Plaidophile

The main problem with a freshly-dead Pope is that they'll always, always, go get another one.

Oh well. Maybe they'll try to preserve him cryogenically. Yay Popesicles!

Ali

The main problem with a freshly-dead Pope is that they'll always, always, go get another one.

Oh well. Maybe they'll try to preserve him cryogenically. Yay Popesicles!

As a Catholic, I find your comment offensive. Pope John Paul II did MANY great things during his 26 years as the Pope. He deserves some respect.

He did many great things (even before his papacy, like operating an anti-Nazi cell in the Polish resistance etc.), but he also did many dogmatic things like essentially promote teenage pregnancy and the spread of AIDS in South Africa by being so vehemently against any form of birth control or protection from STDs and also galvanizing people against homosexuals and so on, and that's all that a lot of people remember him for.

Vladinator

As a Catholic, I find your comment offensive. Pope John Paul II did MANY great things during his 26 years as the Pope. He deserves some respect.

As an atheist in an infuriatingly religious world, I find Catholicism offensive. To me, religion is essentially damaged thinking.

And the dead are dead. They have no use for respect, or anything else.

No, but the other people who cared about the dead do need the respect for the person.

I'll be interested to see what Randi's column says about the Pope this week.

fluffy

I'll be interested to see what Randi's column says about the Pope this week.

Something relatively balanced and probably with a little praise in it, I expect. I haven't got much incentive to sugarcoat, and have a noticeably dimmer view of religion and spirituality than I've gathered from Swift.

My personal take is that the Pope dying is just non-news... he'd been so ill for so long.

And, someone just as charismatic and Catholic will replace him.

And pretty soon, life will be back to normal for Catholics, and non-Catholics.

Nothing to see here.