The largest May Day related workers’ event in this neck of the woods is not going to be organised by a union branch, Respect, the Labour Party or the SWP. Our Lady of the Assumption is having a special 
mass to celebrate the migrant workers who live in the parish. It will be pretty well attended. Feel free to chastise them for their ideological backwardness but the hard fact is that they get more out of their membership of the Catholic Church than any other organisation they could choose to join.
It would make for an interesting spectacle if a few of the liberal and left secularists demanding the arrest of Pope Benedict tried to rustle up support for their campaign among some of the most exploited workers in London .
Reading Richard Dawkins, George Monbiot, or even that scourge of the ultra-left’s fantasies Dave Osler call for the cuffs to be slapped on Benny Ratzinger the phrase “one-sided, undialectical and therefore wrong” comes to mind. The demand might strike a stirring chord with the militant godless on a mission to free the unenlightened churchgoers from their ignorance. It’s much more likely to be seen as a malicious provocation by the churchgoers who, probably correctly, will see it as a clumsily disguised attack on their religion itself.
To be consistent why not add to the warrant the Church’s role in the conquest of Latin America, the burning of Girolamo Savonarola, its support for the Hitler and Mussolini? As the leader of the organisation the Pope should carry the historical can.
And if we’re in the mood for dishing out arrest warrants would the pre-election period not be a good time to demand the arrest of all those present and former ministers with direct political responsibility for the ongoing wars and occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan? New Labour’s period in office has been one long spell of wars of aggression. They are rather proud of it if Blair’s performance at the Chilcott Enquiry is an indicator. Gordon Brown may have said something comparable to Ratzinger’s “you have suffered grievously and I am truly sorry. I know that nothing can undo the wrong you have endured” to the people of Afghanistan but it hasn’t made the news. The Labour Party’s NEC may have said something akin to the English Bishops’ “these terrible crimes, and the inadequate response by some church leaders, grieve us all. " Or perhaps not.
A lot of people who are strongly anti-war, instead of calling for Brown to be arrested, will be without great passion, trying to persuade others to vote for his party. Many of them will have a sneaking sympathy with Dawkins and Monbiot.
The left liberal intelligentsia is making a wrong call on this issue. Most working class Catholics make a distinction between clerics who abuse children and those who don’t. None of them would have a problem with arresting, prosecuting and imprisoning abusers. They would be understandably angry if hostile outsiders use the abuse as a flag of convenience to sneer at their own religious beliefs.
If you try to engage with them by humiliating them for their beliefs they will circle the wagons. If you make a distinction between the abusers and their experience of their local church you might even be able to persuade them that there should be no religious control of schools or medical facilities and that clerics have no particular right to impose their ideas on the rest of society.
More here.
Liam redux 
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