Ahh, the long arm of the internet... There's a neat little video that talks about the chemicals used to make the smoke from papal ballots burning turn black or white. The top two comments?
"Why bother with a new pope anyway? Do we really need a 70+ year old silly hat wearing virgin to tell us what to do with our genitals and to discriminate against gays?"
"I feel bad for those people. Its the ones who survive because of science then attribute it to god who make me mad."
The video itself is a great little practical science piece, with things on fire. Very cool! It's only really tangentially about Catholicism, it was more of a "because this is in the public mind" kind of thing. And yet numerous people decided to look past a fun little experiment (with instructions more or less on how to do it yourself - FIRE!!!), and use the comments thread as a soapbox from which to rail against their perceptions of the Catholic Church.
I mean seriously, who does that? It wasn't even about Catholicism, or Church teaching, or sexuality, or Church teaching on sexuality. It's barely even about Catholicism at all! It's certainly not about the genitals of which you are so concerned!
At least, that's what I started to think. But then I realized, that isn't so uncommon, is it? How many times have I shoehorned into a conversation a rather awkward reference to something I thought, or knew, or did, just so I could feel special? How many times have I forced myself into the spotlight just because I was afraid that no one knew I was even there? Turned a discussion into some completely off-topic mini-lecture just to get some (completely irrelevant to the original conversation) point across?
How many times have I forgotten that my worth is not tied up in what I think, or what I say, and it's okay if not everything is about me?
Once again, it turns out we're not so different after all.
