It gets worse. In 2006 De Mattei said the following in an interview with Zenit, a Catholic news agency.

“Italian identity isn’t just generically Catholic, but is defined by the function of the papacy. Italy’s vocation isn’t simply to host the papacy, but to serve it, to permit the papacy to perform its universal role. Italy is itself when it serves the Church, and it betrays its own identity when it reneges the Church.”

Here we go again: I’d love to know why these people think throwing around the word “universal” makes them sound so important, so profound. No religious confession is universal in character.

This is a prime example of the way Italy has been compromised by the Catholic Church. Italy is a sovreign nation, not a hotel for the papacy. This kind of thing is disrespectful to millions of Italians who are not believers in the supernatural fairytale of Roman Catholicism. It’s wholesale bollocks.

There are countless people running around saying idiotic crap like this. They want us to buy into their obsession with authority. They want us to kneel and kiss rings and fawn at the riches of the papacy. They want us, in short, to stop thinking and let them catapult us back to the Middle Ages.

Well, no thank you.