The Vatican

In light of Pope Benedict’s retirement, I was online looking at articles about the pope’s opinions on various issues. I found a link to an article on BBC.com, found below.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-21417767

I thought the most interesting part of this article was the comments he made about other religious groups. This was interesting to me since the pope has had very conservative views on a number of topics. He has made several statements, one of which on this site is that deviating from traditional gender roles was "a violation of the natural order." I thought it was remarkable that two different groups of people, such as the Vatican and feminists, would feel so differently about a topic. This actually goes into the debate about culture, and the thought that one’s culture is superior, also known as ethnocentrism. The article goes on to talk about Islam, as well as secularism, and not surprisingly, he wasn’t supportive of either one. What initially surprised me was the hard stance he took on several of these groups. Despite being religious, he is also a public figure, and his tone seemed to me to be a little more condemning as opposed to coming across with a willingness to understand. I think that this is a flaw in our world; people are much more willing to look down upon other groups instead of trying to reach agreements.

I looked for other articles relating to his position, and I found a bunch, but not many of them had different content. I read through the comments of these sites, and unfortunately, all the commentators started flame wars in their posts. This only served to back up my previous conclusion. People in general would much rather fight over their beliefs than try to accept somebody else’s. I guess accept in this scenario isn’t even the right word. Understand would be a better choice. I know that most people’s religions say that they are the only ones with the “right answer.” And it’s fine for people to disagree on what that answer is. But I think that we as a species, as a culture, and even as individuals, would be much better off if we took a second, stood back, and asked ourselves “Why does this person feel this way?”

I thought that I would read this article, and it would simply inform me of the opinions held by the papal office, but it was a lot more thought provoking than I originally realized. It definitely made me think about how the news we hear pretty much always has more depth than we assume.