Pope adviser calls the UK a 'Third World country'
One of the Pope's senior advisers has pulled out of the papal visit to Britain, after reportedly saying the UK is a "Third World country" marked by "a new and aggressive atheism".
Cardinal Walter Kasper, 77, made the remarks in a German magazine interview.
The Vatican said the cardinal had not intended "any kind of slight", and was referring to the UK's multicultural society.
It added that he had simply pulled out of the Pope's visit due to illness.
He also was reported to have criticised British Airways, saying that when you wear a cross on the airline "you are discriminated against".
Vatican sources said Cardinal Kasper was suffering from gout and had been advised by his doctors not to travel to the UK.
The Pope is spending four days in Scotland and England, starting on Thursday.
The BBC's correspondent in Rome, David Willey, said the cardinal's reported comments were "a slightly clumsy thing to have done on the eve of the visit".
However, he added that he did not think it would have much effect on the Pope's trip to the UK.
Clifford Langley, from the Catholic newspaper The Tablet, said the cardinal was "obviously talking nonsense".
"I don't think he believes Britain in in the grip of secular atheism, and he shouldn't have said so," said Mr Langley.
"They are saying it is ill health [that the cardinal has dropped out of the visit], but I wonder if that is the fact, I wonder if he has been dropped because he is an embarrassment."
Because obviously the first sign of a Third-World country is its level of religious secularism. Perhaps we should have a look at Ghana and Ethiopia as examples of where Roman Catholicism has been a major contributor to the downfall of Third-World nations. I certainly don't think that atheism has had anything to do with their being less economically or socially developed...I'd wager that it's destroyed social development because, oh, I don't know, AIDS is now rampant in these countries?
How exactly is atheism 'new' or 'aggressive'? Let's be honest, we atheists are significantly more discriminated against than anyone wearing a cross on an airline, or anyone who chooses to wear a turban or a burka. There are no secular holidays. There are no secular sabbaths (saturday and sunday to the majority of the world). There are no cheap and easy ways to avoid work for an atheist. A devout Christian could say as part of their working contract that they can never work Sundays as they want to be able to go to church. A muslim could say the same about having five prayer-times daily. Yet if I were to say I needed every other Wednesday off to pray to Master Yoda I would be told to shove it.
Apart from anything else, this man has never worked a fucking day in his life. What would he know about poverty? Sure, there are enough people in the UK who have never worked a fucking day in their lives either, and most of them do live in poverty (except for the few who really know what they're doing who are picked up on by the Daily Fail for having 26 grand a year coming in). A lot of the UK is rather impoverished (particularly Oop North), but also in some bigger cities. The reason for that is because the price of everything is exorbitant, not because people live on the proceeds of dirt farming. VAT is the scourge, and the rest of the taxation makes it unaffordable to do anything. But not for him. Because he is a sheltered, fuckless little choir-boy who has, on top of never having worked a day, has had everything provided on a gold plate by those poor impoverished souls who want nothing more than a bit of a better life to come, and who relies on a snivelling little shit like him to provide it. Misguided or not, the end result is that this Walter Kasper fellow is a con man. He is a fraud. And so is any religious institution. Allow me to explain:
Fraud Act, 2006
Section 2 - Fraud by false representation. Any person who knowingly makes any representation as to fact or law, whether that representation shall be express or implied, shall be guilty of the offence of fraud.
Let's put that into context, shall we? Knowingly: Well, there's no way he can't know his religion is bullshit and his promises of salvation are nothing but a complete and utter sham, is there? He is purporting that complying and conforming with his belief shall guarantee a place in heaven. He cannot make such a guarantee because:
1) He has no way of knowing heaven exists
2) He has no way of knowing believing in his religion will get him or anyone else there, assuming it does
3) He has no way of knowing God exists, or that if He does that He did all the things this cardinal claims
4) Ditto 3), but about Jesus.
Yet he expressly claims it to be so, and it is written in his Readers Digest Book of False Representations (aka the bible).
Points to prove:
The person must have acted dishonestly - Nothing more dishonest than pulling the wool over the eyes of about a billion people, I'd say.
and that they had to have acted with the intent of making a gain for themselves or anyone else, or inflicting a loss (or a risk of loss) on another. - Well, I think the Church has done all right off the gains made for themselves, and for inflicting a loss/risk of loss on others. Let's face it, if Catholicism's wrong, all those people are fucked. And those tithes and collection plates cost a bomb.
But here's the kicker. This government is spending over twelve million pounds (of a £20m bill) that we cannot afford to be spending on policing this event. Just the policing. That's before you get to the other costs incurred. Do you want to know something else even funnier? They are charging people £25 a ticket to get to one of these Papal events.. Really, I'm not making this up. After having to pay God knows how much to the church anyway throughout their lives, they have to pay for the privilege of attending these events. Now, there's no way of finding out how much money the Catholic Church actually has, but I think it could afford to be going to cash4gold and flogging off a few bits of crockery to be paying for this. Maybe if the UK wasn't having to fork out for worthless shit like this, it wouldn't be so 'third-world'.
Maybe when the Catholic Church acknowledges the value of women, the contribution contraception makes to today's society, accepts gay rights, works to prevent the spread of AIDS and stops raping children it will have some right to comment on a society upon which it encroaches. Until then, it can fuck right off.
He thinks Heathrow's third-world. He ought to come and have a look at fucking Sheffield.
