HOLY JOE

The state visit of Joseph Ratzinger to Britain has prompted in me some further reflection on religion, just as any Pope worth his salt would hope. The major theme his holiness developed while here was the danger of “aggressive secularism” overtaking these islands. I do not think it unreasonable to suggest that the deliverance of such a critical assessment strays beyond the purview of the good manners traditionally expected of a guest, but that’s the modern world for you.

One does know what he means, of course. The history of aggressive secularism in the west is baleful at best. Think of the Crusades, a succession of vicious attacks by atheists on innocent Moslems. Then there were the Marian Persecutions, perpetrated by non-believers on English Protestants. The Massacre of the Huguenots was conducted by adherents of paganism, the Thirty Years’ War was entirely devoid of religious content and. in our own time, there has been the murderous conflict between Humanists and Rationalists in Northern Ireland. And no one expects the Secular Inquisition.

It was two notably unbelieving leaders who dragged the west into two invasions of Middle East countries, Mr Bush and Mr Blair. The aggressive secularism of these two men has underlined the deplorable absence of Catholicism in the modern world. Nations such as Spain, Italy, France, Poland, Portugal, Germany, the Irish Republic, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Latin America, the South American continent and large swathes of Africa have been wholly purged of Roman influence. Secularism is indeed rampant everywhere.

Ratzinger in working togs

Should we mourn supernatural superstition? I have cogitated on the matter anew but it remains my conviction that the more rational are the people and their leaders, the better is their chance of surviving into the 22nd century. And what is the nature of the dogma to which Ratzinger cleaves? It is, it seems to me, an earnest of a mind’s desire never to grow up. It is a sort of outward show of stunted development. An adult’s delusion about a divinity is a close parallel to a child’s entertainment of the notion of Father Christmas: the main distinction is that parents promulgate the myth of the benign old gentleman in the sky who bestows gifts with a certain amount of tongue in cheek. And of course nations do not go to war over Saint Nicholas (though the only time I seriously came to blows in my childhood was in defence of my Yuletide idol’s honour).

People like Ratzinger, who make a good living out of the supernatural, are – in Catholicism, Buddhism, the Shakers, the Brahmacharya state in the Sannyasa order of Hinduism and so on – celibates. They are in effect pre-pubescent. How can they know anything about life in the world if they have never experienced a full relationship with another adult? No doubt they will counter that their spiritual calling is a greater and purer existence. It isn’t; it’s a safer, smaller and more ignorant existence. We who live in mature relationships know that better than they ever can.

St Peter's Basilica – perhaps a gnat's overstated?

Life in the Vatican is not so much pure and spiritual as opulent, cushioned and self-important, like that of some caliph ruling over a barbaric kingdom. Ratzinger the fabled intellectual may pass his days tickling the ivories in Mozart fantasias, poring over illuminated manuscript and sucking quail’s eggs from between the buttocks of choristers but he doesn’t get to engage with the real world, save by waving from his bullet-proof popemobile and swapping sermons with the heads of rival churches like Rowan Williams. I don’t imagine he takes Private Eye or even The New Yorker. Do you see him reading Philip Roth, Cormac McCarthy or Sarah Waters or indeed Günter Grass, Umberto Eco or (ha ha) Aldo Busi? Has he watched The Sopranos? Has he any idea what the world is like?

“There was a certain rich man,” writes Saint Luke in his Gospel, “which was clothed in purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day” [17:19]. But he goes to hell and the beggar who lies at his gate ascends to heaven. I have no idea whether Ratzinger is in his own right a rich man but he has the papal benefice for life and he will live in splendour all his days. The Catholic church rarely has much to say on the matter of world poverty, probably because of its own conspicuous wealth. No church has ever followed the teaching of Christ in this regard: “Go thy way, sell whatever thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven” [Mark 10:21]. It is from this chapter that the famous homily derives: “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God” [10:25].

Not your neighbourhood library but the one in the Vatican Museum

The entire trick of supernatural delusion was to construct an unverifiable promise of reward in the hereafter, what unionists and other capitalism sceptics traditionally call “jam tomorrow” (actually a phrase of Lewis Carroll’s). The promise was designed to throw a misleading crumb to the underprivileged and deprived while the clerics lived on velvet as their reward from the privileged and depraved for their part in keeping the peasants quiescent. It’s a nifty trick and it clearly still works, even with all that we know about physiognomy and psychology.

What it doesn’t do, though, is address real problems. Having put its philosophical responsibilities in the hands of immature, unworldly men, the Catholic church blithely decides that the only function of the sexual act is procreation and that therefore birth control is “sinful” because it condones unproductive lust; thereby the church condemns countless generations of dogma-fearing peasants to swarms of unwanted children that they cannot afford to feed. The church congratulates itself on swelling its numbers by encouraging its adherents to breed like rabbits.

The crown of the holy Roman expire, a nice little bauble in the Vatican collection

Ratzinger has nothing useful to say about population control, about planned parenthood, about HIV/Aids and other diseases spread by anal penetration of women by men (the customary method of avoiding conception in Africa), or indeed about climate change, globalization, international capital, food distribution, starvation, sub-prime mortgage lending or any of the other pressing concerns on which a papal edict might discomfort the church’s rich friends. And don’t get me started on child abuse. It butters no parsnips for Ratzinger to meet and listen politely to a few carefully chosen “victims” or to express his “sorrow” – the BBC’s James Robbins called it “the Pope’s most outspoken apology to date”, a strange choice of adjective. What the church must do is take responsibility for its own long history of cover-up, to hand offending clerics over to the civil authorities instead of giving them sanctuary, hiding them in obscure parishes and handing them mild penances, and to make practical and substantial reparations to all the victims in a manner that may be seen in some serious way to cost the holy see.