Pope B.

Bill Bailey says (twitter)

It's Popelunging Week!
Hurl yourself at the Pontiff! Bother the Holy See!

I agree though we shouldn't have to pay for tis and the bank snafus too.

I too couldn't care less about religion, but don't blame the Pope

It was Gordon - well at least I was prime minister once - Brown who had the audacity to invite him with the status of a state visit. He is not head of state, he is only a religious leader. Do we afford "state visit" status to other religious leaders ??

I am mildly amused by the blind adoration of the leaders of the catholic church by some of the people, but believe & regret they have some part to play in allowing the continual refusal of the church to modernise
I have nothing against the Pope, he is a well meaning but completely detached from life academic who would I believe prefer to be a librarian rather than pope.
But - BIG BUT - the head in the sand management over child abuse is intolerable to all humanity
The guilty should have been handed over to the police, if you or I were to protect a criminal or hide evidence we would be prosecuted.
Religion cannot be above the common law of the land.

The Monarch is the head of state, therfore it was she who invited him, as the head of another state ie the Vatican.

No, but then look at other heads of state. I was hoping it would be funded through the tat they are touting - haven't seen the special edition Pez dispenser that utters 'Would you like a sweetie?' when the Pope's head is pushed back.

Cheers,
OW

The Daily Mash take on it. If I say what I really think I'll end up in the cooler.

I was mistaken when I took the popemobile for an Ice cream van. I only realised my mistake when I read 'wouldn't mind that child' on the back

As Fullahead correctly says our Queen (head of state) invited another Head of state (Vatican) for a State visit. So far so good.

However most of his visit has been open air Masses and other Religious activities (not state vist.)

So on this basis I would prefer not to have my taxes support this visit.

Typical religion, everyone has to pay for their brain wash tosh.

quote:

Originally posted by TomK:
The Daily Mash take on it. If I say what I really think I'll end up in the cooler.

Me, too. Have to bite my tongue. But that link captures my views pretty well. In other news, the Australian taxpayer is stump up $1m to fly Oprah's audience to Australia. How cool is that?

cant be doing with any of it, religion is the cause of more pain than anything else. end.

I tend towards a different view from the majority of the 10 people who have posted here to date. (12 in 4 days.) I am not a Roman Catholic.

"There are so many things to say about this remarkably successful papal visit that I can’t fit them into one blog post. But if I had to produce an immediate response it would be delight that Pope Benedict is no longer a stranger to the British people. They know him now; their curiosity has been aroused by his powerful message and their hearts warmed by his perfect manners and grandfatherly little grin. David Cameron has just made this clear in his speech at the airport: we have heard you, he told the Pontiff, adding that “you have challenged the whole country to sit up and think”.

"Consider the failure of the “Protest the Pope” stunt yesterday. On a sunny afternoon, in a city of 10 million people, a crowd of fewer than 10,000 protestors followed the anti-Catholic bandwagon. Richard Dawkins, Johann Hari, Stephen Fry et al may regard that as a good result, but if (at most) one Londoner in a thousand takes to the streets to register disapproval at the use of their taxes to host the Pope, then I’d say the secularists have misjudged the public mood, wouldn’t you? And look at what a thin demographic sliver of the population they represented: mostly white, middle-class, metropolitan. (Needless to say, none of them could be bothered to make the trek up to Birmingham: the Pope may be the atheists’ Antichrist, but you mustn’t let your principles get in the way of a lazy Sunday morning cappuccino.)

"Compare the protestors to the Catholics in Hyde Park: old Polish ladies, tweedy gents from the shires, African hospital cleaners, self-consciously cool teenagers, Filipino checkout assistants and, as one of my friends put it, “some rather tarty-looking traveller women who’d obviously had a glass or two”. They don’t call it the Catholic Church for nothing: if not a universal cross-section of humanity, it was a damn sight closer to it than the humanist smugfest.

"I’ve just watched Pope Benedict leaving Oscott College and being photographed with the police officers who guarded him. None of them made an attempt to arrest him. What incredible prats Dawkins, Hitchens and Roberston made of themselves with that plan, which was based on false reporting and wilful misunderstanding of the Pope’s involvement in child abuse cases. The British people certainly aren’t in a mood to let the Church off the hook on that subject, and nor should they; but they do now understand that Benedict XVI feels deep shame at those dreadful crimes, and from now on they will be less receptive to the lie that he covered them up.

"As for the ridiculous Nazi slur, today they heard a German Pope congratulate us for fighting the evil ideology of Hitler. What more does he have to say? Nothing, I suspect: the papal visit has killed the myth of the “Nazi Pope” outside a tiny circle of professional Pope-baiters who from now on may find themselves marginalised even in secular liberal circles.

"Remarkably, the success of Benedict’s visit has had an effect even among the ranks of his ideological opponents. Lots of liberals are quietly distancing themselves from the Romophobes (and I wouldn’t be surprised if Stephen Fry slightly regrets wading in). The truth is that after months of increasingly shrill rhetoric from Dawkins, Hitchens and Hari, the anti-Pope movement delivered nothing except a medium-sized bog standard demo."

Damian Thompson
Daily Telegraph News Blogs.

Not sure what you think this proves. It's obviously very biased and reads like it was written as the leader for the Catholic Observer.

I don't believe it's a question of "Proving" anything, is it? It's a response to all the anti-religious ranting that seems to be the smart stance to take.

Personally, I was quite surprised by the strength of support the Pope's visit generated, by such a diverse range of folk.

Have you read any of this man's other writings? Let's just say he's not exactly a neutral. It's like quoting an article by Goebbels as a neutral defence of Hitler.

Firstly I am not and never have been anti-religious, though I am anti-Religion.

Religious ideas and thought derived from religious experience have empowered man with wonderful art, music and many other forms of emotional expression.

On the other hand Religion has cursed mankind with fundamentalism, intolerance and hatred.

It is said that Religion is like Crime, at its worst when its organised.

My point wasn't about religion, nor was it anti-pope (irrespective of what I feel) I just object to cynically naming it a State visit when in truth it was to perform religious and pastoral care just to make sure they could get him here on the cheap at our expense.

quote:

David Cameron has just made this clear in his speech at the airport: we have heard you, he told the Pontiff, adding that “you have challenged the whole country to sit up and think”.

I'm sorry to be crude, but has he fuck.

Typical bandwagon jumping from the Bullingdon boy, and typical religious propaganda from Thompson.

What it 'proves' is that the chatteraty secularists are just that. All mouth and very few trousers.

Funny that a robust comment against a secularist view is simply dismissed as 'typical religious propaganda from Thompson', whereas presumably the spoutings of Tatchell, Dawkins and the like are accepted as infallible truth?

Across the Country, over 1/2 million (independently verified figures) turned out to attend the Papal events, many travelling many miles at anti-social hours. Whereas the best 'Protest the Pope' could manage is allegedly 20,000 (own, unverified figure) in the Nation's capital, and a mere 20 or less at each of the other events around the Country.

So the Nation's population was really motivated to protest against this 'foul b*stard'. Right... Even Tatchell, who is not exactly averse to the cheap publicity stunt or two, couldn't be a*sed to even try his so-called 'citizen's arrest'. Pathetic.

or

54 million people ignore visit of the Pope -

assuming that there is 54.5 million people in the country

quote:

Originally posted by JWM:
What it 'proves' is that the chatteraty secularists are just that. All mouth and very few trousers.

Funny that a robust comment against a secularist view is simply dismissed as 'typical religious propaganda from Thompson', whereas presumably the spoutings of Tatchell, Dawkins and the like are accepted as infallible truth?

Across the Country, over 1/2 million (independently verified figures) turned out to attend the Papal events, many travelling many miles at anti-social hours. Whereas the best 'Protest the Pope' could manage is allegedly 20,000 (own, unverified figure) in the Nation's capital, and a mere 20 or less at each of the other events around the Country.

So the Nation's population was really motivated to protest against this 'foul b*stard'. Right... Even Tatchell, who is not exactly averse to the cheap publicity stunt or two, couldn't be a*sed to even try his so-called 'citizen's arrest'. Pathetic.

Pathetic? Oh dear.

It's simply because this rather laughable hangover from the middle ages has no relevance to the massive majority.

You are right though; the whole country can't be bothered with it. In the same sense as we wouldn't be concerned with the alleged appearance among us of soothsayers, tarot readers, druids, estate agents, little green men, flying fairies, glittery be-winged unicorns and other cringe inducing nonsense.

There has been little 'protest the pope' fir the same reason as there is little protest the hubbardites or any other of the deluded sects and cults. They are an anachronism which most people find are best ignored and left to preach to themselves.

20,000 protesters?, my cousin and indeed her husband both Met.officers were on the phone to me last night.they were both on duty and said the whole thing went very well.She reconed the protesters numbered about 2000 in total.

The Popemobile: Because nothing says "I have faith in God" like 4 inches of bulletproof glass.

quote:

Originally posted by JWM:
'... Whereas presumably the spoutings of Tatchell, Dawkins and the like are accepted as infallible truth?

Do you have any evidence for this assertion?

As far as I know, the only person to claim infallibility is the Pope himself.

A nice quotation from Arthur C Clarke:

Science can destroy religion by ignoring it as well as by disproving its tenets. No one ever demonstrated, so far as I am aware, the non-existence of Zeus or Thor — but they have few followers now.

Disclaimer: I don't necessarily agree with the underlying sentiment, but I admire the rhetorical skill with which Clarke makes his point.

The crowd in Glasgow was 25 percent of the turnout in 1982. ONE QUARTER. Hardly a ringing endorsement. This from a city with one of the highest catholic populations in the UK (second to Liverpool as far as I know but happy to be corrected).
It's been put down in some quarters to the ridiculous travel restrictions imposed on the entire population of Central Scotland. I rather suspect it's because the majority of catholics are as sick and tired as everybody else of hearing tales of children being buggered and it being covered up by this vile organisation, led by this vile old man, with the perpetrators being moved from one parish to another without letting on so the obscenity could continue.

Condoms are useless against AIDS anybody?