Brainstorming? More like brain dead…

IT IS difficult to imagine a more juvenile – and more embarrassing – document than the summary of the Foreign Office's so-called "brainstorming" session for ideas to mark the visit of Pope Benedict to Britain. Entitled The ideal visit would see… the document listed suggestions that could have come straight from a script for the satirical programme The Thick of It. "Brainstorming" ideas included the launch of a "Benedict" condom, a Papal apology for the Spanish Armada

The entire exercise might be dismissed as a preposterous spoof were it not for the fact that the FO took it seriously enough to have the summary circulated to senior officials for consideration. So insulting was it that it has the capacity to scupper the visit altogether. The document displayed both disrespect for the Papacy and indeed for members of the Catholic faith across the UK. At the very least it points to an appalling lack of judgment within the Foreign Office and an inability to treat its duties seriously.

Catholics and members of other churches cannot but be struck by the attitude of sneering contempt it reveals towards religious beliefs – and indeed towards faith in any form. The apologies could not come quickly enough and the top mandarins now rightly blush with shame.

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