Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Why the Pope is like Winnie the Pooh

Michael Cook, from Australia and editor of Mercatornet, writes:

In this job you tend to read a lot of furious argument about events of colossal importance which are forgotten in two weeks' time. This week it is the Pope's visit to England and Scotland. For once I am grateful that I seldom read the British papers, which have been full of articles fulminating against Benedict XVI, the Catholic Church and religion in general.

The media there seems to be in the grip of an intellectual St Vitus Dance in which dozens of sober, intelligent, Oxbridge types thrash about uncontrollably, hissing through their carious fangs at the Pope's presence on British soil. The popular Channel 4 in the UK even commissioned a vigorous campaigner for lowering the age of consent to 14 to do a documentary yesterday about the Pope and the sex abuse scandal. Go figure.

It's so perplexing that I turned to one of my favourite books, Winnie-the-Pooh, for enlightenment. Flicking through it, I came across a passage which explained it all. Pooh ("I am a Bear of Very Little Brain, and long words bother me") is a wise companion:

"Rabbit's clever," said Pooh thoughtfully.
"Yes," said Piglet, "Rabbit's clever."
"And he has Brain."
"Yes," said Piglet, "Rabbit has Brain."
There was a long silence.
"I suppose," said Pooh, "that that's why he never understands anything."

Too much cleverness can be a crippling burden sometimes. That is, to my mind, one of Joseph Ratzinger's outstanding traits: cleverness AND understanding. Perhaps he is humble, like Pooh.

5 comments:

  1. Ooooooh, excellent! A new blog in favour of all things Catholic and the Holy Father...

    Now, as a matter of interest, will there be such a thing as a blogroll...?

    Not that I have any ulterior motive in asking, you understand...

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  2. Hello Mac, welcome, and thanks for the link. I'd be more than happy to exchange blogrolls (if that is the right terminology) with you, and the only reason I have not done so yet is am still getting up to speed on that aspect of blogging. Any guidance would be welcome.

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  3. Mac, et al, if you like this blog, you might also like Uzima, where I cover a wider range of topics not excluding that of this blog:
    www.uzima.blogspot.com

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  4. I would have been happy to advise you on blogroll-creation, apart from the fact that bloglines, the one I use on my own blog, is due to close down in a couple of weeks... so I need to get something else up and running.

    I'll let you know if I find anything good!

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  5. Ooooh, yes! Uzima is VERY much to my taste...

    ReplyDelete