Gerard Henderson, and lashings of desiccated coconut and prattling Polonius - but hold the condoms - thanks to the Pontiff ...

(Above: a couple of cartoons. Plenty more available by googling).

Gerard Henderson is amazed, astonished and delighted.

The bold, brave Pontiff has gone where few have gone, have indeed rarely gone, perhaps ever since Daniel turned up in the lion's den.

He gave an interview to a journalist without minders.

Stunning, brave, and bold. Worthy of an heroic song in the style of a medievalist, and it turns out our prattling Polonius is indeed a worthy chanter, capable of his own song of Roland, or in this case Benedict:

The reader does not have to agree with the views of Benedict to be impressed by the fact he gave lengthy interviews in the absence of minders and that Light of the World was released without "talking points" memos being issued to bishops and priests.

Impressed that he gave lengthy interviews without benefit of minders and cannily released a book designed to sell?

Impressed? As in to affect strongly, often favourably, to produce a vivid impression or image of? What, in the same way that journalist Peter Seewald impressed us with that notorious member of Hitler Youth, Cardinal Ratzinger, in Salt of the Earth Christianity and the Catholic Church at the End of the Millenium (1997 - now on heavy discount), and God and the World (2002 - now on heavy discount) - both also done in the interview format and released without talking points since nobody much cared to talk about them.

Yep, Seewald and the Pontiff have form, but from the ecstatic reading of Light of the World: The Pope, the Church and the Signs of the Times (just released - soon to be on heavy discount) offered up by Henderson in Don't mock the frock - Benedict speaks from the heart, you'd swear that a vision splendid had just rocked forth in the shape of a book.

In its own curious way, Henderson's missive is as dumb as he always contends he is, with his heart lost somewhere in a spiritual Macmansion in the outer western suburbs. And along the way, as he valiantly battles the serpents of secularism and atheism and Islam and sundry mockers and deniers, he delivers some extraordinary insights:

This suggests that the Pope has a much better understanding of contemporary Catholics than do such secularists as Adams.

Which is a bit like saying that the CEO of Coca Cola has a better understanding of Coke addicts than the head of Pepsi. Well you'd hope so ...

Well what did the infamous Adams do to so upset Mr. Henderson, an elephant who never forgets the slightest slight? Well it turns out that way back in October Adams interviewed former priest Paul Adams (available here for podcast and streaming for free) about his book Judgment Day: The struggle for life on earth (available from all fine booksellers), and in passing in the intro, made a few jokes about condoms and every sperm being sacred (a routine well borrowed and much loved from the Monty Python song Every Sperm is Sacred).

Henderson, who is absolutely without a sense of humour, in his ongoing bid to make desiccated coconut seem like totally wet coconut, was appalled, and worse: Collins did not object to Adams's sneers.

No Daniel he, or perhaps should that be, he no Daniel, in this lion's den of sneering secularism.

The thin skinned Henderson spends much time elsewhere getting agitated about Benedict being subjected to more low-level abuse, somehow forgetting that the Catholic church's idea of low level abuse for dissenters, secularists, atheists, mockers and sneerers is an eternity of unimaginable suffering in steam-inducing hellfire ... Talk about sticks and stones and hellfire up against 'but names will never hurt me' ...

But when it gets to the level of defensiveness on view in this bit of Hendersonia, things have taken a truly astonishing turn:

During his visit to Britain in September, Benedict was subjected to more low-level abuse. The author Richard Dawkins described the Pope as a "leering old villain in a frock", the philosopher A.C. Grayling compared him to "the head of a drug cartel" and the humanist Andrew Copson accused him of undermining human rights. Yet, as Bryan Appleyard reported in The Sunday Times, Geoffrey Robertson, QC, obtained a papal blessing in Rome a few months before joining the protests in London.

Uh huh. Suddenly the strange ways of the preening Geoffrey Robertson are crucial evidence, but it has to be said that I too have received a papal blessing, though it was simply by chance, standing in St Peters square, while a Pope blathered away ... (and really a visit to St Peters to see where all the Roman marble, ribbed untimely from the empire, ended up is well worth it, at least for anyone wanting to understand how the rich might find it as hard to fit through the eye of a needle as a camel).

Never mind, by this stage, Henderson is hot to trot in his defensiveness:

The evidence suggests the Pope is more considered than many of his critics. This is evident in Light of the World where the former theology professor acknowledges the church handles some issues poorly, concedes that "the Pope can have private opinions that are wrong" and accepts that "no one is forced to be a Christian". The Pope also apologises for the "filth" involved in the sexual abuse of young children by male priests and brothers.

Yes, yes indeed, the filth and the fury, as the Sex Pistols might say, but what about the notion that the Pope, and the Church might have public opinions that are wrong?

Well here we must turn to paranoid dissembling and deflection:

As Francis Fukuyama pointed out in a lecture in Sydney in 2008, the huge increases in world population are taking place in sub-Saharan Africa where the Pope has little influence. If Adams was truly concerned about the need for condom advocacy as a form of birth control, he would take his cause to the Islamic nations - or, indeed, to Islamic settlements within Western societies. It's just that it is easier to ridicule Christians in the West than Muslims anywhere.

Yep, you see there's nothing the Pontiff could do about it, even if he wanted to do anything about it, not that he can do anything about it because the Church's teaching on condoms and contraception continues to be bizarre (along with sundry other teachings on sex), and in any case, why not just blame the Islamics. Pick on them instead, instead of ridiculing western Christians.

So seeing that he was getting nowhere, but that instead an uproar was starting, he sent for a bowl of water, and washed his hands before the crowd saying, see Africa's got nothing to do with me. The responsibility is yours ...

I was thinking only last night how nice it would be to see a Muslim given prime time in a local rag to defend their position on condoms, but it turns out that few are given such Hendersonian space and so we're left with the prattlings of the likes of our own antipodean Polonius (and anyway it turns out that there's no clear cut position, with some for and some agin, Muslim clerics in Africa differ on condom use in HIV/AIDS fight).

It is of course not an argument to say go pick on someone else, it's someone else's fault, if the Pope and the Catholic church are running around like a bunch of unreconstructed medievalists. What fun to pick on the lot of them for their religious cant and hypocrisy ...

Why even Henderson himself opens with that kind of line:

The Vatican, apparently like God, works in strange ways.

Yes, including working through the empty vessel, the tinkling brass often inclined to sound like a noisy gong as he berates worshippers of heathen dieties ...

And what are these dieties?

In the Western world, which is increasingly subsumed with sex and celebrity ...

Sigh. Oh it's more of the subsuming and the sex and the celebrity, and yes, suddenly it all comes back, those wise words Polonius offered unto Ophelia:

Lord Polonius : Marry, I'll teach you: think yourself a baby;

That you have ta'en these tenders for true pay,
Which are not sterling. Tender yourself more dearly;
Or--not to crack the wind of the poor phrase,
Running it thus--you'll tender me a fool.

Ophelia: My lord, he hath importuned me with love
In honourable fashion.

Lord Polonius: Ay, fashion you may call it; go to, go to.

Ophelia: And hath given countenance to his speech, my lord,
With almost all the holy vows of heaven.

Lord Polonius: Ay, springes to catch woodcocks. I do know,
When the blood burns, how prodigal the soul
Lends the tongue vows: these blazes, daughter,
Giving more light than heat, extinct in both,
Even in their promise, as it is a-making,
You must not take for fire. From this time
Be somewhat scanter of your maiden presence;
Set your entreatments at a higher rate
Than a command to parley. For Lord Hamlet,
Believe so much in him, that he is young
And with a larger tether may he walk
Than may be given you: in few, Ophelia,
Do not believe his vows; for they are brokers,
Not of that dye which their investments show,
But mere implorators of unholy suits,
Breathing like sanctified and pious bawds,
The better to beguile. This is for all:
I would not, in plain terms, from this time forth,
Have you so slander any moment leisure,
As to give words or talk with the Lord Hamlet.
Look to't, I charge you: come your ways.

Naturally Ophelia promises to obey and it all turns out splendidly, but I see we've rather dropped the ball with Mr. Henderson, suddenly confronted as we were by a real scribbler of words.

Never mind, for the rest of the opening bit Henderson spends his time explaining the Pope's mystical utterings on condoms in the recently published book. It gets quite metaphysical and even poetikal:

Commentators have homed in on

Benedict's comment

that in the case of some individuals

- he cited the case of a male prostitute -

the use of condoms may amount

to "a first step in the direction of a moralisation,

a first assumption of responsibility,

on the way towards recovering an awareness

that not everything is allowed

and that one cannot do whatever one wants".

That was about it.

But commentators tended to ignore

a more significant papal refrain

in Light of the World.

Namely that "people can get condoms

when they want them anyway".

And that's the essential point.

The Pope recognises that not all Catholics

follow the teachings of the church.

Moreover, Africa is by no means

a Catholic zone.

The unfashionable fact

is that HIV/AIDS is rife

in large parts of Africa

because many African men

have multiple sex partners.

Only some of them are baptised Catholic.

Not a bad parsing, but what a pity it doesn't scan in the way of the best poetry, and sure as hell in its defensive posturing, it doesn't scan for logic either. You can get condoms anyway, you can defy the teachings of the church, it's all the fault of African men, and only some of them are baptised Catholic and so on and so forth. And it came unto me once again and with much force that if Jesus were to walk the earth today and come upon some of the apologists who wreak havoc and stupidities in his name, he would surely weep ...

And that in the matter of HIV/AIDS is surely the essential point.

Never mind, the sight of Henderson defending the outer reaches of Catholic absurdity against secularists, atheists, Phillip Adams, African men, and the utility of condoms is a splendid one, and not to be missed by devoted devourers of desiccated coconut ...

(Below: and now to prove to secularists with a sweet tooth that there is an actual beneficial use for desiccated coconut, here's a recipe for eternal bliss and joy, the lamington. And put together by a foreigner, what's more, and if we can share that kind of intimacy, is it so dangerous to share the intimate thought that if it's not on, it's not on? Yep, the pond goes to the extremes of culinary supreme to establish universal peace and harmony).

And now there's just time for a song and Mad Mel has come out of his sexy cage of sin to send it along to that Granny Scoopshovel, Mr Henderson: