Bend the knee, sinners

Aug 7th, 2010 | By
Category: Notes and Comment Blog

So now we have the New Statesman rhapsodizing about Newt Gingrich converting to Catholicism and presenting a film that rhapsodizes about the previous pope. Yes really. Then it (in the person of Carla Powell) rhapsodizes about the current pope’s upcoming visit, and his meeting with the queen. Gingrich, two reactionary popes, a monarch…The people’s flag is deepest red, all right.

 And yet, on recent visits to London, I have been shocked by the negative criticism of the Pope and the Catholic Church. Why are so many of the capital’s liberal elite upset? Why is Pope Benedict, an 83-year-old retired university professor, causing such anxiety?

What a fucking stupid question. Because he is the reactionary head of a reactionary institution that tells millions of people what to do, and tells them wrong. Because he is a man at the top of a pyramid of men in an organization that officially bans women from all the decision-making jobs but doesn’t hesitate to tell them what to do.

The child abuse scandals central to all this have been a stain on the Catholic Church. But it is important to remember that this is a problem the Pope has been working to resolve for at least a decade. Grave as it is, the scandal should not be allowed to obscure his core message.

Which is that secularism is evil, that condoms cause Aids, that the ordination of women is The Worst, and that when priests rape children it is up to the church to protect…the priests. Well don’t worry, the “scandal” of child rape and the church’s protection of child rape doesn’t seem to be obscuring that message too much.

The tabloids will always offer apparently easy solutions and those hostile to the robust moral teaching of my faith will jump on any bandwagon.

Bandwagon shmandwagon. Yes I am hostile to the “robust moral teaching” of your “faith.” Why aren’t you? It sucks. The “robust moral teaching” of your faith is that homosexuality is a sin, women must never have the freedom to use their own bodies for their own purposes instead of other people’s, birth control is evil, men must be in charge of everything, and a bunch of priests have access to a special spooky holy morality that cannot be adapted to fit modern sensibilities. I despise the “robust moral teaching” of your faith and your church.

It hurts me that those advocating the arrest of His Holiness are increasingly in danger of sounding like the Chinese government, which seeks to use its brute economic influence to silence the Dalai Lama whenever he travels abroad. So much for British freedom of speech.

Nonsense. It’s nothing to do with silencing, and it’s nothing to do with freedom of speech. Ratzinger concealed crimes from law enforcement; that’s a crime; that’s why he should be arrested.

What is this falangist drivel doing in the New Statesman? I know they’re crazy there, but this? A Catholic rant about liberal elites?

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