Some musings for a (so far) quiet Monday morning…
1—With the Papal Conclave about to begin, Cardinal Ratzinger (the Panzer Cardinal) has made his position quite clear regarding the agenda of the new Pope. In his final homily before the conclave, he issued a blunt call for the Roman Catholic Church’s cardinals to choose a pope who will refuse to be swayed by calls for change to the church’s guiding principles. “Having a clear faith, based on the creed of the church, is often labelled today as a fundamentalism, whereas relativism, which is letting oneself be tossed and swept along by every wind of teaching, looks like the only attitude acceptable to today’s standards,” he said.
In other words, if it was good enough for the 12th and 16th centuries, then it’s good enough for today!
My response to such ludicrous myopia? Bugger!
2—They’ve chosen a winning design for the new Human Rights Museum in Winnipeg, and it’s absolutely gorgeous!
The Human Rights Museum was the dream of late media mogul Izzy Asper. More than 700 people gathered at Winnipeg’s Centennial Concert Hall Friday to hear the announcement, made by Babs Asper, widow of the CanWest Global Communications founder. The $300-million museum aims to be the largest human-rights institution and education centre in the world. Scheduled to open in 2009 or 2010, the museum will be built at the historic Forks site in Winnipeg, at the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers.
You can read all about it, in greater detail, here, but I think the idea behind the museum is fantastic, and I have high hopes for what it will eventually symbolize and represent…such as everything the Vatican seems to be against these days. I don’t suppose it will be visited by the Panzer Cardinal once it’s built, and for that, we should all be grateful. Human rights are rooted in the social progress and evolution of mankind — something the conservative hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church has never embraced. After all, this is the same institution that brought us the Inquisition, pogroms, and forced conversion of native peoples.
By the way, did I mention that Cardinal Ratzinger is the head of the Inquisition? How eerie…
