(Above: go team).
Anyone more than a little puzzled or disturbed by the media circus surrounding the Chilean miners should seek out a copy of Billy Wilder's Ace in the Hole (also known as The Big Carnival if you happen to think studio executives should change a title without consulting the writer/producer/director).
Made in 1951, it was a commercial and critical flop, but it has more than its fair share of moments, as Kirk Douglas plays a newspaperman determined to turn a cave collapse into a path back to the front pages. Douglas conspires for the rescuers to use a slower rescue method, so the story stays fresh for longer, helped along by the victim's wife, who sees a way to make a buck ouf of the gawkers who gather to watch.
Sure enough the media turn up in droves, like vultures to fresh potential slaughter, and the rescue site morphs into a carnival with rides and sideshows. These days, the only difference is that the resources to hand can turn it into a three ring circus ... 1700 journalists and crew and hangers on I heard second hand the other day ...
Well there's nothing we can add to Billy Wilder's portrait in 1951 of events as they unfolded in 2010, except to note that his vision's 59 years young, and is probably going to get younger each year for the foreseeable future as the line between news and 24/7 entertainment continues to blur ...
Never mind, good luck to the actual miners and the rescue team, and pity them forever more as the media and movie deals continue to persecute them for the next decade, and any innocence and joy they might have is destroyed under the microscope.
Meanwhile after a sprightly dose of The Rite of Spring last night - where would film music be without Stravinsky - it's time to whack somebody. Stravinsky is such a bovver boy that after a good belting at his hands, what with the braying horns and the frenzied strings, it's time to pick on a hapless member of the commentariat.
There's nothing wrong with that. We treat our military heroes that way as well. It's the Australian idiom: our way of popularising people who are important to us.
Cardinal George Pell was right to describe Mary as a recognisably Australian saint. She was, after all, born in Melbourne but died in Sydney.
Those who think the Catholic Church is over-centralised might reflect that while she was excommunicated by a South Australian bishop, the rule for her religious order was approved by the pope in Rome.
This is a sign both of a kind of immature provincialism in our culture and a serious ongoing prejudice against orthodox Christianity of any kind.
There is, of course, specific anti-Catholic prejudice, of the kind seen in the ridiculous treatment of Tony Abbott on ABC1's Four Corners when he became leader of the Liberal Party.
This kind of prejudice used to be called the anti-Semitism of the intellectual and its tired persistence in Australian culture is sad, not only because of the unfairness of the prejudice but because of the consequence it has of the media missing so big a part of modern life.
It is very good that our Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd has gone to Rome to attend the canonisation of Mary.
The Catholic Church, with more than a billion adherents, remains the most powerful Christian institution in the world.
It was one of Rudd's best decisions as prime minister to appoint an ambassador to the Holy See. The Vatican remains one of the world's greatest intelligence agencies, with personnel and insights in societies all across the world, far different from, and in many cases far beyond, the powers of any state agency.
Adolf Hitler planned to abolish the papacy and set up a separate pope in every country he ruled.
But I'm still not satisfied. Surely we need to knock the stuffing out of liberalism:
The church could certainly do with all the self-confidence it can get. Two things have harmed it greatly in the past half century. One is the drowsy liberalism it half embraced in a mistaken reaction to the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s. This has been pretty much washed out out of the official church now.
A liberalism that softens all differences, that abolishes almost all rules, that says one thing is as good as another, may be exhilarating at first in the sense of licence it brings, but ultimately it is enervating.
We are the outliers in global trends here.
On the other hand it is also true that in the most religious of Western societies, the US, it is not Catholicism but evangelical and Pentecostal Protestantism that are showing most vigour.
But the church is a central component of Western civilisation. All of the good things in our civilisation, from its greatest institutions to the unconscious grammar of its ethics, flow ultimately from the Judeo-Christian inheritance on which it is based, and which is welcome to and enriched by the inflow of people from sympathetic religious traditions.
The professional denouncers of Christian orthodoxy are trying a new experiment in their desperate search for a universal secularism, to create a society that lives permanently off the moral capital of its founding institutions, which it hopes finally to destroy. I'm not sure it can be done.
And who better than Greg Sheridan, with perhaps the silliest header and the silliest lead in for quite some time, as the media goes into a Mary McKillop frenzy.
Here's the header: Attack on Christianity will undermine society.
And here's the lead in:
The denouncers of traditional religion threaten the foundations of secularism.
That had me rolling in the aisles right away, along with the jaffas. And then lordy, the pure uninhibited liberal pleasure, we get straight into some of the silliest sentences going around.
How's this, or should that be, how's that?
The forthcoming canonisation of Mary MacKillop, who will become Australia's first saint, has been embraced in Australian popular culture.
As we do with all our heroes, we have made her something of a sporting legend. She is our first spiritual gold medallist. She ranks with Don Bradman.
As we do with all our heroes, we have made her something of a sporting legend. She is our first spiritual gold medallist. She ranks with Don Bradman.
Dear sweet gormless long absent lord. Religion as sport, and sport as religion, and Mary McKillop up there with Don Bradman, or perhaps Roy Cazaly, in there and fight ..
A spiritual gold medallist, and our first? Does Sheridan comprehend the vast stupidity of his mindless cant?
There's nothing wrong with that. We treat our military heroes that way as well. It's the Australian idiom: our way of popularising people who are important to us.
No, he's actually being very, very silly. And extraordinarily parochial:
Cardinal George Pell was right to describe Mary as a recognisably Australian saint. She was, after all, born in Melbourne but died in Sydney.
What on earth does that mean? How on earth does being born in Sydney and dying in Melbourne make you Australian? What about her honouring of a foreign power, the Papacy, as primary in spiritual matters?
I keed, I keed, it's always good to get the Protestant v Catholic football match going when we're operating at this level of tosh ...
For meaningless non-sequiturs, Sheridan is in top form:
Those who think the Catholic Church is over-centralised might reflect that while she was excommunicated by a South Australian bishop, the rule for her religious order was approved by the pope in Rome.
Reflect? On what? Reflect on Sheridan being a content free zone, or reflect on the way that the juxtaposition of a South Australian bishop and the pope in Rome is completely banal?
How's this for a variation?
Those who think the Coca Cola is over-centralised might reflect that while MacKillop was punished for low sales by her South Australian boss, the advertising for her new New Coke product was approved by the CEO in Atlanta, Georgia.
Well it makes as much sense and meaning, which is to say no sense or meaning at all.
Then there's the standard whinge, while writing in a major rag, with anti-Muslim pike and twist:
Christianity generally is massively under-regarded in Australia. More people go to church every Sunday than go to football, but the media coverage is hardly commensurate.
I cannot recall seeing Pell on ABC1's Q&A, yet there is a Muslim representative on about every fourth episode of that show. There's certainly nothing wrong with having Muslims on the show, but it's almost as if there is a policy that any mainstream Catholic Church leader is ipso facto boring, not to be listened to or simply not a suitable person to participate in the mainstream media.
Christianity generally is massively under-regarded in Australia. More people go to church every Sunday than go to football, but the media coverage is hardly commensurate.
I cannot recall seeing Pell on ABC1's Q&A, yet there is a Muslim representative on about every fourth episode of that show. There's certainly nothing wrong with having Muslims on the show, but it's almost as if there is a policy that any mainstream Catholic Church leader is ipso facto boring, not to be listened to or simply not a suitable person to participate in the mainstream media.
But Pell is ipso facto boring, and pompous to boot, if not utterly tedious, and he turns up every Sunday with a column in the Sunday Telegraph, and if the cilice and the self-flagellation and the scourging with willow branches isn't enough for you, you can read them all here, going right back to 2001. Or you can pluck out your eyes because they offend you. Your choice ...
If the church wants regular appearances on television, then at least get someone telegenic and engaging out there. Who'd want Pell, unless they consider television as a substitute for valium?
Dearie me, the inimitable paranoid Sheridan wants to draw a larger conclusion, in a way which can only be taken as a kind of immature provincialism:
This is a sign both of a kind of immature provincialism in our culture and a serious ongoing prejudice against orthodox Christianity of any kind.
Because you see a prejudice against orthodox Christianity doesn't make for immature provincialism.That's the turf for people who hate elites or inner west sophisticates, or the arts. I rather fancy connecting to the grand traditions of ancient Greek and Roman makes you rather worldly.
Or perhaps it's just a simple prejudice against Pell - and trust me, there were many in the church in Melbourne glad to be shod of him, and see Sydney take up the burden.
But come on, let's have the full paranoid Catholic fear and loathing rant:
There is, of course, specific anti-Catholic prejudice, of the kind seen in the ridiculous treatment of Tony Abbott on ABC1's Four Corners when he became leader of the Liberal Party.
What? Because Abbott was caught ducking the back door to see Pell and then caught lying about it, and never mind the way his beliefs interfered with his politics? You may as well scribble about anti-hairdresser prejudice in the treatment of Gillard's partner ...
This kind of prejudice used to be called the anti-Semitism of the intellectual and its tired persistence in Australian culture is sad, not only because of the unfairness of the prejudice but because of the consequence it has of the media missing so big a part of modern life.
Say what? How did anti-Semitism get into it? Anti-semitism is what Christianity - and the Catholic church in particular - doled out the Jews for centuries, as the killers of Christ. Have a read of Christianity and antisemitism in its very own wiki and see how many secularist intellectuals you can spot ...
We're all for special pleading, but when Sheridan plays the anti-semitic card in relation to Catholic prejudice, we demand the referee blow the whistle for full time. Or bring in a new Godwin's Law variant to regulate the free kick shoot out ... (oh those sporting metaphors, they're like, sooh religious).
Then comes the lick spittle suck up to the Holy See:
It is very good that our Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd has gone to Rome to attend the canonisation of Mary.
The Catholic Church, with more than a billion adherents, remains the most powerful Christian institution in the world.
It was one of Rudd's best decisions as prime minister to appoint an ambassador to the Holy See. The Vatican remains one of the world's greatest intelligence agencies, with personnel and insights in societies all across the world, far different from, and in many cases far beyond, the powers of any state agency.
Indeed. Well as we used to say in Tamworth, before we understood it was a dumb argument, if you love it so much, why don't you go live there, and scribble a column for L'Osservatore Romano ...
Sorry about that. Just because Sheridan's being a goose, there's no need to be a matching goose. Except of course that's the whole point of the pond. When the loonacy gets too much, let out a Stravinskian shriek, or howl, or growl ...
Finally of course, this sort of rant wouldn't be complete, a replete meal, without wheeling out the new militant atheists, and their dangerous ways:
Beijing certainly takes Rome seriously, whatever the views of professional church denouncers Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and their countless Australian imitators.
Beijing certainly takes Rome seriously, whatever the views of professional church denouncers Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and their countless Australian imitators.
Of course, all the great secular dictators have taken the church seriously and understood it is one of their most formidable opponents. This is partly because the universality of the Catholic Church transcends all national borders.
What? You mean it's some kind of United Nations, planning a world religion, a transcending of national borders, and that's where they keep the black helicopters as they move from a world religion to world government?
Okay, okay, settle, let's play the Godwin's Law card:
Adolf Hitler planned to abolish the papacy and set up a separate pope in every country he ruled.
Uh huh. The parallels between Christopher Hitchens and Adolf Hitler are indeed remarkable, and surely it's no excuse to note that Adolf Hitler had many loonatic thoughts (but you'll have more fun reading Religious aspects of Nazism).
But how about devoting an equal amount of time - say a line - on the way that Mussolini and the Catholic church managed to get along, and the time the Pope of the day began referring to Mussolini as a man sent by Providence. (here). The kind of Providence we can happily live without ...
Yep, let's wheel in Uncle Joe instead:
Joseph Stalin, the leader of the most consistently murderous atheist ideology of the 20th century, scoffed that the pope commanded no battalions. But it was the Polish pope, John Paul II, who was pivotal in the downfall of communism in Europe.
Well there's a bit of knock down history for you. And Chairman Mao sent to the back burner, and not one mention of the Crusades, or other holy wars ... Kill in the name of Christ, and it's all good. Kill as a murderous atheist, and it's all bad? Actually the most consistently murderous leader is god, seeing what she did by way of genocide ...
But I'm still not satisfied. Surely we need to knock the stuffing out of liberalism:
The church could certainly do with all the self-confidence it can get. Two things have harmed it greatly in the past half century. One is the drowsy liberalism it half embraced in a mistaken reaction to the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s. This has been pretty much washed out out of the official church now.
Yes indeed, and the Society of St. Pius X and its wacky zany followers of French archbishop Lefebvre have moved in.
Sigh, must be time to get out the hairshirt. Or a cilice:
A liberalism that softens all differences, that abolishes almost all rules, that says one thing is as good as another, may be exhilarating at first in the sense of licence it brings, but ultimately it is enervating.
Yes, yes, and it all started with the Beatles, or perhaps the Rolling Stones, or perhaps Elvis Presley, or perhaps Chuck Berry, or perhaps, who knows, with Shakespeare, or perhaps, who knows, with Petronius, or perhaps even Apuleius, since making out with a donkey is the kind of thing that would only appeal to Republicans these days ...
You know, when I wander down the streets, I can always pick the liberals. The young men have hair on the palms of their hands, and the women have a pale, gothicky colicky complexion to them, along with black around the eyes ... and they all seem so decadent, and enervated and listless and wretched. Truly liberalism is the abyss into which we must not fall ...
But what's this, a hint of saucy doubts and fears?
After all, Jesus Christ might have been just a man, in which case Dawkins, Hitchens et al are right. He might be just a prophet leading up to Mohammed, the last prophet, in which case Islam is right. Or he might be the son of God made man to redeem humanity's sins, in which case the Catholic Church is right.
One thing is certain: he couldn't be all three, and in the end you must make a choice. A religious liberalism that tries to avoid these choices leads nowhere.
One thing is certain: he couldn't be all three, and in the end you must make a choice. A religious liberalism that tries to avoid these choices leads nowhere.
Uh huh. So, let me get this clear, Dawkins and Hitchens, full blown atheists, can now be conflated with religious liberalism, and if you're a religious liberal, you agree that Jesus Christ might just be a man ...
Couldn't you be a believer who also happens to believe, in a liberal way, in live and let live?
Sorry, that'll lead you nowhere, or perhaps to billions and trillions of years, a whole eternity, roasting in hell for your soft core lickspittle, fellow travelling liberal ways ...
Meanwhile, it's back to the future for the rousing finale:
In Western societies such as Australia, it seems the Catholic Church is shrinking, though it is refreshed by new immigrants, is amazingly resilient and still commands the support to some degree of millions of Australians.
In many parts of the world, the church is growing strongly. Religion generally is a growing force almost everywhere except western Europe and Australia.
In Western societies such as Australia, it seems the Catholic Church is shrinking, though it is refreshed by new immigrants, is amazingly resilient and still commands the support to some degree of millions of Australians.
In many parts of the world, the church is growing strongly. Religion generally is a growing force almost everywhere except western Europe and Australia.
Actually in many parts of the world, secularism is growing strongly, and it irritates the hell out of the religious, so much so that mindless observations in relation to trends without statistical support are led as a matter of faith. Which is perhaps what you'd expect of someone who thinks of religion and spiritual leaders as a kind of cricket. Sadly it seems another eleven might be doing well in the batting:
We are the outliers in global trends here.
On the other hand it is also true that in the most religious of Western societies, the US, it is not Catholicism but evangelical and Pentecostal Protestantism that are showing most vigour.
Oh no, and I thought they were just a second eleven, seeing as how you can hardly call Mormonism Christian and they might be Bradman ...
But the church is a central component of Western civilisation. All of the good things in our civilisation, from its greatest institutions to the unconscious grammar of its ethics, flow ultimately from the Judeo-Christian inheritance on which it is based, and which is welcome to and enriched by the inflow of people from sympathetic religious traditions.
Which is of course the greatest lie of all, and no matter how many times a stake is driven through its heart, the cliche bounces up again, as large as life, and completely inured to other historical truths ...
Like the reality that the Greeks, especially the Athenians, who offered us so much by way of art, philosophy and politics, didn't have a Christian bone in their body, nor did early rampantRomans, who took over the Greeks and who offered much to posterity by way of law and art and thought and imperial models for the British and others ...
And it was the Christians who came along and stole so much of the licentious ways of the philistines, and spent much of the medieval ages keeping alive Green and Roman traditions and making them their own, and also stealing from the pagans, and so we still celebrate Santa Claus and the Easter bunny to this day ...
The professional denouncers of Christian orthodoxy are trying a new experiment in their desperate search for a universal secularism, to create a society that lives permanently off the moral capital of its founding institutions, which it hopes finally to destroy. I'm not sure it can be done.
Desperate search? I think I might just go to the beach this summer, and relish all the bare flesh, flesh that once would have been banned if the Church and fellow travellers like Sheridan had their way ...
As for destroying religion? Sadly, there's no chance of that, and we'll always have illogical, irrational, defensive, paranoid pieces scribbled about the wonders of the Catholic church.
Provided the church and its moral humbuggery is kept out of my life, and away from its ability to influence public policy, and its paws off the young and its hand taken away from the public purse, used to fund its indoctrination of the young, long may such articles be scribbled ...
Because if god runs a tight ship according to what's written in the good book, we'll all be meeting in volcanic hellfires one day ... munching on spaghetti as the one eyed monster confirms that L Ron Hubbard was right after all ...
But one thing's emerged from this particular farrago.
If all Sheridan's got to offer on religion is Pell worship and inanity, he should save it for his perspective on foreign affairs and head off to scribble a piece about the rescued miners. After all, a piece scribbled in Australia about events in Chile means he must be a truly non-parochial internationalist ...
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