Secular Britain: The 3rd World vs The Real World

First thing's first. The pope is a doddery old man. Anyone watching the footage of the shambling elderly virgin arriving in Edinburgh today could not help but see the frail human being that greeted the crowds of people lining the streets. I say crowds, I mean the 9 or 10 people that were lining the route the pope took before he got to the centre of the city... possibly they had just stopped while walking the dog ("Och, Agnes. Shall we wave at the pope?" "Aye Angus. Is nae bother"). This poor, frail, mentally spent individual could not help but inspire sympathy, were it not for the nasty nature of his theology and his church teachings as a whole.

To take but a few example of this reprehensible human being's twisted thinkings, he has spoken of condoms as "increasing the threat of HIV" in Africa and elsewhere. The evidence does not support his view, it refutes it. He has suggested that islam brought nothing new to the world, other than evil. The evidence suggests that, particularly historically the evilness can be considered as evenly shared and the social and scientific advances of medieval islam were streets ahead of medieval Europe. He has also suggested that the march of secularism can only be bad for the world. The reverse is evidential in the progress gained through the secular enlightenment and its guiding principles. This demonstrates that the pope, or Darth Ratzinger as I prefer to call him, fits into that group of people who believe things in spite of the evidence. But its more than that. Popes and cardinals have a very strange idea of what evidence is. This can lead them to see attacks on their religious teachings as tests from the sky fairy and not a reason to change their mind.

Just prior to the popes arrival, one of his underlings (or 'catholics' as they're also known) suggested that being in Britain was like being in a third world country. His evidence for this was the existence (apparently) of "aggressive atheism" here. We can forgive his miss-use of the English language (poetically, if not grammatically, as he should have said secularism) as the chap was a German cardinal and his remarks were translated. What I cannot forgive is that a man who is part of a church that so often espouses its charity works in poor nations can confuse a developed western (semi) democracy with a poor or 'unaligned' country due to the evidence of there being famous atheists here. Perhaps living in all of that opulent luxury has warped his view of reality. But the warping of reality is the very raison d'etres of the vatican.

It is this warped reality that underpins the entirety of the catholic church as a structure and what allows the pope and his cardinals not to blink when they offer up wildly contradictory or ill-informed edicts and rulings. A warped reality allows them, even with such a poor understanding of real life, to rule against condoms, abortion, and family planning in general while hiding. protecting and moving rapist priests. A warped concept of moral absolutism allows them to tell other people that they not only should not do things that come naturally to them but also that they will suffer eternally if they do it. Even the imaginary heat of hell is strong enough to warp the proverbial wood of the catholic mind.

The warped hive mind that is the catholic church anointed Ratzinger in his 70's and the warped world in which his mind matured has spewed forth in a number of ridiculous and often vile speeches and teachings he has given as pope. The madness is endemic within the cardinals and priests of the holy see (which apparently is not a box of saint's eyes, nor is it an ocean with gaps in it) and will not end when this pope's frame dodders its last. If only they lived in the real world and not in some fantasy land, they might have some understanding of what a 'third world' country actually is. Then the good that the catholic charities do wouldn't be hamstrung and overridden by the evil spewing of their overlords.