Franco Frattini
As you saw if you keep up with the News here, Marc Alan Di Martino helpfully translated some theocratic bullying from Italy’s Foreign Minister Franco Frattini in the Vatican’s house rag the Osservatore Romano.
Christians also must be able to forge an agreement with Muslims on how to fight those aspects which, like all extremisms, threaten society. I refer to atheism, materialism and relativism. Christians, Muslims and Jews can work together to reach this common objective. I believe it’s time for a new humanism in order to struggle against these perverse phenomena, because only the centrality of the human being is an antidote to fanaticism and intolerance.
Very papal, isn’t it. Also stupid and deceitful – the whole point of theocracy is that it is not about “the centrality of the human being,” it’s about the centrality of that thing way way above the human being: good old God.
Frattini has form when it comes to theocratic bullying. He was on the job during the Motoons fuss (when he was justice commissioner for the EU), telling the European media to “self-regulate.”
Frattini is appealing for the European media to agree to “self-regulate”. “The press will give the Muslim world the message: we are aware of the consequences of exercising the right of free expression, we can and we are ready to self-regulate that right,” he said.
Yet that man has the gall to talk about theism as giving a rat’s ass about the “centrality of the human being.”
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Skeptic South Africa, Ophelia Benson. Ophelia Benson said: Franco Frattini http://dlvr.it/7lVT8 […]
I seriously hope Frattini reads English so when he comes home from China he’ll know how popular he’s become on our humanist/atheist scum blogs. Fight fiercely, Harvard!
Astonishing – this is something that one could use much more accurately against the Catholic Church. If the human being was really central (and don’t they say this an awful lot? And isn’t it invariably a lie?) they would have different views on women, atheists, homosexuals, abortion, assisted suicide… But it’s not, of course; it’s their primitive superstitious idea of what a human being ought to be in God’s eyes that they are putting centre, not a real live flesh-and-blood being.
Tried posting this but nothing seemed to happen. Sorry if it turns up twice. If it does, please delete the other.
Reason says: we want to live happily, we don’t want pain and hardship. We have only each other so we have to help each other and make an effort to get on with each other. We need democracy, medicine, psychiatry, relief aid, peace talks, science and education.
Many people would call that “humanism”. Frattini calls it “perverse”.
Religion says: we are sinful creatures and disobey the creator’s rules. We have to stick to god’s ordinances, root out heresy, punish unnatural behaviour, and bear our suffering with patience and penitence. We need obedience to authority, prayer, confession, charity, crusades, dogma and faith schools.
This is what Frattini wants to call “humanism”.
So which is the more “perverse”? In which brand of “humanism” is the human being truly central? Which view is the more conducive to “fanaticism and intolerance”? Frattini would argue that the human being is central if god comes first, and I would argue that the human being can only be central if there is no god at all.
It strikes me that Frattini’s language is inflammatory. Does he want to foment a new persecution? Is he quite sane?
I consider all this to be very good news.
It reminds me of the approach made to the Vatican by the President of Iran for the very same purpose – to make common cause against atheism.
As the number of those willing to say the Emperor has not clothes increases, the more desperate the Emperor becomes.
They’re running scared.
Running scared…Let’s hope it doesn’t end in running amok. It may be that people like Frattini are just waking up to the fact that Enlightenment thinking has been seeping into the bones of religious believers for so long that it has gone a long way towards taking over dogmatic religion itself. When was the last time a pope ordered a crusade against something or other? I mean, a real crusade, with persecutions, burnings, torturings, brandings… he can’t, simply because no one will let him. Bad, bad, bad, for anyone who hankers to restore the real authority of religion. So we have the old rhetorical tricks, like claiming that reasonable = perverse. The right moves increasingly towards the most intolerant and cruel of religious views, the left heads towards an arrogant postmodernism and self-righteous relativism. I don’t like it. Reason is still outnumbered, and it’s our own human instincts that betray us.
@Jack: In fact the UAAR highlighted the similarity of thought and expression between Frattini and Ahmadinejad. I think it was Ophelia who pointed out that Frattini’s rhetoric sounded unnervingly like a papal Angelus. (Does hypertext not work here?)
Perhaps the insane violence perpetrated by islamist fundies are death throes. It cerainly has succeded, finally, in provoking self-defensive moves from the civilized world. It’s all over now for the multi-culturists.
Any alliance made by the islamic fundies and civilized religions can only have the effect of moderating islam and not radicallizing the Pope. It’s, on balance, a positive trend. Kind of like putting a terminally ill patient on a morphine drip.
M FRattini would be best advised to consult Ruby as to his next move.