Where the Pope did not pass

The following (which I've translated from the Portuguese) is by my friend Pedro Barbosa from his facebook page. I thought it gives an interesting perspective on where the Portuguese nation is at....

The whole City was dressed up to the nines for the visit of Pope Benedict XVI. To increase the sense of celebration the Prime Minister declared a public holiday. Everything was ready for his visit. Flags and bunting on every street, welcoming his Holiness, declaring the devotion of the Portuguese people to the Christian faith.

But how true is it?

Two weeks before the visit of the Holy Father, the Segunda Circular, the highway I pass by several times during week, was exhibiting publicity posters for a cable TV channel, described as “sexy hot”. The publicity was not so explicit, as we are still, thankfully, a little bashful in this country. In another place, one of the roundabouts near Santa Iria da Azoia, where pass when I go to fill my tank, there is another poster of a lady dressed provocatively in her underwear, advertising a Sex shop, alongside a supermarket, an insurance agency and a pet shop.

I ask myself the question, if the Pope were to have passed by this roundabout, would the powers that be have requested for the advertisement to have been withdrawn, at least temporarily.

This is not intended to be an X-ray of our country, in which, on the one hand, we legalize the marriage between persons of the same sex, putting into question the basic value of the family such as God idealized it, while, on the other, we legalize the voluntary interruption of a pregnancy, throwing the value of the human life into the hands of a momentary choice of intense emotion, and bearing fruit through permanent repercussions in the life of the one having the abortion, be she an adolescent or an adult woman. We have here social and moral values, defended by the government and by the citizens in general, which run clearly against the Christian perspective (Roman Catholic or otherwise).

I wonder if it is a sort of schizophrenia or another similar disease, from which we are suffering. On the one hand we receive with great enthusiasm festivals of erotica, as is the case with the Salão Erótica International de Lisbon, which during the three days it was on, received thousands of visitors, while, on the other, we receive the Holy Father, representing the Catholic Church, one of the Christian confessions that defends the moral, intellectual and physical wholeness of the human being.

I feel confused and leave you with one question: Was what we have all been involved in over this past month, a mere "Puppet show" and a play of political interests, giving a good impression to the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic church, or do we, at the bottom, still respect and hold dear those Christian values on which our country was based, and which can still make a huge difference in peoples’ lives?