NEW - RANT BOX: Following Rahila Gupta's brilliant piece on the Guardian website on Saturday February 21, we decided to give space to WAF women to have their say on a topic of their choice. We start with Clara, sounding off on Gordon Brown's invitation to Pope Benedict XVI to visit Britain.
The latest rant is by Eva, on maintaining her university as a secular space.
Piss off, Pope!
Whatever was Gordon Brown thinking of, inviting Benedict XV1 to Britain at this time? Not that the Pope rushed to accept the invitation – he no doubt sees Britain as a bastion of the ‘dictatorship of relativism’, which he has described as the main problem facing the 21st century.
Against relativism (and secularism) he poses the ‘reason’ and objective truth of Christianity – ‘the Enlightenment is of Christian origin and it is no accident that it was born precisely and exclusively in the realm of the Christian faith.... It was and is the merit of the Enlightenment to have again proposed these original values of Christianity and of having given back to reason its own voice’.
As to what he thinks of Islam – he famously quoted a 13th century opinion that the sole contribution of Mohammed to religion was to spread it by the sword = ‘things only evil and inhuman’. And as for Judaism: he has re-introduced into the Mass a prayer for the conversion of the Jews 'from darkness to the light of the Catholic faith’.
So what are the values of this Catholicism he promotes, as the creator of the Enlightenment, and its heir? – just a sample: the remedy for HIV/AIDS is chastity, not condoms; homosexuality is an ‘objective disorder’ and it is not incorrect to discriminate against homosexuals; dissident gender roles are a ‘violation of the natural order’.
The recent row about his rehabilitation of Bishop Williamson, a notorious holocaust denier, was part of his mission to establish and promote a conservative front in Catholicism; Williamson was one of five bishops in the ultra-right Society of Pius X (linked with Le Pen in France) whom he de-excommunicated. Less widely publicised was his launching last November of the Joseph Ratzinger Foundation, fronted by some of his ex-students, to provide scholarships to poor students worldwide. The purpose of the Foundation is to spread his teachings.
His is a fundamentalist view of the political world and its divisions – for example, he urges Europe to return to its Christian roots, and Turkey to ‘seek its future in an association of Muslim countries’ rather than in the EU.
This man is not welcome here – and if he accepts the offer to visit, I’m sure all good and true anti-fundamentalists (including WAF) will be letting him know this – loud and clear. I’m hoping SBS will compose one of their special songs for the occasion.