Oh, now 185,914. Impressive. Climbing. Ascending!
I see he's "following" 7, but it turns out all 7 are himself, in various different languages.
I went there via Twitchy, which says: "Shameful: Pope Benedict XVI joins Twitter, vile hate starts before his first tweet."
The great thing about Ratzinger's twitter is that we can finally report the Pope for abuse. Abuse of boys, human rights & twitter @PontifexPredictable.
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41 comments:
I've said it here before, but this Pope is fantastic. A great theologian. He's nothing like the knee-jerk reactionary he's often portrayed as being; he's very reflective and contemplative, in addition to being a brilliant thinker and writer. In the days of Vatican II, ironically enough, he was considered a liberal, although that word had a different meaning in the Church at that time. Liberal back then didn't mean you were pro-abortion and gay marriage - it just meant you were thinking about Christ in a different way, like Romano Guardini did with The Lord. And it's funny because that sort of theology is the bedrock of orthodox/conservative Catholic thought now.
I was not a fan of JPII but Benedict has proven to be an excellent choice from a theological and pastoral perspective (though maybe not so much as an administrator).
Way back in the 60s, liberals convinced the Church that there was no problem in allowing openly gay men into the seminaries.
We know the result of that.
The lesson, however, is politically unacceptable.
Apparently, we need to force the Boy Scouts to employ open gay men as Scoutmasters.
We cannot possibly predict the result, right?
Shouting Thomas said...
Way back in the 60s, liberals convinced the Church that there was no problem in allowing openly gay men into the seminaries.
Evidence?
Evidence is not needed! It's Shouting Thomas, who whips his hobby-horses to within an inch of their lives!
Evidence.
I was there. I tend to believe what I see before my lying eyes.
Likewise, I lived in gay communities in SF and NYC over the past 35 years, and I observed the behavior that caused the AIDS epidemic.
President Reagan was in no way involved.
And, no, I wasn't morally offended by the behavior. At first, I kinda hoped that that kind of behavior didn't have the consequences that followed.
Well, the pope's got a lot more twitter followers than he has divisions, that's for sure.
But, as JPII proved to the Soviets with his preaching in Poland, sometimes those pontifices maximi can stir up a whole heap o' trouble.
Palladian, your comment immediately brought "Another Brick in the Wall" to my mind.
I've lived a pretty wild life. I'm one of the worst whoremongers you'll ever meet. I went through the Ten Commandments the other day and there's only one I haven't broken. And, I've lived in a lot of interesting places.
Surprisingly, I learned stuff from this.
For instance. At hetero orgies, a sincere effort is usually made to ban sexual contact between men. Years ago, I believed the liberal puffery that this was a form of "homophobia."
It isn't. It's a deliberate attempt to prevent infection. And, it's the wise thing to do. Keeping gay and bi men out of hetero orgies is just sensible.
Sad, isn't it?
Waiting for the trolls to slither in and tell us all what a bunch of haters we are.
The Pope! How many followers has he got?
~A Stalinist Tweeter
I've never found a use for Tweeting.
Perhaps I should. The Church is not really that into multimedia!
I second The Farmer's take on Benedict. And highly recommend the masterwork that is Guardini's The Lord.
I hope Ratziger doesn't criticize Mohammed. That would make Hussein really really mad.
Ratzinger. Luckily I misspelled the Pope's name and not Mohammed's. No fatwa.
The first Pope Tweet...
Jesus wept...
At which point @John11:35 also wept tears of joy.
Shouting Thomas said...
Evidence.
I was there. I tend to believe what I see before my lying eyes.
You witnessed liberals convincing the Church that there was no problem in allowing openly gay men into the seminaries?
You should write an expose!
Up to 210K now! More than I have.
Not bad for a first day...
In 3 years Jesus only managed 12 followers and one of them crucified him on facebook.
You should write an expose!
I have zero interest in writing exposes. I have zero interest in being involved in any political cause.
But, I can see what happens when it happens right in front of my face. And, I am remarkably resistant to the efforts to convince me that I haven't seen what happens right in front of my face.
Faith without tweets is...
Like shooting without skeets?
Like football without cleats?
Like Little without Feats?
Up to 210K now! More than I have.
You just dont get it do you?
Couldn't resist.
So... Does this now mean the Pope gets it?
@Lem
Ha!
I never cared for twitter on a personal basis, the format does little for me.
The pope is not getting any... I heard a heckler in my head say.
Anybody else with any pope/tweeter material they want to try out?
Anybody want to thank the popes tweeter coaches?
...
Oh come off it.. its a joke!
Lem, there was a pope who used to golf, and there's a funny story about the fourteenth hole on the Vatican home course.
So its tweeting the pope a prayer or a rosary?
rosary... get it?
@Shouting Thomas,
While I don't doubt that you saw the activity you saw around seminaries, I will defer to another man (who characterizes himself as a medically-retired priest).
His focus was on the broader problem of loosening the moral character portion of seminary training.
This may not contradict your claim, but it is no less shocking.
(If you want, I can send you a link to the guy who offered this opinion. He's a well-known blogger in certain circles, but I don't know if you are aware of him. My contact info should be available if you click on my name.)
This joke?
the Pope and Christ were playing golf on the exclusive Vatican golf course. The 14th hole there is known to be a particularly challenging 610-yard par-5 hole with a severe dogleg left after 300 yards.
The Pope takes a nice swing for the tee off, and a beautiful drive goes 240 yards down the fairway, then bounces (they're playing in September, so the ground is dry and hard) and rolls another 45 yards to the right side of the fairway, setting up the Pope admirably for the second shot.
Jesus claims to be impressed, and pulls out his driver. He swings magnificently, but the drive slices severely to the right and ends up in long grass, nearly out of bounds, about 220 yards out. Jesus looks up.
Suddenly, a vole darts out of the grass, clearly holding Jesus' ball between his teeth. The vole is being chased by a fox, which catches the vole by the head, almost swallowing it, but carrying the vole and the ball and then runs down the fairway towards the Pope's ball. As the fox approaches the ball, an eagle swoops down and grabs fox, vole and ball and takes off into the sky, veering left towards the four large oak trees that ring the Green 300 yards beyond the Pope's ball. Just as the eagle reaches the trees, and bolt of lightning -- out of blue skies! -- hits the bird, and the bird and fox fall to the ground. The vole pops out of the fox's mouth on impact, and ball in the vole's mouth pops out as well, and rolls on the green right up to the edge of the cup.
The pope turns to Jesus and asks: Are you here to golf or to screw around?
Good one MM..
Had not heard it.
I see he's "following" 7, but it turns out all 7 are himself, in various different languages.
Indeed. Meanwhile, the archbishops of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem all follow each other.
The great thing about Ratzinger's twitter is that we can finally report the Pope for abuse. Abuse of boys, human rights & twitter
Tweeting is the new stoning.
Farm, I do believe there is some documentation for Shout's assertion.
Some years ago, I recall the Church being requested to allow it on the grounds those involved felt they could deny their proclivities.
As Ann posted Saturday, it apparently doesn't work that way.
No, MadisonMan, but well told!
I was thinking of the time when the pope was golfing on his home course. The fourteenth hole was the devil on earth. Par 3, 220 yards to the green over a water hazard. Everyone lays up, but the pope keeps trying, knowing it's futile.
One day, he tees up a skanky old ball on the fourteenth, knowing it'll go in the water, and stops to whisper a prayer: "Please, Lord, let me hit the green once in my life, before I grow too weak to do it."
He prepares to swing, and he hears a voice:
Put down a new ball!
Struck with the impression of heavenly intervention, the pope gets out a fresh box of golf balls and replaces the old ball on the tee with a brand new one. He prepares again to swing.
Take a practice swing!
Again stricken, the pope steps back, breathes deeply, and takes the most beautiful practice swing he has ever swung.
Again the voice comes:
Put back the old ball!
@MM,
A priest & a nun were playing golf one day.
On the second hole, the priest muffs an easy putt and yells in exasperation "Goddammit! I missed"
The nun says "Father, your language!"
At the 8th hole, the priest slices his shot into the bushes. Again: "Goddammit! I missed!" The nun: "Father, please do not take the name of the Lord in vain again!"
It's now the 12th hole, and the nun is just kicking the priest's ass. The pressure's on. And yet again, the priest screws up and send the ball right into the sand trap.
The priest, in a rage, breaks his club and screams at the top of his lungs "GODDAMMIT! I MISSED!"
Right then, out of nowhere a black storm cloud blows over the golf course. Suddenly, a lightning bolt shoots out of the thundercloud and reduces the nun to a pile of ashes!
Out of the sky is heard a booming bass voice: "GODDAMMIT! I MISSED!"
ST: You just became one of the most interesting people to me on this blog. Through all the 10 commandments but one! I hope I know what that one is!
Of the ones on the list, here are the ones I find objectionable:
You shall not murder.
You shall not steal.
You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
Those seem pretty bad.
However, this one seems kind of odd:
“You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.
I saw a show with people in the aquifers in Florida. I suppose they weren't carved images, does that make it OK? What about those fish symbols on the back of cars, are those OK?
It really gets confusing. I wonder what the supreme court would say about the fish: is that a carved image of the likeness of that which is in the water under the earth?
And bearing false witness might be in a pretty powerful sense, rather than the small sense. But, we are all human.
You might think the Pope would at least follow some of the tweeting Cardinals, like Sean O'Malley of Boston and Dolan in NYC (whom I already followed, despite being non-Catholic).
Also, if anyone knows of a rock band called The Tweeting Cardinals, I'll give them a listen.
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