"Perhaps reluctantly we come to acknowledge that there are also scars which mark the surface of our Earth: erosion, deforestation, the squandering of the world's mineral and ocean resources in order to fuel an insatiable consumption"
- Pope Benedict, July 2008
August 03, 2008
HousingPANIC Quote of the Day
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
52 comments:
.
You mean like Vatican City?
.
Pope Benedict is important. Though I am neither religious or in complete agreement with him, I still like how he challenges things like islam and enviromental destruction.
The resources of the Earth are too vast to squander.
Whoever dug that huge hole in the earth in Arizona without permits-Awesome.
The Pope?
Talks to dead guys,ghosts,and thinks he's a god.George Bush does too.Worse than that a zillion people thinks he's all that too.We're screwed.
What's he worried about anyway?Bible people tell us that this is all The Valley of the Shadow of Death.Snicker.
Said perfectly like a "Brown Shirt" Hitler Youth. What about the insatiable desire of the Catholic Church in it preaching of procreation which is driving us toward overconsumption. Keith, you are picking winners to quote from, Glenn Beck now the Nazi Pope, the problem is not the message but the messengers.
It is easy for some people to mock a religious leader because of past hypocricies. I guess the only hypocrites throughout human history have been Catholic? Give me a break. However, this message is important. I hope he continues to speak out against exploitation and injustice.
"You mean like Vatican City?"
pwned
the catholic church is the mother of all excess.
It is shameful, and we're all guilty. All that we have, yet it's never enough. We're a nation of people looking for something, and the acquisition of material goods is just a shallow attempt to find what that something is.
What would our grandparents and our great-grandparents think of us all?
I think it's unfair to blame poor and middle income people for shopping at Walmart. Their savings and incomes have otherwise been eroded and shopping at Walmart is one of the few ways of stretching their dollars.
They have so little that it is difficult to begrudge them trying to get a little more.
You can't expect the poor and middle income earners to be the ones to make the personal sacrifice of not shopping at Walmart in order to save the US manufacturing industry.
But the pope makes a valid criticism of western culture - we are wildly materialistic to the point of destroying our environment and resources. I just quibble about your photo of a Walmart scene rather than a shopping mall, pottery barn, hummer dealership, home depot or Larry 'Goldilocks Economy' Kudlow.
It's a minor quibble but I'll make it anyway.
The Pope is a Dope!
Anyone want to guess what the modified Mercedes Pope mobile cost?
Answer = more than an average Mcmansion in San Diego in July of '05
Who consumes the most? The wealthy countries and within those countries, the wealthy people.
As long as we allow the top 1% to use up as much resources as the bottom 50%, I'm not conserving anything.
I like the reluctance theme.
Astronomy and pedophilia come to mind.
Al-Qweeferonio
Go on and punish the millions of poor Chinese for their government’s decisions.
Why single them out why not also offer a boycott on American products for its government’s decisions.
Or even better why elevate millions out of poverty and oppression thru open (or even semi open) economies, why don’t we invade China and liberate them..
Stop beating up the Chinese, in all my experiences I’ve found them to be humble and hard working, unlike the arrogant rotten and evil Europeans.
The Chinese have never put their neighbors into ovens alive, or forced their religion onto other peoples like the European Christians..
Here is the good news..
China is on an unstoppable growth path, rightfully so.
Europe is on an unstoppable deteriorating path, rightfully so.
of course these words of wisdom aren't coming from the vatican. the original cespool of child rapist, money hoarding, constantly waging war with sin, a world unto themselves, dress wearing men. Please, like most preachers and people who swear they are trying to live a christ like life, hypocrites the lot of em.
I have a hard time accepting messages of humility and thrift from a man clad in gold and silk, waving around a dead-Jesus-on-a-stick.
Sorry, Mr. Ratzinger - I mean Pope Bendict - but what's the problem now? You say what sounds good but your actions do nothing but support the hypocrites and rats, just like all the other sorry politicians you're identical to. You got the whole Bush package that you backed. It's what you wanted, remember? You enthusiastically attacked Kerry for being pro-choice 2 to 3 weeks after meeting Bush people at the Vatican in September 2004... funny, you knew about his views for years, but during your pro-life rants, you said nothing about Bush's record setting approvals for capital punishment, which is also 100% against Catholic church teaching. You said nothing about Bush's treatment of the Gitmo prisoners, another huge Catholic pro-civil right's no-no. Opps, forgot that those, I guess? Why the selective memory, Your Holiness?
So please keep quiet and stop acting like your high minded and care about something other than creating a totally fabricated legacy. You backed the current horse, and still do. Get over it.
You've got a long way before you you can shake your nickname of "God's Pit-Bull". Lip service won't help you. Get on the TV - you have the media at your disposal - and clearly, repeatedly and loudly tell your flock to stop torturing people, stop hogging the earth's resources, back alternative energy, stop building 5,000 sf homes, take public transport or a bike to work, stop listening to commercials that encourage over consumption and immediate empty gratification, stop bailing out rich folks at the expense of the little folks, stop ads that exploit racism in elections.
Until then, despite your new make over, you're no better than the rest of them. No wonder the majority of your own flock won't listen to you.
The Pope has previously addressed the issue of the environment, as I recall, before his visit to the United States. The Church has always told people to leave behind the world of worthless materialism that is especially prevalent in the US and parts of Europe.
Are people aware that the Vatican has its own farm? They make their own milk, produce, and some meats. It's up at Castle Gandolfo. The farm looks like it's something out of the early 20th century. It's got some machinery, but it's very pastoral.
I gave some consideration to posting this quote given the source (yes, the vatican sure has a lot of gold and wealth stored up!) but I believe it's sincere.
Regardless your view on the church, I think many of you agree with this quote. And I hope other leaders pick up this anti-over-consumption, pro-environment, anti-consumerism message. I sense a change in the collective consciousness when it comes to out of control consumerism, even if our political and business leaders haven't got the message.
Consuming is OK, people need to eat, clothe themselves, furnish a home, etc. But piggish over-consumption fueled by debt with no regard for the environment or human labor, that's the problem.
Very impressed with this pope.
His defence of western civilisation is profound. And his response to Islam puts politicians to shame.
Nature said...
The Chinese have never put their neighbors into ovens alive, or forced their religion onto other peoples like the European Christians..
No they just put them into slave labor prison factories and force totalitarian communism (a secular religion) onto everyone of its 2.3 billion people including the Tibetans and the millions of other mebers of China's ethnic minority groups.
Yes they are "humble and hard working" but most people are when the options are getting run over by a tank or being disappeared.
Boycotting Wal*Mart and Chinese products does not hurt the Chinese people. Their government is allready doing that and buying their crap just subsidizes the oppression.
Keith
I want to applaud you for having the courage to post a quote by Pope Benedict. You display a lot of courage in doing so. The reason you did this was that you wanted to convey the message, not the messanger.
Probably 99% of readers to this blog would have automatically agreed with the quote if it had been posted annonymously. But the fact that the source was revealed shows just how stupid prejudiced people really are. It shows us that they cannot filter out their rage and hatred from obvious statements of truth. To those of you who posted bigotted remarks, "SHAME on You!" Keep your hatred to yourself and try to be a little bit more tolerant and open minded next time.
Paul e. Math said...
They have so little that it is difficult to begrudge them trying to get a little more.
Aw the poor little Wal*Mart shoppers. If they want a little bit more they need to get up off their fat asses and demand more. They bought into the "morning in America" lie that started in the eighties and have been wallowing in credit fueled self-indulgence ever since.
Well now it's game over for the Wal*Mart Americans. Now they can't even afford the cheap Chinese crap from Wal*Mart. Now they are realizing that they have been buying a lie for low monthly payments for 28 years. Now they are waking up to the fact that their pockets have been picked, they traded their jobs for cheap crap they didn't need and the debt are being called in.
The Wal*Mart Americans are so f*cked it would be funny ecept they're going to take us all down with them.
Yes Wal*Mart is not to only villian in this most of the crap at places like Pottery Barn is Hecho in China too but Wal*Mart is the best example of how wretched and degraded the American people have become in this BS consumer economy. "I have to shop at Wal*Mart, I can't afford to buy crap I don't need anywhere else." That is how low this once great country has fallen.
Oh now all of a sudden you care what religious leaders care? You bash religion left right and center and then all of a sudden you ask that we listen to the Pope. Qweefie, please once again I beg you, stick to housing issues.
Is this a pious version of "irrational exuberance"?
Pope Greenspan??
I bash religion?
No, I bash people who do bad things in the name of religion.
Belief in god in my book is good for society. And the major religions for the most part have good things to say. Now if society's members would just behave better, we'd be getting somewhere. I doubt god would be pleased at what she's seeing down here lately.
I think it's past time for people to question their rigid political party affiliations, their political and religious leaders, and their indoctrinated organized religious beliefs.
But I know for most people, that's asking waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much.
It's uncomfortable when you start thinking for yourselves, versus being told what to think.
Sheep don't like to think after all.
Chairman Mao,
You are partially correct that the Chinese government is not the ideal system.
1)Boycotting Chinese products has a much bigger impact on the helpless poor people then it does on the Chinese government.,
2)As we are chit chatting here today there are probably hundreds of Christian missionaries (church sales whores) in China selling the church in the form of ‘saving them’ (they do not need to be saved by the church), while I don’t think you’ll find Chinese in the west trying to save anyone. (pushing their beliefs on the Europeans to save them from the evil church).
3)And to those who are concerned about bigotry against the church, I think its one area were it should be allowed, since the church has been (and still is) the source of formal bigotry against those who don’t support their greedy cause.
So, my point is that the Chinese are a better people then the Europeans because they do not send holy sales whores to ‘save’ others, hence it would make more sense to boycott Europe for destroying civilization (2000 years of the dark ages).
I'm sorry, is this the same Catholic church that doesn't allow contraception?
In other words, forcing insatiable population growth?
Keep trying pope, you may get there yet!
I am anxiously awaiting the day the Catholic church recommends a 2 child policy.
The population has doubled in my lifetime. It will double again and again in 100 years.
That's all there is to it.
I think this is the first time that I have ever agreed with something said by a religious man.
Secular europe, where the pope is based, is dying as people aren't reproducing enough to maintain a population
It's the poorest countries that are reproducing the most. And where the catholic church is growing the fastest
Makes you go hmmm...
Thomas Malthus wrote about this CENTURIES ago.
We are one stupid species.
BTW the pope is a nazi.
Nature said...
"I'm a jibbering idiot"
Keefer,
Correct secular Europe is still out there keeping the poor global populations down by dropping bags of rice to the pro European dictators, by attending Bono concerts to fund the UN causes, again to assure the poor populations remain down, by spreading Christianity to replace the native cultural community organizations and garner recourses and foot soldiers to the European church, and by pointing the finger at China (as if china is now the bad guy for rising to power) while they are meddling in every local conflict across the globe to feed European greed.
We all know that true charity is teaching the poor to fish rather then throwing them fish bones, Europe is very busy assuring the rest of the world does not learn how to fish, that may make the bald headed elitists irrelevant.
The Chinese aren’t taking this crap any more, they are figuring out how to fish one way or the other (Europeans steal US technology in the form of ‘collaboration’ with US research and development and the Chinese are a bit more honest purchase technology and copy it).
This scares Europe to its knees hence all this ‘righteous anti Chinese sentiment’
Message to Europe:
Chinese aren’t Arabs they don’t buy your ignorance.
Who's the Pope?
Chairman Mao said...
Nature said...
"I'm a jibbering idiot"
Awesome comeback
I’ll bet you have a college degree..
Why don’t edumecated folks have common sense?
Dear Mr. Pope;
I do not remember asking you for your input or advise.
Do us all a favor and get laid, you’ll feel better..
Just think when people start hurting people for polluting and consumption.Right now we reward people who have money and consume.At some point this will change.
Also look at the pollution that will come as china and india industrialize.
america must lead the way with new technology to fight pollution as well as grow economies.There is a lot of money to be made solving these problems.
"Perhaps reluctantly we come to acknowledge that there are also scars which mark the surface of our Earth: erosion, deforestation, the squandering of the world's mineral and ocean resources in order to fuel an insatiable consumption"
Oh the irony. Hold this thought, i'll get to it at the bottom.
Ultimately we have not done anything permanent to the Earth outside of causing extinctions- but those occur everyday without us. If we all died out tomorrow, our legacy would be wiped out entirely in 100-1,000 years.
As for irony, consumerism actually pushes and drives society forward. It was the Vatican that held us back technologically for ages.
They saw this 'unnecessary' need for material things as you are just supposed to live and die and than go to heaven. I guess they would like society to come to a complete standstill again?
As I have said before, I have a very serious problem with slave labor and pollution. There needs to be more awareness. Consumerism, in and of itself, is far from a bad thing though.
"Europe is very busy assuring the rest of the world does not learn how to fish, that may make the bald headed elitists irrelevant."
I've been reading articles out of Ireland that says something along those lines. The one I refer to mentions how the author sponsored a poor child in Africa, only to see that boy grow up into a marauding man that fathered more starving children.
I think people are starting to wake up and smell the coffee- just throwing bundles of food (which hurts the farmers) and cash at 'causes' will make such problems worse. Elitists that don't think things through, they only want to be able to say that they did, are responsible.
Nature said: "And to those who are concerned about bigotry against the church, I think its one area were it should be allowed..."
Nautre, at least you're being honest with us about being a bigot. Hopefully, you'll also be honest with yourself and realize that you're going to Hell.
Here's the legacy that Jimmy Carter has left to honest American taxpayers, after his Mariel fiasco:
http://tinyurl.com/69mw7e
Imagine what Hussein Carter II, along with the ultraliberal retards (i.e., Pelosi), will do to America.
As you said, "deflation will win" guy says:
Keith said "Regardless your view on the church."
"the church" ????
Keith, you are a papist! :(
http://i34.tinypic.com/14bsrrq.jpg
Yes, despite his role in urging catholics not to vote for Kerry, thereby re-electing Bush, I do have high regard for the words and the scholorship of this pope.
"As long as we allow the top 1% to use up as much resources as the bottom 50% . . ."
That's quite improbable. Even 50 beat-up Pintos use up more material to build than one Rolls-Royce . . . not to mention the typical top 1% ($350k income) drive ordinary cars, unlike the $30k millionairs.
Does the top 1% get to allocate more financial resources than the bottom 50%? Perhaps, and it's not a bad thing for the disciplined $350k earner who drives Camry to allocate more financial resources . . . better than giving the $30k millionair another stab at yet another resource-wasting ego-booster.
Europe isn't dying, it's shrinking - that's a big difference. The EU now has 500 million People, at a fraction of the space of the US.
So why would it be to anyone's benefit to have an evergrowing population?
What's the point behind this anyway; is it really the best idea to cram as much people as possible on this planet?
Europe is the first area of the world right now, that shows that growth must not be maintained to have a functioning society. And it only matters to people who are worried about the status of their home countries on a global scale.
Bush is a nazi, the pope is a nazi, McCian is a nazi. For you imbeciles, everyone's a nazi.
Please go learn what a nazi really is.
Have you seen how fucked up this world is? I think you blog about it everday, right? I raise a toast to a GENIOUS god! (Insert smiley with eyes going around in circles).
Hey old guy in the funny hat:
OVERPOPULATION
Guess who has a whole bunch to do with that?
YOU DO!
The planet would be very wealthy with 500M-1B people MAX. Ecosystems could easily regenerate that level of human consumption.
All the CO2 we emitted would go into the ocean and new trees. There'd be plenty of fish.
Montie Python's The meaning of life comes to mind. Wasn't it these yahoos who told Catholics not to use birth control to prop up the tything masses? Hello, Pope dude to earth; people need resources! Over-population DUH!!!!
"think people are starting to wake up and smell the coffee- just throwing bundles of food (which hurts the farmers) and cash at 'causes' will make such problems worse."
Like education. Every year the liberals demand more money for education. And every year the education system gets worse.
DC has the highest per pupil spending of any school district in the country. It is also the worst school district in the country by any measure you want.
And yet what is the liberal response? More money of course.
Reality,
Here's what I heard when reading your convoluted post.
Yabba Dabba Do. Gibbery gibbery shazam.
Post a Comment