Welcome back, Dick

Why am I sick of the established Church? Read on. A little digging reveals a few interesting facts about Bishop Richard Williamson, recently having been made homeless by his expulsion from Argentina and within a whisker of being restored to the fold of the faithful. He wrote:

However, until they (the Jews) re-discover their true Messianic vocation, they may be expected to continue fanatically agitating, in accordance with their false messianic vocation of Jewish world-dominion, to prepare the Anti-Christ's throne in Jerusalem. So we may fear their continuing to play their major part in the agitation of the East and in the corruption of the West. Here the wise Catholic will remember that, again, the ex-Christian nations have only their own liberalism to blame for allowing free circulation within Christendom to the enemies of Christ.

Food for thought here, especially as the remitter of the excommunication is, of course Benedict, who in a previous incarnation as Cardinal Ratzinger, together with the ultratraditionalist Cardinal Castrillón (who is looking more and more like the author of the rapprochement) was JPII's messenger boy to try to win back the wayward Lefebvrites.

Yad VaShem, quite properly has publicly announced that 'saying sorry' without retraction really isn't enough and the Vatican has agreed, assuming rightly that an already fragile relationship between Rome and Jerusalem might be damaged beyond repair unless they were seen to be taking a firm line. Truthful regret, dear Richard, isn't quite the same thing as recantation, is it? Stop trying to bleed your theology to death using the leeches of far-Right politics and go back to the incomprehensible Latin mumblings that you're all famous for. Oh, yeah - and it doesn't do you or the Church much good if you threaten journalists at the airport when they are deporting you, either...At least the Israelis responded with typically Jewish satire and said sorry afterwards, even before the Papal Nuncio complained...

A final word...Vatican insiders know Cardinal Darío Castrillón Hoyos well. The steely-eyed Colombian Cardinal, 79, served for nine years as head of the Congregation for Clergy, where in 2002 he drew the wrath of victims of American-priest sex abuse for denying that the Catholic Church had any particular problem with paedophiles in its ranks.

God save us all from troublesome priests. I think I like the football better than the mitre belonging to Pius XI.

There's a film I'd like to see. The Class follows the relationship between a young, idealistic teacher - I was one of those once - and a troublesome class of 13- and 14-year-olds in an abyss of Parisian deprivation and cultural foment. Child actors actually volunteered - their performances raw, unadorned and natural so one wonders how much of it is genuinely improvised.

The humiliation is soul-destroying but the chemistry between the hormonal, insecure and aggressive adolescents yields extraordinarily insightful moments. By all accounts, this is a film that every MP in the country needs to see and debate.

The despair known to almost every teacher that the interests of the vast majority of these street-hardened kids simply don’t stretch much beyond rap music, hanging out, mobile phones and football. The tragedy is that you also know that they never will, however close you get to making meaningful contact.

I am fortunate since I work in a microcosm of comparatively old - fashioned sanity where a few Aristotelian meanderings are allowed and rules are predominantly followed. The norm is closer to the film's portrayal, as far as the reviewers tell me.

Today, a short trip down the Gulf Road took two hours since everyone able to walk unassisted took their cars and armed with party foam, spraying everyone within range, hooting mindlessly in celebration of the Liberation. Twentysomethings in fast cars armed with huge multicoloured water pistols sat, impossibly, on their driver's doors, braking and steering by footwork and luck. Others sat on hoods, waving and cheering, still others were on the roofs of the cars, all bedecked in the national colours. I suppose I ought to be grateful that this is the closest I get to anarchy.

Gongs Again

I'd love to be able to vote at the Oscars. When we vote for a best picture candidate, we are voting for more than just a film which captures the heart, engages the mind or provokes the senses. Whether we care to acknowledge it or not, the judges as cultural representatives are voting for a cinematographic paradigm, shaping the way that the movie dollars are likely to be spent two years or more hence, an attitude toward cinema which their particular choice represents. In this day of the evaporating dollar, attitudes that don't gain the full attention of Hollywood are consigned to history's pitiless shredder. Though one of the oldest clichés of moviemaking is, "If you want to send a message, call Western Union," sending a message is exactly what voters end up doing.

I've again had the chance to see almost everything before the BIG NIGHT.

What I liked and what I didn't. "Button' seems to be one of those iconic films much like 'The Piano' after which post-pubescent cinemagoers either shook their heads that they'd paid good money to get in , or it enthused and animated them. Undeniably clever - a unique spin on a number of slow roasters- probably helped a little by the new incumbent at no 1600, I think it might deserve Best Picture. If not - 'Slumdog' touches all kinds of nerve endings which might mean that this is going to be the big LA-Bolly fusion movie. It wasn't Good Night and Good Luck's night a couple of years ago, but Frost/Nixon as the political representative has been described as 'electrifying entertainment'.

As a fan of PSH, I thought his performance in 'Doubt' was more than a match for Meryl Streep's malevolence, but the Heath Ledger retrospective lumbers on and he might collect as a swansong.

I'd really like Mickey Rourke to win for 'The Wrestler', but there might be a bit too much grit in the mouth for Hollywood's fastidious palate and it might not stand the test of time. "Gladiator" is still as much fun now on the TV as it was nine years ago as the winner. It might be the lovely Kate's year. She was nominated in the best actress category quite justifiably for her role as a former SS concentration guard in The Reader - the performance that secured her a best supporting actress gong at last week's Golden Globe awards, but her performance in thrice-nominated Revolutionary Road (which won her the best actress Globe) was missed off the list. It's a novelty her films often feature that there's frequently a two-scener who steals the show and this one was no exception Michael Shannon's weird but engaging mathematician who had had the mathematics jolted out of him by overenthusiastic ECT kept the attention as did Winslet's character's excruciating mother. Memories...

Fitna

is Arabic for 'unbelief'' and is also the title of Geert Wilders' iconic documentary for which an invitation to screen it in the House of Lords was overturned by the outrage of a Muslim peer, arguing that it would plunge the country into riot and anarchy.

I have seen it and, like the prophet Ezra, sat down, appalled. Not least because it is shocking - deliberately and provocatively so - but also because an invited EU politician was summarily turned around and scooted back to Holland. Our own version of the First Amendment seems to have suffered a bloody nose. Ironically, fomenters of hatred, violence and terror are quite at liberty, it seems, to use the shelter of their mosques to inflame the population of Europe, including the UK. Gaza won the media battle hands down, Israel remains languidly undecided about who should lead it; Islamic infrastructure grows in strength and influence.

Meanwhile,Wiley-Blackwell, a major academic publisher, has recalled copies of 'Encyclopedia of Christian Civilization' and scrapped the print run after critics said the entries were “too Christian” and “too anti-Muslim and not politically correct enough for use in universities.”  I had rather supposed that the purpose of a university education was about teaching people to tell the difference between valid argument and a load of rubbish.

Perhaps I was wrong.

In times of economic uncertainty, a new class of poverty emerges, willing to believe the most persuasive speaker, regardless of the validity of the argument. I wonder whether the prophet Ezra would have shared the same view.

No image this time. In case I get into trouble.

 

Rapprochement

It is said of the human species that in times of uncertainty, metaphorically or literally we have a tendency to 'run home to mama'. Much as I am appalled by the notion, there may be some tenuous thread of truth here. The Catholics assert that if they have a child up until the age of seven, he is theirs for life, however far he wanders.

I sometimes find myself strangely soothed by the familiar liturgy of the Church of England, despite having abandoned her years ago when the holes in the clothing became all too apparent, but the sonorous intonations of the Kyries and Agnus Dei still shine their light on the mustier and least visited parts of my soul. I still view the flummery and theatrics with suspicion but I found myself reflecting on such things having begun Barack Obama's beautifully crafted 'Dreams From My Father'. Here, it seemed was a man who from an early age developed, sometimes painfully, certainties and behaviours contradistinguishing him from others in similar positions, from the perspective of someone trying to find himself against a backdrop of tribalism and prejudice. Having a non-practising Muslim as a father and allegedly praying irregularly at the mosque may be at odds with his 'I'm no Muslim' allegation. Additionally, in a recent interview  he asserted:

'I believe there are many paths to the same place, and that is a belief that there is a higher power, a belief that we are connected as a people'.

Very modern. And perhaps even right, as long as doublethink is permitted and we are still able to return to our own small hoard of resonant connections unimpeded.

Icarus Falling

Auden's poem on the fall of Icarus suggests that strange and disturbing events occur against a backdrop of people going about their ordinary business. Nobody would have understood the matrix of events leading up to the fateful journey or heard the stern admonitions of Daedalus, the architect of the Cretan labyrinth, as he counselled his son not to push the envelope and sail so dangerously close to the Sun. A passerby could only have watched either with detached disinterest or with horror as the boy plummeted, like a shot pheasant, into the sea.

About suffering they were never wrong, 
The Old Masters; how well, they understood 
Its human position; how it takes place 
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along; 
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting 
For the miraculous birth, there always must be 
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating 
On a pond at the edge of the wood: 
They never forgot 
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course 
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot 
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse 
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree. 
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away 
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may 
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry, 
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone 
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green 
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen 
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky, 
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

Over two years ago, I gave up drinking alcohol. After a lifetime of overindulgence, hospitalisations, degrading public spectacles and all the rest so well known to the friends of Bill W, I finally conceded that enough was enough and I was, as they say, 'sick and tired of being sick and tired'.

I stopped just in time. Had I continued, I would now be in the same state as a friend whom I was glad to take to hospital yesterday. Here, any data protection legislation either isn't enforced or is non-existent, so I had sight of a stack of medical records the size of a phonebook, cataloguing the damage, which was grievous, extensive and life-threatening. 

He had continued, almost undetected, for far too long. Suddenly, the wave broke. An avalanche then simply overwhelmed him and he fell from the sky. There is a dangerous verticality about tragedy when the wind in one's hair and the exhilaration of living on the edge turns into an uncontrollable fall.

I do not know what will happen to him now and I can only watch as people work to salvage what they can and which he allows. I hope he stays in the hospital and does not attempt to discharge himself again, as has happened previously.

I am left with a feeling of profound sadness, yet inestimable gratitude. 

The image is of course (attrib) Pieter Breughel's Landscape with the Fall of Icarus (c 1558) in the Musee des Beaux Arts, Brussels. The poem is framed underneath it. 

The ploughboy's insouciant disregard for the tragedy is obvious.

Everybody went home for Christmas. Except me. A friend told the story of an incident in Leeds. She was smoking a cigarette in the street, thoughtfully dropping the ash in a convenient bin. An official-looking individual walked up to her and in a somewhat intimidating manner pushed a small box the size of a large matchbox into her hand, telling her that unless this object was used to collect butt and ash this miniature Stalin was entitled to pursue her - if necessary to a bank - to collect a fine of fifty pounds.
Kuwait isn't culturally very self-aware, but there are compensations. I can ignore non-smoking signs if I really want to, carelessly forget to wear a seatbelt from time to time and I can very often get away with abandoning my car on the street - we don't do meters. I remember once in a senior moment forgetting to turn off my car, leaving it running in the street all night and apart from a depleted fuel tank it was as I had left it the following morning. Can't imagine that happening in downtown Croydon on a Saturday night. But, to sterner matters. The presence or not of street litter is unlikely to be at the top of the agenda for residents of Gaza this evening. If my neighbour's children consistently threw garbage over my garden fence on an almost daily basis, despite being warned, threatened and told not to, I might be tolerant of childish antics for a time, but after a while, all remonstrance failing, I might then be sorely tempted to have a stern word with parents. If I subsequently discovered that it was at the parent's instigation that the garbage was being hurled, I might further be tempted to have a friendly word, accompanied by a baseball bat. No matter how well-hidden the perpetrators might be, my determination to winkle them out and have a word would be almost overmastering and to hell with collateral damage. I can understand how the Israeli government is feeling.