Fisking Charles Johnson

Oh boy, what a blooper! Charlie J headlines one of his latest posts 'Pope Benedict on Islam and the West'. Really? As CJ admits but most of his minions completely fail to realize, the words quoted are not the pope's, they belong to Father Joseph Fessio, the Domino's Pizza-funded conservative Jesuit who holds the strings to the Ignatius Press publishing empire. As you can imagine, it doesn't hurt to keep the publicity mill running if you've got books to sell...

So anyway, this hearsay about what the pope thinks of Islam (frankly dears, we couldn't give a damn), chimes with what the lizards think about Islam, at least to the extent that both believe Islam can't undergo Reformation because it regards the Koran as the true and unchangeable word of God...hold on a minute!

It's a bit rich for Catholics, particularly those of the conservative bent, to speak of the Reformation in such glowing terms. After all, the Reformation was what split the Catholic Church in half once more, spawning the Protestant movement which did away with a lot of the old dogma. Now this ex-hippy Jesuit comes along and says Catholicism underwent a Reformation? That's a bit like saying Communism underwent a Perestroika and that's why it's such a vibrant, modern, forward-looking kind of ideology. Reformation worked for those who left the Catholic Church, it didn't do much for Catholicism until the mid-20th century, when Vatican II finally caught up with the rest of the world.

As for Catholicism not being lumbered with that old 'word of God' business: what do you think the pope's mumblings are regarded as? Hallmark Greetings? He's God's envoy on earth, and what he says goes, got that? If old Ratzinger, bless his Hitler Jugend socks, decided that, say, God prefers you to die than to wear a piece of latex over your wiener to protect yourself from HIV, YOU'VE GOT TO OBEY. There are no two ways about it. There's no 'interpretation', no faffing about with 'dialectic'. His word goes.

So much for divine inspiration.

Anyhow, the lizards obviously skirt the theological implications of this little discussion and get stuck right into the practical side of things, such as: when do we nuke the Muslim world?

Charming.