COMMENT and SATIRE

Indigenous populations, he said, welcomed their European colonisers because they were "secretly longing for Christ without realising it."

So saith Pope Benedict XVI. Well I have heard some crap during my life but this just about takes the cake. These "poor, ignorant savages" longed for someone/something they had never heard of. They had sophisticated cultures and religious systems of their own.

If you do not throw up after reading the highlighted text in the following article, collect your wits and read a factual account of the Spanish colonization of Central and South America HERE

[Los Angeles Times, May 25, 2007]

Confronted with continued anger in Latin America, Pope Benedict has acknowledged that the Christian colonisation of Indian populations was not as rosy as he portrayed in a speech this month in Brazil.

The Pope did not apologise, as some indigenous and Latin American leaders have demanded. However, he did say it was impossible to ignore the dark "shadows" and "unjustified crimes" that accompanied the evangelisation of the New World by Catholic priests in the 15th and 16th centuries.

"It is not possible to forget the sufferings and injustices inflicted by the colonisers on the indigenous population, whose fundamental human rights were often trampled upon," the Pope said in his weekly public audience in St Peter's Square on Wednesday. "Certainly, the memory of a glorious past cannot ignore the shadows that accompanied the work of evangelising the Latin American continent."

Still, he said, recognising the sins should not detract from the good achieved by the missionaries: "Mentioning this must not prevent us from acknowledging with gratitude the marvellous work accomplished by the divine grace among these people." In his first papal journey to the Americas, Benedict visited Brazil for five days this month and gave a speech that many saw as a revisionist account of history.

Indigenous populations, he said, welcomed their European colonisers because they were "secretly longing" for Christ "without realising it." Conversion to Christianity "did not at any point involve an alienation of the pre-Columbus cultures, nor was it the imposition of a foreign culture."

He did not mention forced conversions, epidemics, massacres, enslavement and other abuses that most historians agree accompanied colonisation.

Indigenous rights groups and the presidents of Venezuela and Bolivia were incensed. The episode is the latest in which the Pope, elucidating a theological point that he firmly believes, made statements that seemed to disregard cultural and historical sensitivities.

The TV disgusting show on SBS last night Friday 2nd June called "Footy Chicks" was about young women in Australia drinking alcohol and having sex with alcohol drinking footy players ...... some with 3 or 4 or more footy players a night ..... married men most of them.

There was one incident where a young girl was vomiting over a balcony very sick and a footy player was trying to have sex with her while she is being sick.......the rape crisis woman spoke about this ..... but she referred to the cheer leaders which originated from the USA.

But in Australia it is more provocative ..... it is a great thing for these women to be doing ..... I don't agree. She said she sees a huge amount of rape victims in footy season ..... alcohol and sex. Women treated like one of the women said -- as meat .... which reminded me of Sheik Taj Aldin al-Hilaly. He said the same words and was crucified for it by the government, the media and the Australian people.

Well he should catch up with the young woman who sleeps with footy men that said this on TV SBS last night ..... she and Sheik speak the truth .....

These men are disgusting to the human race and to all other men who regard women as a spiritual being with a heart, mind and spirit and not a piece of meat for footy men to use as a climax kick.

This is not "The art of sacred love making" and the women are as much to blame for drinking all the alcohol and slobbering all over these awful degrading, ugly, uncreative, unspiritual men who live only for kicking a ball and grabbing each other on footy fields.

Like one of the men said -- it's a touch body game as one body together. They are one body on the footy field, and when they have sex they like to have that all men one body feeling with the one women ...... called rape.

These men are abnormal and abusive and need spiritual help urgently ..... and no, not all men are like this, as one of the speakers said, its a man thing. NO ... NO ... NO. I have a son and he respects women and all of humanity.

There are many men such as Buddhist monks and Dalai Lama who is a man and does not think this is a man thing. Also Sheik al-Hilaly. I say this is an Aussie acoholic footy culture .... unlawful, very sad action.

Alcohol -- the food of the Australian culture -- legal by the government, causes this brutal behaviour by these football players and the women who are lost with the men in this unsacred, unsatisfying act of debauchery.

Also drink driving is on TV news every day in the local papers and at school end of exams. Very young drunken days and nights at the Gold Coast ..... if this is what it means to be Australian then the government had better stop alcohol promotion and rape.

One of the worst drugs on earth ..... It's not good enough for Kevin Rudd, John Howard and all politicians to go to Church and pray away ...... but act differently to God's ways which is NO NO NO alcohol

It should be illegal now like it was in 1920. I have seen kids as young as 14 with bottles of hard alcohol drinking away in parks in Katoomba and Springwood and it's all over Australia and needs urgent attention.