I'm an atheist and I find much of the church's teachings to be offensive and wrong. Nevertheless, unlike some strains of American fundamentalist christianity, the catholic church has taken a progressive and commendable stance on a number of issues, from the death penalty, to economic justice, the environment, and war.
For instance, the pope has even spoken out against the cruelty of factory farms:
http://www.goveg.com/pdfs/PopeAdEaster.pdfI'm sure most people reading this board know all of this, but I sometimes find it strange to see the catholic church so readily equated with the wrongs of American cultural conservatism. The church has its own set of peculiar evils and problems.
When people I often disagree with come out with something good, I want to commend them, rather than point out where we still disagree in an obnoxious way.
It's perplexing that the spiritual head of Buddhism, a religion that has been around far, far longer than Catholicism, would get such a low amount of attention from the media compared to the Pope. Why am I not surprised.
He's only the head of Tibetan Buddhism.
He's only the head of Roman Catholicism.
My point wasn't that the pope is more important than the the dalai lama. Just that he's got the numbers on his side. There are around a billion catholics, and maybe 350-400 million buddhists of all stripes, with Tibetan buddhists some small fraction of that. I don't really think it's media bias that explains the different levels of coverage.
