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The Forum > Article Comments > Seven things I learned from World Youth Day > Comments

Seven things I learned from World Youth Day : Comments

By Ruby Hamad, published 28/7/2008

The pilgrims have returned from whence they came. The Pope has left the building. So what have we learned?

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Reality Check:

I think indeed we do need a reality check. Very few people in Australia are "trying to incite hatred against Catholics". But don't get that confused with tolerance of catholicism, christianity or beliefs in "invisible friends" and bibles and korans.

Many of us found the Catholic World Youth Week an affront to our beliefs and the way we want to live our lives. We find the very idea of believing in invisible friends, in arguing morality based on a 1900 year old book which is full of contradictions, contrary to our humanist beliefs. Some of us who are concerned with climate change for instance, are angered when we hear some religious nutter claim there is no problem because god is looking after us. We feel terribly frustrated when Chinese feng shui predicts a tragedy in China on the basis of a solar eclipse of the sun. We are opposed to superstition in general. But our anger is addressed towards catholics mainly because they are ostentatious, hold youth weeks partially at the expense of a government we believe should be secular, and because it was the catholics who have caused the schism in our education systems, resulting in apartheid in children's communities etc etc.

It was a Catholic (Kevin Andrews) who put the kybosh on legalising euthanasia; it was a Catholic senator (Tasmania, name escapes me, Harradine?) who stopped family planning being "exported" to Africa. The list of complaints is almost unending.
Don't confuse these comments with "inciting hatred". Some of my best friends are catholic (that is actually true!). But Catholics must be aware that their carrying on causes pain to others.

Get your reality check here.
Posted by HarryG, Monday, 4 August 2008 7:22:49 PM
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Steel,
>>You should ask why the Germans ... are so hung up about Nazis and their symbols (and violence in general) ... before you start talking down to any races or groups of people such as Muslims.<<

The answer is that the Germans did not have a celebration of what is positive in being a German disrupted and ridiculed by those who would rather they concentrate on what is negative in their cultural makeup (or perceived as negative, like their refusal to participate in the Iraq invasion, since they had enough of that in the saddest chapter of their history) .

I did not know I was talking down to Muslims, I do not know of any Muslim who would have openly protested against or ridiculed WYD08. There are more devout Muslims than devout Christians in the city where I live, and the problem is not with them but with those who want to disrupt the civilised world we have arrived at in the West after many years of evolution without knowing what to replace it with. Call this civilised world of ours secular if you like, although the atheist philosopher Juergen Habermas has recently been openly advocating a ‘post-secular society‘ (c.f. http://www.signandsight.com/features/1714.html) the difference being, among other things, that ridicule, sarcasm and insults are replaced by respect, dialogue and tolerance towards Christian as well as Muslim 'subcultures' (as he calls them). I say Christians and Muslims, because - at least in Germany for obvious reasons - nobody has yet tried to treat Jews the same way the jokers do Christians and Muslims.

And yes, I agree insult, ridicule and sarcasm aimed at what is saint to your opponent are preferable to physical violence, whoever instigates it.
Posted by George, Monday, 4 August 2008 8:12:16 PM
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