The Pope in Australia

You gotta love the Pope. And not just because God tells you to. What
other 81 year old man would lecture the world on climate change while
flying in his personal Boeing 777 at 40,000 feet?

He told Catholics it was their spiritual duty to save the planet. He did this while speaking to 500,000 young people that he had asked to fly half way round the world. But Popes are like that. Hypocrisy is not mentioned in the 10 Commandants or the seven deadly sins for that matter. So it's ok for them to talk about poverty while living in a palace in Rome. Or to ban woman from spiritual positions within the
church and then make all the priests and bishops wear dresses.

But despite his hypocrisy, I kind of like this Pope. And I don't say
that about many ex members of Hitler Youth. I first took an interest in
him when he managed to offend the Muslim world by suggesting that
Islam was a war hungry religion. I didn't agree with everything he
said,but I had to admire the man for having the nerve to say it.
And he threw in a few historical facts which always tickles me.

I've followed his musings since. His style tends to mimic this blog in
that he seems to write about whatever comes into his head, from the
environment to the impact of sport on modern life. He tends to use
bigger words however and he's a little bit too fond of using Latin for
my liking.

He does get condemned for being too conservative of course. But
then again, he is the Pope. So what do people expect? I've never
understood this criticism. It's a bit like attacking Santa
because he's too fond of Christmas, the Chairman of IBM for being
too capitalist or Fidel Castro for being too socialist. Does anyone
really expect the Pope to don a Palestinian scarf and whistle and
parade through the streets demanding abortion rights or contraception?

I'm as liberal as the guru in a hippy campsite, but even I would
want the Pope to be conservative. We need some permanency in a
world of change. A reference point in these conscience addling times.

Catholicism is an inspirational religion after all. We are born sinners
and can reach redemption through improving on that position. We are
not supposed to be perfect and while we suffer from Catholic guilt
in other respects, being a sinner doesn't keep us awake at night.
The Pope sets down a moral roadmap but we don't have to follow it.

That's why even devout Catholics can use contraception or get
divorced.Christ died for our sins after all, so if we didn't sin,
the poor man would have died for nothing.

And I wonder why the poor old Pope always gets stick for his
moral positions, whereas no other religious leader gets the same
hard time? Nobody ever asks the Dali Lama why all Buddhist monks
are men. I've never seen the Chief Rabbi asked to justify cutting
off bits of baby's willies, or the Archbishop of Canterbury asked
to explain the inclusion of Anglican Bishops in the upper house
of the British parliament.

But the media, most of whom one presumes are non-Catholics,
delight in penning opinion pieces on everything they think the Pope
should say or do, from the Venezuelan political situation to female
circumcision in Africa. Perhaps they think the Pope still has some
influence in these matters. That he just has to click his fingers
and the Kings and Princes of the world will fall into line, as
though we still lived in pre-Lutheran times.

The truth is that the Pope has very little influence, even amongst
devout Catholics. Back when Ireland had 95% mass attendance, we
still had enough sins to justify pitching up at confession every
fortnight to pour out our indiscretions to an unshaven, whiskey
breathing paedophile on the other side of the grill.

B16, as the latest Holy Emperor of Rome is called among the yoof,
is in Australia this week for World Youth Day. Youth is a bit of
a misnomer as at 81, the Pope won't even be the oldest there.
And it's running for a week which makes one wonder where the word
"day" comes from.

Needless to say this has brought out the rent a mob protest groups,
including one called "No to the Pope" which plans to hand out
condoms outside the papal events. If anything demonstrates the
media's exaggeration of the Pope's influence in the world, it is
this issue. The protestors believe that B16's position on condoms
is helping spread Aids in Africa because he's encouraging people
to engage in unprotected sex with strangers. When the truth is that
the only Africans who would listen to the Pope's message are the
sort of people who don't engage in sex with strangers in the first
place.

The church's position should be to promote morality, even if this
flies in the face of reality. It's similar to the position the
Health Service is in regarding healthy lifestyle. It's clearly
better if people don't smoke. But reality tells us that people will.
In this case, it's better if people smoke low tar cigarettes,
but you don't see the Health Minister handing these out to party
goers.

If you don’t agree with the Church’s message, the easiest thing to do
of course is to ignore it. I took this route years ago when I stopped
going to mass and found myself engaging in many acts that the
mother church would consider to be sinful (but the less said about
that the better). So perhaps I’m following the Pope’s lead in
wallowing in hypocrisy. Maybe I’ll get to chat to him about it
when he’s next in Australia.

In the meantime I’ll search for God in all the small places. I looked for
him today in the closing moments of the Carlton v Sydney game.
Unfortunately, it’s clear that the devil controls football matches.