What the pope should have said

All right, so Papa Ratzi is having to be more of a diplomat since taking the seat of Peter. But I still wish he could have responded like this.

ROME – In a televised statement this morning, Pope Benedict XVI lashed out at critics of his earlier comments on Muslims, referring to said critics as a "pack of crybaby snake-charmers" and recommending they perform various humanly impossible feats of flexibility and colonic accommodation.

The rest is obscene, and I won't quote it here. And it's seriously disrespectful of both Benedict and the Church in general. But boy howdy, was it cathartic just reading it!

I don't have anything against Muslims in general. I have my faith, and they have theirs. I think mine is right and theirs wrong, but that's what believing in a religion is all about. But where do they get off demanding that Benedict – and the rest of Christendom – speak only flowers and candy about Islam, while in the Muslim world, there are daily warnings in rather graphic terms that they intend to erase us from the face of the earth? You want to share the world in a civilized manner, talk like it. But don't hold us to a standard you don't think you should have to meet.

Miter tip to It Comes in Pints?.