iPope that he gets a Mass following

**Papal infallibility, as defined dogmatically in the First Vatican Council of 1870, states that the Pope is preserved from the possibility of error when promulgating a doctrinaire moral teaching. Aside from numerous historical contradictions, this dogma becomes inordinately unsafe when applied to the word of homophobic fundamentalist Joseph Ratzinger. In 2005, Ratzinger declared a “dictatorship of relativism” to be the core challenge facing faith and humanity. Indeed, a need for moral absolutism pervades almost all of his teachings. Unfortunately, the absolute morality the Pope preaches is far from moral truth.**

In a letter entitled: “On the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons,” Ratzinger clarified the church’s stance on homosexuality, defining it as an “intrinsic moral evil.” Again, the Pope chooses to blame moral relativity for homosexuality’s modern prevalence, claiming that same sex marriages are “expressions of an anarchic freedom that wrongly passes for the true freedom of man.” It is not unjust discrimination, the Pope claimed, to take sexual orientation into account. Ratzinger’s objective ‘truth’ is nothing more than sordid bigotry. To condemn someone for what they are, rather than for what they do, truly is a moral evil. However, the Pope’s unwavering refusal to acknowledge the idea of relativity renders him incapable of accepting anything other than this archaic scriptural bigotry. The Catholic Church boasts over a billion members worldwide. Add to this the notion of papal infallibility, and a malevolent recipe for globalised homophobia ensues.

It is Ratzinger’s stance on contraception, however, that would truly condemn him to the hell of which he preaches were it not a mere sadistic fabrication. In 2009, not content with condemning contraception on the grounds of his own ‘moral authority’, Ratzinger spread the lie that “the problem [AIDS] cannot be overcome by the distribution of prophylactics: on the contrary, they increase it”. I reiterate; papal infallibility dictates that the Pope is without error. Nearly 15 per cent of the world’s Catholics live in sub-Saharan Africa, where an estimated 22.5 million people live with HIV. The Pope’s denunciation of contraception is responsible for immeasurable levels of suffering and death.

Admittedly, Ratzinger does offer an alternative AIDS prevention program; chastity and fidelity. Both are incontrovertibly effective at preventing the spread of the disease. However, forced celibacy is simply not healthy. The dangerously sexually repressive nature of hierarchal Catholicism culminated in the institutionalisation of child rape in Catholic schools and churches all over the world, an abomination Ratzinger was implicit in concealing. In the United States alone, there were over 10,000 reported victims of clergy sexual abuse between 1950 and 2002. Marital fidelity too, does nothing to prevent the continued overpopulation of countries already ravaged by poverty; the suffering of the poor, it seems, is something on which the current Pontiff thrives.

And this man claims to be the Vicar of Christ on earth?