Too bad we can't duct tape the Vatican's mouth shut

I can't take it any more. If the Vatican manages to enunciate one more stupid thing in the month of March, I may have to duct tape an effigy of the papal mouth. It's like they haven't read a book since 1852 (or earlier) and they don't speak to anyone who isn't an unmarried male patriarch (oh wait, that's probably true). I have previously commented on some profoundly stupid statements from the current Bishop of Rome, Joseph Ratzinger, and his team of crazy fries. There was the time he said the indigenous peoples of the Americas secretly longed for imperialism (er, uh, Christianity I guess) because it saved their souls. There was the time the Vatican opposed gender theory while wearing a dress (well in fairness, a lot of priests wear dresses, and I think that's cool, so long as they get gender theory). Then there was the kerfuffle of un-excommunicating and re-excommunicating the Holocaust denying bishop. Of course this denial of gender theory was followed up by an aging Vatican scholar contending that women and men sin differently based on the confessions he's heard (it, naturally, never occurred to him that maybe gender theory might help him rethink his methodology for assessing how people sin; as far as I can tell, he just assessed what women and men are more likely to perceive and confess). And then last week, the Vatican supported a truly heinous act by the Archbishop of Olinda and Recife. A 9-year-old girl had been repeatedly raped from the age of 6 by her step-father. Pregnant with twins and her life in peril, her mother took her to have an abortion, which is only legal in Brazil in exactly her situation - cases of rape or where the mother's life is in in danger - and the girl's situation fit both cases. The archbishop then proceeded to excommunicate the mother and the doctors for doing what they did. Of course, what is the bigger and more unforgivable sin here? Is it, as the Vatican seems to think (since they didn't excommunicate the abusive step-father), saving a 9-year-old girl's life at the cost of unborn fetuses who probably would have died and taken the girl with them; or is the bigger sin (as I believe) raping a 6-year-old-girl for three years until she was 9 and could get pregnant? This is why I appreciated the responses of both Mary Hunt and Frances Kissling.

The Vatican, though, not satisfied with its recent tragic misdiagnosis of sin, thought that it should throw a statement out there just for laughs. Since the Vatican hates birth control and women working, (really girls, if you don't want 10 kids and to be a stay at home mom, become a nun so we can continually undervalue your labor and place in our church), a semi-official Vatican newspaper wanted to make sure everyone knew that the washing machine was the most liberating invention of the 20th century for women. Yep, being able to throw the clothes in the laundromat and sip lattes while gossiping with girlfriends, that's liberation for you.

Seriously, it's like the Ratzinger administration is trying to prove that the hierarchy is idiotic, offensive, and irrelevant. I mean why aren't they out there pounding the pavement with the same enthusiasm about the dire state of the world economy? Or trying to fix poverty, end wars, fight hunger, provide universal healthcare access with the same attentive efforts? Well, I wish those fellows the best of luck at saving whatever they think they're saving.