So a cardinal made some intemperate remarks about the UK and is now not going to visit due to “health problems”.
One of the pope’s top advisers on his visit to England and Scotland has dropped out of his entourage following the publication of an interview in which he said that arriving in Britain “you sometimes think you’ve landed in a third world country”.
Benedict XVI’s spokesman, Father Federico Lombardi, told the Guardian, however, that Cardinal Walter Kasper had withdrawn “for health reasons”.
He said the 77-year-old prelate’s absence from the papal party, which lands in Edinburgh tomorrow at the start of a four-day visit, “had absolutely nothing to do with anything else”.
Yeah, yeah, yeah and the sun rises in the west. Frankly catholicism has been irrelevant in the UK since the reformation. Okay, so there was a bit of seesawing during the Tudor period when rival believers burned each other at the stake over who had the best line to their imaginary friend, but since then, Protestantism has been the prevailing religion and the Pope pretty much a daft old bloke in Rome that no one takes any notice of. So what?
I have no problem with him coming to the UK to see his flock. It is of no consequence and neither is he. It’s a sideshow. I’d have more respect if they stuck to their guns instead of pussy-footing about. They don’t like atheism, so fine – we knew this already and if they think that parts of the UK are like the third world so what? They may well have a point. I suspect all major countries have similar places that could be described thus. So, say what you mean and have the cojones to stick to it. Weasely retractions, half apologies and pulling out due to “health problems” just make you look even more silly than you already do.
Kasper, the Vatican’s leading expert on relations with the Church of England, made his remark after noting that Britain was a “secular, pluralistic” country.
And this is a bad thing?
Whats wrong with some old vicar speaking the truth
Bloggers are the last ones to complain about someone else
having an opinion
We either want freedom to speak or not.
Same with the 50 signatures of Britains low life whimpering
about the Papal Visit, if thats the opposition Benedict is
on a winner.
Let this gang of mutterers sort out our vanishing pubs before waffling on and on about condoms
for Africa
Lorenzo Borgia
Er, doesn’t it rise in the west? Or was that my sidelamp I left on?
James, maybe the barn is on fire…
I’m more than happy for them to speak out. What pisses me off is all the artificial taking of offence and weasely apologies. The guy meant what he said when he said it. He and the Church should have the balls to stick with it.
Maybe he was actually ill. You can criticise the Catholic Church for many things, but not surely for failing to stick to their guns.
Ummm, wasn’t the Reformation, you know, during the Tudor period, which was the whole point of the see-sawing.
Anyway, I got the impression that he has no problem with the UK supposedly being ‘secular pluralistic’. It was the fact that it claims to be this unless you transgress the accepted progressive narrative (AGW, welfare, ‘minority’ ‘rights’ etc) and are than castigated as the devil incarnate. Hence the comparison to a 3rd world country.
What is truly ironic is that in many ways contemporary Britain is more controlling of its people’s thoughts and deeds than the church ever was of its flock, even at the height of the Inquisition.
One of the pope’s top advisers on his visit to England and Scotland has dropped out of his entourage following the publication of an interview in which he said that arriving in Britain “you sometimes think you’ve landed in a third world country”.
Funny, when I tried to get a taxi at Heathrow airport yesterday evening I thought much the same thing.
Indeed so and there were still echoes of it up until the glorious revolution.
I think you have a point about the controlling nature of our current society and its lack of tolerance when it comes to dissenting voices. Although, as yet, the righteous haven’t burned any heretics.
TT – this has all the echoes of a convenient climbdown to me. I think they’re going soft.
TN – yeah, I know what you mean. Despite my antipathy towards the church, I have to agree with some of the comments made.