petermullen – Page 17 – All Things Considered

27 Jul

Is it weak to keep your trap shut?

Prince Harry says: “It is OK to suffer, but as long as you talk about it, It is not a weakness.”

I sympathise. He has had a an emotionally tough start in life since his mother was killed in a car crash when he was only twelve. I’m sure that sometimes it is helpful to talk about one’s sufferings, though I’m suspicious when it comes to the various “talking therapies.” I was once in a drinks reception in a livery hall in the City of London and found myself in conversation with a Freudian psychiatrist. He asked me what it was like to be a priest and I answered as honestly as i could. I said, “But it must be difficult to be a psychiatrist and have to sit there listening to someone’s outpourings for hours.”

He replied, “Who listens!”

It’s good to talk, they say. And perhaps the buttoned-up heart and the stiff upper lip are not always the best responses to our troubles. But over these last few decades we have swung so far in the other direction with our armies of agony aunts and counsellors. There’s something sickening about all this emoting, letting it all hang out.

I remember an accidentally hilarious, and very telling incident, from 1994. A posse of journalists was taken across to Normandy to report on the commemorations of the D-Day landings of fifty years earlier. The commemorations included some re-enactment of the battle. Upon their return, the journalists were offered counselling.

An eighty-year-old veteran commented: “I was there for the real thing in 1944, and we weren’t offered any bloody counselling! We’d have told ‘em where to stick it!”

I cannot stand the way we medicalise human pain and misery.

Actually, I try to take my guidance from a quite different source:

“He was oppressed and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth.” (Isaiah 53:7)

10 Jun

Don’t mention the civilisation!

Amnesty International yesterday published a report into racist incidents in Germany. Amnesty’s spokesman Marco Perolini said.”With hate crimes on the rise in Germany, long-standing and well-documented shortcomings in the response of law-enforcement agencies to racist violence must be addressed,”

You have to admire his self-confidence in his assumption that his international pressure group – not without its own political and sectional interests – has the authority to say what must happen to political and social policy in a sovereign nation state.

So far as I know, no Germans voted for Amnesty in state elections in that country – for the very good reason that Amnesty put forward no candidates to stand in the democratic process.

“The number of racially-motivated attacks has never been as high as now in the history of post-World War II Germany,” according to Selmin Caliskan, Amnesty International’s director in Berlin.

Perolini says, “Racist violence must be addressed.”

But how is it to be addressed? I suppose it depends what we mean by racist violence. This becomes pretty clear if you read further into Amnesty’s high-minded, and high-handed, report. The pressure group is complaining that Muslim immigrants into Germany are being roughly treated by some native German people; and they add that this is compounded by institutional bias against immigrants by the German authorities.

It is as well to get this clear from the start. Otherwise, you might think that Amnesty were referring to the racist violence perpetrated by Muslim thugs and rapists against German women. But no, they don’t mean that at all.

Perhaps they were referring to the institutionalised racist violence which Angela Merkel has committed against the whole nation by her encouraging a million Muslims to take up residence in Germany last year alone – and with the promise of many more to come?

Europe has historically fought wars to keep these aliens – these foreigners with a religion, culture and way of life at odds with and a threat to – Europe’s traditions and practices. To invite very large numbers of such aliens to come in and take root is to do racist violence on the grand scale to the whole country and, by extension, to the whole continent.

But of course, Amnesty are not talking about this either.

At present, Germany is not being defeated by alien foes. Germany, under Frau Merkel, is committing national suicide.

This is leading very speedily to the destruction of 1000 years of European civilisation

08 Jun

The Father of Lies

Has the Archbishop of Canterbury now descended so far into the realm of unreality that his utterances disqualify him from the holding of his high office? He does not speak out of Christian conviction but from a Panglossian mess of evasion and political-correctness.

Yesterday he declared Nigel Farage’s warning that European women are increasingly in danger of being raped by migrants to be “absolutely unacceptable.”

But Mr Farage spoke the truth.

Where has the effete and absurd Mr Welby been living these last few years?

Did he not read about the wholesale rapes and assaults by migrants in Cologne at the New Year? Does this pusillanimous buffoon, cocooned against reality by his own fantasies and wishful thinking, not know that, owing to the influx of Muslim migrants, Sweden is now second only to South Africa in the number of rapes?

I hesitate before intruding into the Most Reverend idiot’s hermetically-sealed conscience to offer a few contradistinctions:

Sexual violence in Germany has skyrocketed since Angela Merkel allowed more than one million mostly male migrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East into the country. The crimes are being downplayed by the authorities to avoid fuelling anti-immigration sentiments:

“The moment they [male migrants] see a young woman wearing a skirt or any type of loose clothing, they believe they have a free pass.” — Restaurant owner at a mall in Kiel.

“Every police officer knows he has to meet a particular political expectation. It is better to keep quiet [about migrant crime] because you cannot go wrong.” — Rainer Wendt, head of the German Police Union. “We, the police, are warning about a potential breakdown of public order this summer, when women who are lightly dressed are confronted by young male migrants.”

I could bore you with a score of such reports, including our own shameful refusal to acknowledge the rapes and other sexual assaults, similarly perpetrated over many years, on young girls in a dozen English towns and cities.

If it is the duty of every Christian to try to discern the truth and proclaim it, how much greater does this responsibility belong to a Prelate?

But this risibly inadequate man, this dissembler and false prophet, studiously refuses to notice what is staring the less distinguished among us in the face?

Outraged as we must be, we are yet reluctant to speak the words of Oliver Cromwell to Justin Welby:

“You have sat here too long for any good you have been doing lately… Depart, I say; and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!”

07 Jun

O brave new world that hath such people in it

There is nothing more heavenly than a summer day spent at a county cricket match. The only problem is that you may have to go through purgatory and halfway through hell to get there.

Yesterday I took the train from Eastbourne to Hove to watch the Sussex-Essex game. Opposite me sat three obese, shouty, fully tattooed and trashily bejewelled representatives of the underclass. I should say they sat only intermittently, for they kept getting out of their seats and running about in pursuit of their offspring, a lad aged six or seven.

To say that the boy was unruly would, I suppose, be an insult to what his minders would describe as his right do just as he bloody well liked. Or rather they would surely have said, what he f****** well liked, for the F-word was the predominant feature of their social intercourse: the carriage was, for instance, “…too f****** hot and too f****** crowded.”

The boy expressed his freewill and exercised his right to do as he f****** well pleased by running up and down and kicking passengers randomly. He had clearly been taught the merits of inclusivity and non-discrimination, for he was perfectly non-selective in those he chose to kick: old ladies, that posh-looking young woman trying to read The Guardian, other of his contemporary oiks – and me.

He even poked a nearby baby in the eye.

His minders were hugely entertained by his antics and cheered him on vigorously. The three of them and their kick-boxer offspring ate noisily, endlessly, crisps, chocolate bars other slimy, runny sweet stuff and some provender which I couldn’t identify but which smelled of sick.

Only their latitude concerning the boy’s foul conduct was not consistent. From time to time their approval would be withdrawn and, in their robust and stentorian vernacular, they would rise up – or rather waddle up sweatily – and assume the proper dignity of responsible parenthood, as in, “Cum ’ere you little f*****! Why woz you kicking that Mrs?”

Then one of the minders would smack him. The next minute another of them would say, “You’re your mam’s little prince, int yer!”

It was the boy himself I felt most sorry for. Alternately doted on and reprimanded, caught between cloying sentiment and sheer brutality, there was no possibility of his learning how to interpret human responses to his behaviour.

A little boy already facing a life totally demoralised.

Lurching from indulgence to terror and back again inside two minutes. And this pattern repeated, world without end.

What would he be like in fifteen years’ time? Like his parents, of course: his fat-legged dad, his savage, loud-mouthed mam and her chav of a sister – if it was her sister.

The whole carriage knew they weren’t underprivileged or socially-excluded or deprived – or, as we used to say, poor – for they announced several times to the whole carriage that they were going on a fortnight’s seaside holiday.

No, they weren’t poor. They were the products of our secularised educashun and welfare system.

06 Jun

Bishops are no laughing matter

You have to laugh…

THE Archbishop of Wales, Dr Barry Morgan, and seven other bishops are among 37 faith leaders who have signed a letter warning EU referendum voters against “undermining” the international institutions charged with tackling the great challenges of the day.

“Faith is about integration and building bridges, not about isolation and erecting barriers,” they wrote, in a letter to The Observer, published last week. “As leaders and senior figures of faith communities, we urge our co-religionists and others to think about the implications of a leave vote for the things about which we are most passionate. . . So many of the challenges we face today can only be addressed in a European, and indeed a global, context: combatting poverty in the developing world, confronting climate change and providing the stability that is essential to tackling the current migration crisis.

“We hope that when voting on 23rd June, people will reflect on whether undermining the international institutions charged with delivering these goals could conceivably contribute to a fairer, cleaner, and safer world.”

Surely it would be rude to laugh at these noble sentiments?

It would – if they were noble. And even if there was a smidgen of truth in them.

But the bishops are wrong to claim that leaving the EU would mean “isolation and erecting barriers.” Getting out of the EU customs union would tear down barriers between Britain and the rest of the world – with countries with which presently we are not allowed to trade, unless we pay prohibitive tariffs.

But more serious even than this – so perhaps we shouldn’t laugh after all? – is the bishops’ reference to “the things we are most passionate about.”

And what are these things? The Gospel, the Creeds, the Sacraments, Christian mission? Of course not. These men are bishops, after all. Their stated passions include “combatting poverty in the developing world.” Yes, but this is best achieved by free trade – a thing which the EU explicitly forbids.

Oh yes, and the episcopal fancy of the moment: “confronting climate change.”

The words “God, Jesus Christ, forgiveness, redemption” appear nowhere in the bishops’ letter to The Observer.

The bishops seem not to notice that the EU is not a Christian polity. In fact it is hostile to Christianity. It does not reproduce Christian symbolism in any of its documents, publicity, logos etc. Its political morality is not based on The Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount, but derived from the doctrines which appeared at the French Revolution, particularly the atheistic doctrine of universal rights.

The EU is militantly secular.

But then so are our bishops

02 Jun

The Incredible Shrinking Church

The Anglican boat is still heading for the demographic rapids.

Official figures just announced say that between 25% and 40% of full time stipendiary clergy are aged over 60. Only 3.4% of all clergy are from black or ethnic minorities. In his commentary, the Church of England Director of Ministry, Julian Hubbard, writes: “While the number of stipendiary ordinations showed a welcome increase between 2012 and 2015, this is not sufficient to redress the gathering effect of clergy retirements predicted over the next ten years.”

He added, “The statistics on the age and ethnicity of clergy show that we still have some way to go to ensure that the whole cohort fully reflects the demographics of the wider community.”

Mike Eastwood, Director of Renewal and Reform, the Church of England’s main response to falling church attendance, said: “These figures support what we have been saying about the need for renewal and reform in the Church of England. Renewal and Reform is about a message of hope, through changed lives and transformed communities, as people discover their vocation to love God and serve others. Renewal and Reform is not a top-down project to fix the church, but a narrative of local hope in God shared throughout the church. As part of Renewal and Reform, we are currently consulting on how we better release the gifts of all Christian leaders in church and wider society, whether ordained or not.”

As a priest with 46 years service, let me try to interpret the ecclesiastical spin for you.

In a word, Mr Hubbard has looked in the cupboard and found it to be bare. These numbers mean that the Church of England is very shortly going to be desperately short of full time, decently educated and properly trained priests. I will come back to the decently educated and properly trained aspect in a minute.

First, we notice the Church’s politically-correct obsession with racial quotas. St Paul said, “In Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek,” but the talkative old tentmaker did not foresee the preoccupations of the modern C. of E. Why this obsession with colour and racial origins? In Mr Hubbard’s contorted language, why should “…the whole cohort fully reflect the demographics of the wider community”? Why should the racial origins of the ministers be precisely proportionate to those of the parishes they serve? Everyone walking about has a brain (we suppose), yet hardly any of us are brain surgeons. Millions take the tube every day, but few actually drive the trains. And the euphemistic phrase “positive discrimination” cannot disguise the fact that the obsession with racial quotas is itself an example of racism.

Mr Eastwood’s verbose exposition of the policies of Renewal and Reform are all blather and bluster – a species of what in RAF slang was always known as “flannel.”

His peroration about the “…better release of the gifts of all Christian leaders in Church and wider society” is a glossy way of saying that in future the cash-strapped Church will resort to appointing unpaid layfolk to do the work presently undertaken by the stipendiary priesthood.

This will, of course, involve a further dumbing down to follow that which has been the norm in the C. of E. over the last forty years. When I was training for the ministry, some ordinands took degrees and higher degrees in theology and philosophy. But the minimum educational standard was impressively high, consisting of the 13 papers of the General Ordination Examination (GOE) – affectionately referred to as God’s Own Exam. There were 3 papers on Old Testament and 3 on the New; two on doctrine, another two on history, one on liturgy, one on pastoral studies and a final one on Greek.

Since that time, there has been a relentless falling off in which all kinds of ad hoc training schemes have come and gone, with the result that most clergy under the age of 55 know very little theology. Most of them have never so much as opened The King James Bible and The Book of Common Prayer, let alone used those books which used to be the head and cornerstone of English Christianity. The worst of it is there now exists – under the shibboleth of “anti-elitism” – a perverse institutional pride in knowing nothing.

Under all the spin, smoke and mirrors, the truth is that congregations will continue their precipitous fall and increasingly be taught and ministered to by people who are hardly qualified for the task.

31 May

Darkness Visible

We have a terrific capacity for producing trash: nearly everything in Tate Modern, so-called Britart, “poetry” so banal it wouldn’t even serve to be adapted for the chorus in a happy-clappy “worship song”; voyeuristic nuts ‘n’ sluts shows and such as Britain’s Got Talent and Strictly Come Dancing for pleb telly; and, as a constant backdrop – like a toothache – to daily life, ubiquitous audible filth in the form of amplified electronic pop music; and everybody in thrall to self-promoting narcissists such as Prince and David Bowie.

All this is bad enough, but what is truly satanic is our penchant not just for producing wall-to-wall muck, but infiltrating work of outstanding quality and perversely appropriating it to the general junk culture. This is the gesture – akin to sprinkling a Rembrandt painting with bleach or pissing in the chalice – which turns out a version of Don Giovanni with a cast of leather-clad punks and druggies in a New York skyscraper apartment or importing pop and rock into The Promenade Concerts.

Here, for example, are a few extracts from a review by Vicki Power, The Daily Telegraph’s TV critic, of a recent BBC production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream:

“The director has re-invented the play as a children’s action adventure full of scary fairies, chase scenes and rousing Indiana Jones style music…Theseus is rebranded as a dictator and the warrior Hippolyta is his prisoner rather than his willing bride…he has also taken a scythe to the text and reshaped lines…the action fizzes along…the verse-speaking is uneven…”

Now what I find interesting about this review is that the Telegraph’s critic doesn’t conclude: “So it’s crap then – an atrocity.”

She entirely approves of this scurrilous travesty: “It is a production that might well direct a younger generation to the Bard.”

How could it possibly do that, except by false pretences? Ms Power thinks that we might be attracted to Shakespeare by what is not Shakespeare; by something to which Shakespeare is the antidote.

This sort of corruption is everywhere perpetrated by those who think it clever – charlatans who, being unable to appreciate and give thanks for the wonderful creations of artistic genius, resort to doing dirt on them instead.

Waste and void, waste and void. And darkness over the face of the deep.

28 May

The horse has bolted

Lord West, the former-First Sea Lord and Chief of the Naval Staff, has called for a blockade of the coast of Libya. He said that such a measure would require ten Navy frigates and destroyers, along with helicopters, drones and other intelligence and surveillance capability.

He added that the plan outlined by Prime Minister David Cameron to send one warship to the area was “not really the way to go about things. It’s no good having ships in the Mediterranean picking up refugees before they drown, because that actually is causing the problem to be worse.

“I know from the people smugglers in southern Nigeria that what they say to people is: ‘Give us your $2,000, we’ll get you across the Sahara, and put you on a boat. Here is a number, phone it on your mobile – that’s the Italian coastguard. You’ll be picked up by a British ship and taken to Italy.”

Lord West’s description of the immigration crisis is refreshingly at odds with the lies we hear constantly from our government and most of the mass media. According to the government, most of the non-EU immigrants to Europe are refugees fleeing war zones and places where they are persecuted. Everyone from Angelina Jolie to the Pope says we should make the immigrants welcome.

But most of the incomers are not escapees from wars and persecution.

Actually, it’s not only Lord West who is spilling the beans the government doesn’t want spilt. He gave the example of Nigerian immigrants, but Nigeria is not the only source of the massive influx.

Credit where it’s due: sometimes we hear snippets of truth, even from the BBC. On The Today Programme this morning, an African correspondent reported that she was standing “on a stunning hillside in Eritrea.” She then told us that last year 34,000 Eritreans arrived in Italy.

Why do they come?

“Actually, British foreign aid facilitates immigration. If you look around the hillside where I’m standing, you’ll see many houses with satellite dishes. Local people receive hundreds of television channels which feature news, documentaries and soap operas about the west and these portray a glamourised lifestyle which encourages Africans from a score of countries to try to get to Europe. These people are not the very poor: they have money with which to pay the unscrupulous traffickers.”

Isn’t it also likely that among the economic immigrants there will be jihadists and terrorists?

Of course. And we are rendering ourselves impotent to prevent their coming.

This presents a dangerous threat to the lives of our civilian populations, and it is scandalous. It is more than scandalous: it is treacherous on the part of our government to frame no effective policy to stop it.

But in the great scheme of things, the terrorist threat is merely a side issue.

The main threat – but it is more than a threat, it is an actuality – is from what amounts to the latest in one of the periodic mass migrations of populations which revolutionise political realities and obliterate civilisations and cultures – such as the massive invasions of the eastern tribes as the Roman Empire declined.

The reality in such monumental shifts is the abolition of one way of life and its replacement by something that is alien.

With due respect to Lord West, it will take more than ten frigates, destroyers and a few helicopters and drones to stop it. The problem requires a whole new defence and foreign policy.

That noise you can hear is the sound of the stable door been slammed. Unfortunately, it is now too late in the day to halt the destruction of our European homeland.

22 May

“Mind your manners, St Paul!”

Archbishop Justin Welby has told Christians firmly that we should not “proselytise” or talk about our faith to non-Christians until they invite us to do so.

It is a pity that St Paul didn’t have the benefit of the Archbishop’s guidance before he set out – without being asked – on his three missionary voyages in which he founded churches among the pagans in such as Philippi, Ephesus and Corinth. The presence of the finger-wagging, politically-correct Mr Welby on the quayside before St Paul boarded his ship would have saved the Apostle a great deal of trouble: the thirty-nine lashes he received (five times), an attempt to stone him and his shipwreck.

How ironic that Welby should choose the season of Pentecost to issue his injunction for, according to chapter two of The Acts of the Apostles, this was the day when the disciples of Jesus experienced the rushing mighty wind of the Holy Ghost and tongues of fire upon their heads and immediately rushed – all uninvited – out into the Jerusalem streets to preach to members of every race under the sun: Parthians, Medes, Elamites, dwellers in Mesopotamia, Cretes and Arabians and all the rest.

If only the wise, admonitory and well-mannered Mr Welby had been there to say, “Never mind the promptings of the Holy Ghost, St Peter! Mind your P’s and Q’s! Wait till you’re asked!”

And if we go back a little earlier to the life of Our Lord himself, we can imagine – if only Welby had been there to quieten Jesus’ enthusiasm – his command “Go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost” would never have been given. Or at the very least Jesus would surely have toned down his command to something more polite such as, “Go and ask those pagans if they’d like to join an Alpha course! Tell them there’s red wine and pizza afterwards!”

Christian history would have turned out quite differently, if only Jesus had minded his manners.

But Welby’s verbal facility is not limited to the occasional sound-bite, such as “Don’t proselytise!” He is capable of quite extraordinary prolixity. How’s this for an example of what Humpty Dumpty called “Impenetrability”? In his Pentecost speech, he went on to say:

“I draw the line in terms of respect for the other; in starting by listening before you speak; in terms of love that is unconditional and not conditional to one iota, to one single element, on how the person responds to your own declaration of faith; and of not speaking about faith unless you are asked about faith.”

That is an utterance so syntactically obscure that Welby’s predecessor, the Great Obfuscator, Rowan Williams himself, would have been proud of it.

21 May

Is the Pope a Catholic?

Some words from a recent interview given by Pope Francis to the French newspaper La Croix make me wonder. He said:

“Today, I don’t think that there is a fear of Islam as such but of ISIS and its war of conquest, which is partly drawn from Islam. It is true that the idea of conquest is inherent in the soul of Islam. However, it is also possible to interpret the objective in Matthew’s Gospel, where Jesus sends his disciples to all nations, in terms of the same idea of conquest.”

The Pope also said he “dreaded” hearing about the “Christian roots of Europe” because they take on “colonialist overtones” and he called on European nations to “integrate” Muslim migrants into the continent:

“This integration is all the more necessary today since, as a result of a selfish search for well-being, Europe is experiencing the grave problem of a declining birth rate,” he stated. “A demographic emptiness is developing.”

What is the range of possible interpretations of these bizarre utterances? First, that the Pope has lost what marbles he had in the first place. Secondly, that he only joking. Thirdly, that he is the Antichrist. Finally, that he has spoken the truth.

I shall consider the last interpretation first. Did Pope Francis speak the truth?

No. There is not a shred of truth in any of his statements.

Jesus did not send forth his disciples “In terms of the same idea of conquest.” He said, “Go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.” (Matthew 28:19)

Is the Pope’s “dread” of hearing about Christian roots derived from “colonialist overtones”? Of course not. Christianity did not colonise Europe: Christianity created European civilisation, culture, art, literature, music and its fundamental social and political institutions.

What about his injunction to “integrate” Muslims into European society? Has the Pope not noticed that Muslims do not wish to be integrated into Europe: they desire only to conquer Europe, destroy it and recreate it in the image of the age old Islamic shambles.

My inclination, in the interests of trying to be as charitable as I can, is that Francis was only joking, or that he has indeed lost his marbles – though I wish I could rule out the third possibility: that he might be the Antichrist.

All Things Considered

Rev Dr Peter Mullen

Author Archives: petermullen