Odessa

What makes You think that this was supposed to be important to You personally?

I remember when I was in Catholic school as a kid, I caught a lot of flak from the teachers and nuns for being into sci-fi and fantasy. While they didn't forbid me from reading it, it definitely caused them some concern.

To me, this sort of a proclamation is of benefit to all the devout people out there who worry that being religious and being scientifically-minded *have to* be mutually exclusive.

If anything, perhaps it will make life a bit easier on some nice kid who gets hounded for star-gazing (omg astronomy leads to astrology leads to evil) or playing D&D (elves and goblins and other non-human lifeforms, oh my).

It's also a step in the right direction in acknowledging that if God created the whole universe then he obviously created chemisty and physics too. Which deflates the fanatics who think that science is evil and cause so many other problems that the folks on this site like to rant about. ;)

Um hello? Of course it's important to her - otherwise why post at all?

As an outsider I find it amusing/surprising that Catholics, with a long history of being self-absorbed and human-centric could possibly acknowledge that there might be *other* life.

After all, this was the same organization that locked up Galileo and then pardoned him posthumously.

I appreciate your point Lara and I hope that this makes the life of someone whose life is intertwined with Catholic dogma a bit easier.

My whole point is that this is NEWS. I'm not catholic, but the Vatican frequently tries to strongly influence, to the point of trying to dictate, policy in this country. This may be kind of a "fluff" piece, but the Catholic church is so myopic that it thinks that nearly everyone is falling over in relief that now that the mighty Vatican has told everyone they can believe in something.

The Vatican doesn't think that this is important to me personally, they think it should be important to everyone. Remember those nuns Catholic school? Their attitude came from somewhere . . .

If you're not Catholic then this should be a non-issue for you.

The Vatican will always send messages to those who believe, those who follow the creed (sheep) will attempt to listen, those who don't aren't affected. At least the pope isn't recruiting people to blow themselves up.

Throwing bombs about a peaceful, productive and active religion that you're not part of seems somewhat frivolous. I dislike many things about the Atheists, Jewish, Catholic, Islamic, Scientology, Mormons, etc. I do not feel compelled to comment about them since they do not apply to me or my beliefs either.

I think our time would be better spent surfacing and disassembling the radical sects of ANY religious base, i.e. radical islam.

Religion or the lack thereof is not a bad thing, contrary to popular belief, provided everybody on both sides use equal doses of common sense.