If there is one, this - Assumptiontide in more civilised times - is probably the official start of the 'silly season,' although we would have to say once again that, in the world in which we are forced to live much of the time, the silly season goes on for twelve months without respite:
The British Labour Party, not that long ago posing as the United Kingdom's natural party of government, but now in the throes of one of the left's periodic, post-defeat, fits of 'forget trying to win elections, let's go for ideological purity at all costs' (and it could be a very high cost) seems about to elect the pale shade of Tony Benn as its leader. Not that this observer didn't cease to care long ago about Labour in any of its manifestations, but a representative democracy worth living in needs an active, responsible - and electable - opposition party to preserve its national life from stagnation or worse. Those of us who grew up in the 1970s and 80s could be forgiven for feeling a sense of deja vu, tinged with despair at the contemporary tendency to despise the lessons of even the recent past...
But, as they say, mankind seems doomed to repeat the errors of the past, although the pendulum does seems to swing faster than ever these days. According to Peter Mullen [here] Pope Francis has lost it. * We should be a little wary of attaching too much importance to the obiter dicta of one who just can't help speaking off the cuff, or to the journalistic translations of what, in fact, he does say. Yet, to put it another way, on all kinds of levels the days of Pope Benedict seem almost impossibly long ago ...
WATCH, increasingly the Campaign for Real Paganism, [see the last posting here] continues its relentless harrying of the embattled orthodox enclaves within the Church of England, this time on the subject of the passing and maintenance of the resolutions in multi-church benefices - thanks, again to Sir Philip Mawer, so far to little avail. A response from Forward in Faith [here]
And the BBC - what can one say about the dear old BBC which has not already been said so many times before here and elsewhere? The Corporation really seems (like other institutions we could, but won't name today) to be hell bent on alienating its most natural and loyal supporters. But I'll leave it to Peter Hitchens to conclude this short dog-day posting:
"...On most Sunday mornings I swim up to consciousness while listening to BBC Radio 4. The thing that forces me into full wakefulness is an almost comically correct programme called, with great wit and originality, ‘The Sunday Programme’ . This hour is supposed to be about religion. But whenever I concentrate it always seems to be mainly about sex – sexual abuse by priests and leaders of religions of almost all denominations, or the travails of overt homosexuals who insist on adhering to, or seeking to be ministers in, churches which disapprove of overt homosexuality. Yesterday was no exception to this rule, so reliable that is actually comical...." [here]The only thing he has left out is that the 'Sunday Programme', more often than not these days, should reconsider a change of name (and positioning in the weekly schedules?) to 'Friday'...
Finally, a photo which sums up the summer so far - or maybe the entire year ....
'Je suis Cecil!'
* Based on a spoof as many have suspected: the difficulty is that the present Holy Father's profile in the secular media (not his fault, exactly) is such that many (previously incredible) reports now seem so believable to many ... the silly season, indeed.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Anonymous comments will not be published