Over the weekend it emerged that a government adviser had circulated a memo about the Pope’s upcoming visit to the UK that they have been forced to apologise for.

The document was apparently the result of a “brainstorming” session, where staff tried to come up with a scenario for an ideal visit by the Pope. You can see at least some of the text here, including suggestions that the Pope should launch a ‘Benedict’ brand of condoms, visit an abortion clinic and bless a civil partnership.

This has led to a storm of condemnation of the memo, branded “offensive” and “vile”. Many revealed that this in fact may not have been a serious planning session, but in fact an attempt to take the piss. Paralysed in shock, the nation gradually came to realise that someone had dared to mock a man who promotes views which we all know to be total nonsense.

The government has apologised and been desperate to smooth things over. Meanwhile, the Vatican itself spoke of “dark forces” at the heart of the British government.

It’s difficult to find a full text of the memo online, and there’ve been differing reports of what it contained (which makes you wonder how many of the people rushing to condemn it have actually read it), but based on what has been mainly reported, is it a case of outrageous prejudice?

Is it outrageous to ridicule the church’s mental position on contraception, sex education, homosexuality etc.? Is deliberately misinforming school pupils about abortion and their sexuality really a set of views that we should just respect? Or is it ok to poke fun at reactionary craziness, even if it is supported by lots of religious believers?

When I was in Catholic school we were taught that two thirds of condoms failed, given no education on different kinds of contraception and any discussion of abortion was solely focused on it being traumatic and wrong for the woman in all cases. We never got to see “The Silent Scream”, a disturbing anti-abortion video, but other pupils did, and it had a major effect on how they view abortion. The film is riddled with inaccuracies and downright pish, Leftfield will be coming back to why it’s nonsense in a later post.

I found it offensive that the Catholic Church was allowed to promote their one sided view of the world in schools, and I wasn’t allowed to hear about anyone’s rights regarding sex education, contraception or abortion – and not only was it offensive, it wasn’t even funny unlike the memo done by hard working civil servants, who no doubt had to take their work to the pub with them.

Some people, including some on the Left, say the memo was out of order because it was an attack on a religious minority and have compared it to the attacks you get on Muslims from the far-right, some evangelical Christians and some very confused ’secularists’. What’s happening to Muslims today is much, much worse though – nobody is denying the Catholic Church the right to build spires on Churches, enforcing legal restrictions on what Catholic women can wear, or talking about Catholic birthrates destroying Western civilization.

The Pope gets into the spirit of things after blessing a gay wedding

Also, while there is no Islamic equivalent of the Pope, if for example the King of Saudi Arabia were to visit the UK we probably would find it quite funny if people took the piss out of his regime for its interesting stances on community restorative justice (i.e. beheadings for witchcraft) or its unique plan to encourage use of public transport by not letting women drive cars – which has won it plaudits from the Top Gear presenters, including fellow Islamist Jeremy Clarkson.

If the Pope doesn’t like being mocked he should either abandon his views or try and defend them against attack. When I was in RE classes it was pretty obvious to most if not all of the people in the class that the Church’s position on many of the issues in the memo were patently ridiculous – and very few of the people at my school were atheists or agnostics. Most of them would still have described themselves nominally as Catholics, and ignore all the nonsense bits of it, like banning condoms etc. If the Catholic Church had spent half as much time attacking poverty in Scotland and the world, opposing climate change, or other kinds of injustice in society as they did attacking homosexuality and sex education then it’s likely a lot more people in my school and in Scotland would have a lot more respect and time for the Catholic Church.

As it stands today, if the Pope wants to argue that gays are as big a threat to humanity as climate change then he shouldn’t expect people not to say that’s mental.

(Additional reporting and images by Jack.)

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