Day 97 of MUC and Day 50 of MOC, and an almost forgotten Polonial prattle tastes all the sweeter when rescued from the bottom drawer ...

The pond almost missed prattling Polonius this week.

The reptiles banished him to an obscure corner of the lizard Oz ... even teh google didn't think he warranted a picture in its splash ...

This would have been a pity for all the Polonius fanciers who flock to check out the dull plumage of this antiquated bird each week ... because Polonius was intent on proving, in his own humble way, that other religions do like to preach hate, just like radical Islam, and there's nothing like a radical Xian to trot out false equivalencies and sublime historical nonsense ...

But there's no point arguing, there's just the pleasure of the read ...

Now there are many fine and splendid bits of revisionism in this piece, but perhaps the most notable is the line that the Catholic Church has always regarded pedophilia as a serious sin.

And yet, both within the community at large and the Catholic Church in particular, they did things differently in the 1950s and the 1960s.

Polonius, for example, routinely bleats about the behaviour of Professor Richard Downing back in the 1970s and his pleading for understanding in relation to the urges of pederasts.

Polonius frequently uses this as a pathetic stick to bash the ABC, and as a way of distracting from the actual deeds of the Catholic church, but then, that's really just a way of reminding us of the magical power of the chameleon to change colours and arguments on the spot.

Others have a little more understanding of those times and why they happened ...

(And more at the ABC here).

But of course Polonius is never that much interested in insight or truth, or the slow and belated realisation of the enormous harm being done, here and in many other countries ... not when there's an institution to defend, and a valiant crusader peddling half-truths and distortions required ...

As for that bit about homosexuals, perhaps the pond should revert to the official catechism ...

(More here).

Indeed, indeed, no yucky fucky for these objectively, intrinsically disordered folk. Under no circumstances can they be approved of.

But what about communion?

Oh indeed, indeed, talk about keeping the company of hair-splitting Jesuits, and there's more here of the funny mark-up, but it's time to revert to prattling Polonius, valiant radical Xian:

Indeed, indeed. 

You can find the names of the signatories to the Lateran Treaty at the NYRB in The Pope Who Tried, which for the most part is behind the paywall, but which just has time to sneak in the Catholic church's courageous early stand against fascism and Mussolini ...

When Mussolini seized power in his so-called March on Rome in October 1922, Achille Ratti, a scholarly librarian and former archbishop of Milan, had only recently become Pope Pius XI. The Catholic Church had not been particularly supportive of fascism during its rise. Mussolini, after all, had started out his career as an outspoken atheist and anticlerical firebrand. The Church supported its own specifically Catholic party, the Partito Popolare, or Popular Party, which competed with both the Socialists and the Fascists. 
To the pope’s surprise, on taking power Mussolini immediately began a concerted campaign to win the Church’s support. He used his first speech to Parliament to articulate his vision of a Fascist society that placed the Church at the center of Italian life: the Fascist Party would be the unquestioned authority in political life and the Church would be restored to its primacy over the spiritual life of the nation. Mussolini followed up his speech with a series of concrete actions: crucifixes were placed in every public school classroom, courtroom, and hospital room; insulting a priest or disparaging the Catholic religion was made a criminal offense; Catholicism became a required subject in public schools; and considerable state funds were spent on priests’ salaries, as well as Church-run schools overseas.

And so on, and naturally the pond would like to record the complete rejection by the Church of this shameless bribery by the Fascists ...



There, that didn't take long, did it? And such a detailed rejection, such stirring opposition.

And so on and on, through to a new pope and the unerring silence during the course of the second world war, and don't get the pond started on the religious in Germany ...

The National Government will regard it as its first and foremost duty to revive in the nation the spirit of unity and co-operation. It will preserve and defend those basic principles on which our nation has been built. It regards Christianity as the foundation of our national morality, and the family as the basis of national life.... (Proclamation to the German Nation, 1st February 1933).

Of course Hitler had a warped idea of Christianity and used show trials in 1936 and 1937 to attack the Catholic Church for being riddled with homosexuals, and so the pond would like to record the valiant way the Spanish church stood up against the Fascists ...

(And more pictures here, cannily assembled by fundamentalists of a different stripe raging at the antiChrist, the whore of Babylon).

And so on to Franco, and to the onion muncher ...

In the famous Melbourne University debate about the Spanish Civil War, he declared: “when the bullets of the atheists struck the statue of Christ outside the cathedral in Madrid, for some that was just steel striking brass. But for me, those bullets were piecing the heart of Christ the King”. He could engender a thrill in the heart that was part patriotism, part Christian idealism and part “fighting the good fight”. I was lucky to know BA Santamaria for the last 22 years of his life, to have attended diligently to his writing and speaking over that time and to have been the beneficiary of the occasional private lunch and long phone call. (and more here).

A thrill in the Francoist heart ...

Never mind, a pox on all their fundamentalist houses, from Islamics to evangelical to Catholic to Scientological, but if Polonius thinks prattling about Islamic fundamentalists should get Catholic fundamentalists off the hook, why then, let him lead the campaign for gay marriage during the forthcoming enormous waste of money when the Catholics are guaranteed to get down and dirty and stand shoulder to shoulder with the rest of the ratbag fundies!

And so with less than a week to go, the pond has been digging its contract out of the drawer ...

Ah, but only the other day, the pond discovered an ancient guarantee for a 23" Thorn TV. 

Try getting that, or the Catholic church, to show a good picture in these troubled times when there's so much steel striking brass ...