If Pope Benedict sang a duet with Britney Spears, what song do you think they'd sing?

He's right, it is marginalised in the UK, and it seems to have made us no worse off than any countries that are more religious. Of course he is going to say that religion is important, but basically, religious people just fail to connect with how non-religious people think. (And I say non-religious rather than atheist as that reflects the position here in the UK - religion has been a "minority hobby" here for so long that the vast majority of Brits have never really thought about it.) To explain how it is here - the historical background behind this goes back to King Henry VIII, who in breaking away from the catholic church just so he could get his marriage annulled also made disloyalty to the English church a treasonable offence, as it implied disloyalty to the King at the head of it.

All other denominations were banned for some considerable time, and the result of making the national church very much an arm of the state caused it to become more of an exclusive top people's club than a church, a position from which it never recovered once it lost the working classes. A too close relationship between church and state caused something similar in the rest of western Europe - and THAT, I think, is why the 1st Amendment to the US Constitution bans Congress from making any law about establishment of religion. Whoever proposed that didn't want the same to happen in the USA, and they were right - the USA is by far the most religious country in the "western civilised world" as a result.

Canada is a young country too BUT it stayed under British influence for far longer, which is why religion there is more in the European mould. However, the Pope's words will be ignored. Parliament will go back to its debates just as before, and in those, religion never features at all.

(I've seen American election campaigns - they are totally different from ours, a) because Parliament doesn't have fixed terms so actual full-on campaigning only goes on for 3 weeks once the election is actually called and b) any politician that mentions their religion is thought of as slightly cuckoo, so they never do. So there is much more emphasis on actual policies.) Basically what he said was that religion has a positive role to play in politics because it, catholicism especially, provides moral norms which can contribute to the debate - and it has in Britain in the past. He mentioned particularly the abolition of the slave trade.

But things have moved on and he didn't provide any logical reason why religion has a vital contribution to make in the 21st century. "It was good then so it still is now" is not a reasoned argument. The other side of the debate - non-religious reason as opposed to faith - has changed so much.

A little off the point but worth mentioning I think - I am not surprised at all that he mentioned Sir Thomas More. It would perhaps be more surprising if he hadn't! After all, he made the speech in the very place where More was tried for treason and sentenced to death.

I couldn't resist mentioning that - when I was 10, we were studying the Tudors in history class and I got a special project to do on More. Basically he condemned himself by refusing to sign the oath of supremacy that Henry VIII is head of the church, because he refused to go against his beliefs and conscience. This sorely grieved Henry that he had to sign the death warrant for his old friend, but... the law is the law.

Whatever your beliefs, you can't help admiring the man. He was made a saint by the catholic church in 1935 and there's a catholic church not far from me dedicated to him. Do google Thomas More for the full story, and the play and film "A Man for All Seasons" tell his story.

I'm not a London citizen but I do live in England. I make little sense of the Pope or the Catholic church in generl with its deeply engrained culture of child abuse and the endless tirades to starving people in the 3rd world, many of whom have HIV, not to use condoms or any form of birth control, I am very angry with the British government to even allowed this horrific man to enter our country.

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.