Poor old protestant pastor Clemens Bittlinger. He is a gentle-voiced man of the cloth with a guitar, who sings faith based songs. But now he has to sing them under police protection.Well, priests with guitars and tambourines might make you want to dose your own cuppa with strychnine, but Pastor Bittlinger is himself getting death threats.
And no, it's not because he has offended Islam, or made some allegedly blasphemous remark about the Prophet Mohammed.
Instead, the subject of his song that has caused such offence is Pope Benedikt, and the threats that have got the police concerned come from Catholics.
The song's title is 'Oh man, Benedikt, a walk with the Pope', and asks "two or three questions because there's a lot I don't understand".
"Why do you revile other Christians?" its lyrics ask. "Why are you openly looking for a fight, saying: Yours is not a church.... You ban condoms, even for the poor of this world. So you encourage the spread of AIDS even if you do not like it. Meanwhile you abandon limbo for babies who haven't been baptised. Did you seriously believe that the Lord had something like that in the first place?"
Bittlinger has been on stage for 25 years without raising much hell. But this time, his song has prompted a healthy dose of fire and brimstone from Catholics.
The hate mail has poured in, apparently.
“You dirty protestant pig, I shit on you and your dirty songs,” read one note.
“When a newspaper prints a Mohammed cartoon, entire cities burn," read another. "But when the Holy Father is ridiculed in blasphemy, we are supposed to just accept that? No, not like that Mr. Bittlinger – you will surely receive the justice you deserve.”
I suppose it was inevitable that while the vast majority of Christians condemned the outpourings of violence after the Mohammed cartoon polemic, some found such determination to respond to perceived offence something to admire.
Depressing though, and hardly representative, for Pastor Bittlinger, who has been singing for 25 years, has been well received by many Catholics and is a specialist in ecumenical affairs.
He says he's bewildered by the fall out to his song, and has written a gloss of it, to clear things up.
Whether it will work, he will have to wait and see.
In the meantime, his post is still getting checked by the police.
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(Source: TN)