There was an opportunity, and senior Catholic Church management grabbed it. As is routine in Catholic agitprop, disasters are being used to ruminate about God's punishment for human failings (aka 'sins'). Well, the Love Parade (a pretty pointless commercial music festival in Germany) recently translated into 21 deaths and hundreds of injured people. Official investigations are still ongoing as to who should be held responsible for these deaths and injuries.
Well, God man and Salzburg's archbishop Andreas Laun said in a commentary the following (the translation is mine and, as you know, I'm not a certified interpreter, so check for the original German language text here): 'The Love Parade and the participation in it, leaving aside its disgusting imagery, are objectively a kind of insurrections against the Creation and God's order. They are sin and invitation to sin.' As our God man knows, there has been public uproar in the past when his organization decided that this and this or she and he had been sinful or sinners and deserving of God's punishment. This time then he's a bit smarter and leaves open the question of whether the deaths are God's punishment for the young people's participation in the Love Parade (really nothing much other than an open air music festival). Instead Mr Laun goes on ruminating about why people reject the idea of a punishing God. He concludes eventually that there is a punishing God and that God punishes out of 'love'. We should not then reject the idea that what happened in Duisburg, including the 21 deaths and more than 500 serious injured Love Parade attendees, might be God's punishment. That is what true love, Christian style, might well require. Mr Laun can't understand why we can't see the world by his light...
Remains just one question: Why ain't God busy punishing his pedophile earthly representatives and those in the church hierarchy who cover(ed) their tracks? Why is God busy with young people going to a musical festival? Odd chap indeed. Strange, strange priorities.
Well, as to our all-time God favorite, the Islamic Republic of Iran (different God, you might note, same principle), is busy trying to hang an 18 year old kid, Ebrahim Hamidi, alleging - demonstrably falsely I might add - that he's engaged in same sex acts. Boggles the mind as ever. I can never decide whether North Korea or Iran are my all-time favorite caricatures of states (well, after that all-time winner, Vatican 'state').
The lesson to be learned from it all: Where there is a God there is cruelty. Try atheism for an ethical alternative.
