Respect

On a beautiful spring Sunday morning, I walked past the legions of families going to attend the morning service at our local church. I cannot imagine anything I would want to do less then spend a beautiful spring Sunday morning in church, but I respect the right of those to practice their faith. That I, personally, regard the idea that there is a celestial dictator above the clouds directing our lives to be quite absurd doesn’t matter. Those who do believe in Him are free to believe in whatever they like. But I do have an issue with respecting religion per se.

My favoured US presidential candidate Bernie Sanders had a chance meeting yesterday with Jorge Mario Bergoglio, AKA Pope Francis, at the Vatican and promptly announced: “I just conveyed to him my admiration for the extraordinary work he is doing raising some of the most important issues facing our planet and the billions of people on the planet and injecting the need for morality in the global economy.” Now Mr Sanders may have been playing the American game whereby it is generally perceived that no candidate can be elected president without believing in God. His camp deny that he is an atheist but the man himself flip-flops because, I would suggest, he would wreck his chances by ‘coming out’. Like Barack Obama before him, Sanders is choosing the easy option. But why should he?

Sanders gushes about the Pope who, may I remind you, has presided over the continued cover-ups surrounding serial child abuse and paedophilia and rejects the true emancipation of women over the one major issue which they can control: the ability or not to produce children. Meeting the Pope, added Sanders, was “an extraordinary moment”, whilst apparently forgetting how the church over which he presides regards the LGBT community as second class citizens.

Catholicism is not unique in terms of the continued oppression of different groups of people, the largest group being women. Most religions have a dubious track record, some more than others. Pope Francis, a 79 year old male virgin, knows nothing about women and yet he heads an organisation that decrees that a woman is little more than a skivvy. How on earth can anyone ‘respect’ that?

I respect any adult who wishes to exercise the human right to follow the religion of their choice, something I would like to extend to children who are often the victim of proselytisation at an early age. How often have you met a child who is of a different religion from their parents? Doesn’t happen, does it?

Spend your Sundays in prayer and worship if that is what you wish to do. So long as it does not impact on my life and my freedoms, do it as often as you like. I’ll be the first person to stand up for your rights. But if you ask me to respect you, then you will need to earn my respect by yourself respecting others, like women, like gay people, like those of all religions and those of none. And for as long as the Pope is not just a Catholic, but also a male Catholic, I’m afraid I can’t respect your religion either.