God's Mordant Wit

Trust me, no tortures which the poets feign,
Can match the fierce, the unutterable pain,
He feels, who night and day, devoid of rest,
Carries his own accuser in his breast.
Juvenal, Satires

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil rebuked a Catholic archbishop because he ordered the excommunication of the mother of a nine-year-old girl and the doctors who provided her with abortion services. The child had been repeatedly raped since the age of six by her step-father,and she was found to be carrying twins in her frail body, certain to bring her to death's door if the pregnancy went to term.

"The doctors did what had to be done: save the life of a girl of nine years old", said the president. "In this case, the medical profession was more right than the Church. But the archbishop, Father Jose Cardoso Sobrinho responded that "God's law is above any human law. So when a human law ... is contrary to God's law, this human law has no value."

The archbishop went further, to say that the stepfather, charged with raping the child would not be expelled from the Church, though her mother and the doctors would be. While the man committed "a heinous crime ... the abortion - the elimination of an innocent life - was more serious", said the inerrant archbishop.

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While thus far Canada, Israel and the United States have removed themselves from participation in the April 20 -24 United Nations conference on racism, dubbed Durban II, in anticipation of a re-enactment of the atrocious manipulations of Arab bloc countries and their sympathizers and supporters to turn the concept of human rights and racism upside down, the Vatican has announced its attendance. While claiming it hoped there would be a change in the wording of the conference's final declaration.

"People go to conferences to discuss and debate", Father Federico Lombardi explained. "That doesn't mean we agree with the draft text of the final declaration is it is now." Perhaps not, but it most certainly admits of a certain validation effect, and support of the concept of the conference which is unalterably opposed to the existence of the State of Israel, claiming it to be itself racist and human-rights-abusing.

But all is well, since the Vatican's Geneva representative has already cleared things with God, since he "made it clear that the Vatican is opposed to all forms of discrimination, whether it is against an individual, a religion or a state". Whew! that's a relief.

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All will be well with the world. Pope Benedict XVI has his globally-pacific eye on the international financial collapse. We need look no further than the First Commandment for its cause: the false idol of lucre. What has befallen the world financial markets is predictable and well earned. That much many would agree upon. The consequences of suffering is another thing altogether.

It is that great failure of human nature, one's view and value of one's self, to the exclusion of the realization of one's obligations to the collective that is at the heart of the problem. Really? People are omnivorously, overwhelmingly greedy. Who would've guessed it? Avarice and ego, what a dynamic coupling. In one pithy sentence lies the history of the world.

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We are God's chosen few;
All others will be damned;
There is no place in Heaven for you,
We can't have Heaven crammed.
Jonathan Swift