Pope

Stephen Fry is good at taking himself seriously while pretending not to take himself seriously. But slowly, as he gets older and grander, his self-effacing mask is slipping. He's becoming less and less of a comedian, more and more a sanctimonious bore. Look at the way he has taken it upon himself to denounce, with such gravitas, Pope Benedict XVI's visit to Britain. In his interview with the BBC yesterday – see above – Fry insists that the Pope should be free to come to Britain. "How could I hold my head up if I objected to that?" he says. What Fry cannot not accept, he explains, is that the Pope's time in the UK should be treated as a state visit. Fair enough, I suppose.

An eyebrow-raising passage from the Pope's letter to the Irish church: In recent decades, however, the Church in your country has had to confront new and serious challenges to the faith arising from the rapid transformation and secularization of Irish society. Fast-paced social change has occurred, often adversely affecting people’s traditional adherence to Catholic teaching and values. All too often, the sacramental and devotional practices that sustain faith and enable it to grow, such as frequent confession, daily prayer and annual retreats, were neglected. Significant too was the tendency during this period, also on the part of priests and religious, to adopt ways of thinking and assessing secular realities without sufficient reference to the Gospel.