Category: Blog

St Nicholas is a black-hating racist and so are 92 per cent of the Dutch, rules Amsterdam’s court.

Since only 80 per cent of the Dutch are white, it follows that many of the country’s black people must hate themselves. One can just see them doing a John Terry impersonation in front of the mirror: “What you looking at, you [expletive deleted] black [expletive deleted]?”

The variously coloured Dutch have found themselves in the dock on account of a tradition going back to the mid-nineteenth century.

In late autumn and early winter the Dutch celebrate the St Nicholas (Sinterklaas) festival culminating on 5 December. St Nicholas arrives by steamboat accompanied by his trusted sidekick Black Pete (Zwarte Piet), or rather hundreds of them crowding the flotilla following the saint’s vessel.

St Nicholas then rewards good children with sweets and makes naughty children promise they’ll be good from now on. He thus does in Amsterdam what his doppelgangers do all over the world at roughly the same time.

Father Christmas in Britain, Ded Moroz in Russia, Père Noël in France, Santa Claus in the States all administer the same incentive programme, immortalised in the 1934 American song:

He’s making a list,

Checking it twice;

Gonna find out who’s naughty or nice.

Santa Claus is coming to town…

Like their counterparts in other countries, Dutch children look forward to the event, and so do the grown-ups. This colourful, exuberant festival is rightly seen as the highlight of the year.

People big and small laugh, shout and applaud when St Nicholas disembarks, mounts a white horse and rides through the streets accompanied by a gaggle of Black Petes handing out sweets and biscuits.

There is a snag though, or at least that’s how an Amsterdam court, prodded by the United Nations Human Rights Council, ruled last Thursday.

You see, Black Pete is traditionally portrayed by a white man sporting blackface makeup, thick red lips and a frizzy Afro hairstyle. Moreover, he plays second fiddle to the offensively white saint, thereby evoking memories of slavery, the colonial past and global oppression of black people.

St Nicholas is therefore a racist swine, as are all those millions anticipating the joyous celebrations. Collectively they, according to the court ruling, promote “a negative stereotype of black people”.

This is tantamount to racism, the greatest cardinal sin of our time, and one that can be neither expiated nor redeemed. 

The good denizens of Amsterdam must therefore either ban the festival or at least rethink its props. One suggestion is to paint Black Pete some other colour, the rainbow spectrum being the court’s preference.

Now, just as Black Pete’s makeup symbolises something, so do the rainbow colours. Stylistic integrity would therefore dictate that the character should change his name accordingly. For example, Pete the P… sorry, I was about to make a facetiously alliterative suggestion that would have exposed me to the charge of homophobia, the second-greatest cardinal sin of our time.

The Dutch are used to their country being used as a pan-European test lab of neo-fascism going by the name of political correctness. Usually they shrug their shoulders and move on, but this time the people are up in arms.

Over 90 per cent of them insist that Black Pete is an innocent figure of fun meaning no insult. On the contrary, he’s kind, generous and much loved.

Even the country’s liberal prime minister Mark Rutte sided with tradition: “Black Pete is black. There’s not much I can do to change that.” This just goes to show he doesn’t understand the true meaning of liberalism.

Nothing you can do, Mr Rutte? Well, for a start, unplug your ears and listen to what the court ruled: “many black Amsterdammers felt discriminated against”.

True, they hadn’t felt offended until the UN told them they must, but that doesn’t change the fact now enshrined in judicial ruling. And true, the numbers point in a different direction: 92 per cent don’t perceive Zwarte Piet as racist or associate him with slavery; 91 per cent are opposed to changing his appearance.

But numbers, Mr Rutte, don’t change the principle. They don’t alter the deep philosophical meaning of today’s democracy.

The word does mean ‘the rule of the people’, but it’s up to international bodies and their local Quislings to decide which people should rule. That’s what real democracy is all about.

Once the ruling demos has been appointed, its task is to make sure everyone marches in step. There are many tricks to be used for this purpose, and one of them is ordering people to be offended at something that in reality offends no one but the ruling demos.

Whatever causes the mandated offence must then be eliminated in the name of progress. After all, what is progress if not learning new things and improving ourselves accordingly?

We’ve learned something vital since the nineteenth century: morality is what we say it is, not what it has been for millennia. So, Mr Rutte, you’d better bloody well do something about it if you want to remain within the ruling demos.

I hope the Dutch won’t lose their beloved festival, but I fear they will. The march of progress is unstoppable.

I have a weak spot for anthems, a sentiment only partly springing from aesthetic appreciation.

Mainly I value them for the insights they provide to the nation’s heart – an anthem is truly a nation’s ECG.

That’s why it was with a mixture of enthusiasm and regret that I viewed this video: http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/07/01/Soldiers-of-the-Eurocorps-give-miliary-salute-to-EU-flag.

The clip shows soldiers of the skeleton European army, known in some quarters as the Eurokorps, goose-stepping and then saluting the EU flag as it’s being raised in front of the European parliament in Strasbourg.

The stamping sound of boots on tarmac is harmonised with the EU anthem, otherwise known as the choral finale of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.

Though in my harsher moods I’ve been known to describe this particular movement as musical demagoguery, at least it was written by a composer eminently capable of better things.

Beethoven was also German, which provides one of those insights I cherish. Therefore his Ode to Joy, as the movement is popularly called, was a good choice at the time.

Though it may not be my favourite piece of music, it’s still miles (or rather kilometres, to stay in the European idiom) better than, say, the Horst-Wessel-Lied that otherwise could also have laid a claim to being the appropriate EU anthem.

Alas, that song had the kind of lyrics that some may still find offensive, such as ‘millions are looking upon the swastika full of hope’ (Es schau’n aufs Hakenkreuz voll Hoffnung schon Millionen in the original).

In deference to those who won’t let bygones be bygones, Horst Wessel would have to be sung with no words at all, or else have them slightly modified to reflect the post-war face of Europe.

Then again, The Ode to Joy has no lyrics either, at least none custom-composed to fit the march of European progress. By itself this isn’t an insurmountable problem: some national anthems have happily survived without words for a while.

For example, the Soviet anthem adopted in 1944 contained words like ‘We were raised by Stalin’ (nas vyrastil Stalin in the original) that a dozen years later became unfashionable. Until new lyrics were composed, the rousing tune went unsullied by verbal impurities, and Muscovites indeed referred to it as a ‘song without words’.

Upon the advent of perestroika, the tune too was discarded until mercifully reinstated by Putin, this time with words referring to Russia’s imperial rather than communist aspect. In a way, the Stalin-specific stanzas used to merge the two, so, for the sake of truth in advertising if nothing else, one hopes they’ll come back soon.

Deutschland, Deutschland über alles, which did such good service in Germany until 1945, also had to stay wordless thereafter, for as long as it took to give the lyrics a more multicultural, less ethnocentric sheen.

Such illustrious examples notwithstanding, I still regret the absence of real lyrics in the EU national anthem. You may object that Europe isn’t yet a single nation, which is why it doesn’t quite rate its own song.

Fair enough, but let’s not get stuck on technicalities. The EU already has its own flag and, as you can see, its own army. Thus denying it its own anthem is downright churlish, and this is the last thing we want to be.

In anticipation of the time when such annoying technical glitches have been ironed out, I’ve taken it upon myself to compose the official anthem of the single European state. My task, as I see it, is to reflect the true nature of the embryonic nation, but without sacrificing continuity with its glorious history.

Regrettably, while I have some modest ability to string rhymed words together, my talent at musical composition is nonexistent. Therefore I too have to borrow an existing tune, which is after all what the authors of the current German and Russian anthems have done.

False modesty aside, I have demonstrable work experience. For I’ve used a similar fusion of new lyrics and an old melody in the anthem I’ve proposed for the emerging Palestinian state: “Yasser that’s my baby, Nasser don’t mean maybe, Yasser that’s my baby now!”

Though the anthem hasn’t yet been adopted, I still regard my first foray into the genre as a solid base on which to build.

In that spirit, and given the tasks I’ve set myself, I’ve started work on the real EU song, provisionally entitled Schön Europa über alles, über alles in der Welt.

Appropriately both the words and the music have to be German. In this instance the latter was composed by Joseph Haydn who was actually Austrian, but that’s near enough.

I think that the middle movement of his ‘Kaiser’ Quartet, Op. 76 No. 3, is better music than the finale of Beethoven’s Ninth, or at least better for the occasion.

It has a certain contemplative quality that, as the music’s previous service as a national anthem proves, can easily segue into a crescendo leading to a paroxysm of patriotic spirit.

Another tune I’ve considered comes from the French anthem La Marseillaise written in 1792. The tune has three obvious advantages: 1) it was written when a new French state was also in its embryonic stage, 2) it’s suitably revolutionary and blood-thirsty, 3) by one of those serendipities that are easy to interpret as divine benevolence, it was composed in Strasbourg.

However, these are cancelled out by the two obvious disadvantages: the tune was written when France was fighting Germany rather than acting as her sidekick and, most important, it’s not German.

So Haydn it is, and I’m pressing on with my work on the lyrics. Unfortunately, since my German isn’t quite up to the task, I’ll have to write in English. Can anyone recommend a German translator, one who can do justice to the main thrust of my effort?

 

 

 

 

 

According to the Anglican clergy, the rejection of Satan, first described in the fictional work known as the Bible, is now complete.

Proving that the papists aren’t the only ones who can use progressive marketing techniques, the C of E has researched its new brand positioning in a wide poll of Anglican clergy.

Queried with the use of an up-to-date testing methodology, the statistically significant sample provided valuable insights into the baptismal ceremony, which for the last 2,000 years has been seen as the USP (Unique Selling Proposition, for the Martians among you) of the Christian brand.

The results of the survey having now been tabulated, a new marketing strategy has been devised in accordance with the findings. The House of Bishops (henceforth to be known as the Board of Directors) has come out strongly in favour of the repositioning and repackaging of the brand.

The anecdotal evidence from the clerical focus groups shows that the subjects favour “a simplified baptism which omits mention of the devil”. The old wording, they feel, damages the brand value of Christianity by “putting off people who are offended to be addressed as sinners.”

The test sample has suggested a simpler, non-judgemental pitch, promising only that we “shall do all that we can to ensure that there is a welcoming place for you.” This repositioning strategy will enhance the brand’s sales potential by enabling the Church to compete for a share in the markets currently dominated by pubs, hotels, strip shows, community clubs, casinos, restaurants and massage parlours.

Although no comments to that effect have been made, the Church clearly envisages further brand-specific activities aimed at re-establishing its role as market leader. Though the time for taking subsequent steps hasn’t arrived yet, the marketing logic dictates additional embellishments.

The strategy practically writes itself. Now that the obsolete notions of Satan and sin are about to be abolished, the matter of salvation comes into sharp focus. Salvation from what exactly? Since there is no Satan and no sin, what are those newborn babes to be saved from?

Such questions could present a problem to anyone unfamiliar with state-of-the-art marketing, but any MBA worth his/her/its salt knows how to turn a negative into a positive. In every crisis there is an opportunity gagging to be seized and ravished.

All it takes is some radical thinking unhindered by any unwanted baggage. Persons endowed with the mental faculties to think in this innovative way will be unafraid to offer groundbreaking solutions. To wit: if salvation has sunk into obsolescence, the term must follow ‘sin’ into oblivion.

It logically follows that the Christ-centred marketing strategy has outlived its usefulness, as senior Church figures have been intimating for decades. Since no sin exists, and hence no salvation is necessary, the figure of a saviour becomes redundant.

For the sake of continuity in the brand personality of so-called Christianity, the fictional presence of Jesus Christ, though downgraded, will still have to be preserved. Jesus will take his place next to Buddha, Mohammed, Confucius and Karl Marx as a teacher of a new all-inclusive, all-permitting morality free of such outdated concepts as sin, original or otherwise.

In parallel with school tests, now designed to guarantee top marks for all participants, the new morality will enable every parishioner to feel like the paragon of virtue regardless of his/her/its misdeeds. There are no bad men… sorry, persons. There are only bad societies, those that renege on enforcing the ultimate, nay only, virtue: all-inclusiveness.

Lord Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, embodies this virtue in his own person, and one can only lament his absence from the forefront of the current marketing effort.

When still the principal prelate of Anglicanism, by way of job-sharing His Grace also acted in the capacity of chief Druid. Now that he has some spare time on his hands, Lord Williams has been inspired by Buddhism to spend 40 minutes meditating every day. Though his celebrating the black mass hasn’t yet been reported, His Grace is clearly in tune with the new direction taken by the church he once led.

By endorsing the new strategy, the Board of Directors (formerly the House of Bishops) takes another step along the road brightly lit by modern marketing techniques. Now members of the Satanist community will no longer suffer ecclesiastical exclusion: no longer will the founder of their faith be disparaged or indeed mentioned in the baptismal ceremony.

Therein lies the social significance of the new strategy, happily coexisting with the commercial opportunities. By excluding Satan and thus potentially including his followers, the Church strikes an important blow for equality and religious freedom.

Displaying enviable foresight, the Board of Directors (formerly the House of Bishops) has courageously abandoned the strategy that once made Christianity the brand leader. The Board is thus serving not the parochial interests of the so-called Christians but the community at large.

Though the strapline encapsulating the new strategy is yet to be finalised, the current frontrunner is ‘Vade retro, Jesus’. If the dollar bill can have a Latin slogan, why can’t the Church?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The good news is that the European Court of Human Rights has upheld France’s 2010 ban on wearing the niqab in public.

The bad news is that it did so in the name of secularism, which is guaranteed to rebound on the symbols of other religions as well.

The niqab is a religious statement, but then so are the cross and the yarmulke. If we ban one, we must ban them all – aren’t all religions equal? Equally offensive, that is? 

The Court explained its rulings in the federalese cant that, though it uses many English words, is somewhat lacking in the forthrightness one expects from the language of Shakespeare: 

“The Court was also able to understand the view that individuals might not wish to see, in places open to all, practices or attitudes which would fundamentally call into question the possibility of open interpersonal relationships, which, by virtue of an established consensus, formed an indispensable element of community life within the society in question.”

Nice, isn’t it? I’ve often volunteered my translating services, but this sentence has enough stumbling blocks for any translator to fall flat on his face. At a guess though, the idea is that ‘interpersonal relationships’ are impossible if one can’t see the other person’s face.

Really? Tell that to the world’s billions of texters, tweeters and users of on-line dating services.

And what about people covering their faces for purely secular reasons, such as extreme cold? Back where I come from, whenever the temperature headed towards 30 below, not only women but also men wrapped their faces in heavy scarves to save their noses from otherwise certain frostbite.

(Such temperatures aren’t the unique property of Russia: they are familiar to France’s Alpine regions as well.)

This in no way curtailed ‘interpersonal relationships’ or prevented them from becoming downright flirtatious. There was an implicit element of surprise there, for trying to chat up a woman whose face one couldn’t see was in a way bidding for a pig in a poke…

Forget I said that. First, this inelegant idiom is disrespectful of women. Second, on pain of having one’s throat slit, one can’t have porcine allusions when broaching an Islamic subject, however tangentially.

The main point remains though: secular reasoning fails as miserably in this case as it does in so many others. Had I drafted the Court ruling, rather than merely trying to decipher it, the wording would have been different:

“The niqab symbolises an aggressive ideology openly proclaiming its hatred of the West in general and its founding religion in particular. As such, this garment is offensive not only to the practitioners of Christianity but also to all Westerners (even the French, with their laïcité) who recognise its significance. Therefore the niqab shall not be worn publicly in any country whose religious, cultural, social and political roots are Christian.”

If the EU begat a judiciary able to express such a sentiment in its rulings, I’d reassess my feelings about European federalism, which at present oscillate between loathing and disgust. However, I don’t think there’s much danger of that.

And speaking of danger, the original anti-niqab law was passed during Sarkozy’s presidency. This was one of only two things Sarko could chalk up in the plus column, the other one being that he’s not Hollande.

Many in France see him as a realistic candidate to replace my friend François in the next election or, if Hollande keeps steering the country towards perdition with the same firm hand, even before it. Alas, Sarko instead seems to be a candidate for a tenner in prison.

Arrested two days ago, he is now mis en examen on allegations that he used his power in an attempt to find out information about legal proceedings against him. Of these there were quite a few for Sarko had six court cases pending against him at the same time.

The French legal term mis en examen means under official investigation. Since the closest British equivalent is being charged with a crime, Sarko is upholding the country’s fine political tradition.

Of his recent predecessors, Chirac was not only charged with corruption but actually convicted, and Mitterrand should have taken the drop for all sorts of things, of which corruption would have been the most innocuous.

In the old days, Sarkozy could have slipped out of the country by donning the niqab and passing for a Muslim woman. It’s a tragic paradox that his own law, now upheld by the European Court, makes such an escape impossible.

 

 

 

  

It always pains me to see two of my friends fall out with each other, as Jean-Claude and Dave did.

So much more gratifying it is then to see them patch up their differences. Now Jean-Claude (or Junk, as he likes his friends to call him) has been confirmed as president of the EU Commission, Dave has apologised for the harsh words he uttered in the distant and long-forgotten past. Three days ago, to be exact.

“I can do business with Junk,” he said to me when we popped out for our customary drink at Chez Kevin. “All those things I’m reported to have said about him? First, I didn’t say them. Second, I didn’t mean them the way they sounded.

“Like when I said Junk’s appointment was a bad day for Europe? I actually said it was a good day for Europe. What I said made it a bad day was that the press had misunderstood what I’d really said.

“Junk likes a drink? Show me a good man who doesn’t. Why, in my Bullingdon days I myself could put it away like there’s no tomorrow. Old Junk is teetotal by comparison.

“Even now, when I feel like chillaxing a bit, I go to my favourite boozer Parvenu-on-the-Park and have some Bolli in a pint glass, to make it look like cider in case that bloke from The Mirror is snooping around.

“The landlord, calls himself Marie-Antoine, keeps a bottle of Bolli under the bar, just for me. So when I say, within the Mirror bloke’s earshot, ‘Tone, me old china, giz a pint of Wife Beater, mate,’ he knows what to pour.

“Took Junk there the other day, and you know what he told me after his fourth Sambuca? ‘Dave,’ he said, ‘I’ll give Britain a fair deal, don’t you worry, mate, mon ami.’

“How good is that? I did ask him to be more specific, and Junk said from now on, whenever there’s a vacancy in the Commission, he’ll look to appoint a Brit first, second and turd.

“I laughed at the pun, like Junk wanted me to. His English, to be honest for a change, isn’t quite as good as he thinks. Like when he told me the other day not to f*** him, I had to correct him. Junk, I said, you don’t mean f*** you. You mean f*** with you, and I’m the last man to want to do that.

“So as we move on from this episode, what do I take away from it? That my determination to succeed, for the sake of Britain and for the sake of Europe, has paid off and now it’s even greater than ever.

“Why, Junk even said when it’s time for me to look for another job next year, he’d be happy to appoint me his Vice Prez.

“And you know what I said? That’ll have to wait, mate. Hold your horses. I’ll piss all over 2015, largely thanks to you, Junk.

“Anyone who thought I was going to back down or blink is now thinking again. I’ll walk the election, get another fiver at 10 Downing, and after that I’ll be ready for your job. So we are heading to the same place, but at different speeds.

“Junk ordered another Sambuca and put a match to it. ‘It’s now a flamer,’ he said. ‘Like Mandy. You know, Peter?’ I laughed, like Junk wanted me to.”

When Dave told me all that, I wiped my brow. First, it’s good to know that my close friends Dave and Junk have kissed and made up. And second, I’m deliriously happy that Britain’s, or at least some Brits’, future in Europe is now secure.

Sorted, as Dave says whenever that bloke from The Mirror is about. His glottal stop is almost as good as Blair’s.

Major cities around the world were yesterday regaled with exuberant homo- trans-sexual festivities going by the name of Gay Pride Day.

New York, London, Paris, Amsterdam, Toronto all witnessed joyful processions of LGBT persons rightly proud of their unorthodox take on human sexuality. And far be it from me to deny that practising various forms of penile or extra-penile gratification is a legitimate source of pride.

LGBT, in case you’re wondering, isn’t a telephone service splitting away from British Telecom, but an abbreviation for a valuable, some will say defining, social trend of our time. So of course its trailblazers have much to be proud about.

Just think of the T part of the acronym.

Ponder the courage it takes for a man to have a significant portion of his anatomy surgically removed and another part fashioned in its place out of the now useless folds of skin. Add to this debilitating hormone treatments, electrolysis, voice coaching, necessary sartorial modifications, and you’ll realise that it takes a well-nigh inhuman power of one’s convictions to go through with such an upheaval.

Yet even that pales in comparison with the ordeal of a woman undergoing a similar process in reverse. After all, she too has to suffer amputation, in this instance of her bust and, possibly if partly, buttocks. But then she also has to have something sewn on, which is always harder and more fraught with discomfort than snipping it off.

I don’t know whether male and female T’s have a reciprocal agreement, with one half swapping their breasts for the other half’s penises, but that sounds like a logical transaction, and one preventing unnecessary waste. In any case, if the determination to suffer for one’s innermost convictions isn’t something to be proud of, I don’t know what is.

I’m assuming that my friend, the New York journalist Vladimir Kozlovsky, is wrong in suggesting that the word ‘pride’ is here used in the same sense in which it describes a pack of large feline predators.

One detects a tinge of underhand sarcasm in this suggestion, which betokens latent homophobia so prevalent among persons of Russian extraction. Though Vladimir and I grew up at the same time and but a few Moscow streets apart, I’m happy that I don’t harbour any such latent hostilities.

Nor do I object to turning one’s sexuality into a political statement. After all, modern politics have become so voluminous that they can accommodate practically any novel form of self-expression.

For example, by proclaiming a preference for nut patties over beef burgers, a person sends an important message: he/she/it refuses to squeeze his/her/its individuality into the yoke of convention. The message certainly has a political aspect, but it transcends it by insisting on upholding a more stringent morality than that prescribed by the Abrahamic religions.

Vegetarianism also strikes a blow for freedom of individual choice and against any attempt by… well, anybody to impose any arbitrary diktats. LGBT lands the same blow with an even more resounding thud.

It’s a matter of individual choice to decide how or by whom/what one’s orifices are penetrated, fondled or otherwise stimulated, and to what use plastic straws or root vegetables can be put. And when the right to any individual choice is forcefully upheld, this also promotes personal freedom in general.

Just think of all the intrepid freedom fighters throughout history, think of all those heroes who died for their rights – and vicariously ours. They had to rush chest first into machinegun fire, walk to the pyre, ram an enemy plane with their own.

What, you object that LGBT heroes fight for their cause without taking similar risks to life and limb? How wrong you are! Think of all those complicated surgical procedures that can go wrong with fatal consequences. Above all, think of Aids, that man-made blight undoubtedly synthesised by the conservative establishment to exterminate those courageous LGBT fighters for human dignity and good taste.

Have you thought about it? Well, then you must have realised that any such person has as much right to be proud of his/her/its erotic achievements as any RAF pilot flying his Lancaster into a cloud of flak.

My only concern is the slight unfairness of it. After all, if we accept – as we must! – that one’s sexuality, especially if it’s at odds with Judaeo-Christian morality, can be a source of pride, why limit it to LGBT?

This is nothing short of discriminatory, and we all know that discrimination of any kind – sex, race, age, aesthetic – has replaced the seven outdated sins as the ultimate, nay only, unpardonable transgression. Certainly all LGBT persons regard it as such, which is why I’m sure they’ll bend over backwards to support the initiative I’m hereby putting forth.

Why not have Adultery Pride Day? Bestiality Pride Day? Necrophilia Pride Day? Masturbation Pride Day? Incest Pride Day? And so forth? Assuming that there are enough days in the year to cover every known deviation from what’s criminally described as the norm, wouldn’t this be a natural extension of amorous self-respect into true universality?

If these milestones were enshrined in our calendar, I’d proudly march in all ensuing parades, even though I’m not admitting any natural or existential entitlement to march in any of them.

It’s just that every person who cares about his/her/its freedom must fight for the freedom of others. Discriminating against any person or his/her/its sexuality diminishes me, to paraphrase John Donne ever so slightly. No man is an island, Lesbos or any other.

My nose may be over-sensitive, but I smell trouble.

There are indications that the Catholic Church can follow our own C of E into the abyss of secular PC modernity.

To begin with, when a conservative organisation, which the Church is supposed to be by definition, uses modern polling methods to determine its policy, alarm bells ought to start ringing in every belfry.

Yet that’s what the Vatican did when last year questionnaires were sent to 1.2 billion Catholics all over the world. Considering that about half of them are undereducated Latin American peasants, the polls probed rather deeply into some recondite theological areas.

Here are two sample questions:

Question 1 a): “Describe how the Catholic Church’s teachings on the value of the family contained in the Bible, Gaudium et spes, Familiaris consortio and other documents of the post-conciliar Magisterium is understood by people today?”

Question 2 a): “What place does the idea of the natural law have in the cultural areas of society: in institutions, education, academic circles and among the people at large? What anthropological ideas underlie the discussion on the natural basis of the family?”

It may be disrespectful but true to suggest that even many seminary-educated priests would struggle with such queries. As to the lay Catholics in underprivileged parts of the world, their idea of the natural law is probably vendetta bequeathed from one generation to another.

Anyway, the results are now in and – make sure you’re sitting down, the shock will be so overpowering – most Catholics don’t seem to follow the Church’s dicta on such things as sex before, in or outside marriage, divorce, contraception and cohabitation, heterosexual or otherwise.

In fact, as the Church concedes, its stand on such issues is “commonly perceived today as an intrusion in the intimate life of the couple”.

Now, by unerringly predicting such findings, any sensible person could have spared the Vatican the vast expense of producing and distributing hundreds of millions of questionnaires.

Overwhelming empirical evidence aside, even cursory familiarity with Genesis would lead to the conclusion that most people are sinners. If that weren’t the case, Christianity in general and the Catholic Church in particular would be superfluous.

Let my learned Catholic friends correct me, but my impression is that this institution, and others like it, have been brought into this world precisely to assist people’s salvation in spite of their being sinners.

Part of this mission has to be communicating in no uncertain terms what sin is and how it must be avoided or, that failing, repented and atoned.

Yet the Church’s reaction to the poll results seems to be that, if most people sin against its doctrine, the doctrine must be revised and the very concept of sin redefined.

This reaction is as predictable as the results themselves. After all, what would have been the point of wasting millions on this poll if the Church hadn’t been prepared to readjust its doctrine to public opinion?

To be sure, Church officials couched their plans in the language of public relations. They didn’t come out and say that the doctrine was going to be changed. Instead Monsignor Bruno Forte only said that “We will not close our eyes to anything. These problems will be considered.”

What problems would they be? That most people are sinners? One would suggest that this problem has been adequately covered both in the Scripture and the subsequent theological literature.

And what’s the point in considering such problems, or indeed finding out about them by sending out useless questionnaires, if the Church remains firm in its adherence to doctrine?

The only proper response to such findings would be that the Church must redouble its efforts in offering doctrinal guidance to parishioners, telling them what’s right and what’s wrong, perhaps explaining to them that their salvation may be compromised if they go wrong.

After all, even secular laws don’t automatically change because many people break them. Nor are they adjusted to accommodate lawbreakers. If they were, Her Majesty’s Customs and Excise, to name just one department, would have to be abolished.

One would expect an even greater rigidity in matters of Church doctrine. Alas, secular trends inspired by political correctness these days trump tradition everywhere you look. This, regrettably, includes even organisations whose raison d’être is to protect tradition from secular fads.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Putin was the ventriloquist, his stooge Sergei Glazyev the dummy. Fairness thus demands that the former be given credit for the words mouthed by the latter.

The words were inspired by President Poroshenko’s having agreed to sign a trade agreement with the EU, which angered the KGB colonel no end.

Hence, talking through Glazyev, he spoke from the heart: “They organised a military coup in the Ukraine, they helped Nazis to come to power. This Nazi government is bombing the largest region in the Ukraine.”

A reader not blessed with fluency in KGB language may require a translation. Here it is: any Ukrainian, or for that matter any denizen of any former Soviet republic, who opposes the KGB domination of his country is ipso facto a Nazi or, to diversify the vocabulary, a fascist.

It would be useless to insist on etymological precision – the KGB/FSB has its own lexicon that only ever overlaps with the accepted one by accident. However, if we insist on staying within the bounds of convention, Poroshenko is a centrist by any Western definition.

Moreover, the two Ukrainian parties that could be legitimately described in such disparaging terms collectively polled about 1.5 per cent of the vote in the last election. In Russia herself similar parties consistently claim the better part of a quarter of the electorate. Nazi-style marches are also much more popular in Moscow than in Kiev.

Never mind: Poroshenko’s government is resisting a takeover by the truly fascist gangs armed, trained, inspired and largely staffed by Putin’s sponsoring organisation. That makes Poroshenko a Nazi in the colonel’s eyes, and that’s all there is to it.

There’s a more interesting subject there, trying to emerge out of the blobs of KGB effluvia. Poroshenko isn’t even remotely a Nazi because he’s resisting a KGB takeover of his country. But is he one because he’s playing footsies with the EU?

In other words, is the EU a crypto-Nazi setup, a Fourth Reich achieved by stealth rather than violence? Is Angela Merkel in the direct line of descent from Bismarck, Kaiser Wilhelm and Hitler?

It’s tempting to answer these questions with an unqualified yes and, at my lazy moments, I myself have yielded to the temptation. Yet such an answer is simplistic, perfectly acceptable in a dinner-table argument, but unfit for serious analysis.

The EU was brought to life by a confluence of factors, and some of its German founders were enemies of the Nazis. Konrad Adenauer, for example, was their vociferous opponent who only by miracle didn’t end up in Dachau with piano wire round his neck. As it was, he was arrested several times and had his job, house and bank account taken away from him.

After the war, as West Germany’s first Chancellor, Adenauer sought his country’s redemption for her wartime sins. The contemporary French leaders, such as de Gaulle, were also trying to heal their wounds, especially those inflicted by the country’s defeat in 1940.

I like to describe this meeting of minds epigrammatically: the Germans no longer wanted to be like Germans, but the French did. This confluence of subterranean emotional streams made both nations receptive to the rhetoric of the hardcore federalists committed to creating a single European state.

Now that group wasn’t as immune to accusations of Nazi sympathies as either Adenauer or de Gaulle. In fact it came together during the Nazi occupation of France, when the two bureaucracies were partly merged. Working side by side, they discovered they had much in common.

Nor could all of them be absolved of direct collaboration with the Nazis. For example, the Belgian Paul-Henri Spaak, one of the principal architects of the EU, had clear pro-Nazis sympathies and campaigned feverishly against Britain and France declaring war on Germany.

And Walter Hallstein, the first president of the European Commission, held a number of important posts under the Nazis. Though he never belonged to the NSDAP, he was a member of many other Nazi organisations and, in his capacity of law professor, preached Nazi legality to his students.

Personalities apart, the idea of pan-European integration was at the time the sole property of the socialist hard Left, be it in its national or international incarnation. Assorted Nazis and fascists espoused the principles of European federalism even before the war, and certainly during it. This was one debt of gratitude that Hitler, according to his recorded conversations, owed to Marx.

Our own Oswald Mosley, for example, was a keen federalist and in fact, as a foretaste of later publishing ventures, his newspaper was called The European. The Nazis also talked about a single European state in terms indistinguishable from those used by Barroso or Juncker.

In fact, if one juxtaposed the communiqué of the 1943 Nazi conference on united Europe with the text of the Maastricht Treaty, one would be struck by the similarity of both language and underlying animus.

Specifically, the EU programme of economic development follows faithfully the plans first laid down by Walter Funk, the Nazi Economics Minister. (Despite being as guilty as the other defendants, he was mysteriously spared the death sentence at Nuremberg.)

Thus, though it’s crude to equate the EU with Nazi Germany, it’s impossible to deny that a strong Nazi (or fascist, if you’d rather) strain has been present in that organisation since its founding.

The very notion of a giant corporatist state divorced from national accountabilities and dominated by a close-knit quasi-Gnostic elite has a distinct fascist ring to it. Hence, if one wanted to paint Poroshenko with the Nazi brush, one could allude to the nature of the organisation he’s so eager to join.

The accusation wouldn’t survive being held to the standard of proof beyond reasonable doubt, but at least there would be some truth to it. However, such subtleties would take the functionally illiterate Col. Putin out of his depth. It’s so much easier to stick to the proven formula: anti-KGB means Nazi.

In their current mood most Russians are willing to accept such simplicity of political thought. Worryingly, so are some Westerners (Peter Hitchens, ring your office.)

The current shambles in the Middle East came about as a direct consequence of the criminal invasion of Iraq in 2003.

There’s no point arguing about this: sensible people know it anyway, and the neocon fanatics will remain deaf to reason and blind to facts no matter what.

The immediate question is how to handle the situation, now it has arisen. What do we do next? More important, what should we not do?

One doesn’t have to know the difference between Shiite and a trip to the lavatory to answer this question. Good old common sense will suffice.

The invasion set the whole region on fire, and there’s little we can do now to extinguish it. Our first concern ought to be not to let the Arab Spring turn into a nuclear winter.

Again, preventing a homemade dirty bomb from going off in the middle of a Western capital is worth an effort, but it’s likely to be futile.

With the European countries having lost control of their borders de jure, and the USA de facto, it’s unrealistic to expect our police to be able to examine every suspicious-looking suitcase carried by every swarthy-looking person.

Partly this is because singling out swarthy-looking persons for such treatment will result in crippling lawsuits faster than you can say ‘racial discrimination’. Either our policemen check all suitcases or they check none, and the former is a logistic impossibility.

Hence the doomsayers predicting an imminent terrorist act somewhere in the West are probably right. The nest has been poked, and the hornets are buzzing all over the place.

The cause to which we must devote all our efforts is keeping factory-made nuclear weapons away from Muslim states likely to use them. In the most immediate future, this means Iran.

Thanks to earlier American blunders, the arguably nasty but generally pro-Western Shah was in 1977 replaced by Muslim fanatics, who remain in power to this day. Since then they’ve been hatching all sorts of madcap plans that can be summed up with one word: murder.

The potential victims cover a broad spectrum: every Israeli goes without saying, but then there are also Sunnis, Westerners, Christians, infidels, apostates, Iraqis, anyone who disputes Iran’s leadership of the Muslim world and so forth.

The list is long but, without nuclear weapons, Iran’s reach is short. Granted, some of the entries in the hit list can be dealt with without such weapons. An AK would suffice or, for old times’ sake, a scimitar.

But neither Israel nor the West can be defeated, or even grievously hurt, with conventional weapons, and without those targets the list looks woefully incomplete. That’s why a nuclear capability is a must for the ayatollahs, and that’s why they’ve been striving to acquire it with their characteristic combination of fanaticism and stealth.

When Iraq harboured similar ambitions, the Israeli Air Force took out the Osirak nuclear reactor in a daring 1981 raid. Since then the possibility of Iraq developing a nuclear capability has existed only in the fevered imaginations, and mendacious propaganda, of the Dubya-Tony set.

The Israelis could probably do a similar job on Iran, though some experts dispute their technical capability to succeed. Yet should the Israeli force be augmented by US aircraft carriers, the task would definitely become feasible.

However, one critical element is missing: the will. The most sophisticated and devastating military force is impotent in the absence of the determination to use it, and such determination is nowhere to be seen.

Instead our wishy-washy leaders have relied on sanctions, which at best could slow down the process of Iran’s nuclear empowerment, not stop it. But at least until now the West, specifically its Anglophone part, has been making the right noises.

Now even the noises have changed. The Sunni thugs are close to overrunning Iraq, Syria and possibly Afghanistan, a prospect that understandably displeases Nato analysts. The onslaught has to be stopped, but the question is how. And by whom?

The Americans have punched themselves out, as they usually do after a few years. The Brits, ably led by Tony, only went to war to kiss a certain part of Dubya’s anatomy and, now that part is no longer in the presidential chair, we’re certainly not going to go it alone.

Who then? Who will wipe out the ISIS, especially now it’s about to be reinforced by a large Syrian contingent? The answer the battle-weary Yanks have come up with is similar to that first proffered by the jaded Romans.

The latter had lost their taste for fighting and decided instead to hire others, specifically the Visigoths, to do their fighting for them. To that end they trained and equipped those chaps, gave them battle experience and elevated some of them, such as Alaric, to reasonably high command. We all know what happened next.

In an exact parallel, the Americans, presumably with our acquiescence, have decided to use Iran in the same capacity as the Romans used the Visigoths, as mercenaries.

But mercenaries have to be paid – not just in cash but also in respect. Alaric eventually turned against Rome because he felt underappreciated, not just because he was underpaid.

We know how the West will pay the Iranians in cash: the Fed’s printing presses are in working order, and no amount of paper will present a problem. But how, besides money, will the West show its gratitude?

The only gesture the ayatollahs will accept is the West’s help, or at least acquiescence, in Iran’s fulfilling her strategic objectives. These, as I’ve suggested, are inseparable from their push to acquire nuclear weapons.

Therefore, using Iran the way Rome used the Visigoths is tantamount to arming Iran with nuclear weapons. The consequences of this could be, almost certainly will be, even more catastrophic than Alaric sacking Rome, and yet the only alternative the West has so far come up with is sending 300 Special Forces men to Iraq.

One wonders if all those neocon champions of democracy in the Middle East are beginning to have second thoughts about the whole enterprise. Probably not: these chaps are incapable of any thought, first or second.

In their own way they’re as fanatical as the ayatollahs, which is perhaps why they feel a certain affinity for them. The rest of us can feel nothing but disgust tinged with fear.

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

Matthew Parris is ‘invigorated by a new idea’, which seems preferable to some other things by which Mr Parris is known to be invigorated from time to time.

The trouble is that the source of his excitement doesn’t qualify as an idea, and neither is it particularly new.

Mr Parris has recently found himself involved in ‘a ground-breaking exploration of a massive problem’: God. The way he words the topic already contains the answer. To Mr Parris and his supper companions, God constitutes a problem, not the solution.

That’s fair enough – faith is a gift in the literal meaning of the word: something presented by an outside donor. Since the donor is the active party in the transaction, it’s up to him to proffer the gift or not, though one is allowed to ask for it.

Mr Parris, or anyone else, is therefore to be pitied for his atheism, but not blamed. However, using atheism as the starting point of idiotic musings is no one’s fault but his own. For this Mr Parris must be rebuked.

In what sense is God ‘a massive problem’? And what eternal verities did the ‘ground-breaking exploration’ reveal?

“A supreme supra-national being [tends] to draw loyalties away from the secular state” is the answer to both questions.

This statement strikes one as remarkable even by the standards of Mr Parris’s consistently crepuscular thinking. For the underlying proposition has to be that the secular state should inspire loyalties higher than which none should exist.

True enough, those secular states that proceeded from the same assumption had little tolerance for religious faith. The most up-to-date examples, which must have served as the models for Mr Parris to follow, are provided by Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany.

Apart from their propensity for murdering large numbers of people, usually by category, the two regimes shared two other characteristics. They were both socialist (like Mr Parris), and they both detested Western, which is to say Christian, civilisation (ditto).

One can understand how they felt: if there is one secular conviction that must logically flow out of Christianity, it’s that the individual is primary and the state is secondary. When Christ said that his kingdom was not of this world, he established an immutable pecking order: his kingdom was higher than this world.

Etched into a Christian’s soul is the innate knowledge that he’s transcendent but the state is transient. Hence in everything that matters he can only regard the state not as his master but as his servant. If the state’s actions suggest that it’s assuming the role of master, then the believer may either resist it or pretend at a moment of weakness to be going along to protect himself from persecution. But inwardly he’ll never acquiesce.

Preaching the primacy of the state is tantamount to negating at a stroke the 2,000 years of our civilisation – and the worrying thing is that Mr Parris doesn’t even realise that’s what he’s doing. Nor does he seem to be aware of the identity of the modern states that were especially arduous in practising what he preaches.

He deplores “the moral absolutism that a higher God than parliament underwrites: abortion, divorce, gay marriage, IVF research, Sunday trading, pacifism and gambling, for example”.

Contextually, Mr Parris believes that none of those ought to be resisted on moral or any other grounds, which is his privilege and, in some of those areas, also his personal choice. Yet in his two model states, those that enviably didn’t allow any conflicting loyalties, homosexuals were routinely castrated and even executed (Nazi Germany) or imprisoned (the Soviet Union). Perhaps then, monotheism isn’t the only culprit.

Mr Parris hasn’t been blessed with a far-reaching intellect, but his instincts are in working order. It’s true that the modern secular state to which he has pledged his undivided loyalty is at odds with Christianity.

The two are in fact incompatible: just as the early Christians went to their death for refusing to accept the divinity of the Roman emperor, so will today’s Christians never accept the state’s supremacy over God.

That’s why all modern states without exception are trying to expunge Christianity or, failing that, to marginalise it. That is also why the power of all modern states is steadily growing pari passu with the diminishing power of the individual.

In the West this tendency takes the shape of democratic despotism, what Tocqueville, and Mill after him, mistakenly called ‘the tyranny of the majority’. In fact, in our so-called democracies the majority merely acquiesces in the tyranny imposed by a small political elite, to which Mr Parris, a former Tory MP and now a Times columnist, belongs, however tangentially.

I don’t know what this elite has established as its membership qualifications, but Mr Parris’s example proves that the ability to put together a cogent argument isn’t one of them.

He thinks he’s saying something of substance, whereas all that comes across in his gibberish is that Matthew Parris hates God. Who cares?

However, I for one would love to find out how God feels about Matthew Parris.