Grandmothers are great

My two grandmothers were very different personalities. My father’s mother had a sweetness, as well as a firmness, which drew people to her as a fount of sage advice and comfort. She played a major role in my growing up, and her death when I was eighteen was a personal tragedy for me.


My other grandmother was also a strong character, but in a different, and more negative, way. She endeavoured to rule her family to such an extent that she alienated their affections, and ended up as a very lonely old woman, still railing about their shortcomings. I felt sorry for her.


Grandmothers – when we are fortunate enough to have them – are often seminal figures in our lives. To a child, they represent a fount of wisdom and experience beyond that of our parents, and although often accused of over-indulgent “spoiling”, leave behind them – perhaps for that very reason – undying memories of being not only loved, but fully accepted by them.


Wise grandmothers – often great-grandmothers – feature in many of the classic fairy tales by the great Victorian writer George MacDonald, such as “The Princess and the Goblin” and “The Princess and Curdie”. Usually they are tucked away in a lofty turret of the castle, only reachable by a child with true discernment, where they sit spinning the warp and weft of the lives of those whose good fairy they are. In “The Wise Woman”, it is an isolated cottage on the moors where the grandmother-figure instils spiritual wisdom by placing the self-absorbed and surly children into ‘mood chambers’ where they undergo various revelatory experiences.


MacDonald understood the power of true feminine wisdom, long before the strident man- hating feminists appeared on the modern scene. If you haven’t read him, do – his Complete Fairy Tales are available in the Penguin Classics series – and reflect this Christmas upon the blessings the fortunate ones amongst us have received from our grandmothers.

The Pope's Christmas message

Pope Benedict XVI has said that saving humanity from homosexual or transsexual behaviour is just as important as saving the rainforest from destruction.
- BBC News.

Well, it's a nice change from 'Peace on Earth, Goodwill to all Mankind'.

In these dire times we are living through, is gay-bashing really the most important mission of the Roman Catholic Church – above reducing global violence, seeking an end to war, ministering to the sick, the hungry, and the homeless?

The New Testament Jesus is not recorded as having even mentioned homosexuality. Nowadays, it seems to be an obsession of his vicars on earth – a displacement mechanism which allows them to turn their pious eyes away from the real evils afflicting humanity.

This ex-Nazi Pope is either naïve or deranged. Hopefully, no sane person will take much notice of his ignorant and bigoted pronouncements. He was recently forced to eat humble pie for a clumsy attack on Muslims; now he owes an apology to those belonging to sexual minorities – though it is unlikely to be forthcoming.

I repeat what I said on a previous post: Ever since it lost its moral and temporal supremacy at the Reformation, the Catholic Church has been consistently hostile to the liberal, civilised values of the Enlightenment, to modernity, and to scientific progress.

My Christmas message to the Pope and his minions is: It’s time for you to join the turkeys, and get stuffed.

Anticant is indisposed

For the past week the Burrow household has been in the grip of one of the worst 'flu-type viruses we can remember. So much for the vaunted jabs we had in October!

Anticant has stayed thankfully in bed, occasionally tottering along to the computer to check mail, but incapable of doing much typing. Pre-Christmas preparations have been disrupted, and it will be a while before normal blogging service is resumed [whatever passes for 'normal' in the Burrow and the Arena!]

In the meantime we wish all our friends and visitors a bright festive season.

Rancid rant

The Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor, head of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales, has made an intemperate attack on secularism and what he describes as “a liberal society, hostile to Christian morals and values”.

According to the Cardinal, Britain shows signs of degenerating into a country “free of morals” because of its rejection of traditional values and its new emphasis on the rights of the individual, stoked up by “vocal and aggressive atheists”. The “unfriendly climate for people of all faiths” has [he says] united the country’s major faiths of Christianity, Judaism and Islam.

Catholicism, the Cardinal claims, has borne the brunt of this “liberal hostility” because it defends “absolute values” which it considers to be “fundamental pillars of a rightly ordered society”.

Almost needless to say, these “absolute values” include implacable Catholic opposition to liberal laws on abortion, homosexuality and divorce, and support for faith schools. He accuses critics of Catholic moral doctrine of being repressively intolerant, and asserts that the Human Rights Act denies the rights of religious groups to act according to their conscience and beliefs.

This utter codswallop really takes the biscuit. It is total "through the looking glass" thinking.

Ever since it lost its moral and temporal supremacy at the Reformation, the Catholic Church has been consistently hostile to the liberal, civilised values of the Enlightenment, to modernity, and to scientific progress.

Yet Catholics take full advantage of the social and technological benefits which this hated "liberalism" has provided.

In this day and age they are parasitic throwbacks, seeking to drag us all back to a pre-rational age.

Anyone doubting this should read Double Cross: the Code of the Catholic Church by David Ranan for a full exposure of their humbugging 'absolute values' and for the cruelty they all too often practise as opposed to the 'sweetness and light' which they preach.

True to form, the Pope’s headquarters at the Vatican would – according to the National Secular Society’s Newsline – prefer gay people to be executed rather than married. And it doesn’t want disabled people to be protected, either, in case that promotes abortion:

‘The full extent of the regressive nature of the Vatican under Ratzinger was made clear this week when it was revealed that the Vatican had opposed two United Nations resolutions aimed at protecting gay and disabled people from discrimination and death.

‘When France proposed a resolution seeking all nations to decriminalise homosexuality, the Vatican immediately said it would oppose the resolution. This is despite the fact that up to 70 nations still have legal punishments for gay people including, in some instances, the death penalty. In a number of Islamic countries such as Afghanistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Yemen, homosexual acts are still a capital offence.

‘The UN resolution is due to be proposed by France later this month on behalf of the 27-nation European Union. But Archbishop Celestino Migliore said the Vatican opposed the resolution because it would “add new categories of those protected from discrimination” and could lead to reverse discrimination against traditional heterosexual marriage.

‘“If adopted, they would create new and implacable discriminations”, Migliore said. “For example, states which do not recognise same-sex unions as matrimony will be pilloried and made an object of pressure. ‘

A strongly worded editorial in Italy's mainstream La Stampa newspaper said the Vatican’s reasoning was “grotesque”.

‘Franco Grillini, founder and honorary president of Arcigay, Italy’s leading gay rights group, said the Vatican’s reasoning smacked of “total idiocy and madness”. Mr Grillini said the resolution had nothing to do with gay marriage, but was aimed at stopping the execution of gay people in Islamic countries.

‘An editorial in Rome’s left-leaning La Repubblica newspaper said the Vatican’s position “leaves one dumbstruck”. Margherita Boniver, a leading member of Italy’s leftist Democratic Party, called it “alarmingly anachronistic”.

‘The gay rights activist, Grillini, said he feared what he called another “Holy Alliance” between the Vatican and Islamic states at the United Nations to oppose the proposed resolution. At a major U.N. conference on the family in Cairo in 1994, the Vatican teamed up with Islamic and Latin American countries to defeat an abortion rights proposal. In October, a leading Vatican official called homosexuality “a deviation, an irregularity and a wound”. ‘

The secretary of the UK’s Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association, David Christmas, described the statement as “ludicrous”. He said: “The accusation that it is in some way discriminatory to attempt to counteract the prejudice and hatred which exists in over 80 countries that outlaw same sex relations would appear to be yet another example of the Vatican turning logical thinking on its head.”

‘Mr Christmas pointed out that in nine countries or regions of countries the mandatory punishment for homosexuality is death by execution. “Isn’t the Vatican supposed to believe in the right to life?”, he asked.

‘Meanwhile, The Times has revealed that the Holy See also refused to sign a UN document last May on the rights of the disabled because it did not condemn abortion or assert the rights of foetuses with birth defects. ‘

The Vatican made its position clear as it marked the United Nations International Day of Disabled People. Archbishop Migliore said the Vatican could not accept a clause in the UN declaration affirming a right to “sexual health and reproduction” because “in some countries such rights include the right to abortion”.

‘The Italian left of centre Democratic Party said that coupled with the Vatican’s stand on gays, this showed a "return to obscurantism" under Josef Ratzinger.

‘Keith Porteous Wood of the National Secular Society said: “These two incidents expose the Vatican’s “morality” to be a sham. How otherwise could an organisation that purports to be a moral authority and whose current Pope’s first encyclical was laughingly entitled God is Love actually oppose measures to put pressure on states who execute citizens because of their sexuality? It seems that in some respects the Vatican has not moved on very much from some of the medieval atrocities for which it was so famous.”’

CATHOLICS - DON'CHA JUST LOVE 'EM?

Roll up, roll up!

In a newspaper interview clearly targeted at Private Eye’s Brownnoser of the Year award, the newly ennobled Lord Mandelson of Foye gushes that “Internationally people say to me, 'Your prime minister has been transformed. His standing has soared.' People really do look to him like some Moses figure who is going to lead them away from this economic mess to the promised land."

This likening of our dear Supreme Leader to an Old Testament prophet – and this one in particular – has occasioned some ribaldry on the blogosphere, where it’s been pointed out that Moses never actually reached the promised land, and one commentator expressed the wish that Gordo had never left the bulrushes in the first place. Anticant’s view is that Gordo doesn’t need to be Moses to get up our noses.

I’m not sure where Foye is - possibly a twee version of Fowey? - but in Lord M’s case a double ‘ll’ has obviously been omitted after the ‘o’. However, his eagerly awaited further interventions of this nature will at least boost what little Yuletide wassail we are able to muster this year.

And he has provided Anticant with a brilliant idea for a seasonal competition in which Burrow regulars and Arena visitors are invited to participate:

WHICH BIBLICAL CHARACTERS DO UP TO THREE LIVING POLITICIANS REMIND YOU OF?

Anticant kicks off with Lord M himself as Joshua, because he sees himself as Gordo’s successor, destined to arrive at the promised land; Jacqui Smith as Salome, dancing before King Gordon with Damian Green’s head on a platter; and G.W. Bush as Belshazzar who ignored the writing on the wall and came a cropper.

Over to you!

Ignorance is bliss - official

According to the Catholic Bishop of Lancaster, Patrick O'Donoghue, university-educated Catholics have sown scepticism, dissent and confusion within Holy Mother Church and are responsible for the decline in attendance at Mass. Instead of following the Church's teaching, they are 'hedonistic', 'selfish' and 'egocentric' said the Bishop, who added that higher education has its dark side 'due to original sin'. You can read his full rant here.

Prominent Catholics in public life include Tony Blair and Mark Thompson, the BBC's director general, both of whom are Oxford graduates.

Bishop O'Donoghue was presumably 'educated' at some bog-standard Catholic seminary.

The former Professor of Divinity at Cambridge commented "What constructive purpose could possibly be served by such irresponsible and wholesale scapegoating of the educated, I have simply no idea".

Quite.

A potty proposal

ANTONY GREY writes:

Our first woman Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, has come up with a mind-bogglingly bizarre plan to criminalise paying for sex with a woman who is 'controlled for another person's gain'. This new offence will, according to the Guardian's political editor, "carry a hefty fine and criminal record, which could prevent those caught from getting jobs in sensitive occupations". The legislation will cover not only trafficked women ['sex slaves'] - who are indeed in need of effective state protection but all too often don't get it despite the stringent laws against such trafficking - but also those who have pimps or who are drug addicts prostituting themselves in order to pay off their dealers.

Unsurprisingly, such a broad definition is expected to include "the great majority of Britain's 80,000 sex workers" [source of figure unstated]. Ignorance of the woman's circumstances will not be a defence. The egregious Ms Smith has stated: "It won't be enough to say 'I didn't know'. What I hope people will say is, 'I am not going to take the risk if there is any concern that the woman hasn't made a free choice.' It would be quite difficult for a man paying for sex in the majority of cases not to fall under this particular offence." [my italics] But she is graciously refraining from imposing a universal ban on paid sex because some women argued that they did it out of choice "and it's not my job to criminalise that".

There you have it! Ms Smith and her advisers don't have the bottle to make prostitution illegal and have done with it - so they concoct a new failsafe catch-all crime which, like so many new offences introduced by this civil liberty-trashing New Labour government, removes the burden of proving guilt from where it properly belongs - the prosecution - and dumps the burden of proving his innocence upon the accused. So much for traditional British justice.

I have spent a large part of my life publicly arguing for freedom of choice in sexual behaviour between consenting partners, because it seems to me that nothing less accords with the dignity of the individual, however immoral or depraved some folk think their freely made choices are. I heartily agree with one of Margaret Thatcher's more sensible pronouncements, when she said: "Free choice is ultimately what life is about, what ethics is about. The whole of the case for freedom is a moral case because it involves choice. Do away with choice and you do away with human dignity."

A guiding light of my political philosophy has been John Stuart Mill's seminal essay On Liberty [1859] - now sadly neglected - in which he lays down the principle that 'the only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good in our own way'; that 'each is the proper guardian of his own health, whether bodily or mental or spiritual'; that 'mankind are greater gainers by suffering each other to live as seems good to themselves than by compelling each to live as seems good to the rest'; and that 'over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign'.

This was reinforced and brought up to date by the Wolfenden Committee's 1957 Report on Homosexuality and Prostitution which stressed the "decisive" importance of allowing individual freedom of choice and action in matters of private morality: "Unless a deliberate attempt is to be made by society, acting through the agency of the law, to equate the sphere of crime with that of sin, there must remain a realm of private morality and immorality which is, in brief and crude terms, not the law's business." Now, it would appear, Ms Jacqui Smith and her New Labour cohorts are bent on making such an attempt.

In 1972 the then Chairman of the Sexual Law Reform Society, Bishop John A.T. Robinson, delivered a lecture on The Place of Law in the Field of Sex in which he affirmed that the true function of law in a democratic society was "not to prohibit but to protect, not to enforce morals but to safeguard persons, their privacies and freedoms". I remain convinced this is right: privacy, protection and consent are the key issues in this area of personal behaviour.

It is always difficult to defend as harmless private consenting activity which is deemed immoral, offensive, or anti-social by others. It is almost impossible to get a hearing for the - surely plausible - view that not all consenting relationships between those above and below the legal age of consent are exploitive or damaging. It is equally hard to get a hearing for the far from absurd contention that many - if not most - prostitutes, male as well as female, take up their profession freely and willingly and enjoy their work. Yet this is the finding of more than one research study, and I myself have known such prostitutes who do not operate at the seedy or criminal end of the business. Yet telling this to the likes of Jacqui Smith and ideologically anti-prostitution feminists is like shouting at a brick wall. Whether it is true or not, they simply do not want to know.

Civil liberties and personal freedom have taken worse knocks under this New Labour government than at any time I can remember. How long will the too patient public continue putting up with this constant erosion of freedoms we took for granted throughout the twentieth century? It will be interesting to see.

To conclude, let me recall the words of John Addington Symonds, celebrated Victorian literary critic and bisexual: "Good Lord! In what different orbits human souls can move. He talks of sex out of legal codes and blue books. I talk of it from human documents, myself, the people I have known, the adulterers and prostitutes of both sexes I have dealt with over bottles of wine and confidences."