Leak Foreign Office memo – Funniest attack on Pope Benedict could hardly be a mistake.

Fly my pretties....

A recently leaked report from the British Foreign Office is really hopeful in its ambitions to get the Pope to try new things. Amongst others, it suggests for him to go to a job centre, for a range of Benedict condoms to be sold, bless a civil partnership, reversal of policy on women priests/bishops and the funniest of them all, “apologise for…….”. The last one really gets me. With the state of the Catholic Church at the minute, the British government left that one vague. I mean they have so much to apologise for that it would be environmentally unsound to use paper to list them all. Dot, dot, dot is a much more economical way of doing it. Could this be a deliberate jibe at the Pope and his church?

Britain doesn’t have the same love of the Vatican as Ireland, only around 9% of people call themselves Roman Catholics. In the past few years this has risen considerably, with the Catholics beating the Anglicans in the race to be the group that believe in some really odd superstitious stuff that has the most members. But remember, immigration from Eastern Europe has been huge in the last few years, and most of them are Catholics. So it still leaves most of the population as non-catholics. His sphere of influence is small, and with his scheduled visit in September, could this actually be a well-timed prank?

The Pope's shopping list, he pays for his goods with a reality cheque

Earlier in the year the Pope outraged Britons by attacking the governments Equality Bill. Basically giving rights to minority groups such as homosexuals, the bill was seen as offensive to people of faith. Yes, they still want to burn you, you gays. “It actually violates the natural law upon which the equality of all human beings is grounded and by which it is guaranteed” was the Pope’s response. By natural law he means the most unnatural of law, the belief system of a made up man in the clouds who is hard-wired to our brains, who sees everything we do and think, and will send us to the fiery bowels of hell for any bending of his rules. He also stated, “the effect of some of the legislation designed to achieve this goal has been to impose unjust limitations on the freedom of religious communities to act in accordance with their beliefs” Another way of saying that if you’re gay or some other minority your beliefs don’t matter. Hypocritical beyond reason, the Pope wants his club to be on top. I must point out that this bill would force the church to employ all types of people. Could you imagine that? Some type of sexual deviant working alongside priests? I mean those gays, they’re contagious aren’t they?

It’s of little surprise then that the government would even put this list together, let alone leak it. I can just imagine the laughing as they add more and more ridiculously offensive things to the list (offensive to the Vatican, to any normal being they seem like the only way to save the shaky institution). Things that everyone is thinking, but things that a government would never think, right?

“I have an idea, how about we ask the Pope to dance the macarena with a couple of bishops?”

“Oh oh, I’ve got one. How about we ask him to apologise for that volcano in Iceland”

“Yea yea, and while we’re at it, lets ask him to break dance in a mosque, to show he’s accepting of all faiths”

Worried about the divisions between the church and the secular state Bishop of Chester, Peter Forster, said “There’s a ‘familiarity breeding contempt’ in some circles of society about our Christian heritage which leads to the distasteful events we had yesterday with that memo.” He clearly misses the point. It’s not familiarity that is the problem with the church, it’s the church itself. In a modern society it has no place, and the leaking of this memo shows how seriously the church is taken.

In the end apologies were given, and the Pope decided not to cancel his visit to the UK. Maybe he has a sense of humour after all. I mean condoms? Come on, we all know that they are made by satan* in his factory of female lesbian priests. He would probably have a good chuckle over that.

*Satan is the true name for Richard Dawkins, who plans to have the Pope arrested when he comes to the UK, much in the same way Pinochet was.