I’ll get back to the pope and the Vatican and secrecy and Crimen Sollicitationis – today was a bit rushed – but meanwhile, there is the related, large, vexed subject of suffering, and what to think of it, and what to think of what religion tells us about it and does about it. I did a piece on the subject for Comment is Free – but I didn’t say everything I could have (in a longer piece) or thought of.

I didn’t for instance say that it’s true (as one commenter mentioned) that suffering can teach us sympathy for other people (or it can get us to shut up inside ourselves – it all depends), and that it’s also true … Read the rest

We need an expert in Vatican jargon, or Catholic doctrine, or Jesuitical Vaticanesque doctrinal legalistic jargon. Hamilton Jacobi alerted us in a comment on ‘The pope invited the bishops to explain’ to the possibility that the pope’s 2001 letter didn’t mean what The Observer reported it to mean. I took a look at the English version* and I’m not at all clear on what it’s saying. It’s not unmistakably saying ‘Bishops must hide clerical sex abuse of children from the police’ and it could well not be saying that at all – so I have to withdraw some of what I’ve said on that subject in the last few days about the coverage of the pope’s scolding the Irish … Read the rest

This is disgusting! I can’t say anything more coherent than that – it’s just a showy display of complete abject belly-crawling disgustingness. The BBC is dribbling all over itself with ecstasy because that reactionary theocratic bastard Joseph Ratzinger might consent to give its poxy theocratic patronizing stinking Thought for the Day. What is the matter with everyone?!

The Pope is in negotiations to appear on Radio 4’s Thought for the Day slot after Mark Thompson, the BBC director-general, made a personal approach to the Vatican. The planned broadcast on the Today programme would be timed to coincide with Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to Britain later this year and would represent a coup for the corporation.

A coup? A coup… Read the rest