So I've got some TV news magazine programme on in the background and apparently the single most important and only newsworthy thing happening in the UK at the moment is the Papal state visit. There sitting in a TV studio is Cherie Blair and she's quietly gushing on and on about the Pope... and it occurs to me just how much I don't understand ANY of it. Here is a supposedly highly intelligent grown up adult woman who is a lawyer - whose husband held one of the most important positions in the country* and yet here she is -for all the world behaving like a starstruck teenager who's only barely able to contain herself in awe of her favourite pop star.
In that moment --not having been raised in any religion I simply can't fathom why the Pope is supposed to be adored so - not when he doesn’t seem to do much of anything except wear over-elaborate clothes and make a few speeches that show how completely out of touch with the modern world he is, and that's without the borderline offensive remarks from him and from that Cardinal Walter Kasper who made the 'like a third world' comments.
Moreover I guess I must suffer from a mild form of enochlophobia or demophobia - because whenever I see such large groups of people behaving irrationally like that - I start to despair of the human race. Not that it ever takes much to get me to despair of the human race at the best of times. Still, it'll be over soon and the rest of the country can get back to it's usual muddling through in it's own semi-secular ways.
*I got even more confused when I found this newspaper article from last year where both Blairs are proclaiming to be pro-gay issues, pro-contraception and pro-condom use yada yada yada.
No comments:
Post a Comment