FATHER FRANK’S RANTS - The Pope Cometh

Rant Number 411 15 September 2010

Once upon a time the English were Christians. Because of Benedict XVI’s distant predecessor, Pope Gregory the Great. Born at Rome about 540 AD. Walking one day through the slave market, Gregory noticed some prisoners of angelic appearance. ‘Who are they?’ he asked. ‘They are English – Angles’ someone replied. ‘Not English but angels – non Angles sed angeles’!’ he exclaimed . ‘Are they Christians?’ ‘No, they are heathens, pagans.’ ‘A people so beautiful cannot be pagan!’ the Pope decided. And so it was that he sent good St Augustine to make that fierce Germanic lot - the Angles, Saxons and Jutes - into a Christian nation. A great nation that was to create a mighty empire and spread its seed throughout the whole world.

Charming story. But today a stunning transformation, a devilish reversal has taken place. The beautiful race, the nation once Christian has turned pagan. The people Pope Benedict comes to visit has changed. The English have gone back to serve false, loathsome heathen gods. They who proudly rejoiced in the name of Christian now prostrate before shabby old idols. Such as Mammon, the god of riches. Venus, the goddess of sex. Calliope, the tawdry goddess of Big Brother - the deity of fame, aka lubricious and phoney celebrities. Consequently, they no longer worship the One True God or follow Christ’s mandate of love.

The erstwhile attractive people have not kept their good looks. Instead, they have become downright coarse and ugly. Look around you, if you have eyes to see. On TV, in the streets, the Tube, the shops, the cafes. A depressingly ill-favoured, graceless human menagerie. Beauty is rare. As rare as a hen’s teeth. Coarse, plain, noisy, ugly individuals are everywhere. The Big Brother crowd have conquered. The zombies have taken over.

Is the priest raving? Getting elitist? Guilty of ‘lookism’? Worse, of aesthetic fascism? Don’t care. As a darksome Latin, and like Pope Gregory, I used to admire the English for their gentle, fine features, as well as for their robust, decent faith. No longer. Inexplicably, they have changed. How awful. Satan, the prince of darkness must have done it – who else?

Worse than any external ugliness is an inner, moral one. Exemplified by the shameful way Pope Gregory’s successor is being treated. The media are assimilating Benedict to a Nazi, a war criminal, a child molester. ‘A guilt-edged visit’ thunders The Independent. ‘Fifteen Paedophile Priests still listed’, Channel 4 News tonight opened its ‘objective’ report on the imminent papal tour. And the BBC is fighting its own relentless anti-papal crusade. Daily it combines every image of Benedict with ghastly tales of child rape, abuse, violence, intolerance, conspiracies, plots and the like. When a Cardinal, the Pope was in charge of the Vatican body which looks after the integrity of Catholic doctrine. ‘The Inquisition’, the BBC glosses, of course. Further, the risible opinions of nonentities like droll British humanists and the loquacious Australian queen, Peter Tatchell, who once threatened to do a ‘citizen’s arrest’ on Benedict, are given the prominence once accorded to heroes, saints and sages. How low have the Angles fallen!

Time for some sanity. Figures bore me but they matter . Catholics are 10% of the British population and more then 17.5% of the people of this planet. The universal Catholic Church counts nearly half million priests and 800.000 female religious. (All child abusers, obviously.) The Church is a worldwide healthcare provider. A quarter of HIV care in Africa comes from her. She runs 5.246 hospitals, 17.530 dispensaries, 577 leprosy clinics and 15.208 homes for the elderly. The Church provides 12 million school places in sub-Saharan Africa.

In 2006 the Pope bought the first Immunisation Bond, an initiative which has raised over 1.6 billion dollars devoted to health and immunisation programmes in 70 of the world’s poorest countries. The money will prevent millions of child and adult deaths. It will shield 500 million children from measles, tetanus and yellow fever. Minimising evil, combating human suffering, noble tasks which all follower of Christ should pursue. Pity the unspeakable British media do not care to dwell on those – they who supposedly care for kids’ welfare.

If you worry about climate change – I am a sceptic - the Pope’s 2009 Encyclical Caritas in Veritate makes a strong statement on the environment and the duty to protect it. The Vatican has even installed solar panels on its rooftops. It has plans to build Europe’s larger solar farm near Rome. It will produce energy to power 40.000 homes. As to disarmament, the Vatican helped diplomatically towards hammering out the Cluster Munitions Treaty in 2008. A few thousands lives saved there, perhaps? The war-mongers of this wicked world will not rejoice. And the BBC? Chicken-feed, surely. Human lives saved? Not worth mentioning, unlike child abuse.

Benedict XVI. ‘The Pope’s Rottweiler’ – his media-foisted nickname when he was John Paul II’s sidekick. In truth, this gentle, scholarly, elderly gentleman is the very antithesis of that. Still, confronted with the torrent of abuse heaped on him by today’s degenerate Angles, I suppose he could be pardoned if he were metaphorically to bare his teeth, just a little. To remind his virulent critics how a decadent nation wallowing in vice, which legally allows the deliberate killing of unborn children and whose youth is actively encouraged to self-destruct should get its house in order. Of course, he won’t. What should he do then? Here is the priest’s humble advice.

‘Holy Father, you do remember Pope Pius VII. His painting adorns the Waterloo Chamber in Windsor Castle, as he was once a better Britain’s ally in the fight against tyranny. A holy and scholarly monk, whom Napoleon arrested, imprisoned and manhandled abominably, Pius was forced to travel to Paris, to crown the usurper emperor. That the Pope did, for the good of France and the Church. The Revolution had striven to eradicate Christianity from people’s hearts. Some pictured the Pope as a reactionary despot. When they saw Pius, however, they were surprised. They liked him. Because he seemed so simple and kind. So crowds thronged to receive his blessing. He smiled a lot. Smiled and blessed. And so he won even indifferent and hostile people over.’

‘Bless, dear Pope Benedict, just bless. Bless even your detractors. By blessing you will conquer.’

Revd Frank Julian Gelli