatters.org/research/2006/05/12/gibson-make-more-babies-because-in-twenty-five/135674
Is the pope’s “more babies” rant a racist view? Maybe, maybe not. But it’s very likely a pecuniary view.
Same dogma, different pope. None of his nice words fooled me at all, and when one cardinal/bishop/monsignor after another followed right behind interpreting his words to mean something else I was convinced he was mere window dressing for the same ol’ same ol’. Europe has had all the papacy the ever needed since about 50 a.d.
We’re gonna run out of white people!
A celibate bachelor is complaining about people not having children? You’ve got to be kidding.
He said that the childless would suffer old age in bitter loneliness. So he wants people to have kids for their own selfish reasons, their own pleasure? To prevent boredom?
And then those kids will need kids … and the Catholic cycle continues to peddle its wares.
Popey McDouchebag wants people to have kids, but what’s he going to say if they turn out gay?
****
Blanche Quizno @2:
FtB uses a third party advertiser. They have no control over the ads.
Ah, for the good old days when our grandmothers brought up all the children they could keep alive in, usually in two rooms with no running water or electricity. Nothing promotes family values like that does, I’ll bet.
THIS.
Europeans are the richest catholics on average. Germany even kindly collects tithes from people’s income for the RCC. Young people who don’t work don’t pay tithes. Also, people with kids tend to stay in the church, since many social services for children and families are run by the church and they literally can’t afford to leave.
@Tony #9:
FtB uses a third party advertiser. They have no control over the ads.
As I understand it, that’s only partly true. FtB can flag ads to be removed from the rotation but only if readers tell them about the dodgy ones. Ed has at least one post about this somewhere on his blog. So we should probably all report dodgy ads to FtB when we see them.
Of course, the organisations involved can just submit new ads to replace the blocked ones, so I’ve no idea how effective this is in practice.
Oops, screwed up the blockquote at #12. But you can work it out.
It’s a bit gob-smacking, isn’t it! Is there much of a campaign to make this opt-in rather than opt-out? (it is an opt-out system at the moment, isn’t it? I seem to remember you or one of the other Horders with knowledge of the system saying it was fairly complicated and onerous to opt out, but that you could do it if you were prepared to jump through some bureaucratic hoops).
As I understand it (it’s been a while since I lived in Germany), the church tax is collected only from people professing to be members of one of the recognised religions. When you are baptised, the church tells the government and church tax is collected from that date onwards, as a percentage of PAYE. If you want to opt out, you have to write to your local court informing them that you have left the church. You are then crossed off the church’s register and are no longer allowed to use its services (marriages, funerals, communion etc and presumably – in the case of the Catholic church – confession.)
I’m not entirely sure, but I think the church tax, once collected, is split in some way between all the churches on the approved list.
So it’s kind of both opt-in and opt-out. If you are never baptised, you never have to pay. If you are baptised – either with or without your permission – you can opt out.
It’s a mess and by the sounds of it horribly exploitative and plain old mean.
Cardinal Glick: Fill them pews, people, that’s the key. Grab the little ones as well. Hook ’em while they’re young.
Rufus: Kind of like the tobacco industry?
Cardinal Glick: Christ, if only we had their numbers.
He’s probably think of the mllions of babies around the world with terrible birth defects such as born with Islam or born while Chinese.
Re: the German tax thing. It’s quite easy to opt out. I worked there for 14 months and it’s easy enough to check a single box and opt out of auto-tithing. I don’t remember what the default was if you didn’t opt out, but it seems like it was based on geography (you automatically tithe to the nearest church, I think).
Crimson Clupeidae
Not that easy for German citizens. If your parents signed you up for the RCC or Lutherans at your birth you have to go to the tax office or the local court (depends on where you live) and opt out.
That’s just the hassle you get for leaving an organisation you never joined yourself in the first place. Much bigger are the implications: No places for your children in religious run and stat financed preschools and public schools, no employment in the vast sector of heathcare that is run by christian organisations, no work in those preschools and schools.
Well, as long as Popes are around to make statements, there’s no danger of ever running out of material.
http://pictoraltheology.blogspot.com/2014/06/pope-says-european-women-need-to-get.html
Thanks for the clarification, Giliell. I was working there on a foreign visa, so it was all part of getting the work permit for me.
Cheers.
(1) The Poe’s extortation was perhaps motivated by the bizarre Christian belief that sex is essentially for procreation not recreation, so all those zillions of Europeans banging away for fun and not producing babies is really against God’s plan, or
(2)Perhaps he’s an adherent of the ‘ageing population hypothesis’ and the hope for more Catholics is not in his agenda, the Pope would understand that Catholics would be a disminishing proportion of any increase in European fertility.
(3) Modern Europe is multi-cultural and multi ethnic, so producing more Europeans doesn’t imply more ‘White’ people.
Yes, but those the Pope yells at (or those who listen to him) predominantly are. I also think he doesn’t care that much about more white catholics the same way he cares about wealthy catholics and also of course power within some of the most powerful nations on earth.
Indeed, in Germany people are starting to question why Bishops are invited to give their opinion on every single question when numbers are decreasing rapidly