Religious stupidity: Gerhard Wagner mad religious loon.

Someone pointed my attention to this religious madness reported in The Graunid

Pope Benedict XVI has made another controversial appointment by elevating to the position of bishop an Austrian pastor who said Hurricane Katrina was God's punishment for homosexuality in New Orleans .

The Vatican yesterday announced that Gerhard Wagner has been appointed as auxiliary bishop in Linz, Austria.

Wagner has served as the pastor of a church in the Austrian town of Windischgarsten since 1988, and received a doctorate in theology from the Gregorian Pontifical University in Rome.

In 2005, the 54-year-old was quoted in a parish newsletter as saying he was convinced that the death and destruction caused by Katrina that year was "divine retribution" for New Orleans' permissive sexual attitudes and tolerance of homosexuality.

Kath.Net, a Catholic news agency in Austria, said the newsletter quoted Wagner as saying that Katrina had destroyed not only nightclubs and brothels in New Orleans but also abortion clinics.

So its quite clear he sees God, or rather his view of God as a rather Old Testament type God that brings forth plagues, locusts and even hurricanes on those who he assumes have earned the wrath of God.

Not only in his view does God not like gays but dislikes them and those who tolerate them so much that God has to smash up a whole city. I can but assume that his God also dislikes lesbians but as Gerhard keeps quiet on them who knows? Maybe he has a stash of their erotic videos and so figures they don't deserve the wrath of God upon them? Maybe God planned on leaving the lesbians alone but laying a storm down on the Gays.

It could also be argued that Gerhard is wrong, maybe his God has a dislike of Jazz music, hell seems as good a reason as any for a vengeance fueled God to send a storm to New Orleans.

Maybe God had a bit of a problem with the urban unemployed of which there were quite a lot in New Orleans?

It could be he was just a plain ol' redneck God who figured that the black folks needed some wrath of God on their ass.

On the other hand he could just be another religious loon who reflects his mad views into the magical sky fairy that he follows. Strange how he claims to have a hot line to the big man on the clouds and able to speak directly for God's reasons for this attack on New Orleans.

So would Gerhard Wagner class the people who had their homes, businesses and who lost relations as just collateral damage?

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