When Betty met Joe
The Telegraph is also worked up about the pope and his impending visit and the rudeness and badness of people who think he’s a bad man. That’s not as surprising from the Telegraph as it is from the New Statesman though. But it’s still sick-making.
…the Queen will be playing the formal role of host to a fellow head of state, who is also the spiritual leader of a billion people.
Yes, yes, it’s all very glam. Some people get a sexual thrill from that phrase, “spiritual leader” – and when it’s of a billion people, oh well then – the pope must be very important and thrilling indeed. Never mind that the whole thing is a vast fraud and a system of mental imprisonment – let’s just admire their pretty clothes and their big shiny cars.
Old-fashioned anti-Popery is not the force that it was in 1982, because the community of anti-papal fundamentalists has shrunk, along with the Christian community in general.
The community of anti-papal fundamentalists! Who knew there was such a community – I certainly didn’t. But everybody is a community in the UK. The lucky ones have spiritual leaders, and the others are fundamentalists about the people who have spiritual leaders. Or something.
Both the BBC and the Government set great store by “celebrating other cultures”. Benedict XVI’s arrival is an opportunity to celebrate a culture that planted our Christian roots; for it was a Pope who sent St Augustine to Britain.
Well yes, they do, as they also set great store by “celebrating communities.” It’s one of their more gag-worthy qualities, especially when the cultures and communities in question are centrally concerned with bending the knee to a non-existent deity. Anyway – you have your orders – be nice to the pope.
Disobey them.
Anti-papal fundamentalists? What faction (sorry, “community”) are they even talking about? Anyone know?
“Anti-papal fundamentalists” is a pretty good description of the Reverend Ian Paisley’s church in Northern Ireland.
The Pope made a big announcement criticising the UK for equality legislation (because he thinks equality is bad) and now they’re surprised that people are pissed with him?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/feb/01/pope-condemns-british-equality-bill
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/feb/02/equality-laws-unjust-pope-uk
Still, apparently there are a lot of Scottish Catholics pulling out of the proceedings. These articles might claim to be focussed on non-Catholic critics, but the real embarrassment will be when the Pope doesn’t receive much in the way of Catholic support.
http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-staggers/2010/08/pope-visit-cost-mass-britain
(Oooh that last article explains where the reference to 1982 came from)
Well in Lewes, East Sussex, they burn an effigy of the Pope every 5th November instead of Guy Fawkes.
Does that make Lewes an anti-papal fundamentalist community ?
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Alan Henness and Heresiarch, Ophelia Benson. Ophelia Benson said: When Betty met Joe http://dlvr.it/3WXnp […]
” let’s just admire their pretty clothes”
And let’s not forget too the rich hands behind the papal scenes who have been exclusively creating them, since time immemorial. While people in the 3rd world, who the church preaches to, are living in extreme poverty. It’s disgusting.
http://secretlifeofshoes.blogspot.com/2005/04/gammarelli-popes-taylor.html
Disapproval of institutionalised child rape seems an odd thing to describe as fundamentalist. *shrugs*
Well, sede vacantism has been falling by the wayside. Vatican II was a long time ago and people tend to, yanno, die.
I like Archbishop of Canterbury’s employment of… is greeted with hostility and manufactured scandals, then British Christianity as a whole will be weakened…in relation to the pope’s impending British visit The sentence quite reminds me of the gross hostility with which survivors of institutional and clerical sex abuse received at the hands of the church when they revealed sex scandals and manufacture of rosary beads and perpetual child slave labour in institutions in Ireland. Indeed, it is such a terrible pity that British Christianity should be weakened by manufactured scandals when the church weakened forever the internal and external bodies and minds of defenseless children. And no their stories were not manufactured. See: Laffoy-Ryan, Murphy and Ferns Report for verification.
But, as the Archbishop of Canterbury recognises, if Benedict XVI is greeted with hostility and manufactured scandals, then British Christianity as a whole will be weakened. And, in the eyes of hundreds of millions of Catholics around the world, our national reputation will be damaged. The Pope’s visit is more than a great event for Catholics: it is a test of Britain’s professionalism, hospitality, tolerance and maturity.
@Marie-Thérèse yes, a test of how we tolerate child rape. I know what result I would hope for from a test like that.
Typical spiel of a church leader. Worrying more about the reputation of Christianity within Britain and what the world will think, when all the dogs on the Rome streets and almost every street in the world, knows about the clergy roaming unholy hands. The reputation of the Church is already in tatters. Perhaps the Archbishop is deflecting from the real ‘Anglican issue’. Let’s face it, Anne Widdecombe and other prominent converts, who knows, Pope Blair, in all likelihood, will be given a platform to celebrate canonisation of fellow convert, Newman. He’s probably seething that the fisherman will be coming to trawl in his territory.
Anyway, just because somebody was baptized Catholic and hasn’t bothered to (or doesn’t know how to) take their name off the rolls doesn’t mean they consider the Pope their spiritual leader. Which is why I advocate getting officially excommunicated if you were baptized Catholic, otherwise you’ll just add to the church’s many supposed followers.
Here’s how to do it: http://www.angelfire.com/pa/greywlf/catholic.excom.html
Well, I returned to The church some years ago, having decided that of all religions, it was perhpas the least bad.
People no longer understand anything about Christianity, and so that same incomprehension greets just about everything the pope ever utters.
Let me tell you something about the current ( oft describes as “nazi” ) pope.
His family was virulently anti-nazi. Benedict had a mentally retarded cousin of whom his entire extended family was very fond. In the late 30s he was taken away by the and euthansied in order to purify the aryan “race”. Benedict never got over that, and, in fact, it may have been that tragedy that pushed him towards the prisethood.
Benedict had an older sister named Maria who had been a nun and who had spent decades working in Rome. She became ill with cancer and suffered for several years. Benedict was her primary caregiver, visiting her every day and looking after her every need. He would travel to her on foot, eschewing the limo and the chauffeur The Church normally provides for high-ranking Cardinals.
In sub-saharan Africa ( outside of South Africa) The Catholic Church provides most of what little healthcare there is available. The last hsopital in Somalia was run and entirely financed by The Church. It was blown up a couple of years ago by an islamist milicia, and a coupel of the nurse-nuns shot. Somalia now has no effective healthcare at all.
Pedophilia. The Church recognises that pedophilia is a very grave sin, which helps explain why it is constantly apologising for those clergy who have engaged in the practice. Hundreds of millions have been paid out to the victims in an effort to right the wrong.
Gay rights groups often cite pedophilia in their ( endless) campaigns agains The Church and “Pope Betty”. The UK gay rights group “Outrage” is on the record as wanting to lower the age of sexual consent to 14 for boys. The average age of the victims of Church pedophiles is about 14.
Contrast that with those Afgan videos showing six year-old Afgan boys dressed up as girls and forced to dance for an audience of bearded middle-aged males. Afterwards they are passed around and raped…with the full and enthusiastic benediction ( and even participation) of the local clerics.
This blog is devoted to fighting fashionble nonsense.
One of the most fashionable and nonsensical things people do these days is bash the Catholic Church.
Let’s make it fashionable to read Magdi Allam, instead.
You know, people critcise and condemn an institution whose main vocation consists of articulating moral absolutes for…well…articulating moral absolutes!
It’s tantamount to condemning and criticising a chemist…for talking about chemistry.
Now, I’ve no interest in chemistry, and have no wish to set foot inside a chemistry lab. It should also be noted that chemistry has done some very bad things…like inventing mustard gas and napalm…but that said, I’d never rant and rave and brandish fashionable nonsense were a chemist to discuss his field of expertise.
I would sit. I would listen. I would attempt to understand.
Shifter, you refer to the pope being very kind to his family. I wouldn’t doubt that in the slightest. Nevertheless, it still did not stop Georg Ratzinger, brother of Pope Benedict XVI, who led a renowned German Roman Catholic boys’ choir for 30 years from allegedly beating children in the past.
Neither did kindness to ones own family ever stop the head honcho at Goldenbridge industrial school from mercilessly flogging children every day of their entire incarceration lives. She even made children smile at her family when they arrived at the institution to visit her. It also did not stop the same sister of Mercy who seemingly devoted her entire life to Christianity, from telling two Goldenbridge inmates (for nigh on fifty years) who their biological family were, despite being close friends of two of the latter, who so happened to be in the same Sister of Mercy order. The head-honcho, by the way, also attended wedding of one of the inmates in question when she was a teenager. She could be kind to her own family, but also have the audacity to deny lost lonely teenagers the right to their family. (Not to mention here, I might add, countless other children who passed through Goldenbridge institution). She did not go to her wedding out of kindness, she went, presumably out of guilt. You talk about commenter’s’ bashing the church and I talk to you about the wolves in sheep clothing. The pope may lift up children when he touches down on British soil, as he is wont to when visits other countries. However, 165,000 industrial school children passed through the hands of the religious in Ireland and I can hazard a guess that only a minuscule amount of them were ever shown affection in their whole childhood, let alone being lifted by the religious for one and all to admire. The ethos of the religious orders was not to get attached to children. What a laugh that ethos really was when we now know of the brutal, tortuous molestation that occurred to children in these gulags. So the moral of the story is that not all religious, or religious affiliated folk, or those who go on about their loving families, who are kindness itself to their own kith and kind are necessarily kind to motherless, fatherless folk. I have personally experienced that fact over and over again.
It is one thing being the primary care-giver of ones own family member, but another one when it comes to providing health-care in Sub-Saharan desert.
Continuation of last comment @ Shifter #12
I was listening to an RTE radio 1 programme some while ago, whereby a nun was explaining how she had to mark the wrists of tiny tots with X’s & 0’s, on a mission field she was sent to by her religious order. You can surely guess why she was doing such an action. Take into mind that the religious first and foremost would have been trained not to get attached to children. The life of these wee bairns were basically in her hands. My instantaneous reaction upon listening to her was to think, what God-given right had this nun from Ireland,, who I considered to be overall meddling in the lives of people from a different continent for chief proselytization purposes. making such serious judgements on children’s lives. The absurdity of it beggared belief! What right has the church got to interfere in the cultural, medical lives of other nations? None, whatsoever, in my book. It is very tragic that another religious organisation killed the medical missionaries. It is nothing new that religion causes mayhem and murder all the time. The government of Somalia is responsible for the health of its citizens, not religious organisations who are mostly there to bring souls into the Roman Catholic fold, so that the pope can visit their country and hold up babies to be admired. It is all about control and power.
Another head of state? Give me a break.!! The treaty between Mussolini and the Pope doesn’t make the Vatican an independent state. It merely gives the pope authority within the Vatican and over some specific locales outside it, but within the city of Rome. It’s not a state and the agreement is not binding on anyone other that the signatories – both of whom are dead. I await the day when an Italian government repudiates (I was tempted to write “refudiates”) this agreement. Until then,we can continue to be glad that the UN agrees that the vatican is not a state and continues to give them mere “observer” status at the UN.
I had the hand-rubbing pleasure in the eighties, when the other pope – the dead one – visited Coventry, of returning a certificate I’d received from the Birmingham Archdiocese. I was a journo on the local radio station, Mercia Sound, and we’d all had a hand in reporting the damned visit, much of the reporting being about the preparations and the inconvenience to locals who had to have passes to get into their own streets because of the security surrounding the old dear. All of us on Mercia Sound got this little certificate thing sent to our homes (I didn’t give my company permission to give my home address to the bloody Catholic Church), thanking us for our work, and I photocopied mine, kept the copy and sent the certificate back with an accompanying letter saying I’d been doing only what I was being paid to to and told to do, and didn’t agree with the visit and thought it a great inconvenience. I heard nothing back.
Should anyone click on my name in my last comment . . . well, don’t. It takes you to soft porn. I must have typed a typo at some point in the past, and the “website” box autocompleted in this instance to give a “p” instead of an “o” (they’re side by side on the keyboard), and the damned thing is “adult content”, which my li’l ol’ blog ain’t. Sorry about that!
@ Shifter #12
Whatever about paedophile victims from other countries, I know of many well known Irish cases like Andrew Madden, Colm O’Gorman and victims of Father Brendan Smyth who were absolutely dragged through the mud before they finally received compensation. AB received an absolutely pathetic sum, not even worth talking about.
Regarding industrial school children, who systematically suffered abuse of every of conceivable kind over long durations, over 1.5 billion will be paid out by the Irish government. An indemnity deal (dirty) was struck up between the government and the religious and the latter got away almost scot-free. 128 million, which was the agreed amount, does not even amount to legal fees of which the government has to pay, even that of the religious.
http://www.independent.ie/national-news/church-abuse-fund-wont-even-cover-8364140m-bill-for-legal-fees-1748916.html
Hundreds of millions of that money has also sadly not gone to survivors, but, instead, cottage industries, which sprung up in the aftermath of RIRB. The average value of awards to date is €62,860, the largest award being €300,500.
http://www.rirb.ie/updates_article.asp?NID=112
http://www.childabusecommission.ie/rpt/pdfs/
Oops, I am learning basic maths and should have said approximately 1.05 million
It is as grievous a sin as Women Priests. That’s how grave it is indeed.
No problem Andy; I fixed the link.
Yes…
No, it isn’t. A chemist knows something; a chemist knows about chemistry. The catholic church has no equivalent expertise. Many of its employees may have a lot of experiential knowledge of people and their needs, but that knowledge is filtered through the infatuated belief system of the church, so it’s often warped and distorted by that.
In any case, there is nothing automatically valuable about Someone talking about Something. There is no automatic obligation to be deferential and silent just because Someone is talking about Something.
Why should I make it fashionable to read Magdi Allam? I’d rather make it fashionable to read Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
They are the wrong moral absolutes. Moral absolutes are often right. The basic probleme with moral absolutes is that they make people uncomfortable at the thought of all the sacrifice living up to them would involve.
Why should I make it fashionable to read Magdi Allam? I’d rather make it fashionable to read Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
Read Ayaan Hirsi Ali if you like. Her statments about Christianity are actually quite positive, and so you’d probably find them shocking.
I am a fan of the political theorist Eric Voghelin. As Christianity recedes more and more from public life, and as we use up the last of its accumulated social capital, its unifying forces will disnitegrate and the social farbric ( as though this isn’t already happening) will unravel.
There has never been a single culture on the planet that wasn’t anchored in some form of transcendance…not even the old Soviet Union…and when that transcendance ceases to act upon and order a soceity, that society ceases to exist. Everything fractures and then degenerates into conflict and confusion.
That incoherence, that void, then pushes weaker individuals to gravitate towards authoritarian leaders and ideologies/religions that provide quick, easy answers to everything.
When you lose your religion, you lose your identity, your traditions, your customs; you lose the threads of your own historical narrative, and you cease, thus, to exist.
The stakes go way, WAY beyond Pope “Betty”.
Right, and that’s why life in Sweden and Denmark is so horrible while life in Saudi Arabia and Somalia and Pakistan is sheer bliss.
What’s this pope Betty crap? Betty is the queen, not the pope; the pope is Joe.
Good old Eric V. I haven’t seen his name mentioned in years.
It’s Voegelin, by the way, not Voghelin.
There’s also this:
No; the basic problem with them is the impossibility of appeal. That’s no good. The catholic church thinks it’s a moral absolute that homosexuality is sinful. That’s no good.
Right, and that’s why life in Sweden and Denmark is so horrible while life in Saudi Arabia and Somalia and Pakistan is sheer bliss
I never claimed that ALL religions improve the quality of life; I merely wanted to point out that all societies are anchored and legitimised by transcendance. The probleme is one of maintaining those forms of transcendance that provide the greatest possible good and the greatest guarantees of freedom.
Yes life in Saudi Arabia and Somalia is far more horrible ( particularly for women) than life in Sweden and Denmark, however I’m confident the latter two countries will soon catch up to the former .
Pat Condell explains it all for you. Shame on him for taking so long to npotice this. Apologies for the spelling. “Pope Betty” is a term used by the gay rights group “Outrage”.
http://steynian.wordpress.com/2010/08/08/steynian-419nd/
But you said
I don’t think you know that. I also don’t think it’s true. I also don’t think it’s true that all societies are anchored and legitimised by transcendance. Those are just assertions.
You think Sweden and Denmark will soon catch up to Somalia and Saudi Arabia? God, I hope not.