Marginalisation

Religion is in danger of being marginalised, said the Pope- and so it is. But it's not something that's being done to it by a mean cruel world. He and his fellow theocrats are nobody's victims.  There's an audience out there for good news, bad news, any kind of news you happen to have and if the churches aren't getting their story across it's either because it's not a very good story in the first place or because they're not telling it right. 

The Pope delivered  his complaint in Westminster Hall in front of an audience including four prime ministers. Such marginalisation couldn't have happened in a godlier age. Back then- say a hundred and fifty years ago, when people really cared about religious matters-  he'd have been sitting not in person in Westminster Hall-  but in effigy on a bonfire outside.

Told By An Idiot: Rose Macaulay

Told By An Idiot is a survey of the fads, fancies and follies of the period 1879-1923, lightly disguised as a family chronicle. Its rolling structure reminds me of Woolf's The Waves. It also shares something of that book's lyricism and melancholy. The differences are that Woolf is only really concerned with the inner life and Told By An idiot is funny.