You know, if God didn't exist, I suspect Richard Dawkins would have to invent him so that he could stridently shout down that existence.
I have a great deal of time for the Professor although I haven't met him since tutorials in the Zoology Department at Oxford in South Parks Road in the 1970s but I do think that today's contribution to the debate about the Pope's UK 'State Visit' is publicity opportunism - and a bad example of same. And let's remember that the Pope isn't God (not even the Catholics claim this).
"Go home to your Mussolini-concocted principality, and don't come back," says RD in today's (16/9/10) The Times. 'Mussolini-concocted' !?! Oh surely he can rant better than this.
'Concocted' is more cocktail-mixing than religious orthodoxy. I mean the Vatican may be spicing up the communion wine but there are few spirits here (sorry about that).
This surely cannot be the real Dawkins speaking, not the greatest neo-Darwinist of the age, not the writer of The Selfish Gene and The Blind Watchmaker.
Perhaps I am guilty of transferring hope to belief here (although there's a lot of this about on the other side of Cardinal Kasper's aggressively atheist divide), but I believe that Prof Dawkins has about him more aggressively atheist advisers than he is and he has tumbled into their way of thinking without fully believing their dialectic. And I have met one such adviser - a meeting that strenghthened, not diminished, this opinion.
You know, I am beginning to wonder whether this is all about Oxford. Pullman whose books are banned to Catholics is Oxford through-and-through and so is Dawkins. Let's remember that Cardinal Newman preached regularly at St Aloysius at the top end of St Giles in Oxford after his 'conversion' and that the Pope has taken up Newman's "Heart shall speak unto Heart" mantra as a theme of his visit.
I don't know what Sebastian's teddy-bear would say!
Thursday 16 September 2010
Wednesday 15 September 2010
DECLINE AND FALL IN OUR MUTUAL FRIEND
I have just been reading Dickens - one has to from time to time - and, as luck would have it, picked up 'Our Mutual Friend' in which, Dickens is self-consciously trying to be funny in his descriptions of people and places and, fortunately for moi, succeeds handsomely in this endeavour.
Consider the comment about the cheese in Mr Wilfer's house: "This was a neat and happy turn to give the subject, treats being rare in the Wilfer household, where a monotonous appearance of Dutch-cheese at ten o'clock in the evening had been rather frequently commented on by the dimpled shoulders of Miss Bella. Indeed the modest Dutchman himself seemed conscious of his want of variety, and generally came before the family in a state of nervous perspiration."
Greater, comedy is, however, to be found in the wooden-legged, 'literary' gent, Silas Wegg, who has struck a bargain with the illiterate Mr Boffin to read through the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire which Mr Boffin originally thinks to be the Rooshan Empire. (Mr Wegg explans that the difference between the two empires should be 'dropped' until such time as Mrs Boffin is not present.)
"Then Mr Wegg in a dry unflinching way, entered on his task; going straight across country at everything that came before him; taking all the hard words, biographical and geographical; getting rather shaken by Hadrian, Trajan and the Antonines; stumbling at Polybius (pronounced Polly Beeious, and supposed by Mr Boffin to be a Roman virgin, and by Mrs Boffin to be responsible for dropping it); heavily unseated by Titus Antoninus Pius; up again and galloping smoothly with Augustus; finally, getting over the ground well with Commodus; who, under the appelation of Commodious, was held by Mr Boffin to have been quite unworthy of his English origin, and "not to have acted up to his name" in his government of the Roman people."
And that whole ride in one sentence!
Consider the comment about the cheese in Mr Wilfer's house: "This was a neat and happy turn to give the subject, treats being rare in the Wilfer household, where a monotonous appearance of Dutch-cheese at ten o'clock in the evening had been rather frequently commented on by the dimpled shoulders of Miss Bella. Indeed the modest Dutchman himself seemed conscious of his want of variety, and generally came before the family in a state of nervous perspiration."
Greater, comedy is, however, to be found in the wooden-legged, 'literary' gent, Silas Wegg, who has struck a bargain with the illiterate Mr Boffin to read through the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire which Mr Boffin originally thinks to be the Rooshan Empire. (Mr Wegg explans that the difference between the two empires should be 'dropped' until such time as Mrs Boffin is not present.)
"Then Mr Wegg in a dry unflinching way, entered on his task; going straight across country at everything that came before him; taking all the hard words, biographical and geographical; getting rather shaken by Hadrian, Trajan and the Antonines; stumbling at Polybius (pronounced Polly Beeious, and supposed by Mr Boffin to be a Roman virgin, and by Mrs Boffin to be responsible for dropping it); heavily unseated by Titus Antoninus Pius; up again and galloping smoothly with Augustus; finally, getting over the ground well with Commodus; who, under the appelation of Commodious, was held by Mr Boffin to have been quite unworthy of his English origin, and "not to have acted up to his name" in his government of the Roman people."
And that whole ride in one sentence!
IL PAPA
As I write, Pope Benedict is about to start his state visit of Britain and, in response, various celebrities - a catchall title that includes the likes of Stephen Fry and Philip Pullman - have written to the newspapers condemning said tour.
I hold no candle for the Pope but I do think that there is considerable irony in allowing, indeed encouraging, visits by Heads of State of countries that formally undertake violence against sections of their own population and yet protesting against one who, while he may have committed sins of omission in failing to seek out child abuse and, worse, in attempting to cover it when discovered, cannot be accused of sponsoring such horrific behaviour.
But perhaps the opprobrium should be the greater because Benedict is a spiritual rather than a political leader and there is therefore a sense in which he must be measured more stringently against a moral benchmark. So that would suggest that child abuse in Catholic schools is somehow worse than the mass murder of children at the Haut de la Garenne Orphanage in Jersey or worse than that caning schoolmaster who has recently been brought to book by a group of his formerly striped pupils?
No, despite the sensibilities of some and the (sometimes artificial) outrage of others, the Pope's visit should go ahead and it should do so for a series of pragmatic reasons.
First, a majority of British catholics would like the Pope to visit. Second he is the spiritual leader of something towards a billion and a half people. Third, how would it look to the populations of Brazil, Ireland, Paraguay even Poland (not to mention Italy) if he was blocked access to the UK just as if he was some rabble-rousing Mullah?
And fourth, this country has a long and colourful history of entertaining worse than him.
I hold no candle for the Pope but I do think that there is considerable irony in allowing, indeed encouraging, visits by Heads of State of countries that formally undertake violence against sections of their own population and yet protesting against one who, while he may have committed sins of omission in failing to seek out child abuse and, worse, in attempting to cover it when discovered, cannot be accused of sponsoring such horrific behaviour.
But perhaps the opprobrium should be the greater because Benedict is a spiritual rather than a political leader and there is therefore a sense in which he must be measured more stringently against a moral benchmark. So that would suggest that child abuse in Catholic schools is somehow worse than the mass murder of children at the Haut de la Garenne Orphanage in Jersey or worse than that caning schoolmaster who has recently been brought to book by a group of his formerly striped pupils?
No, despite the sensibilities of some and the (sometimes artificial) outrage of others, the Pope's visit should go ahead and it should do so for a series of pragmatic reasons.
First, a majority of British catholics would like the Pope to visit. Second he is the spiritual leader of something towards a billion and a half people. Third, how would it look to the populations of Brazil, Ireland, Paraguay even Poland (not to mention Italy) if he was blocked access to the UK just as if he was some rabble-rousing Mullah?
And fourth, this country has a long and colourful history of entertaining worse than him.
Sunday 12 September 2010
IN THE NAVY
I picked up a copy of Alec Guinness's autobiography, "Blessings in Disguise", this morning and found myself in the chapter about his time in the navy during the second world war. Like many such books, this one seems to rest on a series of short (occasionally pithy) stories and the one about Guinness's movement towards the RN is, I believe worth retelling here.
The chapter is headed, 'Damage to the Allied Cause' and begins as follows:
"The Colonel stood with his back to the sitting-room fire, warming his shoulders and his behind. He was very small. He wore a hairy tweed suit and, although he was trying to be helpful, he only managed to look rather cross. He was a revered 'uncle', but no relation, of my dear friend Peggy Ashcroft, who had kindly arranged for me to be interviewed by him. This was in 1940.
"'Drive a car?' asked the Colonel.
'I'm afraid not,' I said. The Colonel looked crosser, so I added, 'Sir,' which mollified him slightly.
'Motor bicycle?'
'No, I am afraid I don't do anything like that.'
'Sport? Rugger? Cricket?'
'Absolutely no. Sir.'
'My niece says you act.'
'Yes.'
'Well, that's that. I suggest you offer your services to the Royal Navy. Good afternoon.'"
The chapter is headed, 'Damage to the Allied Cause' and begins as follows:
"The Colonel stood with his back to the sitting-room fire, warming his shoulders and his behind. He was very small. He wore a hairy tweed suit and, although he was trying to be helpful, he only managed to look rather cross. He was a revered 'uncle', but no relation, of my dear friend Peggy Ashcroft, who had kindly arranged for me to be interviewed by him. This was in 1940.
"'Drive a car?' asked the Colonel.
'I'm afraid not,' I said. The Colonel looked crosser, so I added, 'Sir,' which mollified him slightly.
'Motor bicycle?'
'No, I am afraid I don't do anything like that.'
'Sport? Rugger? Cricket?'
'Absolutely no. Sir.'
'My niece says you act.'
'Yes.'
'Well, that's that. I suggest you offer your services to the Royal Navy. Good afternoon.'"
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