Don’t mock the Pope
The Pope’s private secretary, “Gorgeous” Georg Genswein, has called for Italian satirists to stop making fun of him and his boss. The daily newspaper of the Vatican was critical of a recent spate of satirical sketches about the pair of them, broadcast on Italian TV and radio.
I am aware of the controversy and I hope that broadcasts of this kind stop. […] Satire is fine. But these things do not have any intellectual quality and offend men of the church. They are not acceptable
The satire seems pretty tame. Comedian Luciana Littizzetto joked that she wanted to set aside some of her taxes to pay for a private meeting with the sexy papal secretary. There is an impressionist, Maurizio Crozza, on Channel La 7 who does a number on the Pope, and a two comedians on RAI Radio do a double act about the Catholic couple.
Here is an example of one of their jokes: “They’ve opened a restaurant in the Vatican – the Last Supper. Not bad. You order fish for one and get enough for 20.”
No wonder the Vatican are saying “enough is enough”!
Hmm, so they’ve got to have intellectual quality. Who says? And the phrase ‘offend men of the church’, as opposed to merely ‘offend’, suggests that ‘men of the church’ are special. Well, I guess they are. They clearly don’t have the ‘intellectual quality’ to appreciate the joke – the joke that they are.
And who judges “intellectual quality”? I’d be pretty worried if a group who think condoms don’t help prevent the spread of STDs were the ombudsmen of intellect.
“It is time to reverse the prevailing notion that religious commitment is intrinsically deserving of respect, and that it should be handled with kid gloves and protected by custom and in some cases law against criticism and ridicule. – A.C. Grayling”
Couldn’t have put it better myself.
Like the warnings on fag packets (that would be cigarettes people) this should be inscribed on every religious textbook printed in large type and braille too.
I tottlay agree with you, Marc. The question is, how do we get to the stage of placing such warnings on religious texts, lecture posters, “places of worship” signs, etc..?
Maybe one way is to produce a proper research on the effects of uncritial, or non-scepticly held, beliefs and institutions that promote them? Sure, these concepts will have to be defined as well.. (e.g. what is a belief, a sceptical view, what is non-sceptical, critical, etc..) There’s a LOT of work, and scope in that area…
However, it can also be approached from equality agenda. i.e. social groupings, religions included, should not be favourably prejudiced by legistlators, media, etc.. (e.g. the nonsensicality of almost every “moral issues” talk in the radio/tv – to have a religious core. This is prejudice because it doesn’t question whether the concept and indeed practice of religion, which ever it might be – is moralistic or not… Some might agrue that since the concept of religiousness compless one and society to hypocricity – it is imoral in its core..)
Another form of prejudice is council rates for religious places. These are currently classed as “charity”, hence rates are lower than business…
You might also be interested in http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/nofaithinschools/ – for more than 1 reason..
Did you hear the one about the Catholic with a sense of humour?
No, nor did I.
“They’ve opened a restaurant in the Vatican – the Last Supper. Not bad. You order fish for one and get enough for 20.â€
Hey, do they sell bread in that restaurant ?
If so I’ll have five loaves…
you sure that’s not harry ramsdens?
Thanks Aharon. I’m signed up on the petition already – someone sent me it yesterday. It’s the only really popular petition so far … doubtful if Rev. Blair will take any notice though; it would be a first if he did.
Another form of prejudice is the way that parents of faith (or children attending faith shcools) can get subsidised travel, yet secular parents cannot get the same to AVOID faith schools. This isn’t fair and in my mind it amounts to religious discrimination. Positive discrimination is discrimination too.
Don’t mock the Pope? But isn’t that what he’s for?
They’re not stupid, deluded maybe, but not stupid. It’s clear to them that if people start to mock the pope, they’ll start to realise that all he stands for is bullshit too.
It’s not that they’re offended, it’s that they’re frightened of losing their grip! Hey, with all that money at stake, who can blame them?
So this cross-dressing closet nazi with a fondness for Prada slippers goes into the pulpit……
oh, never mind!
Is the next line something about an altar boy waiting for him?
Or the holy ghost coming over him 😉