How Britain proved his point
MELANIEPHILLIPS
Pope Benedict XVI is one of the most profound thinkers of our time, who has a deep concern for the survival of western civilisation in the face of attack both from within and without. When he arrived in Britain today, he spoke of the country’s
aggressive secularism
which no longer valued or even tolerated the nation’s traditional values or cultural expressions. In his speech to the Queen, he spoke of Britain’s historic
respect for truth and justice, for mercy and charity
which derived from Christian principles. By contrast, atheism showed how
the exclusion of God, religion and virtue from public life leads ultimately to a truncated vision of man and of society and thus to a ‘reductive vision of the person and his destiny’.
The reaction to his visit has been dominated by aggressive secularists -- who subscribe to the brutally reductive vision of man as no more than a random assembly of atoms -- expressing gross intolerance and hatred of the Pope and the religion he heads.
Before he arrived, one of his key advisers, Cardinal Kaspar, told a German magazine that
someone landing at Heathrow airport might think they were in a ‘Third World country’ as there was such a variety of faces there.
Fair comment; millions of Britons, including many immigrants, would agree as they think and say this all the time.
He also said that
Britain was facing an ‘aggressive new atheism’ and ‘Christians were at a disadvantage’.
Absolutely correct. The result of speaking these inconvenient truths was a storm of disapproval, with Cardinal Kaspar suddenly finding himself as a result too indisposed through ‘gout’ to accompany the Pontiff after all.
I’d say the British reaction gives the Vatican game, set and match. If the British had set out to illuminate in flashing neon lights the truth of the Papal analysis of Britain’s morally illiterate, frighteningly illiberal and degraded moral and intellectual state, they could not have done a better job.
How Britain proved his point
Pope Benedict XVI is one of the most profound thinkers of our time, who has a deep concern for the survival of western civilisation in the face of attack both from within and without. When he arrived in Britain today, he spoke of the country’s
aggressive secularism
which no longer valued or even tolerated the nation’s traditional values or cultural expressions. In his speech to the Queen, he spoke of Britain’s historic
respect for truth and justice, for mercy and charity
which derived from Christian principles. By contrast, atheism showed how
the exclusion of God, religion and virtue from public life leads ultimately to a truncated vision of man and of society and thus to a ‘reductive vision of the person and his destiny’.
The reaction to his visit has been dominated by aggressive secularists -- who subscribe to the brutally reductive vision of man as no more than a random assembly of atoms -- expressing gross intolerance and hatred of the Pope and the religion he heads.
Before he arrived, one of his key advisers, Cardinal Kaspar, told a German magazine that
someone landing at Heathrow airport might think they were in a ‘Third World country’ as there was such a variety of faces there.
Fair comment; millions of Britons, including many immigrants, would agree as they think and say this all the time.
He also said that
Britain was facing an ‘aggressive new atheism’ and ‘Christians were at a disadvantage’.
Absolutely correct. The result of speaking these inconvenient truths was a storm of disapproval, with Cardinal Kaspar suddenly finding himself as a result too indisposed through ‘gout’ to accompany the Pontiff after all.
I’d say the British reaction gives the Vatican game, set and match. If the British had set out to illuminate in flashing neon lights the truth of the Papal analysis of Britain’s morally illiterate, frighteningly illiberal and degraded moral and intellectual state, they could not have done a better job.
Thursday, 16th September 2010
The cross-dressers of the Coalition
10:21pm
Amusing to see the LibDem leader Nick Cleggpromoting cuts to welfare -- to the undoubted horror of his party rank-and-file whose opposition he is trying to neutralise before their party conference -- warning that
benefits should not be there ‘to compensate the poor for their predicament’.
Golly. At this rate he’s going to out-do the flint-hearted Tories who, as we all know, would leave their own grandmothers to starve in the gutter. What’s really amusing is that, as Clegg morphs before our wondering gaze from knitted organic sandal-wearer into heartless Tory, David Cameron sloughs off his own Conservative chrysalis to emerge a fully-fledged bleeding-heart liberal butterfly. For a Conservative Prime Minister to boast of his achievement in protecting the overseas aid budget while taking an axe to Britain’s defences is astonishing – and the kind of sentimental and self-regarding national self-abuse we used to associate with the LibDems.
We thought New Labour’s strategy of ‘triangulation’ was discombobulating enough – but when it comes to political cross-dressing, the Coalition is providing the drag queens of British politics.
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