Papal Infallibility Means Never Having to Say You’re Sorry

What is this garbage news making the rounds about the pope “apologizing”? The New York Times, Washington Post and others have reported with straight faces that the pope is “sorry”—that the reaction to his anti-Islamic remarks has not been the one he wanted. Wha’ Happen’? Any six year-old knows that “I’m sorry you reacted the way you did” ain’t no apology. What a sheer waste of column inches. You know the copy editors must have had second thoughts about running this kind of Catholic-pandering pabulum since they dragged a bona fide Vatican scholar out of mothballs to tell us this is all “extremely unusual.”

The maunderings of the popes and ayatollahs and mullahs are not news. These guys believe in angels and devils and the inferiority of women and an impending purification through apocalypse. The Catholic Church officially accepted the Copernican model of the solar system in 1999. They stand firm against gay rights, birth control, and penicillin. Well, he’ll probably come out against penicillin next week. It’s not 1106, it’s 2006, and if it’s not quite science fiction, if we haven't achieved all we should have, at least we can be serious. Agenda-setting media, please stop reporting this stuff so we can get on with the real world.

Poem of the day: T. S. Eliot's "The Hippopotamus"