Pat Oliphant for May 10, 2012

Is the ruler metric? Or did he just not measure up?

Know the feeling. Had the same experience at St John Berchmans.

Making fun of how people talk is not funny. But seriously; Ratzinger has nothing against nuns, it’s just liberals that give him heartburn.

… he might even believe he deserved that beating.

I love this one!!!!

Almost as much as I love seeing a bunch of tired old clowns dressed up in Red trying to hold back the clock. I bet they wish for the good ol’ days when they could molest children with impunity on Saturday and preach homophobia and abstience out of wedlock on Sunday.

“The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers” Princess Leia

I remember the older nuns (born c. 1900) who administered corporal punishment. It was physical, not harsh – but embarrassing. A swat on the butt in the cloak closet with “The Board of Education.” A light swipe at the head. I heard of stronger actions, but through the years I came to realize it involved kids with behavioral problems who responded badly to force.

The nuns were tough with children and it worked in most cases toward training them to control themselves. Nuns didn’t know enough of things such as autism, dyslexia, and various emotional problems to deal with them properly. They had tough jobs (in my time, up to 50 children per classroom!), received only room and board, and in some cases I’m sure were very personally frustrated.

And I’ll tell you what – they resented many of the priests. Religion aside, they had feelings as people and saw the vanity, superficiality, and rudeness of the male clerics. At best, they were often supercilious toward the nuns. I could see the nuns silently fume after dealing with arrogant priests. Sisterhood was already becoming unfashionable by the 1960s, and the nuns were often mocked as women who couldn’t interest real men, so they “married Jesus. “

And yet, they were in most cases intelligent and talented and basically ran the schools and parishes. Nuns did the work; priests got the glamour and admiration. But the day was soon coming when they began to lose respect, too. I often thought, even back then, that nuns should be the priests.

I’ve met clerics high in the Church. I’ve kissed cardinals’ rings, several of my classmates are monsignors and one is a bishop. Sadly, several were even prosecuted for sexual misbehavior. I don’t disrespect religions entirely, but I think men way up in the hierarchy are not normal mentally — have never been, through the ages.

Benedict seems a religious bureaucrat bound by rules and dogma hundreds of years out of date. How can intelligent, educated men engage in the double-think required to believe in fables of a pre-scientific cosmology? In the minds of many rigid churchmen, half of the human race is somehow unclean, ever since Eve. What a strange fetter is religion on the human race.

Revenge was sweet! After years of knuckle smashing, my 7th grade nunster took me out in the hall to give me a good one. I ducked (they telegraph everything) and she broke something in her hand when it hit the oak door. I was as revered as Robin Hood with the class and in deep do-do with Sr. “Mary Hitler”.

The most interesting thing that the Vatican is complaining about regarding the American nuns is that they spend too much time caring for the poor and marginalized while not preaching enough against gays and abortion. In other words, the Vatican would like them to encourage bringing more people into the world whom we can then abuse or at least ignore.

Before all my fellow liberals totallly trash out the Catholic church, may I remind you of the Bishops that recently ( and rightly ) condemned the Ryan Budget for consigning the poor to the compost heap?

empte12: “Board of Education” was Sam Rayburn’s term for inviting an obstructionist Representative over for a sumptuous dinner and an evening of demonstrating the Speaker knew more about the district than the Congressman did. Different “board”, but more effective.

Do you ever ask yourself why you did not interfere? Stunned shock? Job security? I always read your postings because you are such a good and thoughtful writer. This surprised me.

When the catholic church was recognized as the state religion it was because it supported and enhanced the government’s rule. It is anti-life and joy.and blames and persecutes women because of its abnormal and aberrant sexual frustrations. I have wondered how Catholics feel about seeing their donations used to payroll rapists and child molesters.

I’m a Catholic.

And I say f**k Ratzinger and all the celibate male hypocritical relics in the Church hierarchy.

I remember from my convent school years when the nuns became literally the servants of any priests who visited the school. Apparently the Pope thinks those were the good ol’ days.

I was raised (I think the term “reared” is rather silly) Catholic, attended Catholic grade school, public high school, and a Jesuit college. The nuns I remember could be stern but I don’t remember even once any of them hitting a student with even a plastic ruler. (Whereas my high school gym teacher would paddle students for both real and imagined transgressions…..) I’m hoping the next Pope will join the 21st century (or at least re-join the Vatican II era of the 20th century!)

Ok I am not Catholic I get the kid on the floor is a young Pope Benidick what is the issue.

That’s why he hates Nuns! I know the sisters get pretty snappish or at least very rigid in corporal punishment.

All of this begs the question as to why anyone in their right mind could ascribe to the mind killing nonsense that is religion.

The Ten Commandments? Obsolete, my friendOn me (your anti-conscience) please depend

Instead of one god only, have a fewIf you get lucky some might follow YOU

And honoring thy parents makes no senseUnless you move back to their residence

And Sabbath-honoring? So yesterdayIn these enlightened times sin every day

And stealing in this modern day and age?Both Wall and Main Street think it’s all the rage

Adultery can be a lovely gamePreventing sex from being “same ol’ same ol’ same”

And coveting thy neighbor’s wife and assCan be a treat, but only if the lassBe well and truly formed, so here’s my ruleWhere wife is lacking, covet only mule

Concerning killing, causing rigor mortisOnly R.J. Reynolds ever rivals Phillip Morris

“… As for the old man in the robe not having anything against nuns,…”Sometimes when I post here, I forget that not everyone knows me. I should have been more specific and said, "Ratzinger has nothing against nuns as long as they ‘know their place’, it’s just liberals that give him heartburn.And @ Creniere, I didn’t say that was a good thing.

The German accent thing isn’t It really such a big deal. Maybe Oliphant just wanted to make sure everyone knew who he was talking about. I have German friends who think imitating someone speaking German with an American accent is hilarious. I don’t find that especially funny either. I don’t have anything against making fun of old movies though and of course every one has the right to make fun of themselves. “Polish jokes” always made me uneasy too… even when I thought one was funny. But if I tried to explain why, I would start to sound “preachy” (and I wouldn’t want that).

Pope Benedict the XVI, a man who aided and abetted his pedophile friends when he was a Bishop, a man who is now the Catholic Pope and as such seen as Gods voice on earth; especially for all of the religiously psyched automatons that have been programed (mostly as children) to believe in and follow the dictates of Catholicism as now directed by an unindicted, pedophile abetting Pope.

If Carl Marx had anything right it was his clear understanding that, “Religion is the opiate of the people” that denies science, rational thinking, and basic Human Rights for everyone.

oh, please. You are not superior to anyone else on Earth, nor on here. You are human, just like the rest of us. You bleed red blood, just like the rest of us on this mudball we call "earth’.

Maybe to you there is no god, but there are many others who do believe.

In the movies, those german accents were by jews. But, all religions are at fault one way or another & jf there is no God then, all religions are fake.Want to take that chance?

In my opinion, you might misunderstand rightisright, who I think possibly refers to what is often perceived as acceptable prejudice against Roman Catholics by old-wealth families and institutions. Andrew Greeley called it the last acceptable openly-expressed prejudice of the upper-classes in America. Though they no longer talk with disdain of blacks and Jews, they still target Roman Catholics . On the surface they express Liberalism (especially in the media) but still nourish this prejudice.

It has always been suspected by many that American Catholics basically take orders from the pope. You should be aware that Joseph Kennedy, Sr. was a target of this attitude, and was at first excluded from certain areas of business and society. Ironic, that the Roman Catholic hierarchy is now considered very conservative. You’d think this would increasingly endear it to skeptics.

I wish I could find the Greeley reference – it was in one of his columns for The Chicago Sun-Times several years ago.

Are you also missing new Oliphant cartoons? Is he on vacation? I was expecting a Romney-as-bully strip.

Rightisright asked, “Catholic prejudice is authorized by the liberal high command and libmedia, got it. Are you the same liberals who will defend Muslim barbarism all day long?”Answer:1. Catholic prejudice is authorized by the Pope and practiced, with vehement discrimination, by his minion’s. 2. Islam learned most of what it knows and practices from Catholic tyranny, a clear product and mentality of the Right, not the Left. 3. Again, rightisright is (almost) always wrong.

Big, fat thoughts for 8AM, May 19, 2012 A.D.:

The Big Bang heat things up, some stars formed, and our own star formed in the third generation. Earth’s amino acids became animated and in slow processes evolved to different forms. Out of the stupor stumbled Humanity. All human societies are just glorified ant nests in the big scheme of things. Beneath all the thoughts and ideas that give us different shapes and tribes there broods a distant animal ancestor with the instinct to breed it knows not why. It fights, loves, dreams for a while, and dies. Earth and its life eventually disappear in a wisp of vapor, the atoms reassemble several more times. The Universe eventually undergoes proton decay. That’s it in a nutshell.

Religion has served as a trellis on which grew local kingdoms , then world civilizations. But if it remains, beyond abstruse philosophies and feast-day comforts, it needs to change. It’s done so before, many times in relatively small ways; it needs to fundamentally change now. The ones now dominant were the most pragmatic and vigorous, but in the course of centuries they became encrusted with dogmatic sludge. They need to reawaken to rethink their existences because human population is increasing toward an unsustainable level and modifying the Earth. They need to decide if the human garden can continue unmanaged under the gaze of an imaginary Gardener.

Roman Catholicism needs to change. Protestant Christianity needs to change. Islam needs to change. There might be at this very moment be an obscure, despised sect that will eventually replace them all…

The major religions think too small, except Far Eastern ones that envision cosmic cycles of hundreds of billions of years. As it turns out, those are closer to the truth. Yahweh began as a sky god, consolidated from various ancient mid-Eastern religions. The blue sky is the effect of Raleigh Scattering, the clouds are moisture condensations moved by weather patterns affected by our star. The Earth’s breathable atmosphere ends a few miles up. Beyond lies everything else, the stars in their courses.

You do not approve of me???? How shall I ever survive!!

Get stuffed

Enough already with the pope and Sister Mary Adolf….

I hope Pat is OK and only on vacation.

See? It is useless to talk to him. Just remember, if nature is truly in balance somewhere a horses front end is searching for him.

Yawn

^Dunno. He hasn’t updated since May 10. I was hoping somebody on this site knew something.

You are my new God.

First time ever I’ve read these comments top to bottom hoping to find out whats happening with Oliphant.

I wonder if there’s any significance to use of his birth year in May 10 cartoon.

Great comments people! Hope all is well with him…

Oliphant is gone! No one ever expects the SPANISH INQUISITION!

When is Oliphant going to do something else? It’s more than a month now with the Hitler Jugend pope and sister Mary Adolf!

Where are Oliphant’s recent works?

Happy anniversary! One full month with no new cartoons permitted, no notice of any reason for this, and never a dot for progressive cartoonists like Lalo, Ben, et al.