As usual, my reactionary drivel appears belatedly on my blog. There are a number of reasons for that, some more noble than others, such as me allowing some time for my usual hot-headed rancour to cool before passing judgemental comment. Mostly the tardiness of my retort is plain sloth, which is mainly the reason in this case so you will forgive the topical theme to long-time-broken news.
The event to which I am so sluggishly countering, is the Pope’s juxtaposition of homosexuality to the climate, specifically in that he states saving mankind from homosexuality is as important as saving the rainforest from destruction. I’ve had some trouble finding his ACTUAL words, not only because modern journalism seldom finds it necessary to quote, verbatim, the words muttered by some celebrity focal point of the media, but also because I just can’t be bothered to look too hard. You can find references here, here and here, if you’re at all interested, thorough or argumentative.
Years ago I would have launched into a foul-mouthed invective against the pope (does the title require a capital? Take the lack of a capital ‘p’ as you will: disrespect due to his commentary, or poor knowledge of the English tongue), the Catholic Church and organised religion as a whole. That would serve only to add fuel to their brimstone-fed inferno and perhaps prove them marginally correct in a purely semantic sense. That over-reactionary bent of mine has often meant I have enjoyed eating humble pie (neither free-range nor organic) and so I have tempered, for the most part, my fire-and-brimstone rants, if you’ll pardon the beating of the sermon theme to death!
In so doing I often would not respond to things that made me seethe. Friends and family declare this noble, and sensible, disempowering those who at first appeared to have total power over my emotions, control over my sentiments and could, without ever meeting me, ignite fiery and hateful passions deep within me. “Poppycock!” I say! It just means that stupid people were allowed to do and say stupid things, without anyone or anything giving them even the slightest inkling that they may not be as 100%-correct as they first thought themselves to be.
Of course it is arrogance in the extreme to believe that the pope, capital ‘p’ or none, would read my blog, and if he did ‘deign’ to do so, extreme arrogance ad infinitum to hope that he would moderate his comments as a result. I am not stupid. Arrogant maybe, and frivolous and, at times, unfocused, but not stupid enough to believe my verbose reflections, committed to the web as they are, are pontiff-shaking world truths in the least. That doesn’t negate them though, and from such odd and carelessly cast-aside seeds are born the beanstalks of revolutions. Well, I can dream, can’t I?
So these days I tend to react, after a fashion and a delay, with moribund zeal and pointless political correctness sometimes observed. Just to have my say, of course. Because I am like that. With this particular response, I will exercise a little more caution than usual, as one of my fans who often enjoys my blogosphere, is a very religious man, and decent fellow, and a colleague, and a rum chap, wot, and out of respect to him, I will assuage my convention of making sweeping generalisations that perpetuate the tawdriest of stereotypes, and stick to the facts, as I find them, and my opinion, as it is mine alone, and can be dismissed as the ramblings of naïve peasant.
I have waffled now, for 500 words or so, without actually revealing my thoughts on the pope’s commentary. Well, I would like to say that I wouldn’t care to dignify his thoughts on homosexuality with a response, and that spending any time in reflection of his words would be pure wastefulness, but I can’t. Because I have thought about it, a few times, and though my thoughts on religion are not for print, out of respect for the position of the head of a global community I will respond because these thoughts and words of his DO deserve the dignity of my response, trifling though it may be in the grand scheme of things.
Such a sweeping statement made by the head of any organisation or community is reprehensible in its irresponsibility. It lacks insight and its apparent tolerance is merely outmoded social conditioning masquerading as guarded forbearance. Anyone, to whom a significant group of people looks to for example, moral guidance and ethical statutes, has the weighty task of moderating any and all proclamations with insight, tolerance, understanding and a keen realisation of the behaviour and mindset those proclamations will foster. Anything that principal says that sparks a mass action or attitude rebuking any convention defined on race, gender, sexual orientation or age is absolutely off limits!
Public figures so high-ranking may have the intellectual workings to dissect the subtleties, but the masses – the lowest common denominator – by definition, do not have that intellect, and will take as law and out of context, the chieftain’s words literally, and lash out at the subjects of those words. The metaphorical connotations that are the actual intentions of these carelessly-uttered statements are blindly swept over as the attendant mob slavers over the literal tirade it perceives. And if the words are not metaphorical parameters, parables for the modern man, then more so the gross negligence perpetrated by the man in charge.
Of course, I may be selling the masses short here, but in an inescapable generalisation, history, I think, is on my side in proving me correct. A mob is as intelligent as its most vociferous and convincing constituent and they are more often than not the ones who hear half the story, judge harshly and immediately and speak out with extreme prejudice and little forethought for the reaction their words will arouse. I know this because I am often that most vociferous reactionary. Luckily for me, my readers and listeners are few, and in the main, better informed than I am, so riposte in such a manner as to defuse the madness of my vitriol.
In this case, I think my response to the pope is tempered by time and somewhat careful thought, and cognisance of the people reading this and their disposition. There is also the realisation that as apocryphal as his alleged words appear, I can see deep within the twaddle, the core of a thought born of good will and the virtuous intent of the man. He has shown himself, in his lofty position thus far, to be a man who does not think through his words and their consequences clearly. Or perhaps he does not care who he pisses off, and noble though that self-confidence can be, say in business or in sport, it is a poor trait in the pope, in the way it has played itself out to date.
The pope’s words are dismissed easily, because so many have commented on them in the same vein I have, and thus dismissed, I turn to much more important things.
Such as what filling to have on my midnight sandwich.
© Dave Luis 2008. All Rights Reserved.
Ok I say ‘set off’, but at three o’clock when John and I left iBurst House in Sandton on Friday the 25th, knowingly entering the mad traffic fray at the inappropriately named rush-hour. 42 minutes later we arrived at his apartment to collect his clothes. I mention this only because John’s apartment is less than 2km from iBurst House, such was the volume of traffic. Discovering he’d left his key at the office, he gallantly proposed to buy the weekend’s wardrobe once we arrived in Musina, our final destination.
