Peter Hitchens posts some pap about the Pope.

I'm convinced Peter Hitchens has to be some elaborate parody, mocking the very set of values he supposedly believes in, through the sheer silliness of his reasoning. Or an ultra devious fifth columnist designed to infiltrate right wing opinion from within and begin a campaign designed to undermine their beliefs through the sheer weight of the wackiness of his Mail on Sunday column. He doesn't just try and shoehorn logic and reason to try and support his beliefs, he actively dispenses with them completely if they have that damned inconvenient problem of negating everything he is trying to say. He does; and this is putting it mildly, have a liberal attitude to rational discourse (It's about the only liberal attitude towards something he holds!) And this is why we ended up getting this weeks freshly laid turd.

Actually, I am uneasy about the Pope telling us what to
do. This is part of being British, or was when I was growing up. I can still
recite great chunks of Tennyson’s wonderful Ballad Of The Fleet, all about Sir
Richard Grenville and the little ship Revenge, with her valiant Protestant crew,
fighting her unequal battle against the great sea-castles of King Philip, ‘the
Inquisition dogs and the devildoms of Spain’

I doubt British Catholics see it that way. About the Tennyson poem. Yeah it's good at getting the action across. But it's loaded with anti-Catholic sentiment. The line quoted is one of the nicer "compliments" paid to RC's. Does he think Anti-Rome sentiment was/is a good thing?

I had relatives who viewed the Vatican as
Babylon. I was taught at school about Bloody Mary, 400 years later still a
loathed figure.

Yeah it's hard to like someone who burnt people alive for having the "wrong" belief. But does he think his ancestors hating Rome is a good thing?

Even now, I like to roll over my tongue the
defiant 37th of the English
Church’s 39 articles: ‘The Bishop of Rome hath
no jurisdiction in this Realm of
England.’

I bet Englands Catholics were pissing their
sides when that doctrine was put in.

Those who are outraged – or claim to be – about the
Pontiff’s warning from Rome
are trying to use a force they don’t really
sympathise with. My anti-Catholic
forebears were Cromwellian Puritans, and
would have loathed the sexual
revolution even more than they disliked the RC
Church

No I think you'll find they're a bit annoyed that the Pope is trying to use his office to give his church carte blanche to discriminate against gay people. People is the key word here. The anti-gay stance of some parts of Christianity is an idea. Yes I'm sure some folk are going to be put out that they may not be able to implement anti -gay policies because it's going against their beliefs. But for my money the welfare of people goes ahead of respecting to the letter peoples "beliefs". Not every idea or belief automatically has some entitlement to be respected or upheld. We must weigh up the cost of upholding a belief (which is a tiny tiny part of the Christian doctrine in the New testament) against the cost of the welfare of gay people, or any other group of people who may be threatened by an ideology. It really is for my money a one - way contest.

No what I really find offensive (not so offensive I would say he shouldn't write it. I'm not that much of a hypocrite as to undermine the point I'm making!) about this article, is that Hitchens probably wanked himself senseless over the self appointed cleverness of his article. He uses all the big words, name drops obscure poems, and religious laws. I'm sure he sees himself as a self styled fogeyish contrarian, sticking two fingers up at modern liberal society. He's the enlightened bible buff looking down on all of us godless, unenlightened proles. He might want to remember that when Europe really took this kind of thing seriously, lots of people on the "wrong" side ended up as human torches. It is actually insulting to the victims of this kind of mentality, to claim that religious intolerance is somehow admirable.