Making a dickhead of the Pope

One of this blog’s favourite arseholes, Cormac Murphy-O’Connor – leader of Catholics in England and Wales – thinks some people should not be lampooned or otherwise ridiculed.

He’s thinking particularly of the Pope, Mr Ratzinger.

According to the website Religiouswatch.com, Murphy-O’Connor has written to The Times to complain about a cartoon of Ratzo with a rubber johnny on his head.

It appeared in, of all places, a piece by the paper’s religion correspondent, Ruth Gledhill, who reproduced the cartoon (by Peter Brookes), which first appeared on 18 March. She had been writing about the Pope’s considered – no doubt highly scientific – opinion that condoms actually aggravate the AIDS problem rather than help to contain it.

Murphy-O’Connor says, “I was appalled at the tasteless cartoon depicting Pope Benedict XVI. No newspaper should show such disrespect to a person who is held in high esteem by a large proportion of Christians in the world. To pillory the Pope in this way is totally unacceptable.”

Unacceptable to whom, Cormac, me old mucker? To you? Just to those Christians who hold him in high esteem?

There are a lot of people who hold Hitler in high esteem. Should we respect his memory, too, lest we upset these people?

How about Osama Bin Laden? There are hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of Muslims who would hold him in high esteem. Should we respect him, too?

Should we not criticise your good self for having sat on details of kiddy fiddling by one of your pervy priests, just because there are loads of Catholics who have been taken in by the idea that a cardinal is something special – just because he’s a cardinal?

Sorry, but the Pope is just the opposite of respected and esteemed to a helluva lot of people, this writer included (and, he suspects, all the other contributors to this blog and many other blogs). So why should we bow only to those who respect him and not those who don’t. You’ll be asking for Him to have a capital letter on His pronoun next.

There’s no logic in your statement. There is no reason whatsoever why we should treat anyone with respect if he or she doesn’t deserve it. People may get traduced from time to time, but that’s always going to be the case when someone takes a stand on something: there will be those for ’em and those agin ’em.

Enjoy the picture.

Hat tip: Freethinker.