| Unusual Gifts From The Pope's Visit |
| Written by Tom Doerr | |
| Thursday, 07 October 2010 | |
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After a period of welcome obscurity, Tony Blair is suddenly everywhere again, making peace in the Middle East, promoting his memoir, and now even getting himself involved in the pope's state visit to Britain. This is the fault of the Vatican's official newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, which chose to publish on its front page an article by Blair about Cardinal John Henry Newman, whom the pope is to beatify in Birmingham on Sunday. There is no reason to think that Blair, a recent convert to Catholicism, is particularly knowledgeable about this most famous of all British converts, but his article is interesting all the same for what it says about its author.
After a period of welcome obscurity, Tony Blair is suddenly everywhere again, making peace in the Middle East, promoting his memoir, and now even getting himself involved in the pope's state visit to Britain. This is the fault of the Vatican's official newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, which chose to publish on its front page an article by Blair about Cardinal John Henry Newman, whom the pope is to beatify in Birmingham on Sunday. There is no reason to think that Blair, a recent convert to Catholicism, is particularly knowledgeable about this most famous of all British converts, but his article is interesting all the same for what it says about its author. The event is surrounded by security, terror threats and controversy but what has been overlooked is the amount of people jumping on the bandwagon and capitalising on the visit with souvenirs and commemorative gifts. But as you would expect, there is a lot of junk on offer which has been designed to make a cheap buck out of all the pontiff's supporters. Street vendors are offering baseball caps for up to 20. And many are flogging pilgrims t-shirts with the option to customise with the name of their church. Westminster Cathedral's gift shop is stocking specially made plates, photo's books and crosses for the event. But there are also very many bizarre souvenirs available including a 'popener' bottle opener, a Vatican city lighter and a remote control popemobile. Many gift shops are offering silicone bracelets similar to those of the 'livestrong' trend and catholic Swarovski jewellery. However the Catholic Church has rejected claims that the papal visit is being commercialised. Blair may be on the defensive here because he has often been criticised by orthodox Catholics for supporting legal abortion and same-sex unions. So he cites Newman again as saying that there can never be an end to the development of church doctrine and that all doctrine must enjoy the consensus of the whole "body of the faithful" to be considered infallible. "I doubt if this voice is yet taken seriously enough on moral questions, or if we have yet fully digested the implications of these ideas," Blair writes. "The tendency of some religious leaders to bundle a large number of different ideas into a bag marked 'secularism', then treat it as a sinister package, is divisive in pluralist societies." Not content with implying that Newman would not be opposed to a bit of compromise on sexual issues, Blair even suggests that the putative saint would be a supporter of his Faith Foundation and its support for development projects because it was Newman who had first "put the concept of development on the map" and without whom "we probably would not be using the terms 'Millennium Development Goals' or 'international development' today". The Article Author: The sale of unique gifts and novelty gifts is said to be worth tens of millions of pounds during the Pope's first ever state visit to the UK. |
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