Marginalisation

[poliphilo]

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.

Comments

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I don't know what I mean by incompetent, because it's not me who is saying it. I'm just reporting what I read in the press. My knowledge of what's going on in US politics is too superficial for me to form an opinion. I've seen Obama do things I liked and things I didn't like. And I've never been clear how much of a free hand he has to do anything.

With Bush, of course, I was never in any doubt that he was a disaster.

[michaleen.livejournal.com]

Forgive me, I did not intend to take quite such an accusatory tone and realize that you were reporting what you read and hear and not advancing a personal opinion.

Obama puts me in an uncomfortable position. When my parents, for instance, start railing about him being a "communist" -- and they do, in just those words -- I can only laugh, since I think the man is far too staid and conservative for my political taste. When someone on the left is trashing Obama, saying he is worse than Bush -- and they do say that -- I am equally at a loss. I am as disappointed by the current state of things as the next man, without question, yet I think Obama has done better than I should have expected.

Perhaps the real problem here is trying to play the adult, intellectually and politically speaking, in a profoundly infantile age.