Edge of Insanity

For those of you who have not seen the papers today, we have the insane story that an Italian prosecutor wants to convict an Italian comedienne based on jokes she made against the Pope, for insulting a sacrosant figure. This is flatly absurd. If you look beyond the political hypocrisy (yes, that's right, Italy as a member of NATO have soldiers in Afghanistan to stop extremism ... guess they should try stationing them near St. Peter's Basilica and see if they have any more luck there) ... the entire issue is very, very strange. Not to mention disturbing.

With all due respect to the religious of you among my handful of readers, this is why the concept of organised religion deeply concerns me. It derives power from numbers, even when they are irrelevant and ambivolent.

This is a good example. The Catholic population of the world numbers in the billions. As the head of the Catholic faith, the Pope is a symbol of religious leadership. An insult against the Pope is not just that, but an insult against the entire Catholic faith and Catholic believers. But it's not. Some of them probably don't like the Pope. Some are probably only casual believers who will fill it in on a census form, but not much else.

Yet the weight of numbers, the statistics, builds this up in importance. And this includes many, many, many of those who say they are not part of the problem; that they are forward-thinking, open-minded, they condemn the extremist branches of their faith - and I can't argue with that, they are. Yet here, they are part of the problem.

Because this is how it starts.

And this is deeply unsettling.