Posted on 09/16/2010 5:48:26 AM PDT by re_tail20
The hostility that many British are voicing toward Pope Benedict XVI has shocked church officials in Rome as they prepare for the first formal state visit to Great Britain by a reigning pontiff.
The four-day papal visit, which begins Thursday, has prompted negative reactions by far exceeding anything the Pope has encountered when traveling even to non-Christian countries such as Turkey or Israel.
The protests have ranged from the mean-spirited and the tasteless to the vehemently ideological. Some even called for the Pope's arrest upon his arrival in Edinburgh, Scotland, where Queen Elizabeth II is to greet him.
At the bottom of the scale, the cost of the visit — an estimated 10 million pounds (about 15.4 million U.S. dollars) to British taxpayers — has generated repeated complaints, although such protests are never heard when other heads of state come to Britain.
More seriously, a controversy arose in April after the leak of a joke memo that a junior Foreign Office official had written suggesting that the Pope should bless a gay marriage and open an abortion clinic as part of his official program.
The government offered an apology to the Holy See, but the prank betrayed the sort of ignorant contempt that passes for cleverness in the corridors of power in Britain.
The National Secular Society, an atheist lobby group, has submitted to the government a petition against the papal tour and will demonstrate against the pontiff during the visit. The group's opinions are quoted widely and even promoted in the British press whenever the papal visit is discussed. The society’s protests against Islam, by contrast, seem limited to campaigning against the ritual slaughter of animals.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsmax.com ...
“Now I want you all to cheer like Protestants!” - The Quiet Man
The whole Ireland issue seems to be missing from this thread, British loyal protestants verses Irish national Catholics. That hotbed still simmers, if somewhat beneath the surface.
Oh really. Between placing the entire kingdom under interdict until King John agreed to turn it over to "Peter and Paul," opposition to the Magna Carta, the Avignon Papacy, the Babylonian Captivity, and the Reformation, I can't understand how this could have slipped under the Vatican's radar for, oh, 800 years or so.
Don’t forget Bloody Mary.
Or Bloody Elizabeth, but she executed far more. ;)
God has no place in a Socialist society. The people exepect the government to provide for their every need, thus crowding out God’s blessings.
See? Now if you had just let Hank divorce Cathy back in 1525 then you wouldn’t be facing such hostility.
Thing that amazes me how certain Christians on this forum trumpet how “holier” they are and how ‘Christian’ they are and yet heap abuse upon abuse on the Pope and yet remind me of people who even if they recognized the injustice, remained ‘silent’ and ‘complicit’ when another Man walked forward to be pilloried by ‘public opinion’, judged a wicked sinner, even put to death for crimes He did not commit. . .
I will say this though, Satan knows his true enemy and brings all his wiles to bear on our Holy Father and the Church.
I have no idea what your talking about. I never said anything bad about the pope.
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