I thought I was the only one who thought those 2 looked alike.
Stolen from salon (feel free to skip to the bold section):
I see that Salon's three-week pope-a-palooza has reached a new crescendo with the election of the Benedict XVI. I suppose we can all look forward to another round of hand-wringing as lapsed Catholics, devout believers and everyone on Salon's payroll weighs in on this momentous event.
Since the only faction not represented in Salon's coverage is the skeptic secular humanists -- who, I am willing to bet, make up a fair percentage of your readership -- let me be presumptuous for just a moment and throw in our two bits.
Nothing is going to change. The church will continue to do what it has always done for the past two thousand years; sow fear, self-loathing and empty promises to its adherents. The Catholic Church, like most other religious organizations, is -- and always has been -- an institution built on the fundamental idea that the rabble need to be kept in line so that the elites can exploit and plunder them with as little resistance as possible. Give a peasant a work ethic, a fear of a jealous and wrathful almighty, and then add a promise of rewards in the afterlife for his servitude here on earth, and bingo: an ignorant and docile subject! If this sounds cynical and harsh, I'm sorry, but as the Bible says, "By their works ye shall know them." You only have to look at Cardinal Ratzinger's treatment of liberation theology (an oxymoron if there ever was one) to see that his election is business as usual for the church.
While Salon continues to nitpick Benedict's intentions toward his peons, I can't help but recall the words of the philosopher and revolutionary Denis Diderot: "Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest." I can't condone the means -- but the end is a noble goal.
-- Chad Bagley