FATHER FRANK’S RANTS Rant Number 648 21 September 2015 OF PIGS AND MEN - As posed to Of Mice and Men!

ARE HUMAN BEINGS, AS INDIVIDUALS AS WELL AS SOCIETY, DOMED TO BE SWINISH? OR IS THERE A HIGHER WAY?
------------------------------------------------------------


Homer narrates that when Odysseus’ ship reached the island of Aiaia, the hero did not realise it was inhabited by a sorceress. So he let his companions go ashore. In a dell they came upon a stately house. Circe, a beautiful woman, sang sweetly within. The lady then invited them in. She gave them drink and rich food. Alas, the meal was spiked with a magic potion. No sooner had the men eaten, they sprouted pigs’ snouts, grunted and grovelled. They had become hogs all over.

Triumphant, terrible Circe shut them into a pigsty and threw them acorns to feed on. Only Eurylochus, who had not swallowed the bait, was left to tell the tale.

Once informed, crafty Odysseus set out to the rescue. But the magician was powerful - how could he, a mere man, beat her? Only thanks to divine advice. The god Hermes, whom he met on the way, armed him with both antidote and instructions, so that Odysseus could tackle Circe all right. Immune to the drug, he drew his sword and forced the witch to restore his men to human shape. Afterwards the Greek spent a whole year with the tamed lady in uxorious pleasure and enjoyment – she even gave him a son. Huh! What became of that child, I wonder?

Only a tale? Still, one with a sharp moral. Echoed in Jesus’ timeless parable of the Prodigal Son (St Luke 15:15). It is a measure of the degradation into which the erring young man has fallen that he hires himself out to a stranger in a far country, feeding pigs. (The stranger, by the way, is the devil.) Of course, it would have been worse for him to have become a pig. And here is the point. Homer’s story of men turned into swine can be read as more than a poetic fantasy. It is also about what happens when human beings renounce the higher, divine element in their nature – their reason. They then sink to the level of irrational beings and become sub-human – like wolves or pigs. And it is not coincidental that in many cases of Satanic possession on record the unfortunates fallen under the sway of malign influences often grunt, growl and squeal like animals. That man’s eternal enemy should wish to drag down creatures made in God’s image to the level of brutes makes perfect,
chilling sense.

Whether the episode of youthful David Cameron’s alleged obscenity with a dead pig while a wild student at Oxford is true or not does not matter. How many people have not committed stupid, ridiculous or even immoral acts when young? Youth and foolishness often go hand in hand. Yet, the story carries a meaning, albeit a depressing one.

In the Odyssey, the archetypal Western hero rescues his friends from sorcery, bringing them back to their God-given shape and nature. Is the reverse happening? Is European man today now sliding back into an irrational, savage substratum?

There will always be swinish people around, because human nature, as Plato knew, includes that lower, animal element. Worse, however, when a whole society becomes swinish. Grovelling and revelling in all kinds of filth. You don’t need to get apocalyptic to perceive the signs. Symptoms abound. Could a popular TV programme like ‘Big Brother’ flourish anywhere but in a deeply polluted society? It is to the credit of the Muslim people of little Bahrain that when an attempt was made to bring ‘Big Brother’ there, a popular revolt put to an end to it.

More fundamentally, the emphasis on consumerism, materialism, Eros and the economy, to the detriment of higher human values, tells its own tale. The priest does not give a hoot about Cameron’s posh student shenanigans, whether he perpetrated animal necrophilia or not. The priest cares about Cameron’s, and his party’s, disastrous lack of political and moral leadership in this nation’s life. Government should be for the true good of the governed. This government falls short of that.

Worse when even religious leaders cop out on their job. Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, seeks to throw dust in people’s eyes by having a refugee family stay in a cottage in his vast Lambeth Palace. A clumsy attempt to make people overlook the Anglican church’s abysmal collapse to secularism? Churches are getting emptier, people vote with their feet. The C of E is moribund. Welby cannot escape his share of guilt. His church no longer represents Christ to the people of England. Horrendous!

Even good Pope Francis is not quite guiltless. He bangs on about ‘the poor’ and courts geriatric Communist dictators like the Castro brothers in Cuba. But poverty in Christianity is not the worst evil. Giants like St Francis and Dostoevski believed the Church was not about a redistribution of material goods – Communism tried that and ended up in the gutter - but in a renunciation of them. Methinks the Church sometimes forgets the Master’s injunction: ‘Do not cast pearls before swine’.

To be clear. Animals belong in the divine plan. Christianity does not consider any non-human creature as ritually unclean. They simply follow the dictates of their instincts and are morally innocent. Human nature, on the other hand, can rise above its beastly layer. ‘You were not formed to live like brutes but to follow virtue and knowledge’, Odysseus urges in Dante’s Inferno. Knowledge, wisdom, worship and love of the Creator – these are what human beings are truly for.

The rest is sub-human piggery.

Revd Frank Julian Gelli

============================================================
** follow on Twitter (Twitter Account not yet Authorized)
| ** friend on Facebook (#)
| ** forward to a friend (http://us7.forward-to-friend.com/forward?u=3ae40cde0c299583529f1448a&id=924b1e1519&e=5707b9e8db)

Copyright © Fr Frank Gelli
Email Marketing Powered by MailChimp
http://www.mailchimp.com/monkey-rewards/?utm_source=freemium_newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=monkey_rewards&aid=3ae40cde0c299583529f1448a&afl=1
** unsubscribe from this list (http://simplesite.us7.list-manage.com/unsubscribe?u=3ae40cde0c299583529f1448a&id=f9573901af&e=5707b9e8db&c=924b1e1519)
| ** update subscription preferences (http://simplesite.us7.list-manage.com/profile?u=3ae40cde0c299583529f1448a&id=f9573901af&e=5707b9e8db)