Mrs Thatcher was present at the public audience today and was introduced to the Holy Father. Why, I am not sure, especially as her health is failing. Even VIPs have to sit in the hot sun for over hour for a conversation scarcely longer than a few seconds.
16 comments:
I think the third person in the picture is the journalist Paul Johnson. It will be interesting to see if he writes about the occasion.
I was astonished when they showed Mrs Thatcher genuflecting to the Holy Father. I believe she is a Methodist which makes this all the more surprising.
Not Mrs. Thatcher for a long time: firstly Lady Thatcher after Sir Denis gained his baronetcy and then baroness in her own right as a Life Peer.
There is hope for us all- even this frightful woman!
as she has dementia, she is probably commnencing along the path to a future high profile conversion!
I didn't know she was a Man Utd fan.
Did his Holiness check to see if the Fisherman's ring was still on his finger?
Baroness Thatcher was on holiday, staying at the villa just outside Rome of Carla Powell, who is Italian by birth and whose husband Jonathan used to be her foreign policy adviser.
I suspect that the genuflection and the mantilla were simply courtesy and good manners, characteristics which Baroness Thatcher has always displayed, but which her calumniators and detractors have not.
I'd trade her for 0ero in a heartbeat, even in her present condition. She's more of a friend to the US than that usurper will ever be. God bless her, she may swim the Tiber yet - all the best people do. :-D
Bit like attending a Wake,conditions apply.
A great woman meets an even greater man! God bless them both.
Wasn't Lady Thatcher the one who when coming into office made a speech outside No.10 saying, 'Where there is hatred, let me sow...Where there is injury...Where there is darkness...'
And then closed down all the pits and made loads of people unemployed, took all the children's milk away and sold off the council houses which formerly housed the vulnerable and made loads of people homeless.
Unfathomable are the depths of God's mercy!
Free market capitalism, which Thatcher espoused and promoted, is the very antithesis of the Judaeo Christian principle of respect for persons as ends. Any system which sees people as so many nuts and bolts to be used or discarded according to the vagaries of the market is as wrong and evil as Nazism or Communism. Consider the utter crassness of her take on the parable of the Good Samaritan.
How indeed do so many on this blog exhibit the Christian virtue of charity! It is possible to disagree with people without name calling, misrepresentation, and absence of knowledge of what they actually believed and did.
Father,
Such nasty unchristian and uncharitable comments betray a total lack of any sense of decency on the part of your bloggers. I can assure you, father, that I hold you responsible for this disgusting and nasty strand. You have comment moderation, and you should have exercised that to prevent the distress that the comments caused to the many people who greatly admire Lady Thatcher. You can tell a person's character by the company he keeps...you have sunk in my estimation Father, and you have just lost one regular reader. Disgraceful.
Terry,
I see the internet as a more-or-less open forum, it comes from my liberalism and sense of democracy, hence I have allowed your personally abusive comment!
I tend to delete heresy and bad language.
My personal feeling about MT most propbably concurs with anyone who is pro-Life, and saw her unmoved by that issue, which is the most important of all.
Many of us familiar with the Church's social teaching find it difficult to see her as friend of the Catholic Church.
Father,
My mother used to say years ago, "wait until the morning, you will feel better then"
I ignored her good advice then and am obviously still ignoring it now. Can I offer my sincere apologies for the intemperate and insulting comments I made on this blog. You are, of course, quite right and democratic in allowing comment here, provewd by the fact that you published mine.
My "excuse" is that I was incensed at in particular 4 comments, which I felt were hurtful and insulting to Lady Thatcher, and by extension to all who look on her as one of the great and inspiring leaders of our country. I had the privilege as standing as a Conservative candidate in the three elections won by the lady, and was proud to support her, and I still am.
I found no conflict whatever in reconciling my Catholic faith with any of her policies.
According to reports, before meeting the Pope, she laid a wreath on the tomb of Pope John Paul 11, and prayed.
Father, Lady T. is greatly admired, and indeed loved by many of us, and I make no apology for the admiration I have for her.
Please accept my apologies to you personally, I should have delayed replying to the blog comments. I have appreciated your blog for some time now, so can I withdraw my threat to not read it again?
God bless you, Father.
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