You've got to have faith?

I really didn't mean to set the cat among the pigeons - but I did. I was almost unaware of the Pope's visit. I knew he was coming sometime this autumn and that there was some opposition to it. I, frankly, wasn't bothered. Then he arrived and Facebook became a site of casual and thoughtless anti pope comments. They were just repetitive insults and dogma with seemingly no real engagement with the issues. I turned on the TV to see, not a fascist filthy hun, but an old man with a sweet smile and rocking red shoes.

I started to listen - always useful- and found his uncompromising and challenging statements interesting and engaging. So - I posted a pro pope message. You would think the world had ended. Friends immediately took me to task - almost accusing me of becoming anti gay, anti abortion - in short  becoming reactionary. I was  shocked - we talk of how this big brother society curtails our freedoms and we laugh at the lengths some will go to to appear pc - but this was  an attack on the very things the they thought they were defending.  An argument is different  - two sides engage, sometimes bitterly, but engage in the opinions expressed. No one seemed to bother - empty rhetoric was all I could see.

It made me think back to my mother and that broad sweep of religions that were paraded for me as a child. Her intent was to make me see the merit and value of all. Oddly enough she wasn't enormously pro Catholic - something to do with her first marriage being considered invalid by her husband's family because it had taken place in an Anglican church not a Catholic one.  This didn't stop her from being friends with Brother Andrew of the Missionaries of Charity or from going to the Carmelites to ask for their prayers in times of trial. Equally she would turn a prayer wheel, go for peace and tranquility to the Jain temple and read and try to engage with Islam. She understood the Hindu dichotomy of many and one being the same. And - she made sure that I did to.

As a result I have a deep and strong faith in god, enormous respect for the beliefs of others and a thirst for a better understanding of faith. Exclusivity is not something I subscribe to  - I do not and cannot believe that a loving god would exclude  the good simply because their worship takes a different form.  So, all this hostility shocked me.

I went back to watching, and listening to, the Pope. He was very clear in his message about the church today and the struggle that all people of faith have in the twenty first century. He offered  no compromise to make his church more appealing - instead he reiterated the core values that it was built on. I don't think it is for me - largely because being such a fag hag means I have far too many friends who already face daily discrimination  and because my feminist roots mean that whatever my personal opinion of abortion is  I could not and would not condemn another's choice. But I enjoyed the exercise of  engaging in the debate and felt my faith strengthened as a result.

I think it is too easy to hate- to close our minds - to make judgements based on media stereotypes. I find  the way that Israel deals with the Palestinians shocking - a nation born from the rubble of the holocaust should be the better nation not the one dealing in tit for tat politics and battles. I find the extremist views of the bin Ladens of this world so at variance with every Muslim friend I have that it seems hard to reconcile the two as coming from the same faith. It all seems so entrenched in bigotry and hatred with no though of a forgiving heart. Those people who wrote on my wall would do well to look at hard line extremists and fundamentalists wherever they may be and endeavour to not become that which they decry.