04.20.05

Benedict

Posted in Irish Politics at 8:43 pm by

I waited by the TV from the moment the bells rang until the new pope appeared. I just loved the announcing guy so clearly and childishly delighting in his role and giving the thrilled wave when he had to go back in. Also relishing in the limelight was the guy holding the microphone. You couldn’t help smiling and feeling all giggly and excited. Anyway, RATZinger!!!! What a shock! No one believed he could do it, and yet, given that the Cardinals hardly know each other and given the fact that he got to do the big gig of the funeral, we shouldn’t be so surprised.
I know all the other screaming liberals are horrified but I am optimistic. Firstly, check out my previous post on the church’s stance on feminism. The letter I refer to in this post was written by Ratz.
Secondly, I am rather attracted to the idea of absolute truths. Relativism has its limits and I think the greatest happiness principle has its merits. If he could be persuaded to move on the condoms in Africa issue then I’d let him stick by his anti-abortion, anti-homosexual theories. Membership of the church isn’t compulsory. If the gays don’t like it, fine…find a church that does want you..like the Anglicans. No one forces you to be a Catholic and its not like Ratz can send out police to round up the homos….unlike Bush. Wasn’t there some case last year where police burst into some guy’s house, caught him in the act and arrested him? Must research that. The condoms one is different because that is actually sending people to their deaths and I think theologically they must be able to get around it via the ‘double effect rule’. This is the rule that says, for example you could remove the uterus of a dying woman if that would save her life. It would also result in the death of a baby in her uterus, but that would be a side effect of the treatment and not the motivation of the operation. Using a condom with the motivation of protecting yourself from HIV would be ok even if the double effect would be stopping sacred sperm getting into a holy womb!!
On a side issue tho’ I never understood why double effect wasn’t used in the awful case of Sheila Hodgers, the pregnant woman who in 1981 had the misfortune to get cancer and NOT be given treatment for it in that screwed up hospital Our Lady Of Lourdes in Drogheda. She died screaming and the baby died anyway. Here’s a link to a brilliant FO’T article about it but its bloody IT subscription. If you’d like it, mail me and I’ll cut and paste it.
However my number 1 reason for optimism is that when Ratz did make his appearance he was so happy and smiling that I just got a really good vibe from him and I am big into trusting those instincts. For a while I have suspected that I have some psychic ability and recent events have confirmed it for me. I’ll go into that later but for the moment I have a feeling that Ratz is actually ok and perhaps he will use his intellectual ability and dogmatic approach to bash Bush or something.
Anyway, back to the psychic stuff. We’ve all had those deja vu moments or bumping into someone you haven’t seen for years just when you’d been thinking about them but this is really cool. Several nights ago I had a dream about a relative who is a beautician and who waxed my legs about six weeks ago. As that was six weeks ago I had been avoiding looking at my legs as you can imagine that they are sorely in need of a new wax. Anyway the dream was that I was looking at her leg. Just one. Whilst observing her leg I noticed that her’s was hair free and I idly wondered in my dream if she waxed her own legs. However, the rest of the dream consisted of her leg. Very strange….
Two days later my sister told me that this same woman had that same day (i.e. the day of the night I had the dream) fallen off a horse and BROKEN HER LEG!!!! I MUST be psychic.

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