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Protestant Too Much

It being Sunday, this story is particularly resonant - and also demanding of forgiveness.  But the news that a junior British civil servant in the Foreign Office prepared an official memo planning for the Pope's autumn visit - a memo distributed widely to politicians and officials, and called a serious brainstorming document - which recommended the Pope variously open an abortion clinic, and start a new brand of condoms - seems willfully disrespectful, even sacrilegious.  People who wish to suggest I take a chill pill, and see the humour of the document may miss the point: visiting world leaders shouldn't ever be treated to such official government mockery, no matter how ludicrous their beliefs may be.  When their beliefs are a religion practiced by more than 20% of the world, and by a significant minority of one's own nation, even less reason is given for such a Monty Python treatment.  Of course, in pubs and private, let the Protestant (and secular) people of Britain mock the Catholic leader.  But to have derision generated at the higher levels of government reveals an inconvenient truth: Britain's elite ruling class is now, more or less, godless.  Godless, irreverent, and even, it might be said, cynical to the point of boring nihilism.
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Rik said…
Todd - did you read the BBC report all the way through? From that account it's clear that the memo (they're called 'minutes' in the Civil Service) was not 'official' in any way, shape or form; was not cleared - or even seen - by senior officials or Ministers before it was leaked; was nothing more than a prank by idiots who didn't know better. Typically it's the juniors who get blamed, not the line managers and team leaders. And what of the leaker (whistle-blower would be too kind a label in this circumstance)? Was s/he doing a public service by releasing the idiotic document to the press, or is this a game of office politics gone badly wrong?

People forget that Civil Servants are, first and foremost, people - and quite as capable of doing stupid stuff behind closed doors as the next person. Even in such 'august institutions' as the Foreign & Commonwealth Office.
Mon Apr 26, 09:26:00 am 2010
Sheenagh Pugh said…
It wasn't meant for publication or even distribution though. The point about brainstorming, as I recall, was that anything goes, you put forward literally anything that comes into your head, however wacky, because you never know, something that seems impossible may turn out not to be. What went wrong was someone leaking it, which they probably did maliciously because there's an election on.

Anyway I would rather live in a society where everything can be mocked in safety than where nothing can be. We have comedy vicars, comedy priests, comedy rabbis - now if only we had comedy ayatollahs, rather than people who take them in dead earnest, maybe the world would be a safer place.
Tue Apr 27, 01:39:00 pm 2010
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