This week, uberprogressive pope Frank (wink, wink) made the news this week when he said something incredibly obvious, that all the media outlets rushed to copy-paste in an equally absurd frenzy.

According to the capo di tutti capi, it’s “better to be an atheist than a hypocritical Catholic“:



Pope Francis delivered another criticism of some members of his own Church on Thursday, suggesting it is better to be an atheist than one of “many” Catholics who he said lead a hypocritical double life. In improvised comments in the sermon of his private morning Mass in his residence, he said: “It is a scandal to say one thing and do another. That is a double life.” “There are those who say ‘I am very Catholic, I always go to Mass, I belong to this and that association’,” the head of the 1.2 billion-member Roman Catholic Church said, according to a Vatican Radio transcript.

Paraphrasing him, non-practicing Catholics are even worse than atheists. Anyone care to explain to me why there are atheists who regarded Francis’ statement as a positive reference to atheists? It’s your run-of-the-mill atheist-bashing.

And it doesn’t make any sense, either: atheists only share our disbelief in gods, and nothing else — we don’t have the same source of morality, so to group all atheists into the same ethical category is no more than a strawman.

That said, it’s also worth examining what Francis said. His message was that the practicing, obedient, sheepish Catholic who asks how high when the priest orders him to jump, is better than the non-practicing Catholic. That is demonstrably false.

Those who follow closely the Church doctrine, who want to restrict contraceptives, believe that the LGBTQ population shouldn’t be allowed to get married or adopt, judge the sexual life of others, want to forbid divorce and euthanasia —even for non-Catholics—, want to repeal the right to an abortion, and feel a morbid pleasure with the alleged eternal torture of those of us who don’t buy the Jew zombie story are even worse than their non-practicing co-religionists who, at least, leave others alone.

(image: DonkeyHotey)