Gonzo Pro Bono

So of course the big issue dominating the media and dinner table conversations across the land this week is Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to Britain. From David Cameron utilising it to bolster and shamelessly promote his ‘Big Society;’ to Newsnight’s Emily Maitlis’ harnessing the issue to hone her Paxman skills in an argument with Baroness Warsi; to Dara O’Brien unabashedly mocking the Pope-mobile on Mock the Week. Of all of these people I think the general population is probably most with Dara. And is this indicative of the ‘aggressive atheism’ that in Cardinal Walter Kasper’s opinion is rife within this ‘third world’ country?

Maybe, but frankly this shouldn’t be seen as an insult, with the amendment of ‘secular’ for ‘atheist’ within the discussion. Modern Britain is one of the most religiously tolerant of all countries across the globe. This is not to say that we have always warmly embraced peoples of varied faiths and cultures, but we have generally tolerated them and been happy to include them in our society where they do not threaten us. This tolerance extends to people of different sexuality’s and although slow to take up the baton, we now legally allow homosexual marriage. This is an issue that Benedict has particularly strong opinions about, claiming that the sanction of homosexual marriage is nothing more than an expression “of an anarchic freedom that wrongly passes for true freedom of man.” Benedict would argue that true freedom is to be found in faith and compliance to religious doctrine.

In Britain, we dismissed Catholic dogma back in the fifteenth century and we moved significantly away from Christianity altogether after the Enlightenment and the subsequent development of science and reason. Did this lead to anarchy? Are we imprisoned by our false sense of freedom? Some may argue yes, but most will wholeheartedly argue no. We British are now a largely secular people, and indeed, proudly so. Our secularism allows us to view people more clearly as they are, to tolerate other faiths as an expression of culture and tradition that is to be respected but not necessarily believed. In this country, we are not ethnically cleansing our lands and banning our citizens from expressing their beliefs through their dress as the largely Christian France is doing to the Romany people and Muslim women respectively.

In Britain we feel strongly about the rights of our citizens and this is based in a belief in human rights, tolerance and general decency - not on the words of a holy book. Now, this is of course a generalisation and cannot account for all of Britain’s historical relations with people’s of different faith - lord knows we have committed some atrocities in the past. However, it remains that today’s Britain is a largely tolerant and progressive society and this is founded in a secularism that respects and does not dismiss people. Our belief in humanity is stronger than our belief in any one god and this may be interpreted as an aggressive stance, but it is one to be defended.