Chief Witch-Doctor (aka The Pope) Visits Britain
The Polemicist
by Michael House
LONDON, England—(Weekly Hubris)—9/27/10—My country has recently been honored by a visit from Herr Ratzinger, aka the Pope. It was a “state visit,” with the consequence that I and other taxpayers have to pick up a bill estimated at up to £20 million for security and all the flummery surrounding a state visit.
The “statehood” of the Vatican arose in this way. Dictator Benito Mussolini didn’t want the church to criticize his fascist policies, which crossed the line even for Roman Catholic hierarchs. The church did not want to be subject to those policies. “Pope” Pius XI wanted catholicism recognized as the state religion.
So, the Lateran Treaty of 1929 was signed by Mussolini, whose official title was Prime Minister, Pius XI and King Victor Emmamuel III. The “Holy See” was recognized as an independent state, with 771 “citizens.” Catholicism became the state religion. The Vatican promised to remain neutral in international affairs and to keep its opinions about fascism to itself.
The new “state” faithfully kept its part of the bargain. The only conflict arose in 1938, when Jews were forbidden to marry non-Jews. The church asserted that it had sole jurisdiction over whom Catholics could marry. It wasn’t discrimination against Jews that bothered the Vatican: it was interference with its right to govern the social lives of its adherents.
This nonsense of statehood has continued ever since. However, of 195 countries in the world, the Vatican is, together with Kosovo and Taiwan, one of only three not a full member of the UN. No doubt it wishes to avoid the obligations that it would take on as a full member.
In 2008, the Vatican opted out of adopting all Italian laws, citing “right to life” issues. Presumably, only Italy can end this farce of Roman Catholics’ having their own state. But with Berlusconi at the helm, we shouldn’t hold our breath.
Before the visit, a rogue “Cardinal,” who subsequently went down with a diplomatic illness and couldn’t accompany Ratzinger, criticized “aggressive secularism” in the UK. Some might think this was a little rich, coming from a man whose church in the past has murdered, tortured and imprisoned people who did not toe its ideological line, apart from the indirect killing of thousands of women worn out with childbirth, and AIDS victims. Perhaps what is needed is a secularism that is far more aggressive.
Ratzinger apologized for his priests’ sexually abusing children in their care over many years. But he did not apologize for the squalid cover-up he orchestrated as disciplinary head of the church under John-Paul II, allowing paedophile priests to be moved from parish to parish rather than brought to justice. Nor would he tackle the root-cause of the problem: the rule of celibacy.
Roman Catholics are perfectly entitled to revere this silly old man if they wish. But why do states and governments need to follow suit? Ratzinger is, after all, simply the head witch-doctor of an entity whose members believe fairy stories and accept that the laws of physics have been suspended so that its senior members can perform magic tricks.
Call this preposterous phenomenon a religion, and everyone (except the Blessed Richard Dawkins and a few others) performs a mental genuflection, to say the least. Why?
Michael House
Michael House, FRGS was born, of rural, peasant stock, in Somerset, England. He read law at Exeter College, Oxford and was elected President of the Oxford Union. In 1974, along with five colleagues, House started up a set of barristers' chambers in three little rooms in Lincoln's Inn, London, specializing in human rights and in representing the poor and dispossessed. The set now comprises 170 members and occupies a 17th-century building that was home to the only British Prime Minister to be assassinated (Spencer Perceval, 1812). In 1987, depressed by Mrs. Thatcher's third election victory, House fled to Greece for three years, where he was published in The Athenian and The Southeastern Review. He also there met his archaeologist wife, Diane. The pair returned to England in 1990 after a half-year, round-the-world trip, and settled in London and Northamptonshire. Since then, by way of escape from humdrum criminality, House has traveled in Tibet, Nepal, Sikkim, Ladakh, Uzbekistan, India, Pakistan, Turkey, Morocco, Syria, Jordan, Libya, Mongolia, Kashmir, and Sri Lanka, where only the stout walls of Galle Fort saved him and his spouse from being swept away by the tsunami. House returns to Greece, his second home, almost every year. He has written for, inter alia, History Today, the Universities Quarterly, the Sydney Morning Herald, and the Rough Guide to Greece. House practices criminal defense law from Garden Court Chambers, Lincoln's Inn Fields, in London, and hopes that if he keeps on practicing, he may eventually get the hang of it. His yet unachieved ambitions are: to farm alpacas; see Tibet liberated from the Chinese jackboot; and live to see Britain a socialist republic. (Author Head Shot Augment: René Laanen.)