PONTIFICATIONS

The former Hitler Youth conscript, Ratzinger, has given further life to the notion of papal bull. Announcing his intention to impose on the British taxpayer a bill of some £20m by deigning to visit these shores, the Pope simultaneously tore up the usual protocols observed by imminently visiting heads of state and set about the British government’s sovereign authority. His specific target is the equality legislation presently passing through parliament which, claims Ben XVI, would “impose unjust limitations on the freedom of religious communities to act in accordance with their beliefs … [and] … violates the natural law upon which the equality of all human beings is grounded and by which it is guaranteed”.

What Joe Ratzo means is that Catholics want to be able to continue to impose unjust limitations on the freedom of lay people (specifically gay people) to seek gainful employment. The notion is that the British legislation would be liable to overrule, say, a parish priest not wishing to hire the best (only?) candidate for a church cleaning job because that applicant happened to be gay. One can perfectly well understand that no cleric would be comfortable with such a cleaner who is in a position, perhaps during choir practice, correctly to interpret the look in the cleric’s eye every time the choristers process. But his discomfort would not – and should not – give him the right to deny the cleaner the job.


Ratzo tries not to catch the eye of a member of the notorious Swiss Guard ...


... and then wonders if he's been found out

One is bound to ask what is this “natural law” Ratzo evokes that, he seems to think, absolves him of endorsing what, in his account, this natural law achieves, that is to “ground” and “guarantee” human equality. Clearly Ratzo doesn’t want equality enshrined in civil law because then British Catholics would have to do more than pay lip service to it. The natural law business is a mere smokescreen.

Westminster’s still shiny new Cardinal, Vincent Nichols, would have to be a serial killer crossed with a cheat on Who Wants to be a Millionaire? to be worse news than his predecessor Cormac Murphy-O’Connor. But Vinnie too showed himself to be no novice at Vatican doublespeak. After the massed British cardinals had been addressed by Pope Joe-Benedict, he stepped up to support the latest expression of the public, formal homophobia: “We do not support the notion of discrimination. But you have to distinguish between people”. So is that “yes, we do discriminate” or “no, we don’t discriminate”, Vin? It’s make-up-your-mind time.


Archbishop Vinnie looks for guidance (as well he might)

One of the main attractions of espousing supernatural delusion is the centuries-old tradition by which the delusional claim that they are permitted to say or do anything they might wish, however brutal, outlandish, fantastical or plainly untrue, because they can always find some justification in some more or less incomprehensible ancient text. Thus Muslim fundamentalists justify sending children as young as seven to kill themselves and random others with bombs strapped to their bodies and – there was a case of this in Turkey in the last few days – burying alive a teenaged girl because she “dishonoured” her family by talking to (talking to) boys.


Benedict models a jaunty item for the cross-dressing man ...

Ratzo’s Weltanschauung is no less cruel, perverse or disordered than this. If every member of the Catholic communion who had ever mentally or physically abused a child were cast into jail, there would be no cell place left for parliamentarians found guilty of false accounting and not enough priests, monks, nuns and lay teachers to keep Catholicism in the business of indoctrination. Pope Joe knows this perfectly well but it would be far too damaging publicly to concede it. Those who were abused are too dispersed – and many of them too traumatised or simply grateful to put it behind them – for a sufficiently concerted effort to be mounted to make the church pay (in any sense) for its representatives’ sins.


... and a natty example of the 'Village People' range of millinery

Meanwhile, the way you do, His Hollowness attempted to pre-empt his critics in the same address to British cardinals: “it is important to recognise dissent for what it is and not to mistake it for a mature contribution to a balanced and wide-ranging debate”. No pontiff in my lifetime – not even that patently good man John XXIII – has shown the remotest readiness to partake in any kind of debate. Rather, they all deliver pronouncements – or, as they call them, edicts – which are certainly not designed to have comment threads attached. What’s more, we could argue (although it wouldn’t do anybody any good) about how far the term “wide-ranging” could be used to describe such edicts. Shutting down debate altogether is far more to pontiffs’ taste and that is just what Ratzinger is attempting to do here.


Cartoon in The Times twitting Ratzinger's policy on contraception

But of course it is he, the wholly egregious father, who is doing the dissenting. The equality legislation is the proposition. The only people opposing it are the supernaturally deluded who, as always, want to control everyone else and to discriminate against (sorry, Vin-boy, distinguish between) people. This dissent is certainly, as Ratzinger suggests, immature. Supernatural delusion is indeed infantile. If I may purloin a (frequently misquoted) line from that fascinating Catholic writer Hilaire Belloc, the believer’s creed might be “And always keep a hold of Nurse/For fear of finding something worse” [Cautionary Tales], wherein “Nurse” is the deity that the deluded imagine commands their fealty. You can hardly expect such under-developed minds to feel confident about coping with a world in which their intellectual superiors are prepared to treat them as their equals.


"Are you a gay dog, Bernard, or are you perhaps a saint?"