Protest the pope!

[liberal1]

As well as using censorship, Johnston Press (The Scotsman, Edinburgh Evening News and Scotland on Sunday) has been uncritically printing propaganda from the Scottish Catholic Media Office. As part of their PR offensive, The Scotsman printed a highly misleading 'report' headlined: "The majority of Scots have no objection to Papal visit" and claimed opposition was "evaporating". The opinion poll, in fact, showed 68% either opposed or indifferent.

In the BBC Radio 4 Sunday programme, enjoyed by many religionists, listeners were asked what they would want to ask the Pope if they saw him. The programme was forced to confess that the vast majority of its responses were from people OPPOSED to the visit. Posts on threads under stories concerning the Catholic Church confirm that the majority are opposed to the visit.

The story from the Scottish Catholic Media Office appeared on a day when The Scotsman ought to have been printing the story of Cardinal Danneels, head of the Catholic Church in Belgium and a bishop who have admitted concealing a case of serious child abuse. The lad simply recorded the conversation. He was heard being advised to wait until the priest had retired and not to make a 'noise' about the abuse.

Our so called 'national newspaper' is a disgrace. It colludes with protectors of child abusers. Ratzinger refuses to sack Field and Walsh, the two auxiliary bishops named in the Murphy Report. The Irish report accused the Catholic Church of being more concerned with its own image after it found children being threatened if they spoke out. The police just referred complainants back to the bishops.

While ordinary Scots men and women are being told to cut back on essential services, this 'State visit' - the Vatican has only 800 citizens and was established by fascist leader, Mussolini - is costing in the region of £100m. This figure has been estimated by the National Secular Society using the Freedom of Information Act and comparing costs of similar visits outside the UK. The Pope's entourage will stay in a top-rated hotel and receive £150-a-day spending money.

The Home Secretary is making last minute changes to UK law to prevent Ratzinger's arrest and a citizen's petition in protest was pulled months before it was supposed to close by the government.

The Vatican's views on homosexuality (an intrinsic disorder) and women (unfit to do clerical duties; described as a crime on a level with paedophilia) are well known. This visit will be used by the Pope to proselytise at our expense and it will be done behind a human shield of children bussed in from sectarian schools. They will be entertained in Bellahouston Park by a former G-A-Y performer and STV host, Michelle McManus.

Here are some shocking extracts from Sexual Fascism, a book by Garry Otton you can download from Amazon: -

… A string of allegations against the Poor Sisters of Nazareth brought about judgement day in the High Court in Aberdeen for Sister Alphonso, alias Marie Docherty. Former children from the orphanage lined up to provide testimonies of daily beatings, sexual abuse from visiting priests, the force-feeding of a little girl with her own vomit, the wrapping of bed-wetters in their urine-soaked sheets, the forcing of a little girl into a cold bath in the middle of an epileptic fit which Sister Alphonso was supposed to have described as “the work of the devil”, lads being dropped into scalding baths and the ‘cleansing’ of menstruating girls by immersing them in baths filled with Jeyes disinfectant. One woman claimed Sister Alphonso had dragged her by her hair and beat it against a wall so hard it broke her front teeth leaving only the stumps. Helen Cuister told a court that when she began menstruating, Sister Alphonso told her that it was ‘God’s punishment’ for girls who did not behave and that her punishment would go on until midnight when she would die for being so dirty. Louise Clark told the same court how she had been beaten mercilessly simply for not attending church. Sister Alphonso told the court how, as a child she had pulled down her knickers and asked her father to hit her and, when as a sister in the Aberdeen home, she had given the girls a good talking to after she caught them watching forbidden TV programme, ‘Top of the Pops’.

The church stood by Sister Alphonso. A Scottish Catholic Church source told the press: “The view within the church is that she deserves sympathy, not more punishment. The church will rally round her.” In a prepared statement, the Rt Rev Mario Conti, the Catholic Bishop of Aberdeen and Orkney explained: “Some practices which, today seem excessive and even cruel, would not have been viewed in this light years ago. These convictions do not, moreover, invalidate the great good, which was done by Sister Marie, in caring competently and appropriately for many thousands of children over the last 100 years”. The Catholic Church appointed a team of leading lawyers, including former Solicitor General Paul Cullen, QC. Still dressed in her nun’s habit, Marie Docherty was found guilty of just four counts of cruelty and unnatural practices. Former care assistant Helen Howie, 75 was angry that she was not called as a witness. “She has made all these children out to be liars”, she said, “but everything they said was true. A couple of times when my husband came to collect me from his work he had to pull her off to stop her beating the children. I called him many a time to take her away from the children”. Docherty’s age, state of health, lack of previous convictions and the time that had passed since the crimes took place were all taken into consideration. After whispering a polite ‘thank you’ to Sheriff Colin Harris, Marie Theresa Docherty was free to walk away. The Scottish Daily Mail tried to “put this case in perspective” and commented that what Sister Alphonso did “was not in the same category as the more sordid offences involving paedophile priests and social workers” assuring readers “there was no sexual element involved”.

More scandals were to follow. After lodging papers at the Court of Session in Edinburgh containing allegations by 11 former pupils who claimed to have been brutalised by an order of Catholic monks, solicitor Cameron Fyfe claimed he was handling the biggest abuse case Scotland had ever seen. Allegations from former pupils of St Ninian’s List D School in Gartmore, Stirlingshire described electric shocks administered from a device described as a type of generator kept in a boot room where boys had to hold on to a pair of wires leading from the machine. Central Scotland Police were involved in compiling a report for the Procurator Fiscal that also included complaints of regular thrashings, being forced to eat vomit, sexual fondling and serious physical abuse.

The Big Issue in Scotland told a particularly harrowing tale by resident John McCorry of the behaviour of the nuns from the Smyllum Park Orphanage near Lanark. “They warped our sexualities. We were told that the toilet - and even using the word toilet - was evil. We couldn’t refer to any part of our body between the neck and knees as anything other than ‘our front’. But as a result kids would get beaten for talking about their fronts. We would get beaten for asking to go to the toilet. It was institutionalised insanity… Boys who wet the bed were beaten all the time… They were forced to drink Epsom salts over and over again. But that ended up making them doubly incontinent. Most of the boys who suffered this ended up soiling themselves a few hours later. The most disgraceful thing I ever saw was one boy who was forced to walk up and down all day in the dining hall with his wet sheet under his arm. The sister who made him do this was shouting at us, saying, ‘Why aren’t you laughing at him?’ There was the sound of forced laughter everywhere. The boy was crying. It was sadistic, sick, mental torture”. The Catholic Church’s spokesman, the ‘Sexfinder General’, Monsignor Tom Connolly, not usually shy of offering sound bites to the press, left it to his secretary to explain to the magazine: “It’s nothing to do with us any longer”.

More scandals continued to hit the Catholic Church. The leader of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, Archbishop Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, faced controversy after he admitted he had let “pædophile” priest Michael Hill carry on working despite allegations of child abuse. By the summer of 2001, men who worked at the De La Salle Scottish residential homes run by a Catholic order of monks were charged with offences dating back to the 1950s. Victims claimed they had been subjected to electric shock punishments, beaten with whips, punched and kicked.

The Sunday Herald attacked the Catholic Church and printed ‘Liam’s’ story: “The priest would sit the child on his knee, facing away from him, tell Liam to stare at some icon or votive picture such as the Sacred Heart on the wall of his chapel house and whisper in the boy’s ear how much God loved him. Minutes later, the sexual assault would be over. Then the priest would turn Liam towards him and cuddle him, telling him he’d go to Heaven, sometimes adding: ‘It wasn’t that bad, was it, son?’” The Sunday Herald challenged the ‘Sexfinder General’s’ unusual silence, confronting him with a full affidavit from a Michael X who, after claiming to be sexually abused by Father Lynagh, also accused the late Father Kennedy, spiritual advisor at Blair’s College. Connolly blasted: “Michael X can talk to you all he likes, for us the matter is over. He may have made these allegations to you, but he never made them to me. Father Kennedy is dead and there ain’t much I can do about that. So that is that”.

[Lachlan09]

I don't mind if he "popes in" to visit

[ANDY-J3]

I would rather no foreign clerics visited Scotland - I don't care about their denomination. I regard religion as an anachronism and it's unfortunate that so much money is squandered on it when it could be put to better use.

[Polwarth]

I thought that both Whitehall and Edinburgh had made it clear that he had been invited as a Head of State (ie Vatican City) as opposed to head of a religious sect - and that despite this, his co-religionists had agreed to pay half the costs of his visit.... which is much more than other State Visitors have contributed.

I don't think 'we' should have made the requests (multiple, by various people including T Bliar and PoW, over the years, or so I've read) for him to visit.

[wullie m]

Folks, I think he's only a "Head of State" because Mussolini made him one and everybody swallowed this nonsense. The "faithfull", a dwindling bunch, should be paying for the lot. wullie m

[Saorsa1]

Religion is poison.

[Lachlan09]

Oh well, if they could put up with "Capn Hook" Hamza spouting his ****e in the UK for years, I suppose the Pope is really a breath of fresh air by comparison.

I don't see the objection to him coming (unless the UK public pays for it of course). Billy Graham, the Dalai Lama, L. Ron Hubbard and various other important religious heads have been in the UK before.

Besides, he should time it to coincide with a Rangers V Celtic match, so he and the Queen can attend. Then they can play out that joke (you know the one)

The Pope and The Queen in the celebrity box at Ibrox. The Pope says "I can make all the Celtic supporters here go wild with the wave of my hand". So he waves and a huge cheer goes up.

Then The Queen says "That's nothing. I can make all these Rangers supporters go delirious with a mere nod of the head."

The Pope replies "Is that so ? How ?"

The Queen says "Easy ! Just like this !" and nuts him !