Submit Response is a weblog by Jack Mottram, a Wonderful Toynbee Grauniad Pope-Slap
Polly Toynbee is on fine, angry form in today’s Guardian. In a piece headlined Not In My Name, she bashes the greasy flow of pontiff-licking oozing from the media, takes Blair to task for bowing before the corpse of a paedophile-protecting propagator of AIDS, points out the hypocrisy of the public grief-junkies descending on Rome, and ultimately condemns the affluent Western congregation of Catholics for allowing the Church to prop up poverty and death in developing nations. There’s even a nice swipe at that horrid little raisin of a mascot for needless suffering, Mother Teresa (something I always like to see). Do read the lot, but here’s a couple of choice gobbets:
The BBC airwaves have disgraced themselves. The Mail went mad with its front-page headlines, “Safe in Heaven” and the next day “Amen”. Even this august organ, which sprang from the loins of nonconformist dissent, astounded many readers with its broad acres of Pope reverencing.
…
He [the Pope] was a good, caring man nevertheless, they say, as if it were a minor aberration. But genuflecting before this corpse is scarcely different to parading past Lenin: they both put extreme ideology before human life and happiness, at unimaginable human cost. How dare our prime minister go there in our name to give the Vatican our approval for this? Will he think of Africa when on his knees today? I trust history will some day express astonishment at moral outrage wasted on sexual trivia while papal celebrity and charisma cloaked this great Vatican crime.
…
Disgracefully, the European rich quietly ignore the church’s outlandish teachings on contraception without rebelling on behalf of the helpless third-world poor who die for their misplaced faith. Those “civilised” Catholics have as much blood on their hands as the Vatican they support. They are like the Bollinger Bolsheviks who defended the USSR and a murderous ideology that they could do much to change. For today, just remember what lies beneath all this magnificent display.
Wonderful stuff.
Hardly wonderful.
A man who gave so many people faith should be honoured, perhaps even canonized, atheist as I am I thus beleive he should be respected as the next man who can do such a thing, and I know not of anyone like that.
Do you?
Posted by Joe Wright at 6pm on 10.04.05
I’m not sure I understand what you mean - that JPII deserves respect for bringing faith to people’s lives? If so - I suppose you could see that as laudable, but only if the faith he inspired had a positive impact on the world. But it didn’t - it led to suffering and death. Which is not good. Which is why I was sickened by the overwhelmingly positive media coverage in the wake of his death, and enjoyed Polly Toynbee’s piece.
Posted by Jack Mottram at 12pm on 11.04.05
Wonderful stuff indeed. I had started a post on the same subject. Having read your post and the article, I gave up finishing my entry and just linked to the Guardian’s piece.
Thanks for this.
Posted by Zefrog at 3pm on 11.04.05
Truely a fair argument, however despite his [now defunct] rejection of homosexuality, female preists, contraception and many other things which are really, down to moral sense, his faith has brought happiness, or at least trust within religion, to many people who have nothing more than just that: faith.
And what would you have prefered the increased media coverage to be aimed at: the Royal Wedding? The Grand National?
The death of such a religious protagonist will be mourned, or at least recognized by many, as would the death of say, Tony Blair, however, there, I would definately draw the line at canonization.
But I digress; what I beleive is thus: that a man of such prominence within the world should be mourned, and with positivity, as he was hardly a monster, traditionalism and religion are funny subjects, they stem from old traditions (hence, obviously, the name). Traditions such as the ‘stereotypical male and female roles’, whether he was indeed a propogator of aids can be questioned upon, however he was simply doing as his religion instucted, and cathlocism, although morally wrong, does frown upon the use of contraception.
The writing of Toynbee was an interesting read, but it angered me to see her reference to lenin in such a way; in fact Lenin was gripped by the civil way of the early 1920s and years before, between the socialist Red Army, and the White army, the monarchists. Monarchists infact helped by Britain and the United states, without which the White Army would have been crushed much earlier, with less deaths, which she blames on Lenin.
It is not that I beleive that Toynbee was infact wrong, just that perhaps the choice of Russian leader was a bit ‘skew-whiff’, and that Losif Vissarionovich Stalin might perhaps have been the better choice.
Respectfully,
Joe Wright
Posted by Joe Wright at 7pm on 11.04.05