Progressive reformer can’t be what the College of Cardinals expected…

I don’t traditionally care for popes. The Roman Catholic Church has this really long history of promoting oppression and corruption and ignorance, and there’s the whole pedophilia thing, too. I’m hard pressed to think of an organization that done more raw damage in the entirety of recorded history, and that has always been presided over by a pope.

But I’m starting to warm up to this new guy. He hadn’t been wearing his cool new hat for more than about 15 minutes when he suggested … out loud … to a freakin’ reporter … that atheists can go to Heaven. Meet His Holiness, Pope WTF the First. Of course, the Vatican trotted out the spokesclergy to explain that the Holy Father had been misunderstood. There’s some confusion about the canonical meaning of the word “redeem” and blah blah blah. It was like every speech Reagan ever made, where the spin doctors took center stage as soon as he left the room to tell everybody what he had meant to say. Read more