If the pope limited his activities to merely sitting quietly in chapels, delivering babies or giving people colourful pictures while wearing a hat, I don't think any of us would have a problem with him.

I'll note the article does not once touch on the actual REASONS we despise the pope. Misogyny, AIDS in africa, opposition to contraception, abortion and stem cell research, the psychological torment of millions, the abuse cover-up. You'd think from this piece of work that all he's done is warn against the bankrupt morality of the bankers.

It takes some gall to say that those who protest against undue respect and influence offered to religion are failing the cause of secularism.

Also, this made me grimace:

As if the rest of us require professors of theoretical physics or evolutionary biology in order to ponder the big questions of human existence, any more than we need a priest.

Given that the big questions of human existence are, in fact, questions of physics and evolutionary biology, how can they be answered in isolation from the specialists in those disciplines?