It's all the Muslims' fault - apparently

Now, I'm sorry if this blog seems to be obsessed with the many failings of the Catholic Church, but its just that politics (my other passion) is so boring and managerial these days that its only the hypocrisy of this overbearing institution that fires me up. So, here's the latest.

There's a particularly thuggish Liverpudlian called The Very Reverend Vincent Nichols who is currently the Catholic Archbishop of Birmingham. He's being tipped to take-over from Cardinal Hume as the Church's next leader in Britain. He was interviewed in The Times the other day and came out with a tirade of superstitious thinking, such as "I'd go to watch Liverpool and stand on the Kop at Anfield and say to God "Why don't you just leave me alone? Why cant I just be one of a crowd?" People who hear incessant voices in their head tend to end up in prison, mental homes or the church. It's curious how we send people to the first two institutions to prevent them acting on those voices and harming society, and yet when they enter the church they are positively encouraged to act on their delusions do untold damage to society in the process.

Anyway, the point of all this is that he was asked why Britain had become so anti-religious. His staggering reply was that it was all the Muslim's fault! "The acts of terrorism have shaken people's perception of the presence of faiths in this country and the world".

Hmmm....... and what about before 9/11 then? Was Britain a significantly more religious country? Of course not. Faith, thank god, has been declining continuously for years - what a cheap shot to blame the Muslims for the failure of the Catholic Church.

But its even worse than that - and here's where the hypocrisy comes in. The Catholic Church built its political power and its enormous wealth on the back of murder, torture and theft. As early as 1209 the Pope's crusade against the Cathars down here in Southern France saw tens of thousands of innocent men, women and children slain by "The Host", many horribly tortured and then burnt alive. Indeed, when they sacked my local city of Beziers on July 22nd, the soldiers asked the Abbot leading the crusade how they knew which of the civilians were Catholic and which were heretics, he replied "Kill them all. God will recognise his own". In one day the Catholic church murdered over 20,000 people. Just put that into perspective - that's about 7 times more than died on 9/11. And remember, the 12 terrorists who smashed into the World Trade Centre just had to aim their planes at it and everything was over in a few minutes. Think how long it takes, and how much human effort, to kill 20,000 people by hand.

Then, for the next 600 years, up until just 180 years ago, the Inquisition - established and supported by successive Popes - brutally tortured and burnt to death around 600,000 so-called heretics. People were encouraged to name supposed heretics, who they then rounded up and horribly tortured. Once these innocent people eventually confessed (and inevitably they did after days and weeks of torture) they were burnt alive. And all their worldly goods were then stolen by the church to keep the Pope in all the finery and Prada shoes that he so loves.

And when they got bored of hunting heretics, they turned on women in a 200 year orgy of burning witches. Between 50,000 - 100,000 innocent women were tortured and burnt alive.

By the way, in case being burnt alive doesn't sound too bad, just remember that the Catholic Church felt it was more fun to tie their victims a little way above the fire so that they didn't die straight away, but slowly roasted alive feet first to prolong the agony.

So, whilst the would-be Cardinal blames the Muslims for all the world's woes, he should just reflect that his own institution prospered on murder, torture and theft and, had the growth of secularism not put a clamp on its powers, it would no doubt be practicing as much of this as it could get away with today. The Catholic Church - from the Pope down - was very happy to use the political system of the nazi regime (just 60 years ago) to continue its persecution of the Jews as heritics, actively working with the nazis to identify and transport jews and homosexuals to the death camps.

I look forward to more erudite words from the man who may well soon be pontificating more widely on morals in this country.