The new CATHOLIC VOICES blog site today contains a lengthy rebuttal of something I have not read but which apparently came out in the Independent yesterday
www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-catholics-its-you-this-pope-has-abused-2074...
It's a necessary rebuttal, of course, but I wish the writer had provided his/her name, especially since he/she uses the pronoun 'I' and not the editorial 'we'. An anonymous rebuttal does not exactly inspire reader confidence!
An appeal to UK journalists
to show some decency to the Pope
Unsigned
Sept. 10, 2010
I want to appeal to Johann Hari and other columnists in our national press, in the final days before Pope Benedict XVI's visit. I know you are inherently decent people. You are journalists, who value truth, and the search for it, and both the freedom that this requires, and the solemn responsibility that goes with it. You are opposed to reproducing myths without subjecting them to verification; you deplore stories which are baseless, or so distorted that they serve only to obfuscate.
You disapprove, surely, of exploiting the trust that readers put in our press to mislead them, or of fobbing them off with ill-informed, superficial, one-sided arguments. Yet over the next week you will continue to deplore this papal visit, cheering on the protesters.
It is my conviction that if you impartially review the evidence that articles such as Johann's today have tried to claim as justifying that hostility, you will stand in solidarity with Catholics, and open your eyes and ears to what Pope Benedict has to say.
You begin:
"For over 25 years, Ratzinger was personally in charge of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the part of the Vatican responsible for enforcing Catholic canonical law across the world, including on sexual abuse. He is a notorious micro-manager who, it is said, insisted every salient document cross his desk. Hans Küng, a former friend of Ratzinger's, says: "No one in the whole of the Catholic Church knew as much about abuse cases as this Pope."
Yet it was not until 2001 that the CDF was put in charge of dealing with the mounting cases of abuse, especially in the English-speaking world. Until then, "policies" on clerical sex abuse, to the extent the Vatican had any, were the responsibility of the Congregation of Bishops.
But the big point you ignore is that it was the bishops in their dioceses across the world who were and are responsible for the actions of their priests, and it was the bishops who acted or failed to act against them.
After 2001, following Pope John Paul II's motu proprio of that year, it is true, Cardinal Ratzinger came to know more about abuse cases than anyone else in the Vatican, but it was his task, each Friday, to review the files on abusive priests which, as result of that motu proprio, had to be forwarded to him from the local dioceses -- to ensure that action would be taken.
He used to call it his Friday penance, and later referred to the "filth" in the Church. He became very aware of the issue, and put in place a series of reforms, which he has continued as Pope, to ensure that abuse cases could no longer be ignored or shelved by bishops.
You go on:
"We know what the methods of the church were during this period. When it was discovered that a child had been raped by a priest, the church swore everybody involved to secrecy, and moved the priest on to another parish. When he raped more children, they too were sworn to secrecy, and he was moved on to another parish ... The church insisted all cases be kept from the police and dealt with by their own "canon" law – which can only "punish" child rapists to prayer or penitence or, on rare occasions, defrocking."
The cardinal error you make is to conflate the Vatican with the Church present across the world. Do you think the Vatican "micro-manages" 219,655 parishes in hundreds of countries, and decides where its 400,000 priests are sent? Do you imagine that such a management would be possible, even if it were desirable?
What you describe -- abusive priests sometimes being sent to other parishes (usually after therapy, which the "experts" of the time recommended) -- was, so often, sadly true; but it was the bishops who made those decisions.
When you say that "the Church insisted all cases be kept from the police and dealt with by their own canon law", are you referring, then, to some instruction from Rome? There is none. Canon law itself directs obedience to civil law.
And of one thing I can assure you, because it is spelled out in detail in all the independent reports into clerical abuse -- notably two most important ones: the US John Jay Criminal Study of 2004, and the recent Murphy Report into Dublin diocese -- it is that
the action and penalties clearly spelled out in canon law were almost never implemented. Indeed, the way that canon law went into abeyance in the 1970s-80s (for various reasons which we shall not dwell on here) is one of the most shocking aspects of the crisis, for it was the Church's own law which demanded that abusive priests face justice; but the path of therapy was time and again preferred.
"Ratzinger was at the heart of this", you say. "He refuses to let any police officer see the Vatican's documentation, even now, but honourable Catholics have leaked some of them anyway."
I'm sorry? At the heart of what? And when has he refused police access to Vatican documentation?
Why would the police want that access when these are diocesan files, forwarded to the CDF after 2001? Surely the police can just ask the dioceses for them? And of course they have. Time and again.
Nobody except lawyers attempting to bring a class action against the Vatican has ever claimed that Rome is "concealing" abuse cases; these are all cases which fall under local civil jurisdictions.
You then go on to give three "examples" to try to demonstrate that Cardinal Ratzinger personally obstructed abuse cases.
The first dates back to when he was briefly an archbishop in Germany in the 1980s. The Hullerman case does indeed suggest that -- typical of the time -- a priest was moved to another parish. But nobody has demonstrated that Archbishop Ratzinger was responsible for that decision. And even if he had been, he was still, then, a diocesan bishop, and your attempt to demonstrate a Rome-directed cover-up is not assisted by mentioning this case.
The two other cases you mention, Kiesle and Murphy, are both from the United States and both do involve Cardinal Ratzinger, then CDF prefect, because they concern laicisation, which was and remains the responsibility of the CDF.
In both cases there was a failure speedily to laicise priests who had been guilty of or convicted of abuse (as it happened, in one case, the police prosecuted; in the other, they dropped the case). You draw the quite bizarre conclusion from this that the delay in laicisation enabled these priests to continue abusing. But it is not laicisation which prevents a priest from abusing; it is removal from active ministry.
Removal from active ministry is when a bishop stops a priest from functioning as a priest -- he cannot say Mass, hear Confessions, be a pastor, or administrator of a school, or indeed anything else. Crucially, that act -- removal from act of ministry -- prevents a priest from abusing.
Laicisation is a canonical procedure -- and before you object, let me point out that a state such as the UK has no power to laicise, and that this is purely a canonical process -- which takes from the priest the sacramental power he was given at ordination. The difference between the two should be obvious.
The first, which is the task of the bishop, is the crucial act which prevents further abuse. The second, which is the task of Rome, is entirely irrelevant to whether a priest can abuse or not. I hope that's clear. It is rather important.
Now, as it happens, laicisation is an important action for the Church to take against an abusive priest, because it is very painful for a victim to see that his abuser remains a priest, even if he is not acting as one.
But back in the 1980s-90s, it was impossible swiftly to laicise a priest, because it involved a lengthy legal process. What is more, at the time there were many priests applying to be laicised because they wished to marry, and there was a major backlog.
All the evidence suggests that the letter signed by Cardinal Ratzinger "for the good of the Church" was a form letter which was sent to all priests who had applied for laicisation, for whatever reason, effectively saying: go away and think about it.
Cardinal Ratzinger himself can't have been comfortable about this, because in 2001 -- as result of the reforms introduced by John Paul II -- the CDF made use of new guidelines to introduce a fast-track laicisation for priests guilty of abuse.
The problem, therefore, of a priest being acted against in every other sphere (ie removed from ministry, prosecuted by police) but remaining a priest, was resolved, and nowadays a speedy defrocking is standard practice.
But I repeat, the length of time it used to take to laicise had no bearing on whether a priest was able to abuse. The crucial action was removal from ministry -- a bishop's task.
You say:
"In 2001, Ratzinger wrote to every bishop in the world, telling them allegations of abuse must be dealt with 'in absolute secrecy... completely suppressed by perpetual silence'. That year, the Vatican actually lauded Bishop Pierre Pican for refusing to inform the local French police about a paedophile priest, telling him: 'I congratulate you for not denouncing a priest to the civil administration.' The commendation was copied to all bishops."
Let's take this one by one.
In 2001 Cardinal Ratzinger updated a document relating to the abuse of sacraments, and especially a particular canonical crime which is entirely unknown in any civil law of any land, namely exploiting the secrecy of the confessional to solicit sexual favours.
The document did indeed demand confidentiality, because investigating such an abuse, as you can imagine, is not easy;
the confidentiality was imposed not to cover up this abuse, but to act on it -- to enable action, by imposing strict rules of confidentiality to allow allegations to be made and acted on without (until they were proved true) ruining the good names of either the priest or the alleged victim.
[SOP, moreover, in the civilian justice system, to protect the integrity of a case while it is under investigation or sub judice.]
But this was an internal procedure relating to an internal crime, one that does not exist in civil law. The document did not say that a victim could or couldn't also go the police with an allegation -- that is a matter for the civil law of that country (and by the way, in some countries paedophilia is a crime, in others not).
If you look at the rules governing, say, the disbarring of a dodgy barrister from the Bar Council, you will not find any reference there to going to the police either; these procedures concern a separate jurisdiction.
I imagine in the
Independent you have guidelines on how to handle staff misdemeanours; some of them may involve crimes, some not; no one claims that your guidelines subvert British law, surely? And if your staff review procedures demand confidentiality, is this a reason to suppose that the
Independent is "covering up" crimes which should be put in the hands of the police? I don't think so.
As to the letter to Bishop Pican, this was not a letter written by "the Vatican" to the world's bishops; it was a letter to the bishop from the prefect of the Congregation of the Clergy, Dario Castrillon Hoyos, whose attitude, I agree, was shocking.
When that letter came to light earlier this year, the Vatican's spokesman said, in effect, "you see what we were up against?" More specifically, you see what Cardinal Ratzinger was up against. That letter directly went against the guidelines which the CDF was putting into place that year -- guidelines which, by the way, made it clear that a case of abuse should "normally" (they can't say always: in some countries child abuse is not a crime, in others it is a crime but not acted on) be reported to the civil authorities.
Cardinal Castrillon-Hoyos was retired [from being Prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy; he continued to serve as head of Ecclesia Dei] in 2004, leaving the way clearer for Cardinal Ratzinger's necessary reforms.
[Cardinal Castrillon's letter to the French bishop continues to be widely misrepresented, even as it is by this Catholic Voices writer, who also ignores that Castrillon has said he asked and got John Paul II's permission to send the letter. The full story about the letter has yet to be told - from what has been revealed, Castrillon apparently upholds the duty of a bishop to treat his priests like spiritual children and to protect the sanctity of the confessional, since the priest apparently disclosed his crimes to the bishop in the confessional, although there is evidence that the bishop subsequently got independent information about it.]
"Once the evidence of an international conspiracy to cover up abuse became incontrovertible to any reasonable observer", you go on, but there's the rub: there was no international conspiracy, there is none, and any "reasonable observer" that has looked at the facts has reached that easy conclusion, inconvenient as it is for Dan Brown's many fans.
And so you go on -- Belgium was a shocking example of the police overreaching themselves, but let's not dwell there -- to say:
"When Ratzinger issued supposedly ground-breaking new rules against paedophilia earlier this year, he put it on a par with... ordaining women as priests."
A mere flick of Google would have told you that's nonsense. The only new reason that modifications to the canon law on laicising abusive priests and attempting to ordain a woman were issued in this same category -- a category, by the way, which included much else besides -- was that they both related to the same area of canon law, to do with abuse of the sacraments.
But the Vatican's spokesman made absolutely clear at the time that there was no suggestion whatever that the two were on the same moral level, and he said so, precisely because he knew that people like you would wilfully misinterpret it.
Yes, wilfully. Because you must have known, surely, that that's what Fr Lombardi said, and yet you chose to ignore it. Correct me if I'm wrong. Perhaps you didn't know, and were in a rush.
But you're onto condoms now, because the rest of the article is mere padding. "When he visited Africa in March 2009, he said that condoms 'increase the problem' of HIV/Aids." You leave this statement alone, because it must be 'so obviously untrue'.
Yet international AIDS experts such as Harvard's Edward Green rushed to agree with him. And here are some more reasons why the Pope is right -- indeed speaks from the knowledge of the Church in Africa, deeply embedded with, and caring for, those afflicted with AIDS.
"His defenders say he is simply preaching abstinence outside marriage and monogamy within it, so if people are following his advice they can't contract HIV – but in order to reinforce the first part of his message, he spreads overt lies claiming condoms don't work."
Except he doesn't. He says condoms-based programmes are ineffective and can make the problem worse. You go on to suggest -- although you don't actually state it -- that Pope Benedict has suggested that condoms are porous. He has never said this, although a discredited paper by a long-dead Vatican cardinal did try to suggest as much -- and was shot down.
[Condoms are, however, far from 100% efficient - they are not failsafe at all - and to uphold them as the 'best' preventive measure against AIDS is not just willfully naive but ignorant!]
I know that for many liberal, enlightened, rational columnists the kind of crude hatchet-swinging anti-papal polemic you have written makes you feel warm and fuzzy inside. It makes you feel better about yourselves to be on a moral crusade against the "immorality" of a Church.
But ask yourself this: would the "Nazarene carpenter" -- and thank you, by the way, for introducing Jesus -- be on the side of such visceral, irrational, unfounded loathing? Would he approve the setting aside of truth, reason, evidence, balance? Or would he urge a little research?
[Not to mention honesty and an open mind!]
I expect he would want you to welcome his vicar on earth, and to dare to listen -- respectfully, openly, fearlessly -- for when the Truth might dare to find you.
Here's something positive from the London section of BBC News - I must check out whether they have done this for the other cities that the Pope is visiting. A very good initiative, and I hope there will be more of it, as newspaper and online readers don't always have the time - I certainly don't even if I would like to, and as I would do if being a one-man media monitor on papal news and commentary were my fulltime job - to go into the comment boxes and take a sampling of opinion pro and con.
London Catholics welcome
the Pope to their city
Sept. 8, 2010
For many Catholics it will be their one and only chance to see the Pope when he comes to London.
Here, we find out just what the visit means to this group of Catholics planning to make their own special pilgrimage.
Gloria Ezeonyeasi, 45:
I was born a Catholic; it is a way of life and I love it. I was born into a Catholic community where everyone took part in bringing up a child - all my spiritual and social needs as a child growing up were met in my church family.
I am delighted I can go. Being a Christian, a Catholic, has never been so beautiful. Going to see the Pope is a liturgical celebration and my attendance is my service.
The Pope is a unifying symbol for Catholics and we are going to gather at table with Papa. This will make history as we hope this visit will foster unity amongst Christians.
The Green family
(John, 38, Lisa, 37, Jerome, 11, Aaron, 9, Adam, 6 and Naomi, 4.)
Jerome: I was baptised, then we went to the community we heard the gospels and when we were older we went to confession and communion. In the community you can meet with others and discuss bible passages, but it can't just stop there.
John: My parents were both Catholics and brought me up by taking me to church on Sunday, praying at home and sending me to Catholic primary and secondary schools.
Lisa: I was also brought up Catholic but I was very lukewarm especially in my teens when I wanted to be like my peers. I attended the World Youth Days every other year since I was 16; each one was a major turning point in my faith for a different reason each time.
I hope it will bring about a new togetherness in our family as we will all be going. I will also look at the theme of the visit 'heart speaks to the heart' and see what God has to tell me.
I hope to get healing for my family as we had bereavement earlier this year when our nine month old baby died of kidney complications.
James Blythe:
My local church is St Simon's, in Putney, a thriving congregation of about 800 with many families and a lovely primary school. I was born a Catholic and grew up in that parish.
My faith is a relationship with God that guides and helps me in everything I do. Most of all it is an experience of how much God loves me, and it's fantastic! I want to see the Pope since he is the Head of the Church on earth: whoever the Pope was, I would want to see him.
However, Pope Benedict is also an inspiring intellectual and theologian with a profound understanding of the needs of the Church, so I'm really keen to hear his advice for Catholics in Britain.
I'm looking forward to experiencing a happy and festive atmosphere, where Catholics can be unafraid to show their faith and their love for Pope Benedict.
Robert Colquhoun, 28:
My local church is in Banbury, Oxfordshire, St John the Evangelist, and I'm hugely excited about going to the Beatification event in Coventry with a coach load of the congregation.
I used to be an Anglican, and was really interested in the Church and the writings of John Paul II. At the last year of university, I felt the overwhelming desire to become a Catholic, so I converted. After that I travelled within the Church as a missionary and even trained to be a priest for a while, which made me realise how important Christianity is.
Faith gives my life meaning and purpose and a stable root to ground myself on. But the most important thing is about my personal relationship with God. I'm really looking forward to spending a joyful and celebratory experience with other Catholics proud of their faith.
Neil D'Aguiar, 31:
I belong to St Aidan's Parish in Coulsdon. I have been in the parish for three years and really love it here, it is one of the most welcoming parishes that I have been to, and I love the way the whole community seems to be involved in parish life in so many ways. I am a member of the choir and a sacristan in the parish.
I was born and raised in a Catholic family and I was an altar server, however, my faith really began to develop after my A-levels and through university. I was privileged to experience a number of spiritual experiences and healings and have had God active in my life ever since.
There are two reasons why I am going to see the Pope. Firstly, to show him, my family, my pupils, and anyone watching, that I am proud of my faith and religion and want that to be known.
Secondly, to share the pilgrim experience of being with likeminded people sharing the spiritual communion of prayer and worship whilst also receiving guidance from the Holy Father.
This is the kind of testimonial from the 'regular folk' that shows the real strength of the faith that Benedict XVI upholds, defends and wishes to share with all men. It is such regular folk that I had hoped Rodari and Tornielli might have included in their book ATTACCO A RATZINGER, because what really matters is the impact on them of the media reporting on sex abuses (and negative reporting about the Church, in general), not the media's circular sounding board in which they simply bounce off their ideas, pro and con, on each other! People like those quoted by the BBC represent the authentic 'faithful' who, I like to believe, constitute the broad majority of Catholics worldwide.
Carl Olson in Ignatius Insight Scoop calls attention to this recent entry in a British blog, which I suppose was meant to be witty, humorous and clever, but despite making surprisingly honest acknowledgments about some of Benedict XVI's qualities, it does not hide the writer's biases and is definitely unwitty, unfunny and crude whenever he betrays them. However, he is just as derisive about the Pope's other detractors in the UK media. BTW, he gives no clue as to who he is, simply calling himself the Heresiarch.
Ten reasons to love the Pope
8 September 2010
The Pope is said to be looking forward to a "joyful" visit to Britain next week. It's not clear who else is. The organisers seem to be terrified it will be a flop, even while doing their best to discourage the crowds.
Even Damian Thompson is filled with foreboding, perhaps because his liberal enemies are responsible for the arrangements, while
surveys suggest that grassroots Catholics are oddly indifferent to a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get a close-up look at their boss.
['Suggest' is the operative word.]
Only the Protest the Pope crowd would seem to be truly looking forward to the occasion. And the Guardian and BBC, of course, who will relish the opportunity to big up the protestors.
Well the Heresiarch will not be joining in the frenzy of Pope-baiting.
[Though much of what passes for irony in this piece is Pope-baiting!]
As Brendan O'Neill astutely points out, "the great irony of this allegedly rationalist protest against the Pope is that it is indulging in precisely the kind of demonology that the Catholic Church once excelled at."
So what if millions of pounds of our tax-money are being spent entertaining and protecting him? He's only the spiritual figurehead of a billion people, after all. So what if he has old-fashioned views on sex and the role of women in his church? He's in his eighties and by most accounts doesn't have that much experience of the opposite sex.
So what if he has been slow to appreciate the seriousness of the child abuse scandals? As Ann Widdecombe notes, in the 1970s practically everyone was touching up children. And as she also says, the only reason the Catholic Church gets a bad press is that it is too filled with Christian humility to resort to the kind of PR tactics that would get any other organisation the great headlines it deserves.(But then, if the Catholic Church was PR-savvy they wouldn't have elected Ratzinger in the first place, so it's not quite clear what she's trying to say.)
So welcome the Pope, say I. Lay out the bunting. Cheer for the man in white. Stop being such party-poopers. Let's hear it for Joseph Alois Ratzinger, Pontifex Maximus and Vicar of Christ. I mean, he's got to be more fun than Peter Tatchell. To get you started, here are ten reasons to love the Pope. But I'm sure you can think of many more.
1. Julie Burchill hates him. So does Claire Rayner, who recently commented that "in all my years as a campaigner I have never felt such animus against any individual as I do against this creature." Silly woman. That pompous ass Geoffrey Robertson QC has written an entire book about how much he wants to arrest him. And did I mention Peter Tatchell?
Anyone who manages to collect such an impressive roll-call of humourless, self-important and tedious enemies must be doing something right. [The first bit of irony I can appreciate in this piece!]
2.
His shoes. Got to love those ruby slippers. They even have their own Facebook page. None of your Prada rubbish, either, as was once inaccurately reported: these are unique, handmade pumps created by a leading traditional craftsman, for His feet only. [And that is meant to be brilliant sarcasm?]
3. His intellectual brilliance.
John Paul II was a crowd-pleasing figurehead who spoke (and indeed wrote) in platitudinous soundbites, which may explain why he was so popular. I once picked up a copy of his bestseller, Crossing the Threshold of Hope. It might as well have been written by Paulo Coelho, frankly.
[Cheap, unbecoming and uncalled for. The secular world considers any reiteration of Catholic doctrine as 'platitudinous soundbites'.]
Benedict XVI writes proper books. There's no doubt he's the brains of the organisation. His refusal to dumb down, to compromise his message to make it more palatable to the shallow and fashion-obsessed mass media, has been his undoing on more than one occasion, but it gets my respect. [Now, that's straight talk, as are the next three 'reasons'.]
4. His clarity. You know where you are with the Pope. You can disagree with him if you like, condemn him as an obscurantist reactionary, but at least you know what he thinks. What a contrast with our own Rowan Williams, who may well be very clever but whose thoughtscape is so profoundly complex that it can often seem that even he doesn't quite understand what he's saying.
5. His age. Well into his eighties now, he continues to travel the world, make speeches, write learned commentaries and encyclicals and otherwise keep up a hectic schedule.
It's typical of the youth-obsessed culture of today's world that his venerable years are held against him. Surely we should be celebrating the fact that someone well past the usual age of retirement can still make such a huge contribution. In an era of demographic stretch and shrinking pensions, he is an example to us all.
6. The antiquity of his office. Is there not something heart-stoppingly romantic in the very name of Pope, and all its immemorial glories? Macaulay caught it well in 1840:
No other institution is left standing which carries the mind back to the times when the smoke of sacrifice rose from the Pantheon, and when camelopards and tigers bounded in the Flavian amphitheatre. The proudest royal houses are but of yesterday, when compared with the line of the Supreme Pontiffs.
That line we trace back in an unbroken series, from the Pope who crowned Napoleon in the nineteenth century to the Pope who crowned Pepin in the eigth; and far beyond the time of Pepin the august dynasty extends, till it is lost in the twilight of fable. The republic of Venice came next in antiquity. But the republic of Venice was modern compared with the Papacy; and the republic of Venice is gone, and the Papacy remains...
[Thanks, indeed, for bringing up Macaulay's words in this piece. Never was his observation on the enduring longevity of the papacy more apropos!]
7.
His name. Ratzinger, that is. One cannot get two excited by the ponderous appellation Benedict XVI, but Ratzinger is a name worthy of Ian Fleming at his most baroque, a name that fits perfectly his sallow complexion and slightly sinister lisp. I can almost hear Shirley Bassey. "Ratfinger, he's the man, the man with the cross of gold... and he's so old!" [A low blow to make fun of someone's surname (BTW, 'Rat' in German means 'counsel' or 'advice', not a rodent!). This riff is not even clever or funny! Benedict XVI 'sallow'? He's so rosy it contributes to his occasional 'schoolboy' look!. And with a 'sinister lisp'? Is that the p.c. term now for 'German accent'? This false atmospherics are in pure Dan Brown territory!]]
8. His
preference for traditional forms of worship.
I even learn that he is to insist on saying Mass in Latin during his visit to Britain, despite trendy attempts to strong-arm him into using the vernacular.
[Crassly uninformed statements! It belies one of the blurbs for the blog which calls it 'well-researched'. And BTW, his 'preferences' never got in the way of his obedient and daily celebration of the Novus Ordo since it was legislated, but he does it in the true spirit of liturgy and sets the best example of what it should be.]
9.
His moral courage. Not for Ratzinger the easy way out, telling people what they want to hear so as to gain cheap popularity. Instead he witnesses to the tradition that has been entrusted to him.
If it offends members of other religions or other churches, feminists, the gay rights lobby or the Guardian that is no reason to tone down his message. He would be betraying not just his faith but his integrity if he trimmed to the times as some other religious leaders have done. Instead he stands firm. Unless there's a really big row, of course, as there was when he was rude about Islam. [Then what? Did he retreat from his position or stand any less firm? On the contrary, he practically 'shamed' moderate Islamic leaders to get on his 'faith and reason' bandwagon!]
That same fearlessness now carries him to the geopolitical epicentre of the culture of death. Tony Blair, by contrast, won't even turn up to his own book launch, so scared is he by the prospect of a few unfriendly placards.
[I hold no brief for Blair, but he was right not to impose unnecessary time, effort and expense on the London police to secure his booksigning.]
10. His linguistic flexibility. Even if you don't like what he's saying, you've got to admire his ability to say it fluently in half-a-dozen different languages. "That woman speaks eighteen languages, and can't say No in any of them," quipped Dorothy Parker once.
Well, Joseph Ratzinger speaks eighteen languages, and can't say Sorry in any of them. [Cheap cheap shot, and totally wrong!]
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 10/09/2010 22:59]