The World Youth Day wrap

Not a lo to say about the event itself. Sydneysiders, I have realised, love to have a whine about stuff. They hated the prospect of the Olympics and World Youth Day was going to cause traffic chaos the like o which has never before been experienced. Condom hurling lefties in offensive t-shirts would be cloging the streets and life as we know it would grind to a halt.

In fact none of that happened. There were noticaly more young folk in the city, standing out like dog's balls with their bright coloured backpacks and flags on poles. But it remained easy to get around the city, even when Pope Beni was on the move and even when some bloke dressed as Jesus was getting his arse kicked in the re-enactment o the last hours of Christ's life, the Stations of the Cross.

I have a bit of a problem with this particularly nasty bit of religous symbolism. I get that Big JC needed to have a torrid time in order to ram home the fact hat he was doing it for all of us. I get that. But I fail to see why we need to have it re-enacted. Ever. Especially in a youth event. It sends a very strange message. According to the laws of the land at that time JC was a criminal and the punishment for his offense was a damn good kicking and nailing to a tree. "Sorry mate, we're not having any of this son of God nonsense, shut it or we'll string you up. He's not the Messiah he's a very naughty boy" if you will.

If today a scruffy bloke in a blanket started spouting off about how his dad is God, and had a dozen equally scruffy blokes bigging-him-up the rest of us would think he was bonkers. We'd probably not strip, beat, humiliate and string him up. We'd probably check him into a nut house and give him some therapy. Which, if it turned out he was the son of God, would make for a somewhat less theatrical reenactment two thousand years hence. The symbolic handing out of a couple of small pills and a beaker of water would look nowhere near as good on TV as a blood streaming from a mostly naked bloke nailed to a fucking great cross being hoisted up on the shore of Sydney Harbour.

Anyway, Stations of the Cross. Please stop it. It sends an iffy message to the kids. Stop worshiping suffering and death. It's not healthy.

However, I digress. WYD, in the end, caused far less traffic chaos than did the visit of Don Rumsfeld or George Dubya. There was no ill feeling towards the pilgrims (young tourists) and pretty well no negative press about the event itself. Sure it cost us taxpayers a bomb that was not really recouped (pilgrims don't spend big, especially when they have food vouchers) and sure some of my tax money has been gifted to the racing industry courtesy of the church, and sure the whole religion thing is a lot of nonsense. But it was pretty low key, and Pope Beni looked far less evil than he does in a lot of pictures. For the atheist it was all dreadfully dull.

Shame such an event has to be linked to religion. Would be nice if it could just happen wthout the baggage.

It's about time I added a post with a picture...