Our new car which we'll collect on Saturday - formerly used by the Special Olympics

People have been kindly emailing to check that I'm okay.

I've been terribly busy.  Everything from, you know, paid work, my wife getting ready for pilgrimage to Turin which didn't happen because of the ash scare, trying to buy a new car and succeeding in buying a new washing machine after the other one broke and then painting the utility room to go with it.

Some people have been expecting an angry rant from me about the FCO story featuring suggestions the Holy Father open an abortion clinic and bless a gay marriage (sic) during his visit to Great Britain.
 
To be honest, my heart sank at the FCO story.  I read of it and thought - this is disgraceful, outrageous, reveals levels of institutional Christophobia at the highest levels - and yet, and yet, my next thought was "the Church will come out of this badly again" and sure enough within a day some nitwit in the Vatican had told a journalist it was a disgrace the civil servant wasn't sacked.  Cue headline "Vatican protects paedophile criminal priests while demanding the sack for joke that went wrong" followed by references to Cardinal Law. 

We know the British establishment is systemically anti-Catholic.  We know that journalists are motivated by anything but a search for the truth and we know someone in the FCO wouldn't get away with remarks about blacks, or homosexuals, or women, or Jews or Muslims.

But - if a priest in the Vatican had written something unpleasant about the Queen - would he be sacked?  I doubt it. 

I love the Pope but I really wish all the henchmen and dodgy bishops would just go.
 
Bizarrely a little portrait of the Pope has appeared on top of a filing cabinet in a big office I was in recently - appeared a few weeks ago.  No idea where it came from or why but rather good to see it.