I was in St Paul’s bookshop and holy repository beside Westminster Cathedral the other day choosing presents for a christening, a First Communion and a birthday. There were items for a catholicity of taste. They included lives of saints who were historical characters and others we now know who were invented. A great many of the historical ones were popes, archbishops, nuns and other virgins with a great concentration of Italians, French and Spaniards, and one outstanding Basque. Men and women who slept together and lived hardworking lives to put bread on their children’s tables seemed not to feature at all. You might sing a song about it – “If ya wanna getta heaven, getta Popemobile, cos a Popemobile has a magic wheel.”
The Basque Saint was depicted, not wearing a Basque, not this side of another Vatican Council, but the armour of a commanding soldier. So I imagine he had people killed in that career. The Jesuit Order he founded had slaves as late as the 1830s, or at least some its College in Georgetown Virginia held black men, women and children under the sweet yoke of the Society of Jesus. I didn’t read that in the Tripe and Treason column of The Irish Times and Tara Street Walkers’ Intellingencer.
A very curious figure also wearing armour, though she might have appeared more fetching in a Basque, was Joan of Arc. Not for her the long planning of revolution of the Fenians/IRB. She wasn’t damned to an eternal Hell by a Bishop Moriarty, but another Bishop had her burnt at the stake. It took many centuries for a Bishop of Rome to declare her a saint. That was in 1920. Had Germany won the Great War just ended, would Rome have been so bold?
Though the Repositary was Roman Catholic it was selling a hagiography of Nurse Edith Cavell, shot, justifiably, as a British secret agent, by the Germans in Belgium in October 1915. In October 2015 Dame Stella Rimmington, a former Director of MI5 confirmed that Cavell was a secret agent and the Germans were within their rights. In early 1916 THE TIMES was boasting how the execution of Cavell had been worth a couple of Army Corps to the British.
We w know that scores of thousands of men had their sense of chivalry deceitfully abused so that they killed and were killed. It might be a good idea to let Cavell’s statue remain in Trafalgar Square with a pedestal explaining the foul play indulged in by British governments this past century.
So, from contempt for the Catholic Church to a punchline of bad Brits; is there any topic which doesn’t lead to that punchline?
And anyway, if the Catholic religion is so objectionable, why participate in its traditions?
An anti-Brit who lives on the mainland, of course…
One “character” of a priest once caused consternation in my local church when he said from the altar that there was a good chance St Patrick never even existed at all !.Several oul Biddies were outraged!