The Times’s paywall is mysteriously down, so I nipped behind
it and found a blog post from my former colleague the Rev George
Pitcher, now the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Secretary for Public
Affairs.
Writes George:
I confess to having been bemused by the media treatment of the Pope here in October [sic]. If British society is post-Christian you could have fooled me. He enjoyed comprehensive and largely unmediated and uncritical reportage in the British media.
The BBC was especially reverential – wall-to-wall coverage, with little or no challenge in the studio from the usual pundits and antagonists.
There may be good reason for that; the Beeb will have been conscious of Roman Catholicism’s minority status in the UK and its responsibilities to religious diversity.
More cynically, it was any easy hit – the BBC may feel it can have a go at the Pope in future and point to the free ride it gave him when he visited, should anyone claim undue victimisation.
But the point still holds: The Pope’s visit was recorded as an unqualified success.
Is that what Dr Williams thinks, too, George?
SIC: TC/UK