FATHER FRANK’S RANTS - Hall of Infamy

Rant Number 416 20 October 2010

A Hall of Fame is a kind of museum designed to honour people. Mostly the heroes of our trashy times, like footballers, rock stars, their memorabilia and so on. Boring! Our twilight era is more suited to a hall of infamy, the priest feels. So, off the top of my head, here it goes:

Silvio Berlusconi’s phoney hair. Forget his strumpets, his dodgy millions and all the rest. The hair is the thing. Compares unfavourably with Mussolini, actually. Whilst the Duce’s bald pate anticipated tough action-movie stars like Bruce Willis, Silvio’s transplant alludes to some botched-up Brillo Pad treatment. Verily, the man’s hair-do discloses his ego. Vanity, all things are vanity, as Ecclesiastes says.

De Maistre wrote that every country has the government it deserves. A profound axiom. Does that mean Italians deserve Silvio? They too belong into the infamous hall? Hope not. Yet, there is no credible opposition. The Italian Left is a joke. There is no alternative to Berlusconi. The President of the Republic, Napolitano, an etiolated geriatric who postures as a pater patriae, is an ex-Communist who once cheered the Russian tanks that crushed the 1956 Hungarian revolution. And Silvio keeps winning elections. Famous or infamous, he and his hair are Italy’s destiny.

Auntie. Meaning the BBC. Auntie knows best, they say. But this Auntie definitely belongs in infamy. Why? Its conspiracy of silence. Like the mafia, the BBC thrives on the omerta’ syndrome. Its journalists bend over backwards to ban references to religion or faith – except negative ones. Take the ‘G’ word. When the Chilean miners emerged out of darkness into the light one of them spoke movingly about his faith, the strength it gave him to bear his 33 days ordeal: ‘I was with God and the devil. They fought. God won.’ Other miners echoed his sentiments. Some were shown on their knees, praying. Even the Chilean President spoke of faith. Did you hear/view that on the BBC? Have they made a Faustian pact? Bargained with the devil to keep God out of the news? Unless it is to claim He does not exist, of course. But I know the reason. It is the evil ideology called secularism. The galloping disease of our age. The BBC is one of its chief agents. The sooner the family of Abraham – Muslims, Jews and Christians - manage to slay the monster, the better. St George, patron saint of England, come back and kill the dragon, I beg you!

(Guess I am unfair about Auntie. When even His Lordship the Bishop of Liverpool manages to give a ‘thought for the day’ without even a single time mentioning God or Christ, well, how can you then blame the Beeb’s bosses?)

Sheykh Abdul Hadi Palazzi’s beard. A portly Italian Imam. A most amazing fellow this Professor Palazzi. Ever heard of a qualified Muslim sheykh enthusiastically waving the Star of David flag? I kid you not. This Italian alim says: ‘the Quran shows that God have the land of Israel to the Jews and will restore them to it at the end of days’. And he gives chapter and verse. So Arabs must recognise the state of Israel. The PLO are gangsters... By Allah! I would never have believed it, but I have read the stuff online. Palazzi is not just pazzo, mad. Nor a fake or crazy convert. (Know a few of the latter...) He was born a Muslim. Has plenty of degrees and doctorate validated from the Saudis and Al Azhar University. Yet he goes to America on anti-Palestinian conferences sponsored by Zionist organisations – the Zionist answer to the Neturei Karta brigade, I guess. Italians can be more eccentric than the English when they try. He is so unreal, I almost like him. But my Palestinian friends insist: Palazzi and his bushy beard definitely must abide in the Hall of Infamy.

The shoes thrown at President Bush. It would be pleonastic to urge George Jr into the Hall – he is there already. But here is my wee problem. The shoe-thrower was a Shia. Under Saddam the Sunnis ruled, the Shia were downtrodden, persecuted, could not keep their festivals etcetera. Now thanks to the US invasion the Shia have all their religious freedom and are politically on top. You may argue Bush was the Iraqi Shia’s liberator. This is going to be as popular as the plague but here is a haunting thought: the shoes, their fame – are they really infamous? Or do they perhaps stand for the newly-found Iraq’s freedom and democracy? Huh!

A nun’s discarded wimple. Karen Armstrong’s. An ex-religious. Has acquired a certain reputation as a religious writer. Spirituality, things like that. But why does she remind me a bit of Martin Luther? The German monk who could not keep his monastic vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, so he ferociously denigrated those values, triggering off the reformation. Ms Armstrong also opted out of the convent. Fair enough. If someone discovers she has not got the vocation, that’s right. Just get out. But in her books she constantly slags the Church’s glorious ascetic tradition. Virginity, chastity and sexual abstinence, especially. The key monastic vows – part of the pride of Christianity. All patriarchal, repressive stuff. Very bad. I loathe Freud but... a person who could not/would be a nun - a woman devoted to a key Christian ideal – does she then have to vilify that ideal? The high ideal to which scores of martyrs witnessed with their blood? Sad, sad, sad. March into the hall, lady!

Next is a diagram. That of the London Tube. Bright and coloured, with plenty of famous place names on it, but the reality is infamous. They say Dante based his Inferno on the idea of an underground prison. Were the poet to return, the London Underground would provide a better model. A Tube journey is getting a pretty squalid and dangerous affair. Won’t try to describe it. Tube users know already and those who don’t should steer clear of it. The Government has charitably exempted aid to the third world (‘developing countries’) from the spending cuts but surely charity begins at home. The Tube is a segment of third world snaking throughout London. Utterly third rate. Unworthy of a world metropolis. Truly, its name is infamy.

Phoney Tony, Lady Gaga, Pete Doherty...there are too many of them. Luckily, the infamy hall is vast – plenty of space there.

Revd Frank Julian Gelli