Pope Rocks the House (of Commons)

As I suspected was going to be the case, the sheer contrast between the actual Pope Benedict and the cartoon villain painted by the bigots in Brit media proved a huge advantage in making his visit to the UK a revelation and a joy, not only for UK Catholics, but for lots and lots of people who, to their surprised, loved the man they saw. Indeed, the Chattering Classes were so stunned that they actually bestirred themselves to use their intellects instead of merely worshipping them.

It was a ghastly and humiliating defeat for the No Popery crowd, both the Puritan type and also for their even more unpleasant heirs, the Ditchkins types. The Protest the Pope thingie in London only managed to draw 1 in every thousand Londoners, and the lot of them just sounded like puerile adolescents. Meanwhile, Benedict went from glory to glory, announcing himself as the successor of Peter in Westminster and saying “Way to go, Thomas More!”, all to thunderous English applause. The whole thing was a peculiarly apt testament to Newman, who did more than anybody to discuss that way in which doctrine develops, and the Church evolves under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, to become, not something else, but more itself over time. Things of this world (like, for instance, Protestant England) become something else (like Godless England, and eventually Muslim England) because they are things of this world and are therefore passing. But the Church remains herself because her soul is the Holy Spirit and he does not change. Only our grasp of him changes and deepens over time–and that only because he help us. Without him, the Church would have lost track of the gospel five minutes after Pentacost.

Anyway, way to go, B16. Way the ripples from this visit go out for years to come and may England once again reclaim her heritage as Mary’s Dowry!