Official Notice

Lifetime Options Directorate Order LOD 2345987/33/Bigotry/000kaput

Under the provisions of the Lifetime Options Directorate Act 2017, a Termination Notice has been issued on this blog to take effect at 5.00 a.m. on 29th October 2012.

Those wishing to say farewell to the impending deceased should do so before that time.

Signed,

Petronella Gaskammer (Ms)

ALLA

The Maltese are a Semitic people, like the Arabs and the Jews. Their language is largely Semitic.

They are very, very Catholic.

I was born there.

The Maltese word for God is Alla. And why not, pray?

I just thought I would mention it.

Offending the Usual Suspects

Please do head over to Richard's blog, Linen on the Hedgerow, and read his latest post which has offended the usual suspects.His tongue-in-cheek suggestions to Catholic school pupils compelled to visit a non-Christian place of worship have drawn charges that he is a bigot and a racist from some sensititve souls.

I don't know whether Richard is a litigious man (I would be if I could afford it), but I would guess that being accused of being a racist is a libel, actionable, and could be pursued in Court.

I should not be necessary to state that objecting to a false (non-Catholic) religion is 'racist' only to the perceptions of the intellectually challenged, and that it is no more 'racist' than disliking Quakerism, or curry, or roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, or Wagner. I dislike them all.

As for 'bigotry', in the sense of total unswerving commitment to what one regards as the truth, I am all for it.

A British Muslim friend of mine, born in Pakistan, remarked to me many years ago that Allah created life at various levels: vegetable, animal, and human. He added (and immediately lost my respect) that Allah created a lower form of human life, the hubshi (black men and women) who exist to serve the non-hubshi.

Now that was racism, and he ceased with immediate effect to be a friend.

Christmas Profanation

Mundabor has an interesting post, Christmas Madness . It is well worth reading, and reminds me of something similar, as long ago as 1988.

On Christmas Eve, at the brokerage where I worked we all decided to go out for lunch at a restaurant somewhere in Knightsbridge. There were about ten of us.

We were eating when suddenly a uniformed policewoman came to our table, and demanded to know who owned car number ******, which she said was illegally parked outside. A friend said it was his, but was at home in Winchester.

She then stripped, singing some secular ditty as she did so: not a real policewoman, but a "stripogram", poor woman, and clearly a mother, because she had stretch-marks. 

The friend, an Anglican, and, incidentally, a former S.A.S colonel, and I immediately left, our lunch half-eaten.

The experience overshadowed Christmas. In any half-decent, half civilized country, such work as this poor woman did would be unnecessary and illegal.

A Humble Enquiry (reposted because I like it)

Sapphic lines (in the poetic sense, as in Sappho of Lesbos, not Sappho the lesbian) addressed to wiser people than me. It scans perfectly if read correctly.


A Humble Enquiry

“Let’s break bread together on our knees”, but the crumbs get
Into my turn-ups, and the sunrise blinds me,
And where does it say in the Gospels that Jesus
Was Lord of the Dance?* Eh?

And if it’s only bread, then what of the Real Presence?
Transubstantiation, the Eucharistic Fast, and
Holy Hours and Exposition? Have we chucked the Sacrifice
And opted for a picnic?

And why, when we pray the Litany of Saints, do we
Include Saint Martin Luther King, Saint Dalai Lama
And Saint Nelson Mandela? None of them is Catholic,
And two not even dead yet.**

And what of the Bishops of England and Wales? Who
Are they working for? Where are they sailing
In the bark of Peter? To the port of Heaven?
Or the shoal of confusion?

And can you explain please, who the Easter People
Are? Is it all OK now, no repentance?
Life is so cute, if you’ve the good fortune
To be liberal and Catholic,

And nuance the absolute, syncretise and sample,
Admire Tony Blair for sorting out that bigoted
Homophobe Benedict the Sixteenth's obsession
With objectively moral

Disorder. Come on you guys, I mean Bishops, own up!
You don’t believe all this stuff about Papal
Infallibilty. That’s just Pio No! No!
So long ago, too.

And what about those Martyrs, who never took advantage
Of the power of inclusive language to avoid such
Misunderstandings, or, maybe, understandings
As shortened their lives so?

Ha! Now I’ve got it! If Catholic means the same as
Universal, everyone, atheist, agnostic,
Practising and lapsed, burbling and rational
Is Catholic. No problem!



*Why not:
Bounce, then, wherever you may be,
For I like to bounce up and down - tee! hee!
I bounce up and down like a hyperactive flea,
For I am the lord of the bounce - tee! hee!

**
I heard this very "relevant" updating of the Litany
Of the Saints at Mass in a Catholic church in London,
A few years ago, but cannot for the life of me
Imagine who OK'd it.

Lepanto

Remember.

Be thankful.

Pray the Rosary.