Pope arrives in Australia, thousands don’t flee

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The security is said to be tight. One of the newscasts said “There are lots of snipers in the bush”, but no sign of the snipers, of course.

Security would be tight. Melodrama, however, is perhaps also getting a bit wound up. Sydney’s had a bit of practice lately, with the Olympics and APEC as full city workouts. We're not quite out of our depth with this one.

The Daily Telegraph

The Papal plane sporting Australian and Vatican flags landed at about 3pm at Richmond RAAF Base, where it was met by a a long line of dignitaries including Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.

… Pope Benedict XVI himself emerged about 15 minutes later wearing his famous red shoes.
Holding the handrail he slowly made his way down the stairs, stopping occasionally to wave.
He moved along the line of dignitaries chatting and shaking hands with both hands.

This particular Pope isn’t a wallflower. He’s been trying, hard, to put the Church’s various creaking series of long term issues back into working order. He’s also been trying to return the Church to relevance on global issues:

During an inflight address to the 44-members of the international media, he said he hoped his visit to World Youth Day would prompt Catholics to look at the church's teachings in relation to the importance of the planet.

He also called on them to do more to protect the environment.

"(We must) rediscover the earth in the face of the creator...(and) find within ourselves the ability to change our lifestyles, it's necessary, to respond to these great challenges,'' he said.

He also leant his support to leaders of the Church of England gathered at the Lambeth Conference who are discussing issues of homosexuality and the ordination of female Bishops.

Give the bloke credit where it’s due, he’s not just hiding behind his faith and hoping it’ll all go away, unlike the large global population of religious hacks. Maybe he could give some lessons to politicians, too, while he’s at it.

Nice to have him here.

There’s been a bit of a stir about state laws which don’t permit “annoyance” to pilgrims. These laws are being called draconian, an invasion of civil liberties, and a few less endearing things.

The legislation is a bit flat footed. But in practice, it’s not really new. It means people weren’t aware of the general run of laws which have been in force for a long time regarding public demonstrations.

The legal theory’s a bit less dramatic, right or wrong. Any demonstration, if it’s deemed to be out of control, is subject to police action, including arrests. That’s been the case since the Vietnam protests. It’s nothing new.

One group plans to hand out condoms to pilgrims, regardless of the laws. The Church’s position on abortion, etc, seem to be a problem, too. Apparently the right of Catholics to have their own views isn’t a topic.

I’m not Catholic, nor am I anti-abortion, but aren’t people supposed to have their own different opinions and beliefs in a democracy? It worries me when anyone decides their views are the only ones permissible.

This doesn’t reassure me much, either:

Jason Ball, one of the organisers, said people wanted to vent their frustrations on what World Youth Day represented.

"We've got people here who are frustrated it's called World Youth Day but it's not all-inclusive, it doesn't include all youth, it's organised by the Catholic church and is promoting Catholicism," Mr Ball said.

Gosh.

What a coincidence.

Exactly who, pray tell, was going to include "all youth", how, with what, and when?

Did anyone ask "all youth", and what, socially, apart from a few cheerful little wars, has been all-inclusive, recently, like in the last few thousand years?

I wish these guys would think, at least occasionally, before talking to media.

They've turned their own position into just another marginalized form of bigotry.

"All youth" doesn't like bigots much, these days, either.