Sorry to bang on about it

I know some of the recent entries have contained little other than criticism of the theological tide washing over us at the moment, one the media are all too happy to surf upon, with wall-to-wall coverage on BBC News, a channel run by a publicly-funded organisation let's not forget.

But yet again I've been stirred to write on something the Pope said in last night's vigil, which was preparation for today's beatification ceremony of Cardinal Newman in Birmingham. The following is a direct, word for word transcription of what he said;

"At the end of his life, Newman would describe his life’s work as a struggle against the growing tendency to view religion as a purely private and subjective matter, a question of personal opinion. Here is the first lesson we can learn from his life: in our day, when an intellectual and moral relativism threatens to sap the very foundations of our society, Newman reminds us that, as men and women made in the image and likeness of God, we were created to know the truth, to find in that truth our ultimate freedom and the fulfilment of our deepest human aspirations."

I've got very serious problems with this part of his speech in particular. Firstly, the idea that intellectual relativism and moral relativism are somehow the same thing is bizarre to me. Just because I had a different education, and share different mores and cultural influences to those proclaimed by the Catholic Church, does not mean that I am incapable of establishing a firm moral code, for example, which is one of the implications I took from this passage, whether that was his intent or not. His fundamental problem with this relativism, as he describes it, seems to be that my morality will therefore likely be different from his absolutist morality, and no such freedoms are permitted within the 'truth' handed down by, and from, the Church. Surely, the 'ultimate freedom' he speaks of is only possible when I am free to make up my own mind? How can his peculiar absolutism ever, ever be freer than this matter of personal choice which he, and Cardinal Newman, even in the 19th century, found so threatening?

That's one of the Church's fundamental problems - people with the freedom to choose for themselves may reject the values and beliefs the Church works so hard to inculcate into them. Reason enough to reject the teachings in the first place, if they leave no room for doubt, no room for question, no room for even the possibility that they could be wrong. I just, frankly, didn't think the Pope would be quite so open about his Church's rejection of such (what I see as) open-mindedness.

Sorry, probably a bit dry this one! I'll get back to the matters in hand, namely Albion's excellent point at Carlisle yesterday, in due course.

Infiltrate! Infiltrate! Infiltrate!

Oh, the joys of the papal visit. "They're standing 20, 30 deep to catch a glimpse of the Pope," they tell us on the Beeb. Well, possibly most of them, but I seriously doubt the bloke with the sign reading 'The Pope is the Anti-Christ' was there for that purpose. In a move which highlights one of the many absurdities of religion, this made me laugh out loud. "My religion's the right one." "No, mine is." "No, mine - your religious leader's actually the devil. See how far up you've let him get in your heretical 'church'?"

What a job on the part of Satan that is, if he'd actually managed to sneak in and rise to the rank of Pontiff. You'd have to applaud his audacity and, given some of the homophobic, misogynist, anti-family planning messages coming out of the Vatican, the loon with the poster has got plenty of 'evidence' to back up his claim.

Thankfully, of course, there's no such entity. The ammunition which the poster-carrier sees as the machinations of the anti-Christ is of course a result of all too human failures. Blinded by faith and desperately allying with each other against what they can see is a hugely secular tide washing over this country in particular, they are modern day Cnuts, I hope. They're wasting their time. The freedoms, tolerance and understanding of ethnic minorities, other sexualities and, yes, the freedom to practise religion of any colour, are born out of this country's secular humanism. They want to be careful what they wish for - if they win their supposedly holy campaign to turn us all back to spirituality, how long would it be before the more zealous among us started burning each other at the stake?

Pontiff-icating

We keep being told that we live in straightened times and cuts are inevitable across the board in public sector expenditure. I don't think this will come as a great surprise to any of us - we've all seen or experienced job losses for ourselves lately regardless of the sector we work in.

So I was moved to quiet fury a few minutes ago when I saw on the news that the forthcoming visit of the Pope to Britain is going to cost, in addition to policing costs, between £10 million and £12 million. This is a man who, let's not forget, as the figurehead of one of the world's most widespread religions, thinks that there's no place for women in the priesthood, nor even for the discussion of the matter. Who thinks that, even if a man is infected with HIV, that the wearing of a condom during sex is a sin. And that even if a woman has been raped, if she falls pregnant she should not have the choice as to whether to carry the foetus to full term.

So we're all picking up the tab for this individual (a former member of the Hitler Youth) to come over hear and preach to the no doubt already-converted in their thousands. I'd like to know why the Catholic Church doesn't pick up the bill, if they want to listen to him. They are, after all, charging people for the so-called "Pilgrims' Passes" which allow people into the Mass in Cofton Park in Coventry. 52,000 tickets at £25 a time. If the Church can't or won't pick up the bill, then why not invite Catholics in this country to cover it? I don't see why I, and millions like me who have no truck with the man's messages, should have to cough up for this while at the same time I watch public services and charities across the country, as I've written about before, gird their loins for swingeing cuts which are doubtless coming in the forthcoming Comprehensive Spending Review.

This sense of priority is absolutely staggering to me. The Church says his visit going to be 'good value for money'. For them, no doubt. For the rest of us? I think not.