Hate speech

Graham Linehan, creator of the peerless Father Ted, has revealed that he wouldn't be able to write the show now because he has come to hate the Catholic Church so much.

I think that's a pity but I can understand how he feels.

I'm just wondering whether he will now be free to enter the United Kingdom.

A papal knighthood

'The papal knighthood given to Jimmy Savile "should not have been bestowed", a Vatican spokesman has told the BBC.'

No. it should not, though no blame attaches to its award unless the Vatican was better informed than his colleagues and bosses at the BBC will admit to being.

'The head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales confirmed it has written to the Holy See to ask if the honour can be posthumously removed.'

No, it cannot. He held it while he lived, and death removed it from him. There's no more to be said. Unless we want to go the whole hog by exhuming his corpse so that we can put it on trial. Let the secular world wallow in post-Christian superstition; Archbishop Nichols ought to know better. One appreciates that for painfully obvious reasons he feels the need to be seen to be doing something, but this is simply the wrong thing.

The penalties now faced by Jimmy Savile are not a matter for the Church or any other human agency. A papal knighthood is just part of the worldly pomp which we will all be stripped of when we go to meet our Maker. It's not for us to judge how repentant he was, or far his many good works were done for good motives. Those of us who are conscious of having done a lot less good and no little harm in the course of our lives would do well to pray for his soul.

Shahbaz Bhatti, martyr

I've just watched and now  recommend watching the video here on the life and death of Shahbaz Bhatti here - melodramatic, but why shouldn't it be?

Yesterday Mass at a church in Jos, Nigeria, was interrupted by a suicide bomber. At least ten are dead.

A reason to stay Catholic

This will confirm many in the view that the Catholic church is unfit for consumption. This on the other hand will hardly register outside the country concerned - but it ought to.

"We cannot build a state in a culture of treachery, lies and terror, of militarisation and the flagrant violation of the freedom of expression"

These are brave men, and surely their country's best hope.