Bears shit in the woods, just as the Pope talks shit

In this season of goodwill, some see it as customary to put differences to one side and embrace those people who, perhaps for the rest of the year, you have some differences with. For others, such as the Pope, it is the time to slag off anyone who does not live in a way he deems suitable:

In his address to the Curia, the Vatican's central administration, he described behaviour beyond traditional heterosexual relations as "a destruction of God's work" and said that the Roman Catholic Church had a duty to "protect man from the destruction of himself".

And:

The Catholic Church teaches that while homosexuality is not sinful, homosexual acts are. It opposes gay marriage and, in October, a leading Vatican official described homosexuality as "a deviation, an irregularity, a wound".

So sayeth a celibate man in a dress who lives in a palace a loooonnng way from the real world.

The irony is, of course, that Benedict's words - and the stance of the Catholic church as a whole - shows that it isn't homosexuality that is a deviation, an irregularity or a wound. Rather, it is the archaic, intolerant and out-moded Catholic church that matches that description perfectly.