In which prattling Polonius gets the weekend off to a good start with a ripping yarn ...

Whenever the pond is feeling a little down, there's always the uplifting knowledge that the weekend will bring a new edition of the Catholic Weekly, as the lizard Oz's sabbatum issue is known ...

Some might take solace and comfort from the freely offered advice of a war criminal ...

But the pond is always suspicious of free advice, and loves a good bout of old fashioned Ming the merciless-ism, the whiff of the 1950s and picket fences ... even if the pond's own fence was made of sturdy Cyclone wire ...

Yes, yes, the Catholic church has scrubbed up ever so well during the recent Royal Commission hearings ...

Now some might marvel or wonder at the pond's addiction to the thoughts of prattling Polonius, but if you've never cannibalistically swallowed a wafer of flesh, how could you possibly understand?

If you've drunk a glass of red, a decent claret from the days when a claret could be called a claret, and imagined you were swilling actual blood, then you've adequately prepared and trained for a Polonius history lesson ...

As usual, there is an enormous amount to admire in Polonius's work.

As in the way he refers to Film Australia as a potent force for naughty history. 

That now ancient and lost body was knocked off in 2008 and you can find its detritus still for sale at the NFSA here ...

Well might it be said that if the "history wars" are a reality, then Film Australia lost ...

Then there's that reference to the Doc, which inspired the pond to dig out this note by Don Whitington in The Biz, 22nd January 1958 ...

Ah the good old days of rampant wrecking Catholics ...

Yes, the Doc had good reason to see enemies everywhere, especially given that the DLP was at heart and soul a front for the renegade, ratbag elements of the Catholic church ... now, it seems, if Polonius's words are any guide, seeking refuge, a blessing and redemption by hiding behind the frocks of the Sydney fathers, who, it seems, got it right, while Polonius and B. A. Santamaria and the rest of them got it wrong ...

As for the hoary old myth mentioned by Polonius, it only took a nanosecond to google this by a champion myth-maker, Father Alexander Lucie-Smith, a Catholic priest, doctor of moral theology and consulting editor of The Catholic Herald.

It is perfectly true that Catholics, being members of a Church that predates the nation-state by many centuries, and which crosses national borders, and owing allegiance to the Pope, a supranational leader, who is infinitely more important than any national one, and loyal as we are to the Chair of Peter, the oldest institution in Europe, which will be here long after countries like Britain have disappeared – Catholics, I say, are in favour of internationalism, not nationalism. 
Indeed, I would go further: nationalism is a form of heresy when taken to extremes. It is unsustainable to believe that one nation has a special mission from God, when Jesus Christ speaks of “all nations”, a phrase the appears on his lips on several occasions, most notably at the end of St Matthew’s gospel: 
“Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.” 
The idea of a national church is absurd; and the secular nationalism that is so often bolstered by religious nationalism is not only absurd but also dangerous. This means that to be Catholic is to be firmly in favour of European co-operation. The only question that remains, though, is how we can best bring about that co-operation. We all, surely, want European harmony: the end is not in doubt, only the means.

The good Father has many more points to make at The Catholic Herald under the header Nationalism is a form of heresy when taken to extremes ... but the pond can't tarry or dillydally, we must head off to read the rest of Polonius, and his worthy defence of the Dutch man who hates dykes ...

Good old Joe,  a sterling Adam and Eve man ...

Well that story about objective truth and delusional Catholicism is here, and in his day the good lad even had his own Facebook page ...

That page is here, and happily it linked to that Age story here ... which so upset prattling Polonius and which asked a simple question ...

Australia’s largest private-sector union represents more than 200,000 low-paid workers. So why is it so keen on selling them out while swanning off on moral crusades?

Well yes indeed, and the answer is, if they're good Catholics, they'll enjoy an afterlife on a cloud, perhaps with Ming the Merciless just across in another corner of heaven sipping on a claret.

As for where the world is heading, post-Joe?

Yes, the police are being employed as security officers for supermarket chains, so that the big chains might continue to remove check out operators and downsize labour costs as much as possible and instead get mug punters to do the work, and then get the cops to ping the mug punters who seize the chance to be a little light-fingered.

It is, in the classic phrase, a way of making workers redundant, banking the profits, and socialising the losses ...

There are so many other sublime matters raised by Polonius, like the way Joe managed to stay in power via "free and fair" elections, for some 36 years, which makes Polonius sound truly unhinged and delusional ...

But it seems everything's fair game when Catholics play and after all Joe was fighting for his belief in Adam and Eve ...

And now for a confession as to the real reason why the pond is a tad suspicious of Joe?

Well if you do a wiki here - careful of walri straying up from the south - you cop this encomium ...

Liberal MP Eric Abetz is quoted as saying "Joe de Bruyn is a role model of trade union officialdom. He is the type of official that gives trade unionism a good name."

You could have copped that by following the pond's link above, but the main point is that this jolly Joe is Erica approved. And that about says it all ... or at least all that's worth saying ...

And so to a cartoon, and this time in honour of Polonius's prattling from the arras, it's from ye olden Geoff Pryor back in 1998, and what do you know, Ming the Merciless is still enjoying that claret ... and if you believe that, the pond and the Dutch man who hates dykes would love to introduce you to Adam and Eve ...