we have a papa

Dear George
I imagine you would’ve been one of the backers of Joe Ratzinger as the leader of your strange organisation, as he’s by all accounts a hard-line conservative, as I believe are you. The choice doesn’t surprise me, nor does it particularly interest me personally. I seem to recall he saw himself as a defender of the ‘true faith’, and if that meant limiting his cult to the really truly true believers, so be it. I’d be most happy of course if this meant reducing it to a cult of one, and then he dies, but I don’t think he’ll quite manage that in the handful of years left to him. Anyway, youse guys are all too shrewd to nibble away too much at the hand that feeds you, eh?
It rather amuses me that he was reported in the news this morning as having said, only a few years ago, that the other Christian denominations were ‘deficient’. Of course the Anglicans and others are making light of it all in their congratulations and encomiums, but it’s largely irrelevant to me. My own view accords more with one St Teabag, regular commentator over at the raving atheist, whose views I will quote here, with due corrections:
…what is the real difference between catholics and protestants? Some piddling variant in a story that is entirely unbelievable to those who were not brainwashed as children. If any religion has an intrinsic truth to it why is it so rare for non-religious people to become religious after thinking about it for a while? And by the same token, why are people who were brought up in some faith rejecting religion in such large numbers? I'd call it retarded, but that seems a bit unfair to the retards, most of whom are afflicted through no fault of their own.
I wouldn’t put things quite so stridently or unkindly, but the above is an indication of the confusion and exasperation we atheists feel when confronted with something so patently irrational, which yet holds such sway upon this tiny planet. I too felt the need to let off steam among my fellow unbelievers, and I posted this comment …
My guess is that pope joe will last till he's ninety-three at least. He looks v hale and hearty for a seventy-eight year old, a real never-say-die alpha type - so another 15 years of same old same old, only older, which is all right by me, it just means that by the end of it this cult will be more irrelevant and risible than ever, and in the mean-time we'll get fifteen years of free belly laughs at pompous pontifical pronouncements.
However, I take matters more seriously than this. Your church must be fought with the greatest weapon we humans have in our armoury, reason. By reason, I hope, it will finally be defeated.

suffering

Dear George
I hear you’re down in the last eighteen for the vacant papacy. Good luck but for selfish reasons I hope you go no further, I don’t want to be addressing these letters to somebody who’s infallible, I already feel that the task’s a bit daunting as it is. Anyway I don’t suppose even you would imagine scaling such heights. An Aussie pope, I don’t know whether it would make me laugh or cry.
This brings me to your recent post for Online Opinion, an encomium of sorts on John Paul 11. In it, you take a passing swipe at the euthanasia debate, and I want to pause on that.
The swipe was made in the context of claiming that secularists don’t value suffering as Christians do (or apparently should do). You claim that, in modern times, suffering is so devalued that we often prefer to eliminate the sufferer.
This is an odd, and if I may say so, a peculiarly insensitive way of characterising the issue. Of course people hate to see others suffer. That’s a natural response to suffering. It’s about empathy and fellow-feeling more than anything. ‘I have suffered with those that I saw suffer,’ as Miranda said in The Tempest. On some occasions the pain and agony may be so bad, and the situation so completely hopeless, that death would be a release. This issue has arisen for we humans from time to time since we first emerged on this planet. It’s always a great dramatic theme in war and adventure movies, with the hero proving his manhood by finishing off his best mate rather than leaving him to the tender mercies of the enemy. Such scenes depend for their dramatic power on questions and concerns that go a little deeper than ‘why not eliminate the sufferer?’ How much more agonising the issue becomes when it’s not a figure on celluloid but your own loved one who’s in such a suffering state.
So it seems you're trying to argue that people should accept suffering rather than death. That we should reject the easy, painless exit and embrace prolonged suffering, if it should happen to come our way. Followed by death of course.
Your reason for pushing this line is a religious one – Jesus suffered horribly but nobly and beautifully and is an example to us all. Suffering ennobles, it teaches us more than all the textbooks we choose to fill our heads with. Catholics and early Christians have taken this message to heart – hair shirts, regular self-flagellation, drinking the pus of the diseased, you name it, they’ve tried it. Perhaps even your clergy’s celibacy is an attempt to impose on themselves just a modicum of Christ’s suffering - though whether he suffered that particular deprivation is very much a moot point.
Now I for one recognise how much we can learn through suffering, but like the vast majority of people I don’t go out of my way to suffer, for learning purposes or for any other reason. Nor do I take a strong line on euthanasia one way or the other. I’m a pragmatist in these matters, and I don’t believe human life is sacred. I believe a human life belongs largely to the person who lives it and that he or she should have the largest say in how it should be brought to an end, as far as that’s possible.
So let’s not get carried away with the concept of suffering, George. We should acknowledge suffering, but I’m not sure what you mean by valuing it. Certainly we shouldn’t glory in it, or wallow in it. We should seek to alleviate it, where we can. I’m not sure, but I imagine even John Paul 11 was dosed up with pain killers on a regular basis. He died with dignity, and I’m sure we all hope that he didn’t suffer too much.
Bye for now, George, and once again, with renewed emphasis, I can only hope your god doesn’t lead you into too much silliness.
your pal, Luigi.

allow me

Dear George
Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Luigi Funesti-Sordido, founding member of the USSR, the Urbane Society of Sceptical Romantics, a society small in numbers but hopefully not in spirit, and dedicated, not surprisingly, to urbanity, society, scepticism and romance. I've decided, with the authority vested in me, to engage with your reflections on religion, spirituality, marriage, the family and anything else that I find of interest.

So without further ado, let the sparring begin. In an interview with John Cleary back in September 2001, you mentioned a book by Rodney Stark, who proposed apparently that Christianity’s rise within the Roman Empire had a profoundly civilising affect, and that it continues to do so. For example, you’ve pointed out that the most brutal leaders of the twentieth century were militant secularists – Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot and so forth.

However, I would want to point out that the infamous inquisition, the crusades of the middle ages, the various anti-jewish pogroms over the centuries, were all the products of Christian religious fervour. These events should be compared with those of the twentieth century not in terms of numbers killed and maimed – the greater numbers of modern times are largely due to the increased efficiency of death-dealing weaponry – but in terms of attitudes of intolerance, hatred, the value of human life. These are very difficult to determine, and I think changes have occurred at different rates in different parts of the world, but I like to think there has been an overall improvement, in terms of tolerance and openness to diversity, brought about more through globalisation and the effects of largely secular education than through religion, in my humble opinion. For example, I think the universal declaration of human rights, a purely secular document, has had a big impact.

The more destructive events and regimes of the twentieth century need to be looked at in more detail. Many of these regimes had or have a cultish, quasi-religious element which is unhealthy. North Korea’s Dear Leader, the cult of the Fuhrer and so forth, these examples of uncritical devotion are disturbing, and I have to say I’m similarly disturbed by the uncritical devotion many people show to the Pope, who after all is a human being with his biases and his weaknesses. This is one of the advantages of democracy – leaders are rarely allowed to get away with putting themselves above the people. The Catholic Church is a very undemocratic institution in this regard.

To conclude, George, your view that Christianity has been a civilising influence, from Roman times to the present day, is questionable in a number of ways. I recall reading Marguerite Yourcenar’s great historical novel, The Memoirs of Hadrian years ago, a well-researched account of a particularly secular and well-governed period in Roman history. I don’t think religion is particularly necessary to a well-regulated, healthy, vibrant society. Look at Japan. More important is a solid foundation of law and respected and representative political institutions. And besides, more important perhaps than whether or not Christianity is a civilising influence is whether or not it is true. The Catholic Church likes to talk about truth, and I think it’s the central issue myself, so I’ll be talking about it, often, in future letters.

Bye for now, and may your god not lead you into too much silliness

your mate, Luigi.