Because they are alternatives.
It is true that some people raise neither children nor pets. It is also true that some people raise both children and pets. That does not mean raising a pet is any less of an alternative to raising a child.
Will have to address the rest at a later time.
~Max
It’s only an alternative if one choice depends on the other.
I do not believe anyone is choosing not to have children because they can choose to get pets.
You’d have to be fairly deranged to think so. Which is why Max_S alone here has no difficulty thinking so.
I got the impression that the Pope thinks so.
Like I said, you’d have to be deranged.
Yup, and that’s why he’s been pitted. Because it’s really fucked up to think anyone decided not to have kids because they could get a dog instead.
I think Max had some kind of cognitive disorder. In thread after thread he goes on and on sometimes for hundreds of posts responding to dozens of people with absolute inanities that betray that he cannot actually understand ANY point of view that isn’t his own.
But he felt he had to say that.
Miss Manners said she likes reading old etiquette to see what people used to do. Because etiquette books only tell you not to do stuff that people are actually doing. For example, she has an old etiquette book that instructs you not to blow your nose in your host’s tablecloth. Modern etiquette books don’t say that, because no one does that any more.
That the pope felt it was worth saying “you can’t discharge your moral obligation to be a parent by caring for pets” means… The Pope has a really fucked up idea of what people are actually doing.
Maybe so.
Hopefully, much later.
My understanding may be limited on this subject, but relative to kids, dogs hold up pretty well in the “ick” department. At least, most children seldom roll in or eat poop, and less commonly engage in recreational vomiting. Having had numerous dogs and working in pathology* I’ve experienced enough ickiness to the point where kid contributions would hardly matter.
*it’s not called “gross pathology” for that reason, but it often fits.
Not until college, at least.
I’m going to have to vote that however much you might get annoyed by the current Pope, there’s still always the previous one to compare to:
Yeah, when you are caught with your pants down with a dirty, rotten lie (a lie to cover up your guilt and responsibility for atrocious crimes), try the “my dog ate my homework” excuse…
Life must be dramatically easier when your entire audience has permanently suspended their propensity for disbelief.
[See also: DJtRump (and, yes, there’s significant intersection of the two sets in this Venn Diagram)]
There’s more to the story, and I’m surprised it hasn’t made the international news already. The lawyers’ report about sexual abuse in the diocese of Munich was released last Thursday and sent shock waves through German society and the local Catholic Church: a pope being shown personally responsible for the cover up of sexual abuse and reinstating guilty priests in other parishes, AND being caught openly lying about it, is something many people couldn’t imagine. But it’s of course a very big story. I was not surprised, I have been hating Ratze for 40 years.
Here’s a report in English from Deutsche Welle:
It was always strange that Ratzinger decided to retire from the Popehood.
I wonder if some of this had already come to light among those near the top, at the time, and it was made apparent that he needed to get out before he brought the whole deal down.
At the time, I honestly thought that he was old, sick and tired and needed a rest from his post. I thought he was short of dying. But that was nine years ago, and in these years he wasn’t too sick to not heckle his successor and other people from the sidelines. I’m so glad that his pants are now down on his ankles for all the world to see.
Yes, good riddance, Benedict.
A common enough state of undress for the catholic clergy
That’s simply not true. Go to an ice cream parlor, and you will have a choice of flavors. You might choose vanilla, or alternatively, chocolate. Or you can choose both vanilla and chocolate. Or you can choose the fresh fruit on the counter. Or you can decide against buying anything.
It still makes sense to speak of vanilla and chocolate as “alternatives”. If they were mutually exclusive choices we would say they are mutually exclusive (or we would say you can only choose one flavor).
~Max
My taste includes both snails and oysters.