the pope's impending death

I guess for this post I will hearken back to my historical roots. It is hard not to with all the hoolpla surrounding the death of another evil man. I pretty much always see events through a different lense than anyone else I know. And this is another shining example.
When I was at Les Schwab this afternoon picking up my car there were pictures of grief stricken catholics holding vigils for the ailing pope. It was front page paper material. It was on every radio station I tried. There was an update on MSN. You can't avoid the news no matter how much you want to. And that is how it has always been with the catholic church.
Various scholars put the founding of the catholic church at various points. Most of them come down around Constantine, although other reputable individuals place it as late at the end of the 5th century. Either way, it is the most destructive event in Western European history. More people have been murdered by the various forms of the catholic church than the Armenian genocide of WWI, the Holcaust of WWII, any of the various Russian pogroms throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, or any other known genocidal impulse. They may have taken longer to do it but they have succeeded admirably.
The story of catholicism is one of wanton cruelty and bloodshed. It is rife with things such as the Albigensian Crusade, the persecution of the Waldenses and Huguenots, other suppressions of "heresies" (of course, the catholic view of heresy was anyone who bothered to read the Bible and realized the catholic church bore no relationship to the things found therein) the crusades into the "Holy Land", the Inquisitions, the suppression of knowledge, the suppression of the printing press, and other similar events.
To this day catholicism is founded on and propulgated by blatant lies and contradictions. The "unbroken string of succession" is A) impossible when you consider their false stance that Peter never married (makes you wonder what relationship his mother in law had to him...) and that despite the Scriptural condemnation of people who forbid marriage, their insistence that their priests not marry...and B) impossible to track throughout the Middle Ages when 2, 3, or even 4 "popes" would be running around happily excommunicating each other and anyone who did not kill in the name of God.
It is obvious that catholics...and today, many others who call themselves "Christian"...have never read passages such as Galatians 5:22-23 which point out that Christians, who allegedly have the Holy Spirit and theoretically would show the fruit of that possession...that passage points out the Fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, and self-control. Have you ever seen a good soldier who was peaceful? Or gentle? Of course not. The very idea is ludicrous. Unless, of course, you ignore that and tell people to kill in the name of the very God who gave this passage.
Is all the world supposed to mourn the passing of a liar? That is what any man who claims to be God's sole spokesman on earth is. As the book of Peter says, God's people are a priesthood...ALL of them. So either the Bible is false...in which case the pope is false since he allegedly teaches it...or else the Bible is true and the pope through contradicting it is false. There is not an option for a "good" pope.
Men such as him have done more damage in the world than all the atheists, agnostics, Hindus, Buddhists, Church of the Boo-Hoos, Church of Elvis people, and Heavens Gate or Jim Jones like cults have done.
I should not even start on trash like Promise Keepers and the 40 Days of Promise stupidity. Here is a crazy thought. If you believe there is a God and you believe you have found His Word...maybe you should actually read it and find out what it says instead of what someone told you it says.
So yeah...when the pope dies I am sure millions will mourn. I will to, but for a different reason. I fear that someday the catholics will get another person with the charisma and capabilites that some of the former popes had and the world will take another step backwards towards murder in the name of God, suppression of study of Scripture, and domination by an evil empire...evil in deed as well as name.