The BBC just adores the pope
The BBC is all but wetting itself in its excitement about the pope’s visit. Everything was so wonderful! It was just so so so beautiful and touching and moving and spirichal and compassionate and terrific and brilliant.
A pope who had previously been regarded as someone rather cold, professorial, aloof and authoritarian; had suddenly been perceived as a rather kindly and gentle grandfather figure.
Ohhhhhhh – that’s so sweet! Of course kindly gentle grandfather would let any woman die before he would let her have an abortion, and he condemns Africans in their thousands and their tens of thousands to a miserable death and their children to orphanhood with his stupid, pointless, arbitrary Law against condoms, and he shielded child-raping priests – but he’s old and tottery and he can bare his fangs in a scary grin, so he must be a nice man and that’s what counts. Didn’t I tell you it was sweet?
The Pope’s triumph was really his speech to leaders of civil society at Westminster. One political mover and shaker told me afterwards his performance had been “sheer magic”.
Within the space of two hours Pope Benedict penetrated the heart of the Anglican Establishment.
Quite. And why was that?
Seriously – why was that? What the hell is this? No other religious boffin gets this treatment, so why does the pope get it? No other religion has a pope, but why does the fact that Catholicism does have a pope mean that countries have to treat him as some kind of super-dooper extra special starry exciting guy?
The UK is not an officially Catholic country; it’s not an unofficially Catholic country; why did it treat the pope as some kind of ambassador from god?
I don’t get it. I don’t see what’s in it for them. I don’t see what’s in it for the media, or what’s in it for the gummint. It looks like some kind of mass hallucination, from here.
That must have required some Viagra, at his age…
They want a share of the foie gras and wild fruit tart.
I drooled a bit at the wild fruit tart myself.
Mostly? Its a chance to show off how tolerant and multi-cultural they are. They don’t give a fuck about kids who got fucked, anymore than they really give a shit about how any given politician’s policies will impact real people.
Anymore than they really cared if the Iraq war was based on solid data, or if property was really a solid investment in a stagnant population, or if what they are reporting is true or not. It is all about that false “Above it all” savviness of abandoning reason in order to appear reasonable.
The same pope who they praise as “Grandfatherly” was a former Nazi who accused “extreme secularism” of being responsible for the attrocities of a Catholic with a stupid mustache.
I agree, I agree: as a Brit it’s embarrassing. Sunday especially was like living in a Philip Pullman novel where the radio has been hi-jacked by the Magisterium of the Church of Rome and religion has been reinvigorated (perhaps there was some sort of divine viagra involved?). Dawkins was side-lined by a salivating (and themselves irreligious) press who could not resist the term ‘Militant Atheist’: we must all pretend to believe in impossible things & then we will be saved. From what exactly? Possibly our dire economic situation where teachers not working for Academies will shortly be looking through the bins for stubs of pencil & all that stands between the UK & starvation is the soup kitchen of the soul. Thank goodness the sinister old bastard has gone and we can get back to being a nation of (godless) shoplifters.
sigh . There was a time when I really liked the BBC – but I guess I actually didnt notice stuff at that time.
There’s a very frightening side to this. As Hannah Arendt says in her book on totalitarianism, “The chief qualification of a mass leader has become unending infallibility; he can never admit an error.” (Origins, 348-9) Watching the change from the time of the pope’s arrival, until the time of his departure, was like watching a mass transformation of a country — not all of it, of course, but in good measure. And this seems to suggest that, in the context of British society, an advanced secular society at a moment of considerable confusion due to immigration, changing demographics, religious resurgence, etc., there’s a hunger for answers, and not the kind of answers that people can devise for themselves, but answers that might be imposed from someone outside, someone who claims to know.
And that is something the pope definitely does claim to do, to know, to have all the answers, and to have a complete social programme all worked out. And if that’s what people are responding to, that’s scary. (The Tea Party movement in the US, arguably, displays the same kind of yearning for certainty, for simple answers to big questions. Whether it turns out to be a mass movement will be known come November.) To think of all those former prime ministers, and no doubt barons and baronesses, knights and ladies, too, sitting longingly at the feet of the Wizard, tends to say it all. Haven’t they already seen the clanking machinery behind the scenes, and the mendacious and opportunistic way it is being operated?
Hopefully, the effect will be as evanscent as ThetisMercurio suggests, but I wouldn’t bet on it. People looking for answers may just think they’ve found one, and with all the big politicos playing the faith card lately, I suspect we’re in for a bumpy ride. This government “does God,” remember? Perhaps the whole thing will simply go south, but with this kind of wild adulation of a man whose odds of making a connexion with the British were pretty long, and should have been even longer, I wouldn’t lay any bets against the likelihood of religious certainties playing themselves out in British political life, at least in the short run. And yet these are the people who think that we are strident and arrogant!
What’s in it for them? I guess nothing really, except perhaps to wallow in the euphoric epiphany that religious faith is indeed a supreme virtue and faith leaders, even in their garish garments, are ambassadors of peace and harmony. They have convinced themselves that humanity is certainly on the verge of a new golden age and the real impediment to stepping on it is the ominous march of boisterous secularism.
“Within the space of two hours Pope Benedict penetrated the heart of the Anglican Establishment.”
Why are claims (like the one above) often made when they are unprovable? It is amazing how these people love to play with language, and love to put spin on stupid claims like the one above.
What is the Anglican Establishment for starters? How does he know that it penetrated the heart of all Anglican’s? or of the one’s whom were present? The clear answer is that he doesn’t, so therefore why make such a ridiculous claim?
It’s also related to the claim that the Pope was accepted in Britain by the majority of people. No, the majority did not care, there is an exceedingly large difference between a warm welcome, and a neutral apathy.
Surely, the BBC and the British media are running scared after the carefully orchestrated bullying about ‘disrespect’ that preceded the Pope’s arrival. Another thing is that no institution that depends on the public purse, like the BBC, is going to get too out of line, particularly since the BBC was, under Thatcher and Blair in particular, the recipient of a great deal of pressure. The Grauniad: the we-don’t-want-to-upset-any-applecarts by being offensive about a state guest syndrome, I imagine, and the assumption that a bit of fudging is the same thing as politeness. Then of course there is their readership, the advertisers, their links with people in powerful positions…
Eric–
You describe the context well, but I must say I wish people were looking for good questions to ask before expecting answers. And the Tea Party movement in the US, arguably, is not so much a movement “looking for answers” as it is manufactured consent (to borrow Chomsky’s phrase) to a corporate-political-ideological mish-mosh campaign.
Ophelia–
To answer your question, What’s in it for them [the UK]? Nothing. I’m being obvious, yes, but for there to be something in it for them, the decision to bring the pope should have been theirs in the first place, no? Is that the case? Did they clamor for his visit? It’s all very vexing!
“I don’t see what’s in it for them.”
Apart from a few extra days of Pomp Pope and Circumstance (which both the British and the Catholic Church do quite well), nothing.
The Pope was invited by Gordon Brown when he knew he had to call an election that he had all but lost. It was a pathetic attempt to bribe the Catholic vote and failed miserably. It only cost about £20m.
Sorry for being so cynical.
Let’s face it. The Beeb is hailing the Pope as a new god: the latest in the Pantheon.
From my own personal Manichaean perpective, I would say they are definitely onto something. What kind of god? Ah, that’s the problem.
Sheer magic? That sounds like a poster blurb for a stage production of “Peter Pan” or something. Or maybe the Pope resorted to producing doves and yards of brightly-colored cloth from the sleeves of his robe. That would certainly explain why the press and “political movers and shakers” are so wide-eyed and slack-jawed over the whole affair.
“Kindly gentle grandfather”? So was Semyon in Cronenberg’s “Eastern Promises”, and what a delightful human being he turned out to be…
I suppose what’s in it for them is they’ve made a powerful friend… I can imagine Mrs Merton (90s UK comedy character played by Caroline Aherne for those who don’t know!) asking the head honcho of the Beeb, or ‘Dave’ Cameron for that matter: “So what first attracted you to the multi-billionaire Pope Benedict?”
OT, but this one is a logical fallacy and I just can’t think of the name:
One of the commenters on my blog set out this:
Whether we are reincarnated or not does not seem to matter to many people. We know this by their lack of offence. If I call you a ‘thief’, but you have absolutely no experience of having stolen anything, you won’t be offended. You’ll simply reject my claim about you. You’ll consider me mad. But if your conscience is disturbed by a history of theft (i.e., presence ‘in mind’), you will be offended by being called a thief. My statement will matter to you.
http://blogs.timeslive.co.za/expensive/2010/09/20/petty-irritations-god-bless-you/
You can see the basic brain damaged stupidity instantly I assume. Now I know this is a fallacy (the same argument could be used in criminal trials – because the defendant objects to being called a thief, that defendant is a thief. Guilty!) I have seen it before, but just what fallacy it is, is stuck on the tip of my tongue.
Any help here?
Well, it’s a step up from penetrating the backsides of children.
The BBC, for all of its merits in many areas, has a great bloated bureaucracy that is very comfortable at the moment, thank you very much. They are fearful of government cuts via their control of the license fee.
The current UK government likes “God” because: it doesn’t cost them much, it distracts the proles, it is perceived as immigrant and “minority” friendly to do so, and it’s an attempt to undercut the Labour party which has traditionally hoovered up the non-CofE religious vote.
The BBC knew that they would be required to kiss the Pope’s arse throughout this farce, but I must admit that their enthusiasm for this groveling has rather taken me aback.
Well, Rosana Lhota, first of all, in response to your comment, my own comment was a bit off the wall, in one sense, since it puffs up the events of the last few days in response to the gushing publicity that British media gave to the pope’s visit. How did it happen that a man who was described, quite aptly, by the Guardian, on his arrival, as a “turbulent priest”, should, by the time of his departure, be described almost as the saviour of Britain?
Of course, the Guardian did not picture him that way, and its closing editorial on the pope’s visit seemed to blame the protesters for not having bridged the divide between themselves and the pope, as if that had been their intention all the time. Clearly, the protesters felt that the pope is, in fact, a dangerous man, a danger to children, women, homosexuals, and society itself. What was slightly unexpected, though, was the response of the British establishment to this man who, as Geoffrey Robertson argues — and Geoffrey Robertson is no lightweight here — that whether there is a criminal case that would stand in the international criminal court, there is at least one that could be argued there.
Despite this, there they were, all those former prime ministers, drinking up the dregs of wisdom from this sullied spring, as though in seach of answers to their confusions, not to their questions; because, if they are seeking answers so complacently from such a source, it seems fairly clear that they don’t have the slightest idea what the questions might be. This, to me, is the troubling part, though employing Arendt’s Origins of Totalitarianism to make the point is perhaps overegging the pudding.
However, I think it is important that we see what just happened. For some reason, despite the incredibly strong protest, a lot of people in Britain, and especially the chattering classes, seem to have accepted something that never should be accepted, the voice of a man whose reactionary authoritarianism holds no promise at all for the future, but seeks to bring back a kind of theocratic fog to deal with real problems in society, many if not most of which are brought about by religion itself. Why are people so quick to respond to the voice of authority, a voice, especially, which has been discredited by the less creditable actions of and words of the man whose voice it is? Is this just a cult of celebrity, which will disappear like morning mist? Or is this something that goes deeper, and infects a whole generation of people with unreal expectations of what religion can provide by way of social stability and order, no matter what its cost in terms of people’s rights and freedoms? My own fear is that it is something of the deeper variety, and signals a loss in confidence in liberalism, which is, to be honest, still a mere child on the world stage, and has scarcely been given a chance, whilst a disturbingly large proportion of people seem quite prepared to surrender it to darker forces and unrealistic hopes.
I mentally pronounced this like SPY-rikk-ull and was about half a second from Googling it for the definition when I figured it out. Author with a huge vocabulary and a love for language + deliberate misspellings = one very confused reader! ;D
The LD$ church’s prophet would be closely analogous, however. Not that there anywhere near as many Mormons as Catholics… but it’s the next largest religious organization I can think of that has a centralized hierarchy with a single figure placed in charge of everything and said to be a conduit to the word of God.
Any ones I am missing?
“…because, if they are seeking answers so complacently from such a source, it seems fairly clear that they don’t have the slightest idea what the questions might be.”
Thanks for your response, Eric. Yes, the above point in your last post is part of what I was trying to articulate. And I agree that it is fearsome to contemplate the fact that “people seem quite prepared to surrender [their confidence in liberalism or liberalism itself?] to darker forces and unrealistic hopes.” Regrettably, that aptly describes what’s happening in the US, I’d say.
I see the BBC have a new program on TV tonight “The End of God? The Horizon guide to Science and Religion”.
It is presented by Dr Thomas Dixon, someone who has degrees in theology and history and who works as a lecturer on the subject of science and religion in Queeen Mary College, London. He’s a frequent panelist on Templeton funded science/religion conferences and really gives the accomodationist party line in his description of the program.
“Science and religion have had the kind of close and troubled relationship you would expect between siblings or even spouses. They share not only wonder at the majesty of the world we can see, but also a desire to find out what’s behind it that we can’t.
That emotional and intellectual hunger will endure longer than Professor Hawking’s M-theory, and those wishing to take a truly scientific attitude may be better advised to follow the lead of the great Victorian agnostic Thomas Huxley who, in one of the last things that he wrote before he died asked “Is it not better to keep silence about matters which speech is incompetent to express; to be content with revolving in the deeps of the mind the infinite possibilities of the unknown?”
In other words science cannot say anything that might be awkward to religion.
Religion on the other hand has no such limitations imposed.
Oh dear, a “Horizon guide”? The once-proud flagship of science programming of the BBC, Horizon has, on the basis of many recent sorry performances, become the floundering bathtub adrift in stormy seas.
Where once Horizon imparted useful information about science, in recent years it’s become the haunt of meeja-studies graduates trying to impress with tricksy visuals and loud music.
I don’t hold out much hope.
Ugh – that Horizon thing sounds tooth-grindingly orrible.
Sorry about SPYrikkal confusion, James! I do go in for phonetic spellings quite often, especially on words like “spiritual.”
Other religions with a “pope”?
Don’t the people from Tibet have a Dalai Lama who also acts as the head of a religious multitude?
Well, this is Britain where most people are dozy agnostics and lapsed Christians. The Pope is rather an exotic figure with an aura of something strange and religious around him. The Dalai Lama would get the same kind of reception from people who like exotica though the number of Tibetan Buddhists in the population must be small. There are 4 million Catholics so it does pay for democratic politicians to pay him a bit of respect. I think on the whole when the Brits look at the highly religious in the USA they think they’re ridiculous, but they don’t like to say it’s all a lot of rubbish. There’s a whiff of morality and a bit of mysticism attached to it. However, they won’t give up a Sunday which they could spend at the garden centre going to a boring old church. So I wouldn’t look for mass conversions.
Going by my colleagues, people don’t discuss religion. Those who are religious are known to be so, so you don’t make religious jokes in front of them, but it’s slightly odd, though not disreputable, to attend Church once a week. Church is for weddings and funerals and possibly if you want to get your child into a church school, with good academic standards.
This is a huge change from the evangelical Britain of the nineteenth century. It doesn’t seem to me to be a bad state of affairs at all (however I have some affection for the Anglican church and can still sing the hymns if I get a drink in me.)
The Coptic church has a Pope with several paragraphs’ worth of titles.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_of_the_Coptic_Orthodox_Church_of_Alexandria
I just listened to Start the Week on R4, which included Mary Midgley(!) talking about Darwinism and reductionism and Newtonian physics. Not a scientist in sight (though I didn’t notice any obvious howlers).
They keep mentioning Dawkins too, it seems that selfish bankers are all his fault. Or something.
The title ‘pope’ attached to quite a few early church archbishops, notably, Alexandria, Antioch and Constantinople, I believe, though this is just a memory. Anyone interested in such trivia would have to look it up.
This link takes you to the London protest, and parts of some of the speeches. It has, first, at least part of the speech of Geoffrey Robertson, the author of The Case of the Pope. I think it is a good selection, but I was specially impressed by the Robertson’s words, but the moral concern that is so obviously expressed by those who speak, and the genuine human compassion, is palpable, a stark contrast with the public media, and their perfuctory accounts of the pope’s words and intinerary, which largely ignored what was said here. This is shocking, and we should be offended. You can find it here.
i absolutely agree with the title of your blog. The last article i read by the bbc ( http://bbc.in/blhYsI ) before i simply turned off about bbc reporting on the subject was about research of a religous think tank called Theos who did a supposedly blind survey of the pope’s social policy upon the british public. It was a typical theist scam in my opinion, start with a well known fact (most english are not practically religous) then end with the scam (when asked about pope’s social policy anonymously, most agreed). Sure, it was because they only revealed popular parts of the social policy like the need for climate control (as if the pope would know anything at all about something scientifically established). How much agreement would they have had if the policy on protecting child molesters or aids and condom untruths was revealed in the survey? (but i guess that would have given the game away, the anonomity would have been lost, people would have realised straight away it was the pope’s social agenda). It makes me really suspicous now about the bbc’s objectivity as our politicians are well behind the visit while being very secretive about the actual tax payer expense!
The BBC acts as though we all, by default, enjoy pomp. In general, the Pyep’s visit seemed to be cast in terms of pomp. It’s not polite to ask why we are celebrating pomp. Fortunately, we can back it up with completely manufactured circumstance,