Was the Pope demonstrating a lack of vulgarity or venom when he equated secularism with Nazism on his jaunt around Britain, or was he merely displaying the love rooted in Christ's teaching? SAE, can you substantiate your claim that child rape is "pretty rampant everywhere" to the same extent that it has been substantiated within the Catholic Church? Or are you just upset that this alleged cover-up has been much more successful that the Catholic church's coverup? Do tell.

"Child molestation" eh? That's a bit like describing Hitler as not very keen on Jews. We are talking about child rape by thousands of Catholic priests over decades, leading to broken lives and suicides. And yet still the Catholics will not yield up these people to the police and continue to cover up these crimes. Your comment is facile.

Good post. And quite unfashionable. I am not sure they are the "great and good" - just people who have somehow become celebrities, like footballers, and who can sound off about anything and the lazy newspapers just report them. The Church's problem is it can't fight back with the same vulgarity and venom, as it is rooted in the teaching of Christ. Fortunately these detractors are only a tiny tiny fraction of the population and have little impact outside the dining rooms of fashionable Hampstead and Highgate dinner parties. Politicians naturally keep well clear of such bigoted sectarianism for obviously reasons. Die Zeit in Germany has written much more thoughtfully than our British press about such matters as Paedophilia within the church (which I suspect is pretty rampant everywhere if one is allowed to look - if there ia a 100 year embargo on the files, be suspicious, prominent public figures are probably involved in something...) Yes, attacking the church prevents people looking elsewhere, at themselves even. Funny too that the strident secular bigots never seem to mention the segregated orthodox Jewish community when they attack church schools (here since the Victorian era, incidentally) and of course Islam is given a wide berth in their hate campaign for obvious reasons. There always has to be a bogey man - the Catholic church was before, just as the Irish, gay people, black people, refugees, etc have been also. When one reads the illiberal anti-religious outpourings of some commentators in the Guardian, I think of some of the BNP literature I have read. Very little of it stands up to scrutiny, the araguments are so silly that one doesn't know where to begin to answer. But they are famous biologists, comedians,and so on, so one has to listen to them !!! It all has a strong whiff of Chinese communism about it, where everyone has to conform to the top officials' view , and it is not terribly liberal. Surprise surprise.

Attacking the Catholic church is one of the most important qualifications of a leftist intellectual.And the severity of the attack increases with the degree of impotence one experiences in the face of radical Islam.