We have to touch people

There is an article on BBC about how the Vatican is not doing well with PR (Public Relations) especially in recent news items of Holocaust Denying and Queer Hating bishops. The failed or criticized public exposure of these two clerics is in a way not blamed on the false nature of their souls. Blame is going to the Vatican PR Department for the improper way that rotten meat was presented to the public as freshly made tofu. No sale.

Living in isolation and out of touch to the population in general is what afflicts all clerics everywhere of every faith. God and theory of God are one thing. People and all forms of the human condition must balance out that equation in a very large part.

Vatican failing publicity tests

The public forum, the secular forum, knows what passes for decency and these papal touched clowns did not meet the test.

I think there are gaps caused by Vatican II. That many (really the few after Vat II) who got into the priesthood as a meal ticket profession, life time employment and all that, had no particular like or dislike of the attempted reforms of Vatican II. They brought their local prejudices with them as baggage. It would seem these days that there is not a whole lot of good or even mediocre priests in the ranks to be elevated to church office. PR cannot cover up lack of quality available.

That said. I fear that what passes for church bureaucracy is in some sort of survival bunker mindset and that the RC and the Christian church as well is not greatly equipped to deal with the modern world and all its secular complexities.

I was dismayed recently when my wife reiterated the centuries old RC boilerplate mantra blaming the Jews alone for the death of Jesus and this while the whole world wants in a symbolic way to make Richard Williamson a scapegoat for its own real or closeted anti-Semitism.

Williamson is in a way symbolic of what caused the Holocaust - “arrogance, dogma and ignorance”.

I begin to quote above the Polish-Jewish-British mathematician Jacob Bronowski from his television series “The Ascent of Man” from 1973.

I do not know how others, outside of Judaism, view the Holocaust but I think that somehow we should all try to look at and feel something about it as part of our being human.

Below is a scene that has been imprinted on my brain since I first saw it thirty five years ago, of Bronowski demonstrating in a moving way how “We have to touch people”. Touching people may prevent other holocausts.



To Richard Williamson, and the other unripe crop of RC clerics on stage, who do not willingly recognize your own ignorance of the true scope and size of the Holocaust, I implore you and quoting Bronowski quoting Oliver Cromwell “I beseech you in the bowels of Christ think it possible you may be mistaken“.