Some of the bigger atheist Facebook pages, including Addicting Info and Antitheists, have been posting the following photo on Facebook today:
As you can see above, the quotation states: “Women are naturally unfit for political office. Both the natural order and facts show us that the political being par excellence is male; the Scripture shows us that woman has always been the helper of man who thinks and does, but nothing more“.
Not surprisingly, this quotation is spreading like wildfire on twitter as well. The problem is of course that the pope has never said such a thing. In an ideal world people would stop for a second a think before sharing such a ridiculous quotation, but only a small minority spent the few minutes necessary to find an answer to the question raised by James Cridland on Google+: “Does anyone have an actual source for this quote? …seems repeated as fact, but without any source older than 24 hours“.
The quotation has been debunked several places online already, but Fr. Angel Sotelo does the best job of explaining the background here. As you’ll see, the quotation is completely made up and does not become any more true even if spread millions of times on twitter and Facebook.
It’s fascinating how easily social media can be manipulated for character assassination. You would think that these atheist pages, which presumably put great emphasis on facts and reason, would double check such a dubious quotation before sharing it with thousands of followers.