SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
In yet another laser beam incident, crew on a flight carrying Pope Francis reported a laser beam sighting to air traffic control in Mexico City:
Alitalia flight AZ4000 was travelling from Havana with the Pope on board, and was preparing to land when the laser was spotted.
No crew or passengers were injured by the beam, the airline added.[...] "This is yet another incident that shows how serious and widespread the issue of laser attacks on aircraft is," said Jim McAuslan, General Secretary of the British Airline Pilots Association (Balpa), in response to the case involving the Pope's plane. "Modern lasers have the power to blind and the potential to dazzle and distract pilots during critical phases of flight," he told the BBC. "Shining a laser at an aircraft is illegal and dangerous and puts all those on board and on the ground nearby at completely unnecessary risk."
Aboard the plane headed from Rome to Mexico, the Pope said that contraception may be the "lesser evil" for women at risk of catching the Zika virus. In comments made on the ground, he chastised Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump for his plan to build a wall on the Mexican border.
In another story from the UK laser crime beat, Englishman Philip Houghton has been sentenced to 20 weeks in prison for admitting to shining a laser pen at a Humberside Police helicopter that was investigating a shooting.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 19 2016, @01:18PM
I'm pretty sure they checked that he is, indeed, Catholic. Note that for deciding whether he is Catholic, the only thing that has to be checked is whether he was baptised by a Catholic priest. If that is the case, according to the rules of the church he is Catholic, no matter what he thinks, says, believes or does. I think even if you get excommunicated, you don't stop being Catholic, you just lose the right to take part in the rituals.
(Score: 2) by CortoMaltese on Friday February 19 2016, @02:57PM
You are indeed correct, "excommunication does not expel the person from the Catholic Church, but simply forbids the excommunicated person from engaging in certain activities..."
If you want the opinion of a Catholic, in words of G.K Chesterton “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried.”,
I'm of the opinion that Francis isn't any more to the left than JPII, only that American media always focused on the anti-communist side of JPII and ignored well everything else:
"The goods of this world are originally meant for all. The right to private property is valid and necessary, but it does not nullify the value of this principle. Private property, in fact, is under a ‘social mortgage’, which means that it has an intrinsically social function, based upon and justified precisely by the principle of the universal destination of goods."
"We are therefore faced with a serious problem of unequal distribution of the means of subsistence originally meant for everybody, and thus also an unequal distribution of the benefits deriving from them"
Even pope Leo XIII Wrote in 1891:
"The richer class have many ways of shielding themselves, and stand less in need of help from the State; whereas the mass of the poor have no resources of their own to fall back upon, and must chiefly depend upon the assistance of the State. And it is for this reason that wage-earners, since they mostly belong in the mass of the needy, should be specially cared for and protected by the government"