In response to the question from Michael Jeans on whether the leaders back the Pope’s visit to Britain?
DAVID CAMERON
"I do think it’s welcome that the Pope is coming to Britain and if were your Prime Minister I would want to support that visit and make sure I could do everything in my power to make it a success. There are millions of people in our country who would welcome that, who share the Pope’s Catholic faith and I think we should try and make a success of it but do I agree with everything the Pope says? No. I don’t agree with him about contraception, I don’t agree with him about homosexuality and I think the Catholic church has got some very, very serious work to do to unearth and come to terms with some of the appalling things that have happened and they need to do that but I do think that we should respect people of faith, I think faith is important in our country. I think faith based organisations, whether they are Christian or Jewish or Muslim or Hindu do amazing things in our country, whether it is working in our prisons or providing good schools or actually helping some of those vulnerable people in our country, so a country where faith is welcome, yes. A good visit from the Pope, yes, but does that mean we have to agree with everything he says? No."
NICK CLEGG
"My wife – I’m not a man of faith – my wife, Miriam, is Catholic, my children are being brought up in her faith so I have a little bit of an insight into the immense feelings of anguish in the Catholic community here and elsewhere and I think many Catholics themselves feel really extremely torn apart by what’s happened and I think they do want to see the Catholic church express greater openness and repentance. You can’t keep a lid on sin and of course you need to move with the times. I do welcome the Pope’s visit but I hope by the time he does visit there is a greater recognition that there has been terrible, terrible suffering, there has been abusive relationships which have left immeasurable scars on individual people’s lives and we need a process of openness and then healing. You can’t undo the tragedies of the past but you can be open about them so people can start to move on."
GORDON BROWN
"I’ve met some of the people who have rightly complained about the abuse that they were subject to when young and it never leaves them, it’s something that is with them always and no matter what you can try to do to help, there is always this problem that they have to face up to every day that they were abused, cruelly abused, by people in whom they placed their faith and trust. So the church has got to deal with these problems and it has got to make sure there is an open and clean confession about what has happened and that we help those people that have been put into difficulty by this abuse. But you know, I welcome the Pope’s visit to Britain and I want him to come to Britain for two reasons. One is the Catholic church is a great part of our society and we should recognise it as such and I hope every British citizen wants to see this visit by the Pope take place and secondly, we must break down the barriers of religion that exist in our world. The faiths must come together and recognise that they have common values and common interests. We all believe that we should be good neighbours to each other, I’m from the Presbyterian religion but I support the visit. I not only support it, I want religious faiths to work more closely together in society."
Now that is what I call electioneering 2010...
Prime Minister Gordon Brown was the man who invited the Holy Father so he can't much backtrack now, even if he wanted to, which he doesn't, and he certainly doesn't want to alienate the Catholic voters on whom he and his cabinet have been urinating throughout his tenure before an election. Fair enough. Gordon Brown is a Presbyterian, which is a Christian denomination. It is notable, therefore that he didn't describe himself as a Christian, but, then given both the unpopularity of Christianity in the UK and his scandalous voting record on all issues relating to the defense of the most vulnerable in society, especially the unborn and human embryoes sought by the scientific community for harvesting and injecting with the DNA of cows, that is hardly surprising.
Nick Clegg? Well, he may be a massive atheist and probably reads The God Delusion for some wise Dawkinsian maxim to mull over before bedtime, but, still, he is married to a Catholic, as he told us, having reassured the nation that he isn't like those Catholic mentalists. His being married to a Catholic (and we all know how 'liberal' some Catholics can be) won't stop him and Dr Evan "Call me Dr Evil" Harris, from doing all they can to liberalise abortion law and send abortions through the roof on the assumption of power. I expect that, secretly, he genuinely dislikes or even hates the Pope and all for which he stands.
David Cameron managed to do what David Cameron does best, winking to atheists, fondling Church haters and Protestants, molesting Catholics, groping Hindus, whispering sweet nothings to Sikhs, courting Jews, snogging Muslims at the back of the cinema and eyeing up just about anyone with a capacity to vote for him, all in one swift, terribly insincere, pathetically transparant and vacuous statement. Still, that's David Cameron for you. David Cameron probably does not hate the Pope, but he probably does think, much like Tony Blair, that the Pope needs to wear more Armani around Altar and start dishing out contraceptives to nuns who should become Priests.
Still, it is heartening to see that the Catholic Church is worth a question at election time during another tedious if mildly entertaining TV debate, even if it is a question drenched in anti-Catholicism. All round, the election debate was an amusing affair. It was particularly amusing when, I think, at some point Cameron started laying into the highly industious Polish community when discussing immigration. Nick Clegg started ranting about "criminal gangs" and the Gordon Brown was left muttering something about our borders. Sounds like he must be a keen gardener as well.
The Church and the Pope are still important, even at election time. The UK still hates Catholicism, that much we know. The Church is now viewed by a Catholicism-despising public with even more suspicion than before, seen, as it is, as the World's largest concentration of paedophiles, the 'Light of the World' in as much as it attracts pederasts like moths to a bulb. But, it is still worthy of the attention of our dear elected party leaders, vying for the attention and the votes of demonically possessed atheists as much as they are courting the not insignificant Catholic and other major religions vote.
The scandal of abortion, presided over and voted for by all three party leaders should really be the issue over which the major party leaders lock horns, so to speak. They won't do that, of course, because the unborn child does not have a vote, or a voice, or a say. We can safely assume that by the time the next leader of the United Kingdom is elected, the elderly will also come under increasing attack in the friendly guise of euthanasia and assisted suicide, primarily because these men believe in very little. This country has been sleepwalking into a state-sponsored, Third Reich-inspired, industrial killing machine for quite some time now.
When he arrives, the Pope won't defend the woeful record of this country's efforts to defend human rights, life and dignity. He doesn't rely on anyone's vote or opinion, save the Opinion that will judge him. He is truly an independent voice and I, for one, am sure that when he comes to this country, he will bear witness to that Voice to which all three candidates refuse to listen. For when the blood of so many innocent lives has been spilled in one country, how could anyone remain silent? Newspapers are debating this morning who won this debate. When it comes to the most important issue facing the nation, the protection of human life itself, these three candidates are losers.
Therefore the Pope wins. Hands down.
3 comments:
Claggy did mention sin as if it was something real, you've got to give him credit for that.
Surely the question was against the Pope (i.e. its tone was similar to someone asking whether a radical Islamic preacher should be permitted entry to the UK). It hardly shows Catholicism was 'worth a question'. I also felt that the three leaders responses could not have been more derisory toward the Church if they had planned it in advance: they spoke as if Catholics are some intriguing anachronism or a peculiar minority that were not worth making any gestures towards (their responses made it perfectly clear that the 'tolerance' toward 'other faiths' was part of a general approach to all unwanted minorities, and not specifically targeted at the catholic vote).
In this light, I doubt that advising Catholics to vote one way or another really bothers them, if it did, they would change their rhetoric.
You can sense almost a pride in pronouncing that they are not Catholic or religious, or don't have to listen. Wouldn't it be great if it was 'cool' to be obedient to God and His Church, to be a source of joyful proclamation, because He just might in fact, love us and know what is best for us?
Now that's the kind of person I'd vote for!
Post a Comment