As far as I can tell there have been no new ethnic or religious insults released by the Vatican today. In the last week he has, in the form of quotations that he has used, managed to offend both the Muslim and Jewish communities.
I wanted to put a bet down that he would offend Buddhists, Sikhs and Zoroastrians by Christmas but the bookie wouldn't accept it as he has already insulted the Buddhists. 1997 the then Cardinal Ratzinger called Buddhism an "autoerotic" spirituality that offered "transcendence without imposing concrete religious obligations".
I think, and this opinion is shared by others, that these two recent occurrences are the result of naïveté on the part of this Pope. He has displayed a tendency first as a Cardinal and now as the Pope to express a lack of tolerance of other faiths nor is he likely to move the Roman Catholic church in the direction of modernity. However long it last his papacy is not likely to be either outward looking nor forward looking. There is likely to be more controversy to follow.
I wanted to put a bet down that he would offend Buddhists, Sikhs and Zoroastrians by Christmas but the bookie wouldn't accept it as he has already insulted the Buddhists. 1997 the then Cardinal Ratzinger called Buddhism an "autoerotic" spirituality that offered "transcendence without imposing concrete religious obligations".
I think, and this opinion is shared by others, that these two recent occurrences are the result of naïveté on the part of this Pope. He has displayed a tendency first as a Cardinal and now as the Pope to express a lack of tolerance of other faiths nor is he likely to move the Roman Catholic church in the direction of modernity. However long it last his papacy is not likely to be either outward looking nor forward looking. There is likely to be more controversy to follow.
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