Pope Benedict's visit to UK a "mistake" - Paisley

Pope Benedict

uk.reuters.com

(Reuters) - Protestant preacher Ian Paisley said on Friday it was a mistake to have invited Pope Benedict to Britain and criticised the Catholic Church's response to the child sex abuse scandal.

The preacher, who stepped down from the post of Northern Ireland first minister in 2008, said the pope should not have been invited for the four-day visit in September during which he will meet the queen at her official residence in Scotland.

(visit the link for the full news article)



[edit on 1-7-2010 by LarryLove]

So, what do we think about this. With the number of regular weekly church goers recorded at just over 800,000 has the sex abuse scandal rocked the faith in people and should the Pope be doing more to ensure the Catholic Church is atoning for its sins?

I am on the fence with the Pope's visit. I believe there's serious work to do to clean the churches' image up and maybe this visit should focus on doing just that.

uk.reuters.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

[edit on 1-7-2010 by LarryLove]

reply to post by LarryLove


You know the Pope and BP's Tony Hayward have a few things in common. Both are the heads of major corporations that have suffered huge PR disasters.
Both are criticized for doing far too little in reaction to those PR disasters.
And both seem to be living in their own little and greatly distorted versions of reality.

There is no way to clean up the churches image. It has been forever stained. Who cares where he goes, it does matter who he meets with. We can expect that those who meet with the Pope are either blind, or part of the problem.

I also don't think the Pope has as much control over Catholics worldwide. The Mexican Catholics are very devout and against the issue of child molestation. They believe in the faith, not the man that is called Pope.