Selling The Pill at the back of our churches when the Pope visits?

There is so much talk about how broke the Catholic Church is in Britain, and how 'strapped' all the parishioners are, and how we will have to scrimp and scrape to prepare for Pope Benedict's visit, that it's time to do something that would cost nothing, and would rid our churches of a resident poison.

I propose that those glossy piles of The Pill stacked at the back of our churches be removed - without delay - and consigned to the recycling bin. Sure, would anyone on their editorial board resent a bit of rubbish recycling? It would improve our green status immediately. Ms Pepinster will be proud!

Forgive my use of arguably vulgar language with the term 'rubbish', but The Pill often resembles hate notes that bullies write to ridicule their victims. I'm sometimes confounded to read the nasty belittling of Pope Benedict, and belittling is what it is. There is always an attitude that The Pill knows best, and must point out the woes and wrongs of Pope Benedict's papacy. It could just be me, but whenever I read The Tablet, (and this could be a trained response from my teaching years) I feel as if I have happened upon evidence of pupils bullying the headmaster.

From their delirious statement in 2007 that 'Pope Benedict is not a trained liturgist' to their spiteful implication that the Pope's Motu Proprio was anti-Semitic, it's all too easy for Pill-writers to portray the pope as a fetish-fond German who at best is too fond of 'nostalgia', and at worst a fascist at heart.

This week's bitchy article by 'a leading human rights law lawyer' (let's all bow low to this 'lawyer') who claims that 'while Pope Benedict XVI calls fro dialogue, that conversation is made problematic by his very concept of dialogue'. From reading this bully-talk, you would think that our pope was in his dotage, because according to this lawyer, the pope is not capable of 'true discussion'. And it is implied that our pope would like to rule as though he were a dictator; 'this pope in particular...he seems somehow to regard a democratic society separate from the authority of the Church'. 'This pope' sees democracy 'as a concession'. May I assert to the Pill journos, that you are writing about our pope, not King Lear?

The mere sight of The Pill at the back of churches is damaging to everyone's faith - if you are nine months old or ninety. If you are the former, you may see these despicable caricatures of our pope in the pages of The Pill.



This is political satire, where the pope looks like he is floundering and ‘out to lunch’. Then when Mum and Dad are doing their best to inform the growing child that the pope is the Vicar of Christ, the child may sense a contradiction in that he seen loathsome images of the pope at the back of Westminster Cathedral or even in his own living room. All the young Catholics that I know would not leave the Pill lying around the living room when they have kids, why then should we tolerate it at the back of our Father’s house?