Another Sunday, another early phone-in, this time for the BBC 5Live breakfast show (do people really listen to the radio on a Sunday morning at 6.10am?) The BBC had organised a poll designed in the run-up to the papal visit to show divisions among “British Catholics” – a typically cynical BBC Pope-bashing operation.
The question I was asked to address was about the Pope’s teachings on celibacy. “The poll results… suggest,” the BBC reported, “that a large number of Catholics think that the Pope should drop his insistence on clerical celibacy. Just under a half of those polled, 49 per cent, said the celibacy rule should be relaxed, compared to 35 per cent. A further 17 per cent were uncommitted”.
