The Ten Nein Commandments of ex-Cardinal RatFink

the former head of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith (which was once known as The Inquisition), now known as Pope Interdict XIV.

1. Ordered the Sisters of Charity who were just about to open Australia's first medically supervised injecting room in Sydney with support from the local Cardinal, most of the press including The Catholic Weekly – they described it as a "great step forward for human dignity" - & the State Government, to cease & desist. (The Inquisition) ".. is deeply disturbed...that such an initiative is proposed by members of a religious congregation, to whom they look for good example.")

2. Ordered nursing orders & public hospitals run by the church that they should draw back from 'harm minimisation' schemes. The same line for AIDS as for drugs: abstain or die.

3. Ordered American Catholic bishops to deny John Kerry Holy Communion because Kerry was in an "objective situation of sin" for being pro-abortion & pro-euthanasia.

4. Ordered safe-sex education be stopped.

5. Ordered people with AIDS never to wear condoms, even when sleeping with their wives.

6. Declared homosexuality an 'intrinsic moral evil" & devised an argument whereby homosexuals themselves were to blame for homophobic violence. "When civil legislation is introduced to protect behaviour to which no-one has any conceivable right, neither the church nor society at large should be surprised when other distorted notions & practices gain ground, & irrational violent reactions increase."

7. Declared the church had an obligation to tell its adherents how to vote "when this is required by faith or the moral law".

8. Instructed any Catholic lawmaker that it was his (RatFink's word) to expression his (ditto) moral opposition, & publicly to vote against anti-gay discrimination laws.

9. Instructed Catholic politicians to oppose any type of recognition for same-sex couples.

10. Instructed Catholics to uphold the church's dogma of sex & family: no divorce, no contraception, no sex outside marriage, no homosexuality, no IVF, no stem cell research, no drugs.

(with heavy achnowledgments to an article by David Marr in The Sydney Morning Herald)