Letter to the Scottish Catholic Observer

Dear Sir –

Up until eight years ago neither myself or my wife knew anything but the longest Papacy in history. Concurrently the imminent papal conclave is both exciting and fascinating for her and I.

However I was disappointed with Kevin McKenna’s recent comments, “Pity Those who take a Pop at the Pope.” It dismayed a deep seated and parochial understanding of the faith handed on to us by Holy Tradition.

In addition the fact that Pius XII helped thousands of Jews during the war does not belong in your “Recent News” section.  John Paul II refered to the Jewish people as, “Our Older brothers and Sisters in the Faith.” Since the war It has been well known that after the horrors of war and anti-semitic Holocoust had subsided the chief Rabbi of Rome converted to Catholicism because of  the example of the much maligned Euginio Pacelli.

McKenna is correct in one respect – the purpose of Benedict’s papacy was to imbed what the man who personified the Sixties Council gave us.

As such we salute “Papa Beni” and after obviously contemplative works such as Jesus of Nazereth we, his loyal flock, look forward to further reflections in retirement.

 The church’s current position is unprecedented in modernity. As such Benedict will be a wise advisor to whoever next occupies the shoes of the humble Gallilean Fisherman. The best symbolic gesture he made was to change the crown on the papal coat of Arms to a more appropriate mitre.

However the embedding of the social democratic model has meant that the stated aim of the current Popes tenure – the re-evangelisation of Europe – was outmoded and outdated.  “Selfish Society” is an oxymoron and as we saw with the French Banlieue riots Europe teeters on a knife edge, unable to accommodate different world views.

Ideology has had its day and Chrisendom wisely looks south for a leader. What we need now is a man with a coherent systematic view of reality centred outside the continent that has given us some of the most fruitful and at the same time some of the most militantly atheistic outlooks of the last thousand years.