Philopassianism

One of the many odd notions peculiar to the religious mindset is that pain is a good thing. This isn't the same as masochism, which allows that pain is fun, a source of gratification, etc. but does not, I think, claim any higher moral ground for what happens as a stiletto heel grinds down into a crotch (ouch!). When Paola Binetti straps that spiky mediaeval thing around her upper thigh, on the other hand, the rush of pain she achieves is somehow ennobling. And when JP2 gave himself a good flogging in the hush of the papal apartment he wasn't just being kinky - he was recharging his soul. That's why the word masochism doesn't begin to describe the saintly practice of getting a hit from suffering. So I was pleased to discover (from a review of Gilte Legende in the LRB, 3 December 2009) that there's another term for it, coined by Esther Cohen: Philopassianism. It's glossed by Barbara Newman thus: 'It differs from masochism in that pain is valued, not as a perverse source of pleasure, but as a moral and spiritual good'. So where does that put people like Mother Teresa, the subject - as you can see from the picture - of a new musical, who don't derive much pleasure from their own pain, but thoroughly enjoy that of others? It's not quite sadism, also a perverse source of pleasure, although it looks worryingly similar.

Maybe it's a case of Munchausen philopassianism by proxy.

Vatican update!

The Vatican has been having a bit of a rough time these past few days. News arrives from Poland that the 'miracle' needed to sanctify GP2 smells a bit fishy, news that has been roundly denied by B16. In 2006, it was claimed that the wandering Pole had cured a French nun of Parkinson's disease, described by GP2 as 'another sign of God's creativity'. Now it looks as though the nun might not even have had Parkinson's disease, suggesting that the creative one isn't God, but his earthly representatives. They'll have to fish around in the tub of other purported wonder cures to see what they can find. Maybe evangelist Benny Hinn has one he can spare, when he's finished talking to his divorce lawyers and counting his money.

As if this wasn't enough, tapes have just been published of conversations in which a Vatican chorister (correction: ex-Vatican chorister), a certain Thomas Chinedu Ehiem, known to his friends as 'Mike', has been pimping men at the rate of two or three a week for Angelo Balducci, a Gentleman of his Holiness (correction: ex-Gentleman of his Holiness), known to his friends as 'Brenda', and deeply implicated in the latest wave of corruption scandals to fail to rock Italy*. Balducci's tastes are eclectic. Among the men that seem to have been procured by Ehiem are two black Cubans, a RAI dancer and a professional footballer, not to mention assorted seminarians. Still, he doesn't seem that easy a man to please. Ehiem's sidekick, Lorenzo Renzi, apparently told one of the lucky hookers to take the Viagra and not to touch the Gentleman's (correction: ex-Gentleman's) balls. Fussy! In a possibly related item, the Ratisbonne boys' choir appears to have been a hotbed of under-age sexual abuse under the direction of B16's brother, Georg, who ran the show from 1964 to 1993. Now why does the name Georg ring a bell?

And there's no cake without a small and delectable fruit perched on the top. In this case, the cherry is the news that money squirrelled away by Diego Anemone, one of the leading figures in the Italian Civil Protection corruption scandal and currently enjoying the comforts of a cell not that far from Balducci's, has been found in the safe of don Evaldo Biasini. (That's don as in catholic priest, not mafioso. I know, I know...) Something like a million euros was hidden behind a religious painting in the office of the priest, who just happens to be responsible for the financial affairs of an organization called the Congregation of the Missionaries of the Ever-so Precious Blood of Jesus. Where do I start?

* One of these facts about Balducci isn't true. Guess which!

Nice one, Pat

I haven't posted a video by Pat Condell recently, so here's his latest.

Sniff, sniff

First item on the lunchtime news programme on RAI 1 today was a hurriedly organised photo opportunity for Berlusconi and Benedict 16 at Rome's second airport. B16 said it was a 'joy' to see Berlusconi, who responded with a cheesy grin and a comment about 'racing through the air' to greet the befrocked one, as though he'd flown there under his own steam, and not in a ruinously polluting plane of the kind he normally uses to shift his harem from one villa to the next. You'd have expected B16 to follow up this greeting with a few words on his latest edict (the word bull comes to mind, although it isn't immediately associated with papal), the one about the havoc wreaked on children by divorce and extended families. I'd have thought that a fair amount of havoc had been wreaked on children by catholic priests, but that's by the by. Still, there he was, the supreme head of the catholic church and noted theologian, tête a tête with a head of state, a divorced man who's about to be divorced by his second wife for consorting with minors, a man with a family so extended its limits remain unknown, a man who apparently phoned his pimp in Bari at least ten times a day before said pimp hit fan. Which moral figurehead would miss a chance like that to set a poor erring sinner on the straight and narrow? Well, B16 for one.

They talked about the credit crunch.

The right of the strongest

There's a typically Italian kerfuffle going on here at the moment about the authorisation of Ru486, the pill that induces abortion. It's used pretty much everywhere in the developed world, but Italy's taken its time about saying yes, for obvious reasons. It's a political issue here (yawn), which is what women tend to become when their bodies,and their right to make decisions about them, are involved. I'd call the issue ideological but that gives too much weight to the knee-jerkiness of most of the reactions here, in the world of opinion-makers, inside and outside the Vatican, if such a space as 'outside the Vatican' exists in Italy in anything but the most virtual sense (i.e blogs). Because it isn't ideological at all; it's a question of who swings what, and where. It's party lines and party funding and who gives a flying fuck about individual women and their complicated individual lives?

For some people, for example, doctors and cardinals and their various acolytes and dependents (politicians), the use of the pill 'banalizes' abortion. At this point, it might not be a bad idea to cut the crap and introduce the proviso that legal abortion is available as long as it's accompanied by a public flogging and a rather severe haircut. That way the woman won't regard it as 'banal', and will presumably think twice before having sex. Because naturally, before having sex, she'll take into account the fact that she might be able to avoid a surgical procedure and replace it with a slightly less invasive sort of medication. Good God, who wouldn't risk it, knowing that? I'm surprised Papi Silvio doesn't slip a pill into the bustarella he gives the whores he entertains in his many villas. Banal, schmanal, as long as she doesn't do a paternity suit. The chance, as they say, would be a fine thing, despite Berlusconi's latest crack that he may not be a saint, but he fucks like a god. (Yes, this is the Italian premier speaking...)

But my favourite is the comment made by Bagnasco. He's the cardinal who took over from God's ferret a couple of years ago in a PR attempt to soften the rigour of the Prada-clad One, who is currently nursing his over-stressed wrist somewhere comfortable. In the photograph above, he's the one in the red sash sucking up to the boss, in white. They're quite a picture, surounded by all that sombre but not unsexy black. These colours wouldn't matter, but they have a hierarchical significance, rather like judo. And that's what makes me laugh about Bagnasco. His reaction to the decision to allow the use of the pill was to express his bitterness that it endorsed 'the right of the strongest'. Coming from a democrat this just might have had some weight. It's certainly true that a pregnant woman is 'stronger' than a foetus, if only because she's a reasoning autonomous being and not a mere cluster of cells. Coming from a man at the highest ranks of a rigidly hierarchical structure that regards all women within its bounds as lesser beings, deprived of decision-making power and doctrinal choice, a structure that will do all it can to reduce women outside its bounds, who don't even share its faith, to the same level, as unspeaking, unquestioning vessels of God's word and man's seed, it's no longer laughable. It's obscene.

Succour, always succour

No dears, he's broken his wrist.....

(My thanks for this wonderful image to Miss Magnolia Thunderpussy.)

One hand clapping

You've been waiting for me to post some nasty little comment about the Pope's fractured wrist, haven't you? Some spiked gratuitous remark about repetitive strain injury. A snide reference to the lovely Georg, at the holy one's side. The fact that it was the first story on the national TV news here in Italy. Maybe a jibe about the speeding nun, with the two in the back, rushing to succour his infallibility in what the Guardian bizarrely calls a 'mercy dash'. Well, I'm sorry, but I'm going to disappoint you. This post is merely to announce that I've finished a short story that's been on the boil for some time and that I'm very happy with it. Thank you.

His right wrist. Hmm. No more Roman salutes for a while then, Benny?

Hohum

Evidence

A couple of nights ago, while reporting in its usual brown-nosing way on Ratzinger’s visit to France, Italy’s TG2, the state-run evening news programme, talked about the 'appearance' of the Madonna at Lourdes. Except that, the way it was said, there weren't any inverted commas around appearance. And I didn’t hear any of those qualifying words like ‘claimed’, or ‘presumed’ or, well, ‘possibly never happened’. Apparently, for Italian state television, she really did appear. The physical presence of a woman who’s been dead for damn near two thousand years in a small French town one and a half centuries ago is a fact. Like Russia invading Georgia, or Berlusconi representing Italy at G8. (Hmm.)   

This was followed by an account of a recent 'miracle'. There was an interview with the head of some preposterous religious organization set up to ensure the validity of religious miracles who said that, yes, this was a miracle. Apparently we’re supposed to believe the man because many so-called religious miracles are shown to be false, which makes this one true. Next thing, we’ll be asking Russell Davies if being on the cusp really makes a difference to the way we relate to Sagittarians. Publish Post

Contempt

Italian actress, comedian and satirist Sabina Guzzanti's in trouble. The last time old broom (read: Berlusconi) swept clean (read: ensure that all critical voices on state television had their contracts pulled from under them) she must have been on sabbatical somewhere. Since then, though, she's made her film about the state of Italy under the rule of B., entitled Viva Zapatero and has generally mouthed off against the corrupt old charlatan, so it was fairly obvious she'd be next in line for the censor. 

This time, though, Baldy didn't swing his own axe, but persuaded someone in Rome's public prosecutor's office to do it for him (OK, I may be simplifying things here. He might not have fingered collars himself. Hey, it might be a zeitgeist thing. As in, we're all neo-fascists now...). And the person whose dignity is being defended isn't Berlusconi, but Joseph 'Prada' Ratzinger.

After a speech at a public meeting earlier this summer, in which she predicted that within twenty years the Vatican CEO would be getting buggered in hell by some very active faggot-devils, Guzzanti's been accused of something called vilipendio verso il papa. This translates as "contempt towards the pope", and actually appears to be a crime. Guzzanti could be fined or, given the mood of the country at the moment, go to jail. 

Jail for having made the sort of crack satitìrists in Rome and elsewhere have been making against the rich and powerful for millennia. And who's defending her? Apart from Dario Fo? Certainly not the Partito Democratico, one of whose leading mealy-mouthed lick-spittle toe-rags, Dario Franceschini, announced that there was no need to punish Guzzanti in legal terms because she had already been condemned by civil society. Says who?

What Guzzanti said (and, believe me, it works one hell of a lot better in Italian) is no more vulgar than Aristophanes. Or Shakespeare. Or Dante. Good god, it's not as though the man's more worthy of our moral respect than any other un-elected pedagogue with a degree in astrology (sorry, wrong -ology) and a cracker of a private secretary. 

Relax, girl. It'll hurt less.

The fruit - and peel - of love

From today's Guardian:

Young Catholics attending World Youth Day celebrations in Sydney may find themselves swamped with offers of free condoms after a court overturned legislation giving police the power to arrest anyone who "annoys" pilgrims.

Annoyed? I'm sure the many thousands of young people who used condoms - and left them to be found - during JP2's speech at World Youth Day in Rome would have been only too grateful to have had them provided free of charge.

Vulgarity

Remember Giuliano 'Tubs' Ferrara? Obese man wobbling naked along a beach to rescue foetuses? Ex-communist, turned foot-servant/mouthpiece/toe-rag to Craxi (corrupt ex-PM, dead in luxurious Tunisian exile on the run from justice), then Berlusconi (currently rewriting the Italian judiciary system to avoid a similar fate), and now Ratzinger (I say no more). A man whose deepest instinct is to run to the support of the strong. His latest attention-seeking exploit is to ask people to leave bottles of water outside the hospital where a woman called Eluana Englaro has been lying in a vegetative state for the past 17 years. Her father has finally obtained permission to remove the tubes that have been providing the body of Eluana with food and water since a car accident in 1991. You'd have thought a little respect was due to a man prepared to fight for his daughter's right to die (something she did - to all intents and purposes - almost two decades ago). But you've have reckoned without Ferrara. A man for whom one family's tragedy is another's photo-op.

Still, it looks as though Tubs - after his mind-boggling failure to win a seat in parliament - has just scored another resounding own goal. At the last count, and despite TV news coverage to the contrary, no more than a dozen bottles of water had been left at the hospital. And most of those were half-litres.

James on pontiff

In his LRB review of the first two volumes of Henry James's collected letters (The Complete Letters of Henry James, 1855-72: Volumes I and II edited by Pierre Walker and Greg Zacharias,) Colm Toibin quotes from a letter James sent to his sister, Alice, on Pope Pius IX:

‘When you have seen that flaccid old woman waving his ridiculous fingers over the prostrate multitude & have duly felt the picturesqueness of the scene – & then turn away sickened by its absolute obscenity – you may climb the steps of the Capitol & contemplate the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius.’

Plus ca change... Unless of course Marcus Aurelius is intended to represent the glories of an independent and secular state, in which priests were allowed to advise but not to rule.

Dear Editor

I thought I'd write to La Repubblica to point out that the rest of the world (pace the horrified wailing of the Italian media) is actually not that interested in Ratzinger's failure to show at la Sapienza. On the assumption that it won't be appearing in tomorrow's edition, this is what I wrote:

Contrariamente a quanto detto da quasi tutti i giornali e telegiornali italiani, la rinuncia del papa di presentarsi all'inaugurazione del anno accademico della Sapienza ha avuto pochissimo risalto nei media internazionali, almeno quelli di lingua inglese. L'assenza del papa, per motivi squisitamente politici, e lo scompiglio creato all’interno del mondo politico sono affari che riguardano il Vaticano e il governo italiano e poco altro. Meglio così? O l'amore proprio nazionale vuole che anche i piccoli disaccordi di famiglia attirino gli occhi del mondo intero?
(Contrary to what has been said by practically every Italian newspaper and programme, very little attention has been given by the foreign press to the pope's decision not to appear at the inauguration of the academic year of the Sapienza. The pope's absence, for purely political reasons, and the upset this has caused in political circles interest the Vatican and the Italian government and practically no one else. This is no bad thing. Unless, of course, Italian amour propre would prefer every family tiff to draw the attention of the entire world?)

If it isn't published, I will, of course, claim to have been censored. Even better, I might just withdraw the letter first and then claim to have been censored!

Papal bull part two

Well, would you believe it? Ratzinger's decided that his presence at La Sapienza would be 'inopportune'. It's hardly the first time his cowardice desire to avoid conflict has overruled his spiritual, and political, responsibilities. Less than a month ago, he chose not to receive the Dalai Lama for reasons that had very little to do with religious divergence and everything to do with Realpolitik. Who can blame him? It's what you'd expect from the leader of a tinpot state the size of a football field. Still, since when has 'inopportune' been part of the papal lexicon? If Jesus had been more 'opportune', just think, he might have avoided the cross and ended up dressed in gem-encrusted frocks and leopard-skin pillbox hats - or something very similar - like his most recent representative. He might have been able to issue diktats on just about everything from stem cell research to civic administration. He might have, but he wasn't. Never mind. The new man doesn't do self-sacrifice, or risk, or exposure to conflict, or open discussion. He's an expert, after all. He's the pope of fucking everything.

Oh yes. Italian state television devoted over half (16 minutes!) of its news programme (TG1) to this story. As if that weren't enough, it twisted the facts to suggest that the pope had in some way been prevented from appearing at the event. He chose not to come. Repeat. He chose not to come. How many times does this need saying? He chose not to come.

Blair babble

Confirmation that Tony Blair has decided to run Europe while waiting for Eggs Benedict to meet his maker (and I'd love to be there when that happens, assuming it ever does) and free up the Vatican CEO slot came yesterday, with a typically vacuous speech made in Paris to Sarkozy's UMP party. Its primary aim may have been to arselick, and upstage, Sarkozy (and I wouldn't be surprised if a bob or two didn't change hands either - Tony doesn't come cheap, even to friends), but it also indicated just how wide his political stance is. Basically he's prepared to boldly go pretty much anywhere that isn't tainted with socialism, as befits his new part-time job as £500,000-a-year adviser to JP Morgan. Not that Tony likes the words left and right; they're old hat, uncool, pas chic, or whatever term he now prefers. What Tony likes are words that don't mean very much at all - touchie-feelie words, buzz words. Words like future and past, as in: "'Europe is not a question of left or right, but a question of the future or the past, of strength or weakness," or today and yesterday, as in: "'It's about today versus yesterday. Less about politics and more about a state of mind; open as opposed to closed." I'm not sure to whom this kind of fatuous waffle is supposed to appeal, but it's a frightening thought that a meretricious warmonger like Blair might actually be allowed to govern the European Union, particularly now that he's sworn allegiance to a small but irritating non-member state that contributes nothing to the continent but seems to feel it has a right to dictate EU policy.

Pontification

Ratzinger's campaign against Italy's newly-formed Partito Democratico (PD) continues apace. Not content with planting his emotionally warped moles (read, self-mortifying Paola Binetti and the other so-called Teodems - though what they understand of theology or democracy is anybody's guess) into the heart of a party that continues to represent, numerically at least, the last gasp of the long and often great tradition of Italian communism, he used an address to the Roman administration yesterday to deliver a direct attack on its leader, Walter Veltroni.

God knows, I'm no fan of Veltroni, nor of the PD, but it's pretty rich when Ratzinger accuses the city's administration of allowing Rome to fall into a state of gravissimo degrado. He was probably too busy fiddling with Georg studying theology to notice what Rome was like twenty-odd years ago, under the rule of the inept and effortlessly corrupt Christian Democrats backed by the Vatican, but I remember it well: dirty, degraded, inefficient, unkempt, stationary. It's true that a lot of Veltroni's reforms have been cosmetic, but hey! a little lip gloss and mascara is no bad thing. More to the point, Rome actually feels like the capital of Italy in a way it never did, especially as its only rival, Milan, slides into squalor and neglect, personified by the sadly abandoned state of its central station.

Ratzinger says the city doesn't guarantee the safety of its citizens. According to a recent survey, Rome is the safest major city in Europe. But what are facts to the merchants of revealed truth? He says that Rome has problems of homelessness, low wages, social inequality. He says this from his usual pulpit, dressed in his usual finery, exempt from VAT, the recipient of a slice of Italian tax money that would make a whore blush. He doesn't say it because he cares (he cares? come on!), but because it's what his real supporters - Italy's centre-right - want to hear. He's set his sights so low he's now an unofficial part of the opposition. He's there with Sandro Bondi (ex-communist) and Michela Vittoria Brambilla, Berlusconi totty, rooting around in the political muck for the odd truffle.

And what's the solution? (Apart from blocking in its tracks a party that might - just might - manage to reform Italy.) That's right. The family. And what kind of family? Right again. The kind based on marriage between a man and a woman. So let's run through this again. Homelessness, poverty, inequality? All it takes to solve them is to stop gay couples having any kind of rights at all. It's all so simple, you wonder why Jesus didn't think of it.

Blair-faced devotion

Well, Tony won't be answering his elders and betters back any longer, I imagine, now that he's finally thrown his mendacious lot in with Vatican Inc. It's only a stone's throw, by helicopter, to Tuscany, after all, and presumably he'll be making himself useful about the place until God makes direct contact. Let's face it, how long can the current CEO hold down the job? By the time Tone's sorted out the Middle East and ditched the bitch (the Sacra Rota, natch), he'll be more than ready to slip on those Prada pumps and get his ring well buffed. And no more foolish promises over dinner, right, Tone? This time it's to the death.

Combs, poodles, sunglasses, white silk scarves

Franco Zeffirelli, ageing film director, thinks the Pope needs a makeover, according to a short but sadly riveting piece in today's Independent. Apparently, Eggs Benedict is too cold and too showy. Unlike cuddly, downbeat Franco.

Borges described the Malvinas war as two bald men squabbling over a comb. I wonder what he'd have had to say about this potential tiff. Two toothless poodles fighting over a boner? Of course, the pope of fucking everything might, just this once, have the dignity to not respond.

I'm expecting an official statement from the Vatican as I write.

Pope duck

Tempted? If making your own holy water (just immerse pope duck in bath!) doesn't grab you, try some of the other goodies Miss Poppy has in stock. (The Handzoff anti-masturbation cream looks like a real bargain.) Go on! You won't regret it!

And if you do, it'll be too late.