The Pope

The death of the Pope and the adulation of the masses reminds me a good deal of the reaction of the UK public to the death of Princess Diana. A quasi-religious spectacle of public display of emotion, of someone who none of the people concerned actually knew....

And what of JP2? Frankly, I didn't have a lot of time for him. A social conservative, with a didactic view of his own position ( suppose that goes with the job description) and no doubt did plenty to assure the future of the Church lies in the pre-modern world. Charismatic, a great communicator, yes - but in terms of his beliefs and ideas, on the whole, I disagreed with them. Indeed, his positions were generally the opposite to mine - socially reactionary, economically naive, reacting very much to his own experience, and inability to accept that theocracy is not the favoured method of governance of anywhere in Europe.