Sunday 3 March 2013

Israel and the Pope

Oh dear! A fortnight since I blogged! Difficult to keep it up if so few people read it. I have to put Israel in the title in order to get more readers - probably not the ones I want. I have an idea for the new Pope, the most exciting thing he could do is move the Papacy back to Jerusalem, where it started (if we are to believe that Simon Peter was the first Pope). That would be a glorious re-affirmation of the international status of the once-Holy City, which was part of the partition resolution of the United Nations in 1947. Israel would be forced to acknowledge the illegitimacy of the attempt to make it a wholly Jewish city. Incidentally, the name Peter is a translation of an Aramaic joke; Jesus gave Simon the nickname of Kefah ('Cephas'), meaning Rock, which is Petros in Greek and Petrus in Latin. Perhaps the new Pope could take the name Kefah the Second, to recall the Semitic roots of Christianity. And by overlooking a few obscure points of doctrine, perhaps he could reunite the Catholics with the Oriental Orthodox churches, which broke away in the fifth century. Dream on!

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