Pope John Paul II is going to be canonized. This guy protected generations of child rapists, which is a crime almost anywhere in the world, and also protected the Opus Dei cult. He took away the rights of women, gays and lesbians, and blocked the use of condoms to fight AIDS. By keeping the Catholic world locked firmly in its medieval past while the rest of the world was moving forward, he did more than almost anyone in the 21st century to set back the cause of equality and human rights. There have been third-world dictators on trial in the Hague who didn’t do as much damage as he did.

But because some illiterate woman up in the hills claims that he magically cured her, making her own diagnosis regarding her brain aneurysm, fellow members of his cult can now send him pagan prayers to magically solve their problems too. Even though he is not only not magical, not only an unindicted criminal, but also completely and totally dead.

The church was in such a hurry to canonize him that they violated their own rules, to canonize him ahead of schedule. This is the guy they chose to fast-track, the living embodiment of everything a Christian should be. A coddler of child molesters.

The irony here is that the church is also canonizing Pope John XXIII. John actually did a lot of good. Long before he was pope, during WWII, he saved the lives of Jews in seven different countries, which obviously was incredibly dangerous. This, in contrast to his boss Pope Pius, who did considerably less to help the Jews. And later John worked to fire bishops who had collaborated with Hitler. But he had to wait half a century for canonization, because he wasn’t “magical” enough.

In the religious world, magic is more important than morality, courage or compassion. So now we know where the church’s priorities are. “Save thousands of Jews? Go to the back of the line. Conspire with rapists? Step right this way, no need for you to wait!”

Don't you wish it were a century from now, when such barbaric superstition will, with luck, finally be in retreat and decline? When the guy who protects thousands from oppression and death gets as much respect as the man who turned a deaf ear to thousands of victimized children?

And by the way, this magical nonsense is a laughable insult to nature: the concept of miracles is completely unnatural. Remember that the next time the Jesus people holler at you that homosexuality, which occurs in more than a thousand animal species in nature, is unnatural.