What is the Protest the Pope movement really about? Ask ten different activists why they object to Mr Joseph Ratzinger’s state visit to Britain and they’ll give you ten different answers. My own mother, a lapsed Catholic who is not normally the sort of lady to spoil her shoes on noisy demonstrations, looked me in the eye when I inquired about her reasons for attending the protest and said, very quietly, “it’s personal”.
For many of the millions who are dismayed at the prospect of the papal visit, it is indeed personal, and it is also political. Deep-rooted resentment drawn from first or second-hand experience of the institutional brutalities of Britain’s largest “minority” faith – there are nine million Catholics in this country- forms the basis of legitimate liberal indignation.
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