** FATHER FRANK’S RANTS Rant Number 777 19 July 2018 DOWNFALL: HOW I CAUSED ENGLAND TO LOSE THE CUP
IT WAS GOOD FOR ENGLAND TO LOSE THE CUP. MY PRIESTLY CURSE WORKED.
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The young Lenin loved classical music. Beethoven, especially. But he gave it up. ‘The revolution...my dedication to its cause must be total. Music would distract from it’, he said. Therefore he stopped listening to Beethoven.
Like Lenin, the priest is fanatically committed to his revolutionary-theocratic project. What might he give up? Music? No, not that. Oh, yes! I have got it! He will renounce football. Happy, O happy renunciation! Because I never gave a toss for it.
A curse on the Cup, I say! In my remote, extreme Roman youth, beleaguered by football-crazy Italians, I felt like a stranger in strange land. The game generated either indifference or tedium. Or annoyance. Now, as a London-based old codger, I stand on graver ground. Football is actually counter-revolutionary. No one should watch the World Cup. Further, I hold people should forcefully be prevented from such self-harm. That is why I caused England to lose the Cup.
I am in good company. The Somali militant group, al-Shabab (the Young Ones) declared the World Cup un-Islamic. With impeccable revolutionary logic, the Shabab argue that soaking up international soccer is incompatible with fighting in the way of Allah. Too many young people are glued to the TV screen to join the struggle. Hence the Shabab threaten to behead or mutilate those caught doing it. I may disagree with the means, but not with your end, dear Shabab. The laws of Christianity forbid harming people. Yet, by the same token, one should impede people from hurting themselves. Watching the Cup is self-damage. Worse, it is deliberately intended to be so.
This football craze is a curse. ‘Bread and circuses’, get it? In imperial Rome the rulers kept the populace happy by feeding them cheap food and huge spectacles. Football is the modern equivalent. Worse, it is opium for the masses, a gloss on Marx’s opium of the masses. The Church should denounce that and vigorously campaign against it. Strive to discourage it by preaching and teaching. If she fails to do so, while Islamists do...I have to be with them. God works in mysterious ways, surely.
A curse on the Cup! I hear the howls of execration. ‘Events like Cup bring people & nations together. They are celebrations of friendship between cultures.’ Are they? Once, when Algeria beat Egypt in a Cup qualifying match, Egyptians hurled fire bombs at the Algerian embassy in Cairo. Even worshippers coming out of a mosque after Friday prayers took to rioting and burning Algerian flags. Egypt recalled its envoy in Algeria. Good they have no common border, otherwise a war might have broken out between the two Muslim nations. United by a common faith and Arab language. Egypt also aided Algeria in its war of independence from the French. Yet football fanaticism erased all that. Instructive, methinks.
‘Frank, think of ordinary folks enjoying the game so much. Do you want to deprive them of something so innocent?’ a friend contended. But this insidious, debilitating craze isn’t innocent. It is designed to sedate the people. Opium induces a rush of pleasure, it relaxes and then it stupefies. Diabolically, in the XIX century British opium merchants fought wars to force opium on the Chinese, to put them to sleep, prior to dominating and exploiting them. Similarly, the World Cup is being foisted on the masses to narcotise them into submission. Bread and circuses indeed!
A curse on the Cup! Why is football called ‘the beautiful game’? Looks ugly to me. ‘A gentlemen’s game played by hooligans’, they used to say. Its players express themselves in barely human grunts. Footballers’ wives...no, I am a gentleman – no rudeness to ladies allowed. Too many fans (from fanatic – yes?) hark back to Neanderthal Man. All right, there are exceptions, like the personable and articulate ex-player Gary Linecker but...a swallow does not make a summer.
A silly man in Time Out magazine blathered about ‘racism, homophobia, slashed horses, sectarianism, violence & so on’ as vices attended by football. Poppycock! Capitalism-plugged football is essentially a counterrevolutionary tool. Look how the hapless, beleaguered PM Theresa May has the St George’s Flag flying over 10 Downing Street for the FIFA games. (St George! England’s holy patron enlisted in such unholy cause! Sacrilege!) The bankers, financiers and public school toffs in power want to keep the opium flowing. By contrast, faith in God is about liberation. About arousing people up from their drugged slumbers. About a bright new dawn. Listen to the Apostle to the Gentiles:
‘It is full time for you to wake out of sleep. For salvation is nearer to us than when we first believed; the night is far gone, the day is at hand.’(Romans 13:11-12). Kick the habit, folks. Kick the Cup, O you new Gentiles. Time to wake up!
Football curse. I mean both the curse of football and a curse on football. The one I placed on the match before last night, which Britain indeed lost. Yes, the priest did it. It was a revolutionary curse and it worked. A practice authorised by the Commination Service in the Book of Common Prayer. For the good of England I did it. Because England must be saved from this pernicious drug. Insh’allah, it will.
Returning home last night, I went by a rough pub. Yobs wrapped in the St George’s flag looked disgruntled. ‘England bites the dust!’ I nearly shouted out. Martyrdom is always a temptation, but I resisted it. Christ wants me to live, to go on fighting the good revolutionary fight…till victory!
Revd Frank Julian Gelli
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The young Lenin loved classical music. Beethoven, especially. But he gave it up. ‘The revolution...my dedication to its cause must be total. Music would distract from it’, he said. Therefore he stopped listening to Beethoven.
Like Lenin, the priest is fanatically committed to his revolutionary-theocratic project. What might he give up? Music? No, not that. Oh, yes! I have got it! He will renounce football. Happy, O happy renunciation! Because I never gave a toss for it.
A curse on the Cup, I say! In my remote, extreme Roman youth, beleaguered by football-crazy Italians, I felt like a stranger in strange land. The game generated either indifference or tedium. Or annoyance. Now, as a London-based old codger, I stand on graver ground. Football is actually counter-revolutionary. No one should watch the World Cup. Further, I hold people should forcefully be prevented from such self-harm. That is why I caused England to lose the Cup.
I am in good company. The Somali militant group, al-Shabab (the Young Ones) declared the World Cup un-Islamic. With impeccable revolutionary logic, the Shabab argue that soaking up international soccer is incompatible with fighting in the way of Allah. Too many young people are glued to the TV screen to join the struggle. Hence the Shabab threaten to behead or mutilate those caught doing it. I may disagree with the means, but not with your end, dear Shabab. The laws of Christianity forbid harming people. Yet, by the same token, one should impede people from hurting themselves. Watching the Cup is self-damage. Worse, it is deliberately intended to be so.
This football craze is a curse. ‘Bread and circuses’, get it? In imperial Rome the rulers kept the populace happy by feeding them cheap food and huge spectacles. Football is the modern equivalent. Worse, it is opium for the masses, a gloss on Marx’s opium of the masses. The Church should denounce that and vigorously campaign against it. Strive to discourage it by preaching and teaching. If she fails to do so, while Islamists do...I have to be with them. God works in mysterious ways, surely.
A curse on the Cup! I hear the howls of execration. ‘Events like Cup bring people & nations together. They are celebrations of friendship between cultures.’ Are they? Once, when Algeria beat Egypt in a Cup qualifying match, Egyptians hurled fire bombs at the Algerian embassy in Cairo. Even worshippers coming out of a mosque after Friday prayers took to rioting and burning Algerian flags. Egypt recalled its envoy in Algeria. Good they have no common border, otherwise a war might have broken out between the two Muslim nations. United by a common faith and Arab language. Egypt also aided Algeria in its war of independence from the French. Yet football fanaticism erased all that. Instructive, methinks.
‘Frank, think of ordinary folks enjoying the game so much. Do you want to deprive them of something so innocent?’ a friend contended. But this insidious, debilitating craze isn’t innocent. It is designed to sedate the people. Opium induces a rush of pleasure, it relaxes and then it stupefies. Diabolically, in the XIX century British opium merchants fought wars to force opium on the Chinese, to put them to sleep, prior to dominating and exploiting them. Similarly, the World Cup is being foisted on the masses to narcotise them into submission. Bread and circuses indeed!
A curse on the Cup! Why is football called ‘the beautiful game’? Looks ugly to me. ‘A gentlemen’s game played by hooligans’, they used to say. Its players express themselves in barely human grunts. Footballers’ wives...no, I am a gentleman – no rudeness to ladies allowed. Too many fans (from fanatic – yes?) hark back to Neanderthal Man. All right, there are exceptions, like the personable and articulate ex-player Gary Linecker but...a swallow does not make a summer.
A silly man in Time Out magazine blathered about ‘racism, homophobia, slashed horses, sectarianism, violence & so on’ as vices attended by football. Poppycock! Capitalism-plugged football is essentially a counterrevolutionary tool. Look how the hapless, beleaguered PM Theresa May has the St George’s Flag flying over 10 Downing Street for the FIFA games. (St George! England’s holy patron enlisted in such unholy cause! Sacrilege!) The bankers, financiers and public school toffs in power want to keep the opium flowing. By contrast, faith in God is about liberation. About arousing people up from their drugged slumbers. About a bright new dawn. Listen to the Apostle to the Gentiles:
‘It is full time for you to wake out of sleep. For salvation is nearer to us than when we first believed; the night is far gone, the day is at hand.’(Romans 13:11-12). Kick the habit, folks. Kick the Cup, O you new Gentiles. Time to wake up!
Football curse. I mean both the curse of football and a curse on football. The one I placed on the match before last night, which Britain indeed lost. Yes, the priest did it. It was a revolutionary curse and it worked. A practice authorised by the Commination Service in the Book of Common Prayer. For the good of England I did it. Because England must be saved from this pernicious drug. Insh’allah, it will.
Returning home last night, I went by a rough pub. Yobs wrapped in the St George’s flag looked disgruntled. ‘England bites the dust!’ I nearly shouted out. Martyrdom is always a temptation, but I resisted it. Christ wants me to live, to go on fighting the good revolutionary fight…till victory!
Revd Frank Julian Gelli
------------------------------------------------------------
============================================================
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