freeinfidel

Speaking on his US tour, the Pope has recalled some of the horrors of his own past. But only some.

While in New York, the Pope addressed a Seminary in Yonkers and said:

“My own years as a teenager were marred by a sinister regime that thought it had all the answers.”

It turns out he was talking about Nazism, a cause he briefly served, and not about Roman Catholicism, his current brand of totalitarianism. He went on to praise respect for human rights. Really? What, like the right to control one’s own fertility? Like the right to use condoms to reduce the risk of AIDS? No, thought not. So I guess he favours only some human rights.

There always was something slightly messianic about Tony Blair. Now he is calling for a greater role for faith in world affairs - as if religion were the solution rather than the problem.

According to The Guardian, Blair will be delivering a lecture at Westminster Abbey where he will say that “failure to engage with religious groups will drive believers to apathy or fundamentalism” (the Guardian’s words). Apparently, Blair believes that people are moving either towards religious extremism or a feeling that religion is a “spent force”.

That actually conforms with polls in the UK - religion is declining overall but evangelism and fundamentalism are increasing. But note the implication that both ends of the spectrum are a bad thing. And notice that there is no mention of atheism - just apathy. This is clearly a way of denigrating atheism without having the courage to do it directly. Blair is a slick spinmeister. He knows that atheists form a large section of British society. He can’t call them a problem outright. He has to resort to innuendo.

It is a common tactic for movers and shakers in the religious world to sideline secularism whenever there are debates about bringing world peace or social benefits. There is much talk about ecumenical approaches and multi-faith initiatives, but never the slightest consideration that taking faith out of the picture altogether might actually remove barriers to progress - that spending any energy and resources on considering the role of faith might be a wasteful irrelevance. Get rid of faith and you can get on with the job. But too many people in positions of power seem to think that the only solution to the world’s problems lies in medieval witchcraft.

This faith in faith says a lot about Blair. His crusading zeal in the role of Bush’s lapdog can best be explained, perhaps, by a common interest in supernatural phenomena. There seems no other reason why a pseudo-socialist prime minister would cosy up so snugly to a crypto-fascist president.

In an interview, Blair recently said that he largely kept his religion out of the public spotlight because “frankly, people do think you’re a nutter”. That’s an illuminating comment. It shows the massive gulf between the status of religion in the UK and the US. Indeed, in the UK, religious fervour is the perceived domain of the unhinged. In the US, it’s a requirement for the job of president.

But US-style religious extremism is creeping into the UK. Blair oversaw the rise of faith-based initiatives in areas where religion has no business - doing the work once done by government departments. Faith schools have become stronger. Even the anti-intellectual disease of creationism is on the rise. This may be Blair’s true legacy.

After leaving office, Blair converted to Roman Catholicism and is leading the Faith Foundation for young people (as the figurehead of New Labour, his experience of spin and indoctrination will come in handy here).

In case Blair hasn’t noticed, though, maybe we should point out that faith already plays a major role in world affairs. Ask anyone in Iran. Or Iraq. Or who lost loved-ones on 9/11. Perhaps what Blair, acting now as the acceptable face of the Inquisition, is trying to tell us is that people need the right religion. But we’ve been there before, haven’t we?

The announcement by a Vatican official of ‘new’ mortal sins is further proof of religion’s man-made origins. It also shows that, whenever the Roman Catholic church tries to be hip, it reveals itself as painfully out-of-date.

Speaking in an interview with the Vatican daily newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, Monsignor Gianfranco Girotti listed among the new breed of deadly sin a number of modern ills including illicit drugs, pollution, genetic manipulation and social injustices that make the rich richer and the poor poorer.

And he should know. Girotti heads the Apostolic Penitentiary, the Vatican department that concerns itself with sin, conscience and redemption.

Mortal sins are the type that send you straight to hell unless you obtain the most stringent form of absolution, which requires profound levels of penitence. Traditionally, there were seven, familiar to any fan of the Brad Pitt movie of the same name. But self-indulgences like gluttony, lust, sloth, greed, wrath, envy and pride were all personal matters. This original litany of bad behaviour was clearly an attempt to control personal attitudes and activities - partly so that the church could exert its control. Forcing people to conform to unnaturally strict rules is a fundamental mechanism of totalitarianism. It makes people fearful of transgressing: at the same time, it virtually ensures that they do transgress at some time, in some way, thus cranking up the fear and providing the regime with a means to punish, demonstrating its power and superiority.

In addition, these rules had a beneficial effect, that of controlling behaviour perceived as anti-social that might otherwise threaten social cohesion and stability - arguably a key role for religion before secular laws took over that function. Of course, given that most religions are still mired in the concepts and outlook of the Middle Ages (at best) it is a sheer anachronism for the church to attempt to fulfill this function today.

Clearly, the Roman Catholic church is feeling somewhat sidelined in the world. The number of its adherents is falling. It no longer has the political clout it once enjoyed. The majority of the world’s population regards it as either irrelevant or comically archaic. Something needs to be done.

Concerns about social inequality, pollution, the environment, genetic modification are part of today’s zeitgeist. The Roman Catholic church has thus far shown itself inadequate in dealing with these issues. So this is the response - a new breed of social or corporate sins, shared by many.

It is a sad sight. There were times, in past centuries, when the church led in matters of moral issues. Now we see it pedalling furiously to catch up with the rest of the world.

Quite what burden each of us carries for, say, air pollution, isn’t clear. Given that these are mortal sins, presumably we should all be desperately worried. Personally, I think I can cope. I am already concerned with many of these issues and try to do what I can - not because of the threat of eternal torment in some supernatural world, but because it is self-evidently the right thing to do. I don’t need some self-appointed moralist in a frock to wave a big stick at me.

And there’s another problem here. How come the Vatican has only just noticed?

Pollution isn’t new. Some of the worst pollution the planet has ever seen occurred back in the Industrial Revolution.

Social injustice and the gap between rich and poor is hardly an innovation either. And there were times when the Vatican was firmly on the side of kings. In fact, it has never appeared particularly averse to building up considerable wealth itself. So there’s a deep hypocrisy at work here.

Even genetic manipulation is as old as farming itself. For centuries, farmers and horticulturalists have used selective breeding to create new or more robust species of plants and animals. And much important early work in genetics was carried out by the Moravian monk Gregor Mendel, who published his results in 1865.

One has to assume that god, being omniscient, knew that these things were sins all along, even if the Vatican has come to the realisation somewhat late (indeed, after pretty much the entire rest of the world). Presumably, the industrialists, farmers, rose breeders, kings, popes and at least one Moravian monk are now burning in hell while bemoaning, “We didn’t know it was a sin!”

This attempt to update its image and get on board with issues that have been concerning the rest of us for some time simply highlights two rather pathetic characteristics of the Roman Catholic church (though ones it shares with many other religions).

First, it is desperately and unfailingly behind the times. It is a dinosaur, but one deserving of extinction. Its effort to grasp the nettle of contemporary issues is hilariously anachronistic because it can do so only by framing them in concepts that belong to the fourth century.

Second, by delineating ‘new’ sins, the Roman Catholic church demonstrates that religion is a man-made construct. We’ve seen this before with limbo and other bizarre fantasies of the faith. And the more nonsense they make up, the more the rest of us will feel justified in ignoring the church and getting on with our real lives.

Like all totalitarian systems, organised religion is not just intolerant of dissenting opinion or alternative ideas - it is vulnerable to them. That’s why it must crush free speech.

The call, by certain Catholic organisations, for a boycott of the movie The Golden Compass, reveals just how afraid the church is of its adherents being exposed to ideas beyond its own dogma.

The movie is an adaptation of the first book in Philip Pullman’s ‘His Dark Materials’ trilogy. (The book is known as ‘Northern Lights’ outside the US, but, predictably, the film has taken the American title.)

The Pullman books have been criticised in the past as an attack on religion - Catholicism in particular. It has even been suggested that Pullman wrote them because he was aghast at the camouflaged proselytising for christianity in C S Lewis’ Narnia Chronicles. He has gone on record denying both charges.

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