Damian Thompson Attacks Papal Trip Organizers...on Twitter

He's been very critical of the goings on for awhile and is even attacking the organizers on Twitter. It's just nice that someone with a serious soap box is taking these people to task and holding them accountable because it seems that almost no one else is. He writes:

.@thepapalvisit It's your fault for putting out tacky stuff that no one with any taste could like. You make Catholics look like prats.

This is sure to appeal to his artistic non-Catholic friends. It's about time someone took a bite out of artistic mediocrity, even if it were only from the province of artistic competence.

But he's asking another, more important question, why should religion be left to people who don't care enough about it to be competent at it. Most of them who are in charge, whether in the UK or elsewhere, couldn't tell you the 10 Commandments or the Precepts of the Church. Could it be that the last half century of ecclesiastical malaise has left us with a diet of mostly dull porridge?

.@thepapalvisit And what about that awful, error-strewn booklet with its computer game-style cover? Non-Catholics were cringing.

Many people object more to being infantilised more than they object to being told they are sinners, it seems.

@thepapalvisit You can't even write a literate tweet! Yet Mass-goers pay your wages.

It's been a long lament for those of us on the outside of the power structure who have to endure what's passed on to us. Many of us have made temporary and indefinite measures by finding the Sacraments as much as possible as they were before the Conciliar malaise.

Is this high level of incompetence intentionally meant to drive more people out of the Catholic Church in England than have been in the past years? Here's a bit of what he's talking about with some really cool urban beats and the usual Mass brunch fare some of you may be familiar with:

Link to Papal Visit, here.

At least the production values were solid. That's a jamming soulful piano in that track.

Papal visit CD: musical atrocities that make the Birdie Song sound like Mozart

[Telegraph Blog] Despite everything I’ve written about the incompetence of its organisers, I firmly believe that Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to Britain needs to be a success. Time is running out. The sad trendies of Eccleston Square have done enough damage without them handing their critics fresh ammunition at this late stage. My heart sank when I saw that the papal visit team had released two tracks from the official “Pilgrim Journey” CD that comes with the (expensive) tickets for papal events. But nothing could have prepared me for the awful reality.

I’ve just played “Urban Pilgrim (Reprise)” by Alessandro Cherin and “Deus Tuus Deus Meus” by Fr Gerard Bradley to my colleagues in the Telegraph newsroom. And they’re keeling over in embarrassment. “Urban Pilgrim” is described by a friend as “the stuff they play on planes when they switch off your in-flight…

You can hear the mediocrity and incompetence, at least some of it, here at a Catholic Radio Station opened just for the purpose. As a foretaste of this, the organizers plans to cover a group of youth who'll sit outside the Pope's temporary residence all night and sing him lullabies, not that there's anything wrong with that. He also promises to sing the praises of Catholic Charities. You can bet that they will be covering some liturgical abuses, as well as Father Freddy Fraggles...