Tonight is SCUL's first ride of the year, and I won't be riding with them. I was going to, and I was going to bring a freshman with me as my maggot, but the weather forecast for today was grim... predictions of flash flooding and everything. But it stopped raining this morning (although it's supposed to start up again later), so now I'm antsy and wishing that I were riding a cool chopper instead of sitting in my room.
It's strange and sad that the pope is dead. It's also strange that I'm sad. When he was alive, I was never fond of his (and the church's) positions on homosexuality, abortion, female priests, and probably a few other things that don't come to mind right now. But to be fair, the Catholic church does some great social justice work, and they oppose the death penalty, and the pope was against the Iraq war. I wonder what the next one will be like. It's exciting and scary to realize how much one man can change the world through his actions. I mean, I think that the cardinals will do all they can to NOT rock the boat, but even subtle differences in opinion between the former pope and the future one could make a huge difference. My theory is that while the U.S. is the most powerful country on earth, and the president is arguably the most powerful man in the U.S., the pope actually has more influence on culture. Not necessarily my culture, because I'm not Catholic, but there are a lot of Catholics in the world.
It's strange and sad that the pope is dead. It's also strange that I'm sad. When he was alive, I was never fond of his (and the church's) positions on homosexuality, abortion, female priests, and probably a few other things that don't come to mind right now. But to be fair, the Catholic church does some great social justice work, and they oppose the death penalty, and the pope was against the Iraq war. I wonder what the next one will be like. It's exciting and scary to realize how much one man can change the world through his actions. I mean, I think that the cardinals will do all they can to NOT rock the boat, but even subtle differences in opinion between the former pope and the future one could make a huge difference. My theory is that while the U.S. is the most powerful country on earth, and the president is arguably the most powerful man in the U.S., the pope actually has more influence on culture. Not necessarily my culture, because I'm not Catholic, but there are a lot of Catholics in the world.
Comments
I'm not sure that I agree that the pope never denigrated groups of people. I do believe that he never acted maliciously, and that he spoke with compassion as a representative of Catholicism, but as a non-Catholic, I have found some of his opinions to be hurtful (about homosexuality, or women considering abortions, for example).