In the ongoing, childish game of "my religion can beat up your religion," Pope Benedict XVI has reasserted the primacy of the Roman Catholic Church, approving a document that says all other Christian communities are either defective or not true churches and Catholicism provides the only true path to salvation.
The statement brought swift criticism from Protestant leaders. "The Pope is an old poopy-pants," said a spokesman for the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, a fellowship of 75 million Protestants in more than 100 countries.
"It makes us question the seriousness with which the Roman Catholic Church takes its dialogs with the reformed family and other families of the church," the group said in a letter.
Pope Benedict XVI also eliminated restrictions on the use of Pig Latin in the conduct of the mass, weddings, funerals, and other liturgical proceedings of the Catholic Church, a move cheered by Catholic traditionalists who had worried, after decades of English Mass, that their congregations had begun understanding what is going on in their churches.
Known as the "igpay atinlay" rite, the Pig Latin mass was never officially banned, but following the mid-1960s reforms of the Second Vatican Council, it was effectively replaced by a liturgy recited in "street vernacular" and accompanied by hip hop music.
The Pope repeated church teaching that says the Catholic Church "has the fullness of the means of salvation." He also maintained that "Christ established only one church here on earth and it is ours."
He summed it all up by adding, "Nanny-nanny-boo-boo."
