Ian O'Doherty: If you're an atheist, then you simply shouldn't care what the Pope says
Okay, let's get a few things straight. I'm a devout atheist. I always have been. And I always will.
Even as a kid in school, I was completely baffled by the fantastical, phantasmagorical fairy tales that were delivered with such righteous passion by the priests of the Holy Ghost.
I've never understood the need to believe in something that quite obviously doesn't exist, simply to keep me feeling content or to inform my moral compass. But if believing in God, Yahweh, Moses or the Jolly Green Giant gets to help you through the night, then that is entirely your business.
On the other hand, the Catholic Church has, in my not particularly humble opinion, been a force more for bad than good both in this society and around the world in general.
I loathe the smug hypocrisy, the mealy-mouthed platitudes, the overbearing arrogance and the sense of superiority with which it carries itself.
I've despised the Church since school days and I still do and the only time I darken a church's door is for a funeral -- even my friends who get married know that I don't do the church bit.
And as for the Pope?
Well, perhaps the kindest thing I can say about him is that he is hopelessly, cluelessly, tragically out of touch with the real world and is quite obviously the worst man for the job given the global crisis and lack of confidence in his organisation.
So why am I so disgusted with all the protests about his visit to Britain?
There has been a stunning predictability to this entire furore.
The usual suspects have been tripping over themselves as they compete to see who hates him the most.
I am, obviously, removing the survivors of Catholic sex abuse from the above category; these people are the ones with a genuine, noble cause. And if there was any justice in the world, Benedict would be forced to look at them all individually in the face and beg for forgiveness -- an act, when you consider his disgusting refusal to accept the resignation of two Irish bishops, that is obviously never going to happen.
No, I'm referring to the other protesters, the ones who think that somehow they're being brave by threatening to disrupt a state visit by the Pontiff.
Indeed, the zeal with which so many of them have taken in their threats to perform such stupid, self-aggrandising acts as committing a citizen's arrest on the man is as pathetic as it is futile.
The likes of Richard Dawkins, a man who is inspiring and infuriating in equal measure, threatening to try and arrest him simply makes a noted scientist look like that idiot who tried to do the same to Tony Blair in Dublin recently.
And anyway, what have atheists got against the Pope?
After all, I don't stay awake at night, pacing the floor and waiting for another Papal encyclical to get annoyed about.
I simply ignore him, the way anyone should ignore someone whose opinion they don't value.
The very fact that the first thing the Pope did on arrival in Scotland yesterday was to launch an all too predictable attack on atheism, and with typical hyperbole, he likened atheism to Nazism.
Was I, as an atheist, offended to be compared to a Nazi?
No, why would I? I don't care what this old coot says, so I find it baffling that so many other atheists are hopping mad about him.
But what really raises the bile in my throat is the hypocrisy of so many of those who object to his visit.
A coalition of atheists including Stephen Fry, Terry Pratchett, AC Grayling and Stewart Lee, who wrote the very funny Jerry Springer: The Opera, have all signed an open letter: "The state of which the Pope is head has also resisted signing many major human rights treaties and has formed its own concordat with many states which negatively affect the human rights of citizens of those states."
Okay, I can live with that; there's very little to quibble with there.
But where were such brave statements when the Chinese president was given a full state reception when he arrived in Britain a few years ago?
After all, China is executing so many people these days that they have even invented mobile execution chambers that can be driven from town to town to speed up the whole process.
This is the same China that backs North Korea, has turned Tibet into an open-air prison and is waging genocidal war against minorities like the Falun Gong and Muslim populations.
Where were they when Saudi Arabia King Abdullah received the appropriately royal treatment when he hit Britain two years ago?
After all, Saudi Arabia is one of the most vicious, backward and savage countries currently existing in the world. Public executions, pathological homophobia and misogyny; the country is a desert kip run by savages.
Where were they when Robert Mugabe and his entourage came to town?
Where were the protests then?
You see, Catholics and Catholicism are easy targets because when offended they call for boycotts and write angry letters.
They don't, on the other hand, strap a semtex waistcoat to themselves and take a one- way trip to Virginville.
And that, my friends, is why, even though I agree with most of what the Pope bashers are saying, they can count me out of any protest.
After all, wasn't being an atheist supposed to remove you from the herd mentality, not simply replace it with another one?
- Ian O'Doherty
Irish Independent
