The Pope is about to grace the UK with his presence, and so there’s been a lot of anti-Catholic news (propaganda?) hitting the headlines recently. Unfortunately, lots of it has focused on less important issues such as paedophile priests and some bloke’s* injudicious remarks about his being likely to forget where he was when he landed at Heathrow because there are so many brown people in Britain, he might accidentally think he’s landed in a Third World country. (Oh yes, he also claimed there was an aggressive streak of neo-atheism raging rampant in our green and pleasant land, but that seems correct – check out Richard Dawkins.) The bloke in question has unleashed no end of good old British outrage, which we’re all clearly enjoying (a bit like a hand ball in the World Cup), and paedophile priests are clearly a bad thing. But I can’t help thinking that since the percentage of paedophile priests is, one presumes, pretty small, and the remarks about brown people at Heathrow are not so different from what passes for critical analysis in certain sectors of the tabloid industry (Daily Mail hacks, I’m looking at you), you’d think there were more important topics on which to take issue with the Catholic Church. I mean, for example, its stance on the use of contraception, its opinions about abortion, and its views on the ordination of women. In case you missed the memo at previous meetings, there is a massive AIDS crisis going on right now. People are dying horrible deaths, leaving behind families, many of whom have little or no sources of financial support. Moreover, whilst there are cases of AIDS in the developed world (for ‘developed’ read ‘rich and taking steps to retain their riches at the expense of the poor’), the vast majority of cases are in the ‘developing’ world (for ‘developing’, read ‘poor and getting f&%$ed over by the rich nations’). Those folks can’t afford the drugs that would make living with AIDS possible. An excellent tool to help stem the spread of AIDS is the simple condom. But guess who thinks that’s the work of the devil? You guessed it, our mates in the Vatican. Abortion? Don’t get me flipping started. In fact, take the following words ‘reproductive rights’, ‘importance of allowing women control over their own fertility’, ‘treating women as people, capable of making their own decisions, and with control over their own bodily boundaries’ and just insert your own rant HERE. As for the ordination of women, well, I believe the Pope has pronounced that it’s a sin in the same category as paedophilia. Because, you know, there’s something intrinsically evil about those people with vaginas, and they shouldn’t be allowed entry to the old boys’ club. You gals want a role model? Here’s one: a lady who was both a virgin AND a mother. Having trouble living up to our expectations? Try harder.
Anyway, I wouldn’t want you folks to think to we’re out of touch with wider news themes, so here’s a lovely Catholic apologist conference you might be interested in attending. (Alternative title: some old white men spout crap about something again.)**
*Hilariously, said bloke is one of the Pope’s advisors responsible for building bridges and easing communication with other faiths – or so I’m informed by the BBC.
**No, I don’t know whether this is a wind-up. If it is, it’s one of the best pieces of trolling I’ve ever seen.
did you see this?: http://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-trouble-with-the-pope
i thought it was a good run-down of papa-benny-related issues. i mean, he didn’t give nearly the sort of presentation he could have given to, eg, the aids crisis. but, as a summary of ‘the trouble w the pope’, not bad.
(did he really say brown people?? i mean, was he really talking about brown people?? i thought he meant dirty and crowded. and of course, it is!)
CAn we give out a ranting prize? Please? Because I’d really love to give one to you. ;)
More seriously, I’m totally with you on nearly all of your rant. But I think the paedophile priests thing is more significant than you do– because of the rather large-scale conspiracies to cover it up, and because of what those conspiracies reveal about the priorities of the Catholic Church.
The Beeb reports ‘Vatican sources’ as saying the Cardinal’s ‘”Third World” comment referred to the UK’s multicultural society’. I take this to mean brown people.
Ranting prize accepted, thank you kindly. *Blushes* I should probably clarify: paedophilia is obviously v serious, and the Catholic Church’s methods of dealing with paedophile priests is a legitimate thing to criticise. But I think the news focus on this issue is tied up with the news obsession with paedophilia, which is pretty much always couched in terms of evil stranger preying on our children, even though the last stats I saw on this issue suggested children are more often abused by members of their own families. (Brass Eye, anyone?) And the focus on this one issue seems to have been at the expense of the other very important issues I mention. Also, I’m not entirely convinced the news coverage of the paedophilia issue has been completely fair. The message I got from Panorama the other night – which was not the message they were trying to convey – is that the Church is trying to sort out its track record of dealing with these things, and has a lot of ridiculous clunky religious legislation to deal with. Whilst these things are certainly worthy of criticism, the story is a bit different from ongoing conspiracy and cover-up, which is what all the news items I’ve seen on this have been reporting.
wow! i have to say, i feel very bad for catholics these days. (and i’m not one to champion religion.) they’re in an institution that’s governed totally nondemocratically, and their leadership, it seems, is totally out of step w how many of them understand their faith. if i were catholic, i’d leave the church at this point, but then i’m reactionary like that…
I broadly agree with what you’re saying in this piece. I’m planning to attend the London protest on Saturday, even. But I have to take issue with the ageist language you used, despite your jokey attempt to pre-emptively deflect criticism. It really detracts from your argument, coming across as an ad-hom rather than a legitimate attack vector. So what if the cardinal in question is old? It doesn’t make his views any more or less repulsive. What he said is by itself bad enough without having to resort to the use of words like “doddery” in response.
Hmm, have to say I expected more thoughtful language from this site.
Jo – you’re quite right. I apologise for not considering this more carefully. The post has now been changed.
The good news about the Pope’s visit is that apparently, the following concern does not apply to women,
“In his sermon delivered later in the day, the British Broadcasting Company reports he said a ‘dictatorship of relativism’ threatens ‘to obscure the unchanging truth about man’s nature, his destiny and his ultimate good,’ with some seeking ‘to exclude religious belief from public discourse, to privatize it or even to paint it as a threat to equality and liberty.’” (from USA Today- here: http://content.usatoday.com/communities/Religion/post/2010/09/pope-benedict-sexual-abuse-britain/1)
Thanks, Monkey – maybe see you on Saturday :)
Lol about Old White Men Spouting Crap, Monkey. It is definitely an artful piece of trolling. If you read the bios of the–ahem– “scientists”, you’ll see that the name of the movement is Apologetics, a spoof on L Ron Hubbard.
The author/s is/are BRILLIANT! I studied some of these weird cults in anthro. The rhetoric is perfectly mimicked in such a hilarious way. I’m almost wondering if the author is a former member of some weird group and a present Dawkins convert. I’m going to check out some of those sites to see if the atheists feel like some comic relief for the day.
I think they’re serious… if you go to the parent website (http://www.catholicintl.com/), there’s some pretty disturbing stuff that seems like it’s not a joke, e.g. Masonic Jewish Plot to overthrow Catholicism (also suggests that Ratzinger is a Jewish plant determined to make Catholics look bad) and there’s this from the radio piece on the evils of feminist catholic women/lesbians- “The astute observation by Donna Steichen, author of Ungodly Rage – The Hidden Face of Catholic Feminism, that ‘…among contemporary assailants of the Church, the female of the species is more spiteful, irrational, unscrupulous and destructive than the male,’ is borne out in this final installment in CFN on radical feminist/lesbian religious in AmChurch today. … ” And I know of a local Catholic group where I am, who call them selves apologists- and not in a spoof way.
I’m pretty sure it is serious.
I don’t think he just said there was a lot of aggressive atheism going around, he blamed atheists for the Holocaust. I think that’s utter nonsense, and extremely offensive–especially to non-believing Jews who are descendants of Holocaust victims.
Holy shit covered dipstick, Batman! They call THEMSELVES Apologists?!? Well let me apologize for laughing. I didn’t notice the antisemitism. Nasty.
Love how they reinvent history to prove their argument. The majority religious view among antisemites in Nazi Germany and in the region for the previous thousand years+ was Catholicism.
(Go ahead and enlighten me on the breakdown of Lutherans, Calvinists, etc. if you’d like. I’m just saying that the MAJORITY were Catholics. Yet another lesson that was well remembered because of the accompanying migraines and nausea.)
If you want to get technical, it was a broken deal with Stalin that actually allowed his communist atheists to STOP the Nazis from continuing their part in the Holocaust. Had it just been the allies against the axis powers INCLUDING Stalin, the war may have continued for another decade. That’s not to defend later Soviet practices toward the very same groups that the Nazis tried to annhialate. But they at least put a quicker end to the war, and to the camps.
OOps. Typo. That’s annihilate.
Agree that that weird group is sincere (I hesitate to say “serious”), not a hoax. As for their self-reference as apologists, only recently, I think, did “apologist” come to be perceived in some circles as carrying the negative connotation of a defender of something that is by rights indefensible, rather than just someone who argues in defense of something (as with Socrates’ apology). Apologetics, of course, is not a spoof on “Dianetics”, but a discipline of theology and philosophy of religion.
Moving on, the part of the papal address (which I assume Jean K was referring to) mentioning Nazism is this:
“Even in our own lifetime, we can recall how Britain and her leaders stood against a Nazi tyranny that wished to eradicate God from society and denied our common humanity to many, especially the Jews, who were thought unfit to live. I also recall the regime’s attitude to Christian pastors and religious who spoke the truth in love, opposed the Nazis and paid for that opposition with their lives. As we reflect on the sobering lessons of the atheist extremism of the twentieth century, let us never forget how the exclusion of God, religion and virtue from public life leads ultimately to a truncated vision of man and of society and thus to a reductive vision of the person and his destiny.”
Yeah, yeah, papal address, destiny, polarization, good guys, bad guys. Better to die like one of us than live without our god. Same shit different dipstick.
That’s not to minimize the contribution of Brits that gave their lives to defend us against Nazi tyranny, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, secular or whatever. A whole factory filled with my Gran’s coworkers were among them. I’m just saying that a deed is good because it’s good. Leave the squabbling gods out of it.
No Allen, I thought so too (easy mistake to make) but it only appears that way because the whole universe is actually revolving around the earth. And they know this because they have a video of it from heaven.
To be fair, the official Catholic stance is that Galileo was right. But clearly a few hardliners didn’t get that memo.