Here’s something. Imagine you live in a community where you are expected to pay into a fund that is used to meet various needs in the community - the upkeep of roads, salaries for nurses and teachers, and community hospitality, for example. Then it transpires that you are about to receive a visit from a dignitary, and custom dictates that you will be expected to meet his considerable costs - the travel and accommodation of his party, and his considerable security expenses, not to mention the disruption and strain on usual community services.
On the face of it, it doesn’t seem too bad. After all, custom is custom. However, when you start to realize that the estimated cost of the visit runs into a number of millions - around 20, in fact - you do begin to wonder if that is the best use of community money, especially when the home for senior citizens near you was clearly having to make tough decisions about restricting care.
And then you start to think about it, and various problems start to emerge:
- The dignitary lives in a community in his own country, but doesn’t pay much into the community fund. He claims that he is exempt from such things. He is above them. His business keeps most of the money that it earns, putting it at a considerable commercial advantage. It is not really understood why this is so, but it is so. You realize that he wants to benefit from community funds, but doesn’t pay into any community funds of his own.
- You realize that he is not short of a bob or two. In fact, his business is one of the richest in the world. If it followed its own principles and shed its wealth, it could make considerable inroads into alleviating third world debt. He could well afford to meet his own travel, accommodation, and security costs, and make a considerable donation to you to cover the other expenses incurred by his trip.
- You begin to question his actual importance to your community. You realize that you have to look at what people actually do, rather than what they actually say when asked to fill in a form. In the 2001 census of your community, something like eight per cent of your community claimed to follow him. However, at Christmas in 2006, one of his biggest business gatherings of the year, only around one point five per cent of your community (861,000) actually turned out to support his cause. Around 20 million seems an awful lot to pay for one point five percent.
- You start to realize that this guest has a reputation for being a bit rude. He likes to enjoy the hospitality of his hosts, but then feel he has the right to criticize the way things are run in the community he visits. He makes representations, but certainly doesn’t have the burden of taxation.
- You discover to your horror that in the name of morality, his organization is responsible for some extremely questionable actions. He condemns sexual health policies in a way that encourages disease, death, and poverty throughout the world. And his organization’s track record on basic human rights is appalling. His organization has repeatedly failed to protect vulnerable children from unspeakable violation, condemns people with a different sexuality to his own, and continues to fail to acknowledge the equal employment rights of women.
- You remember that he promotes extremely strange views that have no empirical justification, and have held back the intellectual progress of large parts of the world for years - that he can turn wine into blood, that his organization’s leaders can secure respite from hell, that his own views are infallible, for example.
When you realize all this you start to wonder if you are being had. In fact, part of you really knows that his lack of reciprocity, generosity, importance, tolerance, morality, lack of respect for all human rights, and lack of intellectual integrity all add up to the conclusion that you really are being had.
For information on the cost of Papal Visits see Concordat Watch.
Sign the Petition.
The wires have been buzzing with the news of the Pope’s visit for some time now and I think many of us have signed petitions condemning it and demanding that the government refuse to pay for this evil little man (little in stature and evil in character) to visit this country.
The Pope is the sort of international leader who, but for the government’s toadying to all things religious, would be condemned along with Robert Mugabe, Kim Jong Il and all the other evil little men who find themselves in positions of power from which they should be summarily removed.
I fail to understand why Catholics, many of whom are kind, compassionate folk (if deluded), continue to accept this disgusting piece detritus as their head. If there is anything good to be said about his tenure it is that he has probably done as much damage to the reputation of his church than the massed ranks of the New Atheists.
If this visit goes ahead (and under that religious patsy Gordon Brown it assuredly will) then I hope that all people of good will (believers, agnostics and atheists alike) are going to turn out to show their rejection of the man and all that he stands for. Hereinafter, let “papal” stand for “despicable”.
Yes, I agree that it is outrageous that so much of our money should be spent on this visit. I have signed the petition.