Eamonn Fitzgerald's Rainy Day

On this, the 60th anniversary of the day on which Adolf Hitler committed suicide, here are some thoughts on the tyrant from Pope Benedict XVI. These come from a conversation that the then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger had with the German journalist Peter Seewald:

"On the one hand, Hitler was a demonic figure. One only need read of the German generals, who time and again made up their minds to tell him to his face what they thought, but who would be so overcome by his power of fascination that they did not dare to. But then when you look at him from up close, this same person is really just a banal hoodlum. And the fact that the power of evil make itself at home precisely in what is banal shows us something of the character of evil: the greater it is, the more pitiful, the smaller the element of true greatness.

One certainly cannot say that Hitler was the devil; he was a man. But there are reports that suggest he had some kind of demonic encounters, that Hitler would say, trembling 'He was there again," and other such things. We cannot get to the bottom of it. I believe one can see that he was taken into the demonic realm in some profound way, by the way in which he was able to wield power and by the terror, the harm that his power inflicted..."

Peter Sewald's conversations with Cardinal Ratzinger appeared in book form entitled God and the World.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 30 April 2005 at 5:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

This post is really about Bill Gates, but first... Will the French rebuff the proposed EU Constitution in their referendum at the end of May? The momentum is with the non-sayers right now and some of the rejectionist feeling is due to worries that an expanded EU with Turkish membership would see a dam burst of cheap labour flooding France and taking jobs from the natives. Unease is widespread in Germany, too, where the proposal to bring Bulgaria and Romania into the EU in 2007 is running up against opposition for a similar reason: fear of competition for scarce jobs.

Across the Atlantic, the labour mobility debate has been warped by post-9/11 fallout, which has seen a clampdown on visas for workers and students. This is turning into a major headache for the tech industry and it's led to the stage where Bill Gates is now demanding that the doors be opened, wide. US tech companies have long complained about restrictions on the H-1B visa program, which lets them bring foreign workers to the US. Washington has capped the number of H1-Bs that can be issued — 65,000 last year — thereby shrinking the recruiting pool. On Wednesday, Gates reiterated the industry's position, and then went a step further when he argued that the US should get rid of the caps altogether. Hire the best workers, regardless of nationality, and improve the competitiveness of the company, industry and economy he said. As in Europe, however, opponents of the movement of free labour insist that more foreign workers mean fewer jobs for the locals.

Sound bite: "Gates' comments verged on sarcastic. He said that 'it's almost an issue of a centrally-controlled economy versus' and then trailed off." What could he have meant?

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on at 7:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

France's hottest sex symbol is Binoche? Zidane? Olivier Martinez? Actually, it's Lewis Wingrove. The English-born Casanova is better known to the French as Nick, a serial seducer who has blogged a year of sexploits in graphic detail using Meetic, a French dating site. Wingrove's blog was originally named "Je nique sur Meetic" ("I shag on Meetic") but it recently changed into J.N.S.M. It has been visited 2.87 million times since its creation in January. Libération called Wingrove "the most famous shagger on the web," and added, "The writing is lively, the tone is naughty but never too vulgar as he savours every date all the way from the bistro to bed." Nick — a play on nique, meaning "shag" — is negotiating a book deal on his "unforgettable socio-erotic experiment".

Who is Wingrove? And what's his secret? Well, he's a 44-year-old resident of Lyons, where he works as an advertising copywriter and web designer. Astonishingly, he talked 52 women into going out with him between August 2003 and August 2004. Of those, 27 went to bed with him, a third of them on their first date. Of those 27 nanas (babes), three quarters made the first move. As well as blogging his adventures "sous la couette" ("between the sheets"), he reprints his pick-up lines with Sylvie, Florence, Sonia and Solene and the other 27 conquests, whose average age was 40. All are given stars for "physique, figure, looks, breasts, bottom, charm/charisma, wit/complicity, tenderness/feeling". Sylvie, 38, a blonde gets just two stars for charm and one for looks. She's a banker. "I am screwing a banker! Usually it is the other way around," he writes.

Meetic, one of the few European web ventures which is an international success, will go public in October. If Wingrove didn't exist, one could well imagine that he'd been created by the company to drum up publicity. After all, France has already given the world The Sexual Life of Catherine M and the web has given us Belle de jour. Just sayin', like.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 29 April 2005 at 12:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

It's 1987 and screenwriter Jeff Andrus is living in Rome, just off the Via Veneto, trying to turn a play into a film. The play isn't by any old hack, though. Pope John Paul II wrote it. Back in the day in Krakow when he was plain Karol Wojtyla he tried his hand at drama and The Jeweller's Shop was one of the results. When he became Pope in 1978, The Jeweller's Shop suddenly sold 50 million copies in 22 languages. For some, this was a sign that money, big money, could be made by making a movie of the story. And that's how Jeff Andrus came to be in Rome, typing, for four weeks, in a five-star hotel.

And he had a lot of work to do. The play's subtitle, A Meditation on the Sacrament of Matrimony Passing on Occasion into a Drama "didn't exactly suggest bofo box office," but La Bottega dell'orefice was made and Andrus got a call from Rome after it was premiered to an audience of 5,000 invited guests in the Main Hall of the Vatican. "You could hear a pin drop," after the lights came up, said the director. "When I finally saw the film two years later, I understood the initial silence," writes Andrus. "The movie was so bad, it took your breath away."

In Typing for the Pope, Andrus has written a bittersweet reflection on the madness of moviemaking. We meet shady Italians reluctant to pay any bill; there's the Polish connection represented by the saintly Monsignor St. Pasierb; the director is a famous Brit (Around the World in Eighty Days, Logan's Run), and there's the French money personified by Phillipe, "a dapper, Marlboros-smoking Socialist with a tuxedo jacket he usually wore over Levis." His favourite saying was "Ah dawn care."

And he didn't. The result of all the midnight typing, horse trading and back stabbing, says Andrus, was "a movie which, unfortunately, wasn't nearly as good as the great man who authored it." Still, it was memorable in the making.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 28 April 2005 at 8:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The world knows what German political "experiments" can cost. In the 20th century, Germany tried imperialism, fascism and communism before grasping the value of democracy and free markets. The price, however, was incalculable human suffering. And the lesson was learned only at the point of a gun, and with the largesse of the Marshall Plan, and the West's defeat of the Soviet menace. Given all that bad history, one can understand the anxiety that accompanies news of more German restlessness.

The latest manifestation is an anti-capitalism debate that has been started by Franz Müntefering, chairman of the ruling SPD party. In his denunciation of business people he's even gone so far as to use the term Heuschreckenschwarm ("locust swarm"). If that sounds likes Mao, it's appropriates as Müntefering's boss, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, is determined to sell European arms to Mao's heirs, China's leaders, who are the quintessence of imperialism, fascism and communism. A graphic embodiment of all that Germany has left behind, actually.

On the heels of the demonizing of business comes news now that one third of Germans are fed up with democracy. In 1986, eight percent of West Germans were dissatisfied with democracy; now it's 30 percent. In former East Germany, it's up to 38 percent. This is according to a poll conducted by TNS Infratest for Spiegel magazine. Although disturbing, this isn't surprising as five million Germans were out of work last month, giving a jobless rate of 12 percent, compared with about five percent in the UK and the US. And more dismal news came yesterday when Germany's six top economic institutes halved their economic growth forecasts for this year. They are now saying the German economy will grow by just 0.7 percent, compared with their earlier predictions of 1.5 percent.

Imperialism, fascism, communism — all tried and all abandoned; democracy falling out of favour; anti-Americanism and anti-capitalism proving enormously popular. What next for Germany?

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 27 April 2005 at 1:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (1)

There's an ancient and erudite practice of informing the editor of The Times as to when the first cuckoo of the season has called. It's an English rite of spring, sort of. The letters are often memorable. An example from 12 February 1902:

Sir, — On Sunday morning last, while delivering my sermon on the meaning of Responsibility in Family Life, I was interrupted by a cuckoo.
I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
Osric Cantuar
The Athenaeum.

The Guardian does not have any such noble custom to boast of but it does make up for in malice what it lacks in tradition and this allows it to pursue other creatures, notably, lame ducks. And so, in yesterday's newsblog, Mark Tran posted Bush begins quacking. An excerpt: "But five months after the November vote, his opponents' fears and supporters' hopes seem misplaced. In fact, the president already seems a diminished figure politically — if not a lame duck."

The best thing about this kind of twaddle is the comments it provokes, showing again how the blog format allows a paper's readers to get involved in a story, even if it is cracked. Oh, and talking of quacks, here's an apposite comment on the post: "Too many crazy windbags vitiating the atmosphere of this esteemed blog-site. But they don't need to feel frustrated. Craziness can be cured. Send me $ 250 and I will give you psychiatric counseling. I can guarantee absolute return to normality in six months. E-mail me your problems. I will offer solutions for very small price. Anoop Verma." For once, spam sums it up nicely.

From Rainy Day's Miscellany of Facts: On Hearing The First Cuckoo in Spring by Frederick Delius received its first performance in Leipzig on 2 October 1913.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 26 April 2005 at 7:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Back on 30 March our posting here was entitled "She was taken off life support..." and it concerned the tragic death of Irishwoman Kay Kelly Cregan following cosmetic surgery performed by Dr Michael Sachs in his offices in Manhattan. The New York Times Magazine followed up on the story at the weekend with "The Irish Patient and Dr. Lawsuit" by Warren St. John.

Noteworthy in the article is the role of Ireland's top-selling newspaper, The Sunday Independent, in the tragedy. According to the New York Times, "In 2004 an Irish grandmother named Helen Donaghy agreed to allow a reporter from The Sunday Independent to chronicle a face-lift that Dr. Sachs would perform free." Surely a conflict of interest for the doctor and the journalist? Surely a dubious deal by the newspaper? Apparently not, because the result was a glowing story in the weekly's Sunday magazine section, which included the web address of Dr Sachs. Was there any mention that he had made 33 malpractice payments during the past decade, more than any other doctor in New York? No. Here's what Brendan O'Connor, editor of The Sunday Independent magazine, told Warren St. John: "If this guy is fit to practice medicine in the United States, who are we to say he's not fit to practice?" O'Connor later added that he was unaware of the lawsuits or the restrictions placed on Sachs by New York State health authorities, although this information is freely available and has been for years.

St. John writes that "The article made an impression on Mrs. Cregan, a town clerk in Limerick, who was quietly despairing over her appearance." The rest, we know.

Ireland's economic boom of the past decade has been accompanied by a dramatic coarsening of Irish life and the The Sunday Independent's veneration of the shallow, the crass and the crude has contributed significantly to the trend. Although the paper has taken an admirable stance against Sinn Fein/IRA, it has simultaneously debased the very notion of journalism by making its reporters the central figures in stories that focus on the intimacies of minor celebrities, the ecstasy of conspicuous consumption, the fetish of youth and the thrill of inside access. These articles make an impression on their readers, leaving many of them feeling envious and wanting. Or, in the case of Kay Kelly Cregan, making an appointment with Dr Sachs — an appointment with death.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 25 April 2005 at 12:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Refresh. Yesterday's summary posting on the decline-of-the-newspaper discussion that's doing the rounds, is in need of an update as George Will has just added his voice to the debate. Writing in today's Washington Post, Will pours more gloom on newspapering with "Unread and Unsubscribing". Are we entering a "post-journalism age", he asks? He then goes on to point out that we need to think about what's going on in terms of "media" versus "journalism". Excerpt:

"The young are voracious consumers of media, but not of journalism. Sixty-eight percent of children 8 to 18 have televisions in their rooms; 33 percent have computers. And if they could have only one entertainment medium, a third would choose the computer, a quarter would choose television. They carry their media around with them: 79 percent of young people ages 8 to 18 have portable CD, tape or MP3 players. Fifty-five percent have hand-held video game players. Sony's PlayStation Portable, which plays music, games and movies, sold more than 500,000 units in the first two days after its March debut."

Despite the grim outlook for newspapers, print journalism's future may not be as desperate as the commentariat would have us think. The success of NYTimes.com suggests that the way forward lies in the proper porting of content to the internet. This observation is prompted by the truly impressive fact that in March the NYTimes.com site experienced a record-breaking 555 million pageviews. According to the company's press release, the main driver for the growth was content. Money quote:

Pageviews for the National section of NYTimes.com experienced a 96% increase year over year, due to reader interest in the news surrounding Terri Schiavo. Also, pageviews for the Travel section increased 238% year over year, as a result of the site's coverage on a number of topics of interest including Paris restaurants and Maureen Dowd's article about visiting Cancun, Mexico, entitled "Girls Gone Mild." The Real Estate section grew 22% year over year, with several articles on a potential real estate market bubble. College basketball, baseball's spring training and the steroids debate fueled growth of the Sports section with pageviews up 12% year over year.

A 96 percent increase year over year! So, printed newspapers may be on the way to the graveyard, but that's the medium, not the message. If you have the right content, and you have the right strategy for the net — RSS feeds, audio, video, lots of bloggers linking in — and you offer services such as "mail this article to a friend" and e-mail newsletters, and you keep tweaking your site and you market it cleverly, you stand a chance of making the transition. If you don't do any of these things, or do them badly, you'll be unsubscribed and unread.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 24 April 2005 at 2:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The poet W.H. Auden wrote For The Time Being — A Christmas Oratorio in 1941 and 1942 when the world desperately wanted a glimpse of hope to sustain it in a time of darkness. On the face of it, the poem is about Christmas but it's about many other things, especially the human need for intimacy. An excerpt:

The Time Being is, in a sense, the most trying time of all.
For the innocent children who whispered so excitedly
Outside the locked door where they knew the presents to be
Grew up when it opened. Now, recollecting that moment
We can repress the joy, but the guilt remains conscious;
Remembering the stable where for once in our lives
Everything became a You and nothing was an It.
And craving the sensation but ignoring the cause,
We look round for something, no matter what, to inhibit
Our self-reflection, and the obvious thing for that purpose
Would be some great suffering. So, once we have met the Son,
We are tempted ever after to pray to the Father;
"Lead us into temptation and evil for our sake."
They will come, all right, don't worry; probably in a form
That we do not expect, and certainly with a force
More dreadful than we can imagine. In the meantime
There are bills to be paid, machines to keep in repair,
Irregular verbs to learn, the Time Being to redeem
From insignificance. The happy morning is over,
The night of agony still to come; the time is noon:
When the Spirit must practice his scales of rejoicing
Without even a hostile audience, and the Soul endure
A silence that is neither for nor against her faith
That God's Will will be done, That, in spite of her prayers,
God will cheat no one, not even the world of its triumph.

W. H. Auden (1907-1973)

This excerpt from For The Time Being — A Christmas Oratorio captures the post-Christmas blues with humour and honesty, and ties the lot to how we try to make sense of the world. The poem was written soon after Auden had converted to Christianity and as he looks at the excitement of the holidays he concludes that God is more in the everyday than in Christmas Day.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on at 8:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The recent round of obits for the venerable newspaper began with Michael Malone who pronounced newspapers dead and said that "they will never come back" in his "Farewell to newspapers" column. Jay Rosen then took up the running with a dramatic posting, "Laying the Newspaper Gently Down to Die". Next, like a thunderclap, came Rupert Murdoch's address to the American Society of Newspaper Editors last week in which he "spoke more like a pony-tailed, new-age technophile than a septuagenarian old-media god-like figure, Mr Murdoch said that news 'providers' such as his own organisation had better get web-savvy, stop lecturing their audiences, 'become places for conversation' and 'destinations' where 'bloggers' and 'podcasters' congregate to 'engage our reporters and editors in more extended discussions.' He also criticised editors and reporters who often 'think their readers are stupid'. "

Those quotes come from the current issue of The Economist, which is adding its voice to the clamour about the future of journalism with "Yesterday's papers". Bottom line: "What is clear is that the control of news — what constitutes it, how to prioritise it and what is fact — is shifting subtly from being the sole purview of the news provider to the audience itself. Newspapers, Mr Murdoch implies, must learn to understand their role as providers of news independent of the old medium of distribution, the paper." So, who'll be next to pen an obit for the ink, money and circulation bleeding industry?

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 23 April 2005 at 9:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm a fan of Forrest Whitaker. He doesn't look like a Hollywood star, nor does he act like one, but he's got talent and style. Watch Panic Room and Phone Booth and you'll see what I mean. Whether it's a big or small part, he gives it everything and now he's got himself a remarkable role: he's to play "The Last King of Scotland" aka Ugandan dictator Idi Amin. Set in the 1970s, the film is based on Giles Foden's award-winning novel that blends history and fiction. It centres on Nicholas Garrigan, a Scottish doctor who, through a twist of fortune, becomes the personal physician of the then-new president of Uganda. At first, the doctor is thrilled by his position but soon becomes aware of Amin's savagery and his own complicity in it. Filming is set to take place in Uganda and Britain later this year and Kevin MacDonald (Touching the Void) is directing for Fox Searchlight.

When the dictator died in August 2003, Rainy Day wrote: "Human rights groups estimate 400,000 people were killed under Amin's rule. They included farmers, fishermen, students, soldiers, former and serving cabinet ministers, supreme court judges, diplomats, university rectors, educators, Roman Catholic and Anglican clergy, hospital directors, surgeons, bankers, tribal leaders and business executives."

We noted at the time that because Amin was a convert to Islam, the Saudis were particularly fond of him and he was honoured by the kingdom for his attempts to create an Islamic nation out of a country that was only about six percent Muslim at the time of his take-over. Because of Amin's zealousness and barbarism, the ruins of Uganda became the stage for some of the most extremist religious movements the world has seen. There was the terrifying Lord's Resistance Army, which filled its ranks by abducting children and committed such atrocities as mass murder, rape and forced cannibalism. Then there was Alice Lakwena, a former Catholic whose visions led her to establish the Holy Spirit Mobile Force, which pledged to fight witches. She refused to accept the national peace settlement established under President Yoweri Museveni, and engaged in a holy war against his regime. Holy Spirit soldiers, many of them children, were ritually anointed with butter on the understanding that it would make them bulletproof. When Lakwena's army was crushed in 1991, most of her followers merged with the Lord's Resistance Army.

These horrors, and many more, were the legacy of The Last King of Scotland, "Lord of all the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Sea". If the filmed version of his reign is as compelling as Giles Foden's book is, we are due for a salutary cinematic experience.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 22 April 2005 at 12:06 AM | Permalink

Writing in today's Guardian, Timothy Garton Ash is in melancholy mood: "Christian Europe RIP", he intones in a piece subtitled, "The new Pope will hasten the decline of the old continent's formative faith". Here's his thesis:

"Atheists should welcome the election of Pope Benedict XVI. For this aged, scholarly, conservative, uncharismatic Bavarian theologian will surely hasten precisely the de-Christianisation of Europe that he aims to reverse. At the end of his papacy, Europe may again be as un-Christian as it was when St Benedict, one of the patron saints of Europe, founded his pioneering monastic order, the Benedictines, 15 centuries ago. Christian Europe: from Benedict to Benedict. RIP."

WHILE ADMITTING that the Catholic church is not a political party, "trimming to pick up votes," and acknowledging that "The strength of a rock is that it is not sand," Garton Ash thinks the corpse-to-be would look rosier with "a couple of important adjustments". These changes could be made "without threatening the central core of Catholic dogma" he asserts. All that the Pope has to do is "allow the exceptional use of condoms to prevent babies being born with HIV/Aids" and "allow Catholic priests to marry."

Hmmn. Is that what the atheists really want from Benedict XVI? Lemuel Kolkava, who blogs from Bratislava, is a nonbeliever, but upon hearing of Benedict's election he wrote: "And though I am an atheist I am very glad to see a 'traditionalist' getting elected — someone who understands that truth, faith and morals aren't relative and should not and can not be altered by and subjected to certain crazy fads of the day."

WHAT GARTON ASH does not say is that the places where Christianity is growing are also places where the population levels are rising quickly. Not Europe, in other words. The centre of gravity of the Catholic world has moved to the Southern Hemisphere and it will never shift back. So when Garton Ash writes about the necessity of Euro-centric Catholic reforms, he does so without fully realizing that his views on the subject are increasingly irrelevant, because the future of the Church lies elsewhere. If Christian Europe opts for demographic suicide, we can get on with the job of converting the cathedrals into hotels, but a look beyond Europe's borders shows that boom times for basilica builders are coming.

TAKE AFRICA. In 1900 Africa had just 10 million Christians out of a continental population of 107 million — about nine percent. In 2002, the Christian total stood at 360 million out of 784 million, or 46 percent. And that percentage is likely to continue growing, because Christian African countries have some of the world's fastest rates of population growth. Within the next 25 years the population of the world's Christians is expected to grow to 2.6 billion (making Christianity by far the world's largest faith). By 2025, 50 percent of the Christian population will be in Africa and Latin America, and another 17 percent will be in Asia. By 2050 the United States will still have the largest single group of Christians, but all the other leading nations will be southern: Mexico, Brazil, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, and the Philippines.

THE POPULATION SHIFT is even more dramatic in the Catholic world, where Euro-Americans are now in the minority. Africa had about 16 million Catholics in the early 1950s; it has 120 million today, and is expected to have 228 million by 2025. The World Christian Encyclopedia suggests that by 2025 almost three quarters of all Catholics will be found in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

IN LIGHT OF these astonishing numbers, Timothy Garton Ash's commentary comes across as a provincial lamentation. If anything, Europe's dismissal of St Benedict's legacy at a time when Christianity is re-emerging as a major international force appears more like another petty rejection of globalization than the bold declaration of modernity its proponents would have us believe.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 21 April 2005 at 12:36 PM | Permalink

It's the year 2014 and the New York Times has been reduced to a print-only newsletter for the elite and elderly. Its demise was heralded by Googlezon, which resulted from the merger of Google and Amazon in 2008. Two years later, the News Wars began. "Googlezon's computers construct news stories dynamically, stripping sentences and facts from all content sources and recombining them. The computer writes a news story for every user." The Fourth Estate made its final stand when The New York Times Company sued Googlezon, claiming that the company's fact-stripping robots were a violation of copyright law. The US Supreme Court decided in favour of Googlezon on 4 August 2011.

On Sunday, 9 March 2014 Googlezon unleashes EPIC: "The Evolving Personalized Information Construct is the system by which our sprawling, chaotic mediascape is filtered, ordered and delivered. Everyone contributes now — from blog entries, to phone-cam images, to video reports, to full investigations. Many people get paid too — a tiny cut of Googlezon's immense advertising revenue, proportional to the popularity of their contributions."

Googlezon is a creation of Robin Sloan and Matt Thompson. They've made an eight-minute Flash documentary about the rise of the Big-Brotherish EPIC and it can be viewed at the "Museum of Media History". What a clever logo they've come with for EPIC, eh? Note the reflected image of Pi. If you would prefer a summary of the film, pop along to Masternewmedia and it's there. Robin Good is predicting that the coming generation of "newsmasters" who'll serve EPIC "will be the most sought-after and highly rewarded professional media creators the world has ever seen." Can't wait for 2014 to roll around.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on at 7:47 AM | Permalink

[MUNICH] The sky is grey. Rain is falling. Temperature is unseasonally low. Not exactly conditions for dancing in the street. Not even if the new pope is a Bavarian who was once archbishop of this city. But spontaneous outbreaks of joy are not part of the Bavarian personality. Actually, one of the more prominent character traits in this neck of the woods is that of being "grantig", which means grouchy, grumpy. Could be a consequence of the weather; might be a result of living in the shadow of the Alps and having to wrestle a living from land that is hard to farm. Until the beginning of the 20th century, Bavaria was a mostly agrarian society and a poor one at that.

All those years in Rome have softened the cantankerous native aspect of Pope Benedict's persona but he retains the local quality of directness. It served him well in his previous roles within the Vatican curia and it will be interesting to see what role it will play now.

It's much too early, too, to say how the new pope will be factored into German political reality but here on the border with Austria one can expect a revival of interest in the glories of the Holy Roman Empire. Bavarian and Austrian Catholics have always felt that they were a people apart and they have a race memory of a time when Germanic monarchs ruled the "Empire in the West". Although the borders of the empire shifted greatly throughout its history, its principal area was always that of the German states. From the 8th century its rulers were elected German kings, who usually sought, but did not always receive, imperial coronation by the popes in Rome.

Anyway, what began historically on 25 December 800, when Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne emperor, ended ingloriously on 6 August 1806. After the extension of French control over western Germany following the Battle of Austerlitz and the reorganization of the German states into the Confederation of the Rhine by Napoleon, the Holy Roman Emperor Francis II consolidated his power in Austria, Hungary, Bohemia, and northern Italy and proclaimed himself emperor of Austria in 1804. Two years later he formally dissolved the old Holy Roman Empire to prevent the annexation of the imperial title by Napoleon. On 25 August 1806, The Times carried this "Report on the Dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire":

"The latest accounts from Vienna are of the 6th instant, the day on which FRANCIS II. abdicated his title as Emperor of Germany. Of that act of necessity, submission, and degradation, no traces or intimation whatever appear in the Vienna Papers. Some mention is made of the arrival of a Courier from Paris and some Councils held in consequence; but no pains seem to have been taken to prepare the public mind for this, the consummation of French outrage, insult and indignity."

It can be argued that Europe was ruined by the fall of the Holy Roman Empire, an empire St Benedict of old helped build by forming a new Christian society. Pope Benedict must now find a vision to transform a decayed Europe and the world.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 20 April 2005 at 7:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The Vatican: HABEMVS PAPAM BENEDICTVM XVI

Roman Catholic blog: "Today's agitation by the shrinking heterodox minority over celibacy, the ordination of women, abortion, artificial birth control, blah, blah, blah -- is really nothing new and is tame in comparison the Arian heresy or the Cathars. And the election of Benedict XVI is a sure signal these agitators will just as surely dissipate in the face of the Magisterium and another determined Pope."

Papabile: "I'm happy. I'm overjoyed...... Today is a beautiful. I'm literally crying with joy."

Andrew Sullivan: "And so the Catholic church accelerates its turn toward authoritarianism, hostility to modernity, assertion of papal supremacy and quashing of internal debate and dissent. We are back to the nineteenth century. Maybe this is a necessary moment. Maybe pressing this movement to its logical conclusion will clarify things. But those of us who are struggling against what our Church is becoming, and the repressive priorities it is embracing, can only contemplate a form of despair. The Grand Inquisitor, who has essentially run the Church for the last few years, is now the public face. John Paul II will soon be seen as a liberal. The hard right has now cemented its complete control of the Catholic church. And so ... to prayer. What else do we now have?"

Professor Bainbridge: "Andrew Sullivan is an Ass"

The Pope Blog: "Long live the pope!"

The Achoress: "I like the name. The press is unhappy - Benedict indicates a more conservative bent, and folks in the press are speaking through their teeth as they bemoan the fact that the progressive agenda will not be moved on. John Allen is suggesting that Ratzinger took the name Benedict to indicate that his reign would not be a long one. I respect Allen enormously, but I think he's being a bit silly with that."

Stern: "Rom feiert den deutschen Papst"

The Belgravia Dispatch: "Great figures in any public office are rarely succeeded by people of close to equal stature. Perhaps the conclave recognized that any new Pope would suffer from comparison with the last one, and decided to choose a man who would not mind and could hold things together until the Church had a better idea of how it wanted to be led in the new century."

Slugger O'Toole commentator: "I should have known that the Germans always come good in the big tournaments."

Wikipedia: "Pope Benedict XVI, officially in Latin Benedictus PP. XVI, born Joseph Ratzinger. This article or section contains references to a current or ongoing event. Information may change rapidly as the event progresses."

Michael Novak: "To the meaninglessness of relativism, Ratzinger counter poses respect for the distinctive, incommensurable image of God in every single human being, from the most helpless to the seemingly most powerful, together with a sense of our solidarity with one another in the bosom of our Creator. This fundamental vision of the immortal value both of the individual person and the whole human community in solidarity has been the motor-power, the spiritual dynamic overdrive, of an increasingly global (catholic) civilization."

Rick Deckard: "A German, former-Nazi elected pope - previously in charge of the Inquisition, crucial in the concotion of the Fatima Secrets, occult tendancies, hatred of science, a man who has become the nuclear option if you will...what would Dan Brown say?"

The Ratzinger Fan Club: "The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to maintenance downtime or capacity problems. Please try again later."

The Guardian: "Ratzinger's defence of conservative orthodoxy may have been part of his job, but it hasn't made him popular, especially in more progressive corners of the faith. In western Europe and North America, in particular, there is an acute perception that the church is losing ground and needs to reinvigorate the flock with a less uncompromising hostility to the outside world."

Ratzinger T-shirts: "Truth is not determined by a majority vote"

Tim Blair: White smoke sighted.
UPDATE. Windows open on the balcony.
UPDATE II. Some old guy speaking Latin.
UPDATE III. Ratzinger!
UPDATE IV. Pope Benedict XVI.

Washington Post: "Ratzinger is a brilliant, tough-minded intellectual who started out as moderately liberal and -- like so many American neoconservatives -- developed a mistrust of the left because of the student revolt of the 1960s. He once said that "the 1968 revolution" turned into "a radical attack on human freedom and dignity, a deep threat to all that is human." The pope knew what he was getting with Ratzinger, and he got what he wanted."

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 19 April 2005 at 7:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

BACKGROUNDER: When Rupert Murdoch warned newspaper editors last Wednesday to embrace the internet or perish, the industry sat bolt upright. "The challenge for each of us in this room is to create an Internet presence that is compelling enough that users make it their home page. Just as people traditionally started their day with coffee and a newspaper, in the future I hope that the way they start their day online will be with coffee and our Web site," the Digger told the annual meeting of the American Society of Newspaper Editors. In his speech, Murdoch even used the "blog" word eight times. He noted that "some digital natives do even more than blog with text — they are blogging with audio, specifically through the rise of podcasting — and to remain fully competitive, some may want to consider providing a place for that as well."

Thing is, it may be too late for the newspaper business to recapture an audience that's heading for the exits. Why bother to wait for the perfect digital Murdochian to emerge when the kind of multimedia news that is becoming the next form of journalism is being assembled before our eyes. And here we come to the point of today's homily. Step forward Father Roderick Vonhögen, Catholic priest of the Archdiocese of Utrecht in The Netherlands. Trading as The Catholic Insider, he's "Podcasting from the heart of the Catholic Church", as he puts it. Talk about brilliant use of the new media to deliver niche news! This guy's simply astonishing. Text, images, audio... he does it, with passion and style. "Let me take you back to the night before the pope's funeral, and let's do a soundseeingtour of the streets around St.Peter's square, crowded with ten thousands of young people who travelled to Rome from all over the world." Love that "soundseeingtour", there. And now he's podcasting around the conclave.

Of course, individuals don't have the resources to break news stories that require the kind of support only major media can provide, but the point is that by the time Murdoch & Co. figure out how to make print palatable for a public that's getting accustomed to high-quality, multi-media bespoke "news", a lot of their customers won't want to come back to the mass market product anymore. It's all very well when the man from the Current Bun parachutes into St. Peter's Square to give us the low down on what those queerly-dressed cardinal chappies are up to, but the Father Rodericks are way ahead of the game. And they're only getting going. Pod on, padre!

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on at 12:16 AM | Permalink

As the cardinals of the Catholic Church gather today for their papal conclave, it is not at all heretical to consider the challenges facing their organization in business terms. After all, Laura Nash, senior lecturer at the Harvard Business School and co-author of "Church on Sunday, Work on Monday", has said that Pope John Paul II's trademark saying "Be not afraid!" should be adopted by more managers as it might give them the courage to carry out their missions. So, the precedent is there.

Flicking through the JP II case study, we can say that the late pontiff was the master of "Management by Walking About" — 104 international journeys totalling 31 times the circumference of the earth. He was closer to his customers, er, congregation than any of his predecessors in the past two millennia and by adding a quarter of a billion new "clients" to the "firm" during his term in office, he deserves to be ranked as one of the greatest marketers and product managers of all time.

The election of John Paul was a bold move but it paid off, so the MBA advice for those charged with choosing his successor would be to select an energetic candidate from the developing world. The European market has matured, the North American region is riddled with division, so south of the equator is where the future lies. Latin America and Africa are now home to two-thirds of all Catholics and the billions of India and China beckon. The reality, however, is that John Paul's natural successor is probably labouring in fields far from Rome these days, making it all the more likely that a less than charismatic leader will be picked this week.

Still, mediocre or messianic, the new CEO will be expected to deliver two things: certainty and hope. Certainty because as John Paul demonstrated during his battle with Communism, the Catholic Church is at its most powerful when it sticks to its core message and addresses the fundamental human needs not catered for by materialism. Hope because as FDR, Churchill and JFK demonstrated, all great leaders reassure and inspire. Seeing that today's shoddy politicians can't do either, it falls to the lot of the cardinals in conclave to fill the gap in the market.

PS: For all those who have written to say that Rainy Day has erred on the side of the hagiographic when it comes to this pontificate, here's Andrew Sullivan's extremely critical and largely negative appraisal of Super-Star John Paul II.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 18 April 2005 at 6:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

What a party they had over at the Ratzinger Fan Club. You see, yesterday was the 78th birthday of their hero, Cardinal Josef Ratzinger and the candles burned late into the night. In the better quality papers Ratzinger is usually referred to "the Vatican's guardian of orthodoxy", ("the Vatican's hard-line defender of the faith" the New York Times). but he's officially titled Prefect of the Congregation of the Doctrine of Faith, an enormously powerful office in the Vatican bureaucracy. For history buffs, the Bavarian-born theologian is also dean of the College of Cardinals, which was founded by another German, Pope Leo IX, who reigned from 1049 until 1054. Synchronicity?

Anyway, one of the great things about Ratzinger is that he's got personality in spades and this has led to an outbreak of nicknaming. So, you can take your pick among God's Rottweiler, der Panzerkardinal, The Enforcer, Cardinal No and John Paul III. As regards the latter, Italian newspapers are reporting that he has already secured at least 40 of the 77 votes required for elevation to the papacy and there's no doubt that he's got a resume that will impress the conclave electors tomorrow. Along with an acclaimed performance at John Paul II's funeral and the well-timed release of a new book on Christian values, the man's had the aura of "vice-pope" for some time now.

And he's also got that something else — that brush with the mysterium iniquitatis that marks people for life. John Allen, Vatican watcher for the National Catholic Reporter and author of the Ratzinger biography "The Vatican's Enforcer of the Faith", puts it like this:

As a seminarian, he was briefly enrolled in the Hitler Youth in the early 1940s, though he was never a member of the Nazi party. In 1943 he was conscripted into an antiaircraft unit guarding a BMW plant outside Munich. Later Ratzinger was sent to Austria's border with Hungary to erect tank traps. After being shipped back to Bavaria, he deserted. When the war ended, he was an American prisoner of war.

Under Hitler, Ratzinger says he watched the Nazis twist and distort the truth. Their lies about Jews, about genetics, were more than academic exercises. People died by the millions because of them. The church's service to society, Ratzinger concluded, is to stand for absolute truths that function as boundary markers: Move about within these limits, but outside them lies disaster.

Later reflection on the Nazi experience also left Ratzinger with a conviction that theology must either bind itself to the church, with its creed and teaching authority, or it becomes the plaything of outside forces — the state in a totalitarian system or secular culture in Western liberal democracies. In a widely noted 1986 lecture in Toronto, Ratzinger put it this way: "A church without theology impoverishes and blinds, while a churchless theology melts away into caprice."

No more than John Paul II, whose outlook was shaped by his encounter with Nazism and Communism in Poland, Ratzinger's world view has been very much influenced by his proximity to evil in Germany. Politically, Ratzinger's nearness to John Paul makes him a logical successor, while his age makes him a putative pope with an expiration date. A safe choice, in other words. Atheist-turned-Catholic Jeff Miller at The Curt Jester loves those nicknames, btw.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 17 April 2005 at 8:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Rainy Day reader Christine Sayer writes and points out that if 20 Major, the unconventional Irish blogger who has applied for the vacant position of Pope, gets the job history will not regard him as the first "diarist" to be the Bishop of Rome. That honour belongs to Pope Pious II (1458-1464), she says, and given that the papal conclave starting on Monday is power broking by another name, she supplies this highly interesting extract from the diary of Pious about the behind-the-scenes goings on in the Vatican City in the 15th century:

"A great quantity of cardinals used to meet in the latrines, and there, as in a place that was conveniently secret and secluded, agreed that a certain William should be elected pope and promised their vote in writing and with an oath. William immediately began to promise jobs to his friends... the place was worthy of such an election. Where better than a latrine could you draw up unusual contracts of this sort?"

By the way, "Pius was greatly admired as a poet by his contemporaries, but his reputation in belles lettres rests principally upon his Eurialus and Lucretia, which continues to be read to this day, partly from its truth to nature, and partly from the singularity of an erotic novel being written by a pope." Those were the days! By the way again, 20 Major may not agree with the blogger/diarist parallel, just as a lot of reporters don't agree with the blogger/journalist equation, but that's a debate we'll have to leave until after the shoes of the Fisherman have been filled. If you can't wait, though, Jack Shafer over at Slate magazine has been writing some great stuff on the bloggers vs. reporters clash.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 16 April 2005 at 7:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

What a peculiar country Ireland is. Once renowned for its saints and scholars, it went on to become famous for its exiles and eccentrics and then for its poets and playwrights. Now it seems to have become a byword for gamblers and speculators. In the past week, hardly a news outlet around the world — here and here — has not reported on the Irish bookmaker Paddy Power and his betting action on who'll be the next Pope. Then there's Intrade.

The Intrade fundamentals are the same as Paddy Power's, but the focus is different. The Power operation concentrates on horse racing and football, but betting on novelties such as the papacy is a bit of fun that attracts publicity. Intrade, on the other hand, is a Dublin-based online futures market used by more than 50,000 speculators worldwide. Their interests are more specific, their spending power is greater and their collective wisdom is awesome to behold. Remember last year's US presidential election? All those polls and demographic shifts and overpaid pundits who told us the race was too close to call. Down to the line it was going to go. Right? However, those who watched the Intrade market during the campaign saw the speculators uniformly putting their money on a Bush victory and, most impressively of all, the weekend before the election, the traders correctly called the winner in every one of the 50 states.

Because nothing is sacred, it's expected that Intrade speculators will spend at least $1 million on futures contracts tied to the election of the next Pope — an Italian Pope, Dionigi Tettamanzi of Milan to be precise. The futures contract that pays off in the event any Italian wins was trading at a few hours ago at 35.0, which means the traders gave Italy a 35 percent chance, followed by Germany at 18, meaning Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. Let's see if the Holy Spirit can confound the speculators. If Intrade gets this one right, though, expect the market to rule and Ireland to become the new Las Vegas.

For an insight into the Intrade phenomenon, Rainy Day recommends The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki of The New Yorker. Surowiecki says that large groups of people are smarter than an elite few, no matter how brilliant. When it comes to solving problems, making decisions and predicting the future, the crowds have it. Next week, we'll see if picking popes can be added to that list.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 15 April 2005 at 6:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Rainy Day does words not pictures with the result that our photos tend to leave a lot to be desired. Nevertheless, the camera accompanied us on the pilgrimage to Rome last week and a handful of the results have been posted at Flickr, where they are now available for viewing. Take a look and then come back for some really stunning photos of what took place in Rome last week.

What's coming up next is a photo essay consisting of 300 images taken by Hans Gonzalez, beginning Monday 4 April during the removal of the Pope's body from the Clementine Hall to St. Peter's Basilica, and ending with the funeral mass last Friday. Gonzalez was born in Manila and moved at 14 to the United States. After attending high school in Las Vegas he studied at the University of Nevada Las Vegas and went on to become a top-class dancer, winning US Amateur Latin-dance titles in Cha-cha, Rumba, Samba and Jive. He was teaching at the Genesis DanceSport Academy in San Francisco when a close friend was killed in the 9/11 terrorist attacks and this forced him to ask: "Will I be ready when it's my turn?" The result is that he's now studying at the Pontificia Universita San Tommaso D'Aquino in Rome. Take a look now at his marvellous photo essay.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 14 April 2005 at 8:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Our favourite irreverent Irish blogger, 20 Major, has applied for the current vacancy at the Holy See. Here, two excerpts from his letter of application:

As you can see from my enclosed CV I am currently working as a shepherd. The Bible says 'The Lord is my shepherd' and I assume the Pope role would put me in the position of Super-Ultimate-Power-Shepherd whilst a billion Catholics would become my biddable flock. If you've ever worked with sheep you'll know they're absolute cunts and don't do a thing you say. Working with people will be an absolute cinch. I would have to give my current employers two weeks notice but I think I could get away with a week if push came to shove...

... I have a very well-developed sense of right and wrong, important for someone in a position of such authority, and have previously demonstrated my leadership qualities during countless getaways and burglaries. I'm also very much a "team player" and while I realise the ultimate decisions will rest with me I think it's far better to work collectively and to use "communication skills" which will prevent unnecessary conflict in the 'boardroom', so to speak. That said I'm not afraid to make difficult and painful (for others) decisions when necessary.

Think of it, if 20 Major gets the job, he'd be the first blogging Pope. Oh, and the first Irish pontiff, too. Here's his encyclical. We wish him good luck in his endeavours.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 13 April 2005 at 8:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Now that they're busily trading in Catholicism for materialism, the newly irreverent Irish still manage to combine the old and the new by wagering their money on who will be the next pontiff. Over at bookmaker Paddy Power, the money is piling in on Nigerian Cardinal Francis Arinze, who is now at 7-2, meaning that you would win $7 for a $2 bet.

The irreverent British, who long ago traded in Catholicism for convenience, read newspapers such as the Guardian, which has declared Arinze to be "candidate for first black pope", but as many commentators have pointed out, this would be news to Pope St Victor, an African and pontiff from 189 to 199, whose legacy includes the celebration of Easter on a Sunday. As Mark Steyn witheringly observed, "That's not what the Guardian had in mind, of course: it meant 'the first black pope since the death of Elvis' — or however far back our societal memory now goes."

So, would Guardian readers like Arinze if he got the top job in Rome? Well, possibly. They'd certainly like much of what he said in a talk on "Christian-Muslim Relations in the 21st Century", which he gave at Georgetown University in Washington D.C., on 5 June 1997. An excerpt:

"The experts tell us that 20 per cent of humanity consumes 80 per cent of the earth's resources, leaving only 20 per cent to fourfifths of humanity. Moreover, certain rich countries restrain food production for the sake of balancing market prices, while there are poor countries whose inhabitants do not have enough to eat. And no one needs the experts to know that the earth's resources can be devastated or slowly depleted by greed, carelessness and war. Here is a rich area for Christian-Muslim collaboration in the forthcoming century in a world in which people realise more and more their interdependence."

Clearly, leaders of the developed world could expect some straight talking from Arinze, if he were Pope. By the way, you can read the full talk here. The cardinal was back in Georgetown in May 2003 to give a commencement address. His topic was "human happiness". Here's how he began:

"True happiness does not consist in the accumulation of goods: money, cars, houses. Nor is it to be found in pleasure seeking: eating, drinking, sex. And humans do not attain lasting joy by power grabbing, dominating others, or heaping up public acclaim. These three things, good in themselves when properly sought, were not able to confer on Solomon, perfect happiness. And they will not be able to confer it on anyone else!"

So far, so JP II. But now comes the bit that saw Professor Theresa Sanders leaving the stage in protest while Arinze was speaking. Sanders teaches "Religion and Film," "Saints in Film" and the general-education theology course "The Problem of God" at Georgetown. Here's what led to her problem with Cardinal Arinze:

"In many parts of the world, the family is under siege. It is opposed by an anti-life mentality as is seen in contraception, abortion, infanticide and euthanasia. It is scorned and banalized by pornography, desecrated by fornication and adultery, mocked by homosexuality, sabotaged by irregular unions and cut in two by divorce."

Can't imagine the Islington set liking that, eh? Too bad. You can read Arinze's splendid address here.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on at 8:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Alan Cronin writes wanting to know when "this religious phase" will end at Rainy Day. What can one say? We're talking here about The Greatest Story Ever Told, according to the big book of Hollywood, chapter 1965, and it's going to run and run. The current episode playing in the Roman theatre is the most important show of the moment and that's how the majority of Rainy Day's visitors see it, too. So expect more, not fewer papal bulletins in the days ahead.

But that doesn't mean that we're not keeping an eye on more worldly affairs. Extremely heartening at the moment, for example, is the positive news coming out of Iraq, where local troops now outnumber coalition forces and the combined armies have the terrorists on the run. Remember all those Vietnam analogies? Always said there was too much sand for them to hold up. And then there's football. A few hours ago we were with 59,000 fans enjoying a thrilling Champions League second-leg quarter final between FC Bayern and Chelsea FC. It ended 3-2 in favour of Bayern, but 6-5 on aggregate in favour of the London side, who now go on to the semi-final.

Chelsea put on a superb defensive display and were deserving winners overall. Robert Huth was absolutely magnificent, but one had to feel sorry for Bayern who had possession and opportunities but simply no luck. And why not? Well, this might be stretching things a bit, but if Michael Ballack had not deceived the officials to win an undeserved penalty in the first leg, the Great Referee looking down on last night's game might have been kinder to Bayern. Just a theory, that. In between the goals, we almost twisted our necks trying to catch a glimpse of Jose Mourinho or Roman Abramovich, but nary a sight of them. And so to bed.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on at 12:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

On 14 August 1991, the Irish writer and lapsed Catholic Colm Toibin was with a million people in the spiritual capital of Poland — the monastery of Jasna Gora at Czestochowa. He was researching a book on Catholicism that became "The Sign of the Cross: Travels in Catholic Europe". Pope John Paul was there, too, and the impression he made on Toibin was indelible:

"I watched his face on one of the big screens. In repose he was managing still to be both the stern father and the kind uncle, allowing the considerable number of ambiguities in his being to amount to something powerful and touching and memorable. His eyes were kind and intrigued by things, but also guarded, almost weary, and then, watching him there under the fiercely sharp lights that Polish television shined on him, I studied his mouth, which seemed to me that night to belong to a different being, a more implacable and more stubborn man who would care deeply about discipline and doctrine. His eyes understood and forgave everything; his mouth and the set of his chin forbade deviation and did not want there to be any change. His power, as the night came to an end, arose from the tension between the two, the lure of the drama in his own physiognomy. It is unlikely that the church in our lifetime will be able to find a figure as interesting and intriguing. It is unlikely that the million of us there that night will ever again in our lives see a spectacle so effective and seductive. The glory, or its very opposite, has departed."

That excerpt is taken from a piece entitled "A Gesture Life", which appeared in the New York Times Magazine at the weekend. This is journalism of a high order in which the reporter creates a vista that involves the reader. You can learn more about Toibin at his excellent website.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 12 April 2005 at 7:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The current issue of The Spectator contains an article by Peter Oborne titled "How Blair betrays the Crown" (subscription required). To Osborne's outrage, the PM opted for Rome over Windsor last Friday: "Rather than await the decision from the Prince, Downing Street indicated instantly that Tony Blair would go to Rome." Osborne continues:

"No prime minister has ever attended a papal funeral before, and with good reason. Britain is not a Roman Catholic country — though admittedly anyone who has read the British newspapers over the past few days might be forgiven for supposing that it was. The papacy stands for autocratic and hierarchical principles and attachments to ancient dogmas that are alien to the British state."

Some might find it a bit rich of a royalist such as Osborne to bash an organization for "autocratic and hierarchical principles", no? Regardless, because the Vatican regards the Church of England as aberrant he goes on: "This is what made it such an audacious decision by the Prime Minister to abandon his duties to the British Crown and travel to the Vatican instead." That's strong, "abandon his duties to the British Crown." The reason for the bile is that the Prince of Wales ended up appearing, once again, a spineless pawn.

So who told, er, advised Charles to postpone his wedding and go to Rome? Why, his mum, of course. And here one must say that the late pontiff would have been pleased as he wasn't too keen on registry office weddings and neither is the Queen as she boycotted her son's on Saturday. With half the guests in Rome anyway, what was he going to do? Go ahead without them? Some stories doing the rounds have it that the Archbishop of Canterbury was the first to insist that the Prince of Wales represent the Queen in Rome. Charles is said to have strongly resisted the suggestion. But then the Queen put her foot doing and in doing so it appears that she was respecting the wishes of the Prime Minister, who accepted the invitation to the Pope's funeral at a time when the wedding was still scheduled for Friday. That was the decisive move. No wonder Peter Osborne is furious.

"The strange death of Protestant England" was the headline in the Guardian the next day. It continued, "Catholicism hasn't been this chic since Bloody Mary burned Rowan Williams's first Protestant predecessor at the stake." The Mail On Sunday showed how good its sources are when it revealed "Safe in heaven". But best of all, The Mirror printed a "memorial issue" and proclaimed "John Paul the Great." Conservative Party leader Michael Howard told the Catholic Herald that he saw no reason why the monarch should not be a Catholic — or marry one.

No one should expect a rebirth of Catholicism in Britain but what the historian Mark Almond calls "the hollowing-out of the Protestant Succession" is a fact and Tony Blair is hurrying it along.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 10 April 2005 at 10:53 PM | Permalink

Timing, to repeat a truism for the millionth time, is everything and that goes just as well for humour as for politics as for publishing. How providential, then, for Bloomsbury(of Harry Potter fame an fortune) to publish Universal Father: A Life of Pope John Paul II, by the British Vatican watcher Garry O'Connor, on 18 April, the very day that the papal conclave begins.

The timing is doubly providential in that the book will appear in the run up to the British general election on 5 May, a period when all things Blair will be grist to the media mill, and of great interest will be the "authoritative" account by O'Connor of the mass Pope John Paul celebrated for the Blair family at the Vatican on 25 February 2003. For this scoop, O'Connor was granted a 90-minute interview with Cherie Blair, who describes the mass as the high point of her entire time as Prime Minister's wife.

The Blairs arrived in the Pope's private chapel at 8 am, to find him facing the altar, deep in prayer. "The image he gave," writes O'Connor, "was for Cherie a symbol of both suffering and the defeat of suffering. When he began to say Mass, he sprang to life: he said all of it, the first part in English but, when he came to the Eucharistic prayer, in Latin. Blair, in an off-the-peg suit and muted tie, read the first reading from Isaiah: 'I it is who must blot out everything.' Euan, his eldest son, read the responsorial prayer: 'Heal my soul, for I have sinned against you,' and Kathryn, their daughter, the second reading, from Corinthians: 'Jesus was never yes or no: with him it was always yes.' "

O'Connor then writes that "the Pope gave the family communion." What he doesn't say is whether the Prime Minister received communion. Most people think that he didn't, since he had been told by the late Cardinal Hume that this was inappropriate for a non-Catholic. On 21 March, 2003, however, the Catholic Herald wrote that the Pope had personally given Tony Blair Holy Communion — the first time in history that a British prime minister had received the sacrament from the hands of the pontiff. The story generated such hefty denials from the Vatican and No. 10 Downing Street, that the paper was forced to withdraw the claim in its next issue.

In a number of recent interviews, however, O'Connor has suggested that the communion story is true and that he verified it from several sources, including the papal chamberlain's office. Out of respect for the family, however, he decided to gloss over the incident in his book. True or not, it is well known that the Blairs admired the Pope greatly and it is this admiration that may hold the key to understanding another big story last week: The decision by the Charles, Prince of Wales to postpone his registry office wedding and church blessing until yesterday. After all, shortly after the Pope's death, Clarence House announced that the Windsor Guildhall Ceremony and marriage blessing would take place regardless of any clash with a burial on Friday. But on Monday, the Prince's press officer was telling a different story. Did someone lean on his boss? Part II later...

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on at 9:49 AM | Permalink

Despite all the false starts and hindrances, the freshly-married Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles have just completed a walkabout at Windsor Castle following a touching religious service that was preceded by a civil ceremony. Good luck to the two of them, we say! Whatever one thinks of the groom or the bride, they are entitled to their share of human happiness and maybe they'll have it.

And now, a darker cloud hovers over our keyboard and it's prompted in a way by what we witnessed in Rome yesterday. The thing is that what we've just seen televised from Windsor was a rather average affair, especially when one thinks back the 1981 royal wedding of Charles and Diana. At that time, the centuries-old trappings of the realm were used to inspire awe among the subjects, and it worked. Elation was widespread; the kingdom was content. But as soon as the dysfunction of the royal family became public, first through Sarah Ferguson and then through Diana, the mystique eroded, and it's been downhill since then. Only the Queen retains a semblance of respect now.

Contrast this with another institution, the Vatican. What was going through Charles' mind yesterday in Rome as he sat through a ceremony defined by a mass outpouring of love and conducted using just the right amount of pomp? Was he aware of what he has thrown away? Seeing that he's an educated man, it must have been clear to him what was obvious to John Paul: Even in today's dress-down culture, the paraphernalia of office can be immensely powerful, but only if used with maturity and wisdom.

Compared to the papacy, the British monarchy has become a soap opera, with all that that implies. Today, Charles and Camilla; yesterday Ken and Deirdre. Our best wishes go out to both couples.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 9 April 2005 at 5:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This day last week here, we were quoting Bob Dylan's Knockin' on Heaven's Door as it became apparent that the Pope was about to die. Seeing that this year marks the 50th anniversary of rock 'n' roll itself, we'll stay in the "mature performer" groove and quote Bruce Springsteen, who inducted U2 into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on 15 March:

"Every good Irish and Italian-Irish frontman knows that before James Brown there was Jesus. So hold the McDonald arches on the stage set, boys, we are not ironists. We are creations of the heart and of the earth and of the Stations of the Cross."

U2 are on the road now with their Vertigo//2005 Tour. It kicked off in San Diego to great acclaim at the end of March and the band is currently playing its way along the West Coast of the USA. Last Saturday night, the venue was Anaheim. Bono speaks to the packed house:

"I met the Holy Father and I was so taken by this showman, even if I didn't agree with everything he said," the singer, whose father was Roman Catholic, said to the crowd as the band began playing the intro to new song 'Miracle Drug'.

Bono carried on speaking about a time six years ago, when he met the church head and gave the Pope his trademark sunglasses.

"I said 'Holy father, do you want a pair of fly shades?' and he said 'yes' and he put them on and he made a face kind of like this."

After scrunching his face to resemble Pope John Paul II, Bono showed the crowd he still carries with him a token of their meeting.

"He reached out and gave me this sort of crooked cross. It was designed by Michelangelo. They're my rosaries and I wear them around my neck, and I take them off and put them in my pocket during a rock show, you understand [why]."

The band then launched into the full version of 'Miracle Drug' which Bono dedicated to "anyone who is sick." Before U2's next song, recent single 'Sometimes You Can't Make it On Your Own', Bono called out the name of the Pope — "John Paul" to the crowd and described him as "an Italian who knew the right person to get into heaven."

No trace of irony there. Those who says that we live in a Godless age suddenly seem less convincing.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on at 9:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It's raining in Rome now. A weather front has moved on, a celebration has ended, a mourning is over, a journey has been completed. What remains in the mind's eye are the images of a once-in-a-lifetime experience. What remains in Rome is the note that was written in that reflective few minutes after having moved past the bier in St Peter's and before moving out into Thursday morning's light. Paper and pen were made available for the purpose and thousands upon thousands of scribbled pages were piled on every available surface. One more was added to the pile and addressed, like most, to Karol Wojtyla. It read:

"Protect our family and friends in Ireland, New York, Germany and Italy. Help the sick and suffering everywhere, especially in Tanzania. And a special wish for Patricia at this time. Pray for the world."

Mere words. More words. But that's all one can manage at such moments in such places. And anyway, in the beginning was the word.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 8 April 2005 at 8:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

ROME Would it have been better to have risen at dawn yesterday, instead of dawdling over breakfast? Too late now for retrospect. What follows is the chronicle of a day in the life of a pilgrim in Rome.

11.20 am There's a shuttle bus service operating from the main station, Termini, to the Tiber. Seems to be free as well. At least no one stamping tickets. Unfortunately, the bus driver decides to call a one-man strike at the Palazzo Venezia and we have to foot it from there.

12.20 pm The line is forming south of Ponte Sant'Angelo. The imposing dome of St. Peter's is visible in the distance. Something about the size of the crowd and the enormous speed with which it is swelling says that getting there may not pan out as expected.

1.20 pm Standstill. In the battle for popularity in Poland's mobile phone market, it is even-Steven between Nokia and Siemens. This observation is based on a quick survey of surrounding pilgrims. The phones are as varied as their owners — big, small, simple, sophisticated. Poland has come a long way and it's not surprising that its people have stormed Rome to give thanks to the man who gave them back their identity.

2.20 pm Along with the Poles, the other major national group represented here is the Italians. They've planned for a long day if the variety and amount of sandwiches is anything to go by. My neighbour, Carlo from Salerno, is eating a lovely looking one made with delicate brown bread and filled with sausage and spinach. Panic begins to set in here. What if I miscalculated on the food front? What if this takes eight hours instead of the expected five?

3.20 pm Headgear is a must. The sun is beating down, which is better than rain, of course, but not so charming if you cannot move. Another must is a book. Mine is Despair by Vladimir Nabokov. An odd choice, I agree, but the selection in the train station book shop was bizarre. In the English books section it was Nabokov or Michael Moore. "I can readily imagine what Pushkin might have said to his trembling paraphrasts," he writes. A new word for the vocabulary, that, paraphrasts.

4.20 pm We make it onto the Ponte Vittorio Emmanuel. What's it now? Four hours? And we've covered a distance that would take a slow walker five minutes on a normal day. Except this is a day when more than a million pilgrims are trying to get to see a hero. People still very cheerful, though. City workers are supplying us with bottle of water and the gesture is appreciated.

5.20 pm Ah, ha! Oh, oh! Now we can see why progress has been so slow. On the other side of the Tiber, to our left, a huge river of people is pressing forward. What's it going to be like when we merge with them? Chat to Julia Baker, an English pilgrim. Charles and Camilla. What we're seeing today suggests to her that the Church of England will fold its tent when William ascends the throne. It's not a spiritual experience anymore and that's what people hunger for. The fact that Charles is here means that he knows the game is up, she says.

6.20 pm We take the bridge! But a wave of worry ripples through the crowd. Italian authorities are sending out text messages telling people not to join the lines. Apparently, they are worried that it will get out of control. Lots of excited conversation. We are determined to press on, however. There can be no turning back now we tell ourselves.

7.20 pm Helen and George are from just outside Seattle. Not exactly young, either, but they seem to be coping well. They get alarmed when we look back at the mass of people we have left behind on the bridge. What if? The only consolation of being stuck on the corner of Borgo S. Spirito and Via S. Pio X is the architecture. Alarm! No more food left!

8.20 pm If only we could get onto the Via della Conciliazione. We could then see St. Peter's. What we can see, though, is a huge screen showing scenes from inside the basilica with people filing past the body. The picture quality is stunning. Wonder what the screen resolution is?

9.20 pm Where would we be without our mobile phones? Fingers flying. Messages pouring in from Ireland, England, Germany and Italy. "Did you hear that Saul Bellow died yesterday? "U will get to heaven for this!" "Was JP a footie fan?" "4-1. Blues better." The Chelsea-Bayern Munich Champions League game has enough goals to keep us alert.

10.20 pm Now, we're getting places! Surging along the Via della Conciliazione we are and up ahead, bathed in light, is the world's most impressive church. Big screens line the way and thousands are joining in the prayers that pour forth. Along the bottom of the picture, the crawler says "live from the Basilica" and we can see George W. Bush, Laura Bush, George Bush Snr., Bill Clinton and Condi Rice kneeling beside the body, deep in prayer. Jeers go up from the Michael Moore faction but one pilgrim applauds and earns stares. No one challenges him, though.

11.20 pm We are in the square! It's a sea of flags and pennants and emblems borne aloft, mostly Polish, red and white. The imagery is ancient, as if a mighty host of yore was assembling for an encounter that would remake history. Impossible not to be overwhelmed by it all.

12.20 am "Attention! The Basilica will be closed for cleaning between 2 am and 5 pm." The announcement booming out across the square in Italian, English, French, German, Polish and Spanish fills us with dread. The crowd control has been impressive up to this but it's not going to be easy to deal with these people if they are locked out within sight of the Grail, to use a Dan Brownism. We are packed against each other now, tired, hungry and thirsty and kept awake and alive by forces beyond our powers.

1.20 am "The Basilica doors will be closing in thirty minutes!" Sprits are high, however. We are certain that our bloc is going to make it. We look back and see thousands upon thousands who won't be with us. The poor things. How will they endure until 5 am? Where will they get the energy to complete the mission? Pity for them is mixed with satisfaction for our own good fortune. Human vanity and weakness are constant.

1.50 am We enter the Basilica. Too exhausted to appreciate its wonders: The frescoed hallways, the Pieta. Up ahead a blaze of light.

2.10 am Face to face, at last. "What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculties! in form and moving, how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension, how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?" Hamlet (II, ii, 115-117). Tranquil, he is, despite the bursts of flashes from all kinds of photographic devices. This is how the new pilgrim gathers relics. No piece of the robe, no sliver of bone. A digital image.

Mission accomplished. Time for a quick prayer. No candle to light but the Vatican offers pen and paper where one can list ones wishes for the world and hope that they will be granted. And then we're out into the morning. Suddenly, one is aware of how sore the feet are and what it is like not to have peed in 15 hours. Time to find a bar, lots are open. Coffee, cognac, a cigarette to round it off. Text a few people, even though they are in bed. No point in sleeping. The need for it seems to have disappeared.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 7 April 2005 at 11:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (2)

ROME The sun is in the sky. A fortifying breakfast has been consumed. The major prints have been read. It is almost time to get in line. But let's have one more espresso before the work begins.

The TV in the corner of the bar here on the corner of Largo Branaccio is showing a huge throng of people filling the Via della Conciliazione, which leads from the Tiber to St. Peter's Square. The influx has to be seen to be believed and the numbers are almost alarming. More than a million pilgrims are expected to view the body of Pope John Paul II today and the television reporter is saying that 18,000 people an hour are moving through the basilica and past the body.

I suppose one conclusion we draw from all this is that the 1960's are finally over. Remember? "God is dead!" The pope is, but he's still acting out the central Christian belief that redemption is there to be sought.

Anyway, here goes. Time to enter pilgrim territory.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 6 April 2005 at 10:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Why? Well, a number of reasons, but here's one: it's an e-mail that I got from a good friend who was in St. Peter's Square 24 hours ago. It reads: "The viewing last night began at 8pm and we got inside about 90mins. later. A deeply moving and beautiful experience. May he rest in peace."

Another reason? Pope John Paul's encyclical Veritatis splendor in which he says: "No one can escape from the fundamental questions: What must I do? How do I distinguish good from evil?" There is truth and there are lies, he believed. And the question for us to ponder now as we prepare to bid him farewell is: What if he was right? Not just about Communism, but about some of the other things as well? He never wavered from the "splendour of truth" because he knew what the alternative was. He had seen it in Poland and would have seen it and named it if the Chinese had granted him permission to visit. And it is this honesty and this clarity that we need and which we shall miss most.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 5 April 2005 at 5:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

So, you're a cardinal and you're in the conclave. What now? Do you vote for a Third World type to reflect the new demographics of the Catholic Church? Or do you go for an Italian to prop up Old Europe? What about a youngster (well, under 65) to connect with the internet age? Or what about an oldster who won't be around too long but who'll make it easier for the next guy to finally escape from John Paul's shadow? A liberal? With the makeup of the College of Cardinals, that's not going to happen, but given the late Pope's fondness for centralizing authority, the backlash, if it comes, might be in the shape of an internal reformer.

"Always follow a fat pope with a skinny pope," says John Allen, the Vatican correspondent for the National Catholic Reporter, quoting an Italian saying, and there may be more than a grain of truth in it. Anyway, here's a list of the current cardinals, divided into electors and non- electors. You can use it to make your predictions. Seeing that almost every other site is picking its top ten, I've decided not to, but Francis Turner at L'Ombre de l'Olivier is offering an interesting "Guide to the Papal Conclave" and he's using Father Andrew Greely's book, White Smoke, to help him decode the various announcements over the coming days. Quote: "According to Greeley one of the more interesting signs of who are the Curia favoured front runners will be who preaches at the various requiem masses." It's Ratzinger on Friday!

UPDATE: Paddy Power, the Irish bookmaker, who took down the "Who will be the next pope?" betting on Saturday as a mark of respect to John Paul, is now out of mourning and back in business. Dionigi Tettamanzi (Italy) and Francis Arinze (Nigeria) are both 11-4. Rainy Day tip: back Arinze. Don't know if Arinze fits with the "Always follow a fat pope with a skinny pope" maxim, but he looks like being the right man in the right place at the right time.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on at 7:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We all have our weak spots. For the usually lucid and normally humane Christopher Hitchens it's the Pope. But even allowing for bitterness, there's no explaining this sentence: "No obituary about John Paul II, for example, will omit to mention that he exerted enormous force to change the politics of Poland. Well, good for him, I would say." That a writer of the ability of Hitchens can dismiss the noble struggle to free Eastern Europe from a vicious, tyrannical system that claimed countless lives with the trite "Well, good for him," is astonishing. The only explanation is that he was blind drunk when he wrote it.

What is it about the death of the Pope that prompts Terry Eagleton to plumb the depths of distaste and Christopher Hitchens to lose his sense of fairness? Is it an infantile need to insult? An unhealthy craving for the limelight at a time when it's shining on two million ordinary people preparing to stand for hours in Rome to express their respect for someone who inspired them, even if they didn't always agree with him. That's an expression of humanity. What Hitchens expresses in his "Papal Power" article in Slate is the opposite, and the pity is that it disfigures a piece of journalism that makes a very important point about the shameful tolerance by the Vatican of criminal priests and bishops who were involved in monstrous sex crimes against defenceless children.

If anyone reading this is socializing with Hitchens during the next fortnight, can you please make sure that he stops after one bottle? The fever will pass, but it may take longer for the bad taste in the mouth to disappear. Note: Jon Henke is on the case of the Necro-heckler.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 4 April 2005 at 10:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Thank God for Tim Worstall. The excellent British blogger lays into Terry Eagleton, professor of cultural theory at Manchester University, who used the platform of the Guardian today to launch a childishly offensive attack on the late pontiff in an article titled "The Pope has blood on his hands". As Tim notes in his post, Eagleton "decides to violate one of the little cultural rules with which we burden our society, that one does not speak ill of the dead in that small period between their death and their burial. Not too much of a surprise that an avowed Marxist would rip into one who did so much during the downfall of that evil system of governance of course. His case would make a little more sense if he actually knew anything about the Catholic Church, rather than the knee jerk rubbish he spouts."

It's a bit rich of Eagleton to call the late Pope a killer when, as Norm noted on 26 January, the red prof used the pages of the Guardian of British liberalism to excuse the evil deeds of suicide murderers. Eagleton's condition would appear to be untreatable, but let us hope and pray that he bears his affliction with more grace than he displayed today. Pope John Paul II should serve as his model in these matters.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on at 7:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

They are a small and powerful group of journalists permanently covering the Holy See. Known as the "Vaticanisti", this media elite is extremely insider-informed on the thinking of the hierarchy. Of the English-speaking ones, John Allen of The National Catholic Reporter is certainly the most knowledgeable American journalist in the Italian capital; David Willey, the BBC Rome correspondent, is exceptionally well-versed, Gerry O'Connell of The Universe has excellent sources within the Curia (the Vatican administration) and Robert Mickens of The Tablet is reliable. Given the feedback loop that exists today between the media and power centres from Washington to the Vatican City, the musings of the top correspondents can end up shaping the opinions of those upon whom they report.

So who are the papabili ("popeables") in the eyes of the Vaticanisti?

The first thing to be said here is that commentary on papabili is not an exact science. Back in 1978 some Vatican observers said that Cardinal Sergio Pignedoli considered himself such an obvious winner that he had a papal costume tailored before the conclave. He exited the conclave, however, as he entered, a cardinal. The selection instead of Cardinal Karol Josef Wojtyla, Archbishop of Krakow, was a shock. The first non-Italian pope since the Dutch Adrian VI in 1522 caught the Vaticanisti, and everyone else, it has to be admitted, by surprise.

One thing that makes reading the Roman runes more daunting is that Pope John Paul II could not designate a successor and if he had a favourite, he certainly refrained from naming him publicly. Still, Vatican history shows that the odd discreet push has not harmed a papal career. Pope John XXIII appointed Giovanni Battista Montini to the position of Cardinal Archbishop of Milan to give him the kind of diocesan experience that would bolster his credentials with the Curia. Montini ended up succeeding John XXIII in 1963 and reigned 15 years as Pope Paul VI.

Age is an important aspect say the Vaticanisti. Will the next pope be young as Cardinal Wojtyla was at 58 allowing a long period in office, or an older pope for interim rule, as in the case of Cardinal Angelo Roncalli, who was selected at 80 in 1958. He ruled for four years as Pope John XXIII. Nationality cannot be ignored either. Considering the Roman Catholic Church's global role, the next pope could well come from the Third World, but after the long reign of a non-Italian, an aged Italian might be favoured now. Foreigner or Italian is not that important say some commentators; conservative or liberal is more critical and seeing that the eligible voters in the College of Cardinals were mostly appointed by John Paul II, it's unlikely that a reformer is going to get the job.

A final factor: Although it is said that the Holy Spirit should be the main guide of the papal electors, leaks from previous conclaves suggest that hard bargaining and block-voting by the pope-makers in smoke-filled rooms are all part of the process. So, as you can see, being a Vaticanisti is not an easy task. With this in mind, the next post here will look at the top candidates for the vacant position of pope.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on at 12:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

In the last weeks of his life, the Pope suffered terribly, but he endured that suffering with tremendous dignity. How did he do it? The answer can be found in an Apostolic Letter, Salvifici Doloris, he wrote in February 1984. In it, he gave his interpretation of the meaning of suffering, and why we should take comfort from it. An excerpt:

"Suffering seems inseparable from man's earthly existence. Suffering evokes compassion. It evokes respect but it also intimidates. At the basis of all suffering, there is the question: why? The inevitability of that question is precisely what makes suffering distinctively human. Pain is everywhere in the animal world. But only the suffering human being wonders why he is suffering. And he suffers in a still deeper way if he does not find a satisfactory answer to that question...

...It is suffering, more than anything else, which clears the way for the grace which transforms human souls. In suffering, a man discovers himself — his own humanity, his own dignity, his own mission."

The life Pope John Paul II lived was long and marked by courage and conviction. He acted when doing nothing would have been the easier option and thus he became a catalyst for a democratic revolution that brought freedom to millions in Eastern Europe. At the very core of the belief system he stood for is the concept of forgiveness and John Paul II expressed this when he forgave his own assassin. That was noble. So, regardless of whether one loved the message or the messenger, today is a day for gratitude.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 3 April 2005 at 9:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

According to the BBC, "All football matches cancelled in Italy." And seeing that the Pope was the first Vatican ruler to have satellite TV installed so that he could watch international football, the Italian calcio authorities must be praised for this decision. But back to last night's posting about that 1997 concert in Bologna where Bob Dylan sang for the pontiff. As we noted, one of the songs he sang was " Knockin' on heaven's door" from the 1973 album Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, and there's no better moment to give it a spin than this. So, here goes:

Mama, take this badge off of me
I can't use it anymore.
It's gettin' dark, too dark for me to see
I feel like I'm knockin' on heaven's door.

Knock, knock, knockin' on heaven's door
Knock, knock, knockin' on heaven's door
Knock, knock, knockin' on heaven's door
Knock, knock, knockin' on heaven's door

Good luck on your journey, John Paul II. Football fans, and a billion others, will miss you.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 2 April 2005 at 3:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Rainy Day reader Katherine Timmons writes and reproaches me for placing too much faith in Ricard Delevan's theory of the innumeracy inferiority of Euro hackers and bloggers (see yesterday's post). The "cousins" across the water aren't any betters she says and makes her point by directing me to the very astute and literate Felix Salmon. In a recent post, Salmon said:

"Whenever I rail against journalistic innumeracy, which is often, I tend to point out that journalists are normally creative arts-graduate types, who frequently have very little grasp of numbers. In turn, this means that they're at risk of being taken advantage of by people claiming to perform wonderful 'demystification' services for them. Today I came across one of the most egregious such quacks, in the form of Galia Gichon of Down To Earth Finance. Ms Gichon is teaching a MediaBistro course next week, where, for a mere $65, she will dispense advice on how to 'get a grip on debt' and other such staples of the personal-finance pages. Judging by her Q&A on MediaBistro today, however, you'd be better off spending that $65 on getting blotto in the nearest bar."

What enraged Salmon was this particular piece of advice that Gichon felt was vital for New York freelance journalists: "Hire a Bookkeeper. As a freelancer, this is one of the most important financial decisions you can make. You will save so much time and be able to focus on getting more business. "

Here's Salmon's surgical counterstrike:

"WHAT??!! This is completely insane. Bookkeepers, at their best, save you time and cost you money. Freelancers, in general, have lots of time and very little money. Saving time is not top of the list of most freelancers' priorities. Spending money on a bookkeeper, I think it's fair to say, is right at the bottom. What would a freelance journalist do with a bookkeeper, anyway? Give her a pile of receipts and ask her to add them up in the hope that they might count as a business expense? Get her to add up this year's invoices so she can see just how little money she's actually made? Bookkeepers are necessary for small businesses which have relatively high gross income and relatively high expenses. Freelance journalists have relatively low incomes, and nigh-on zero business expenses. Unless you need a bookkeeper to pay your phone bill, hiring a bookkeeper is a complete waste of money."

This is sooooo true. Read the full post here and for more delicious Salmon, check him out on the general hopelessness of journalists with statistics. BTW, Rainy Day has asked Richard Delevan to comment.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on at 7:09 AM | Permalink

On the wall behind my desk is a photo of Bob Dylan performing at a concert in Bologna on 27 September 1997 and behind him sits a contemplative Pope John Paul II. It's a marvellous image. As one person who was there noted: "After a sermon of about twenty minutes, Dylan and band suddenly appear on stage and start with Knockin' on Heaven's Door. He wears a beige stetson hat, a black cravat and a black suit with white piping. The band is in grey or black suits. The performance is nothing special except for the lyric "I'm looking up to the skies, feeling like I'm knockin' on heaven's door" which I hadn't heard before. Without a word to the audience or as much as a smile, he launches into A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall." Given that the Pope is now at death's door, the appropriate Dylan lyrics at this moment are those from Time Out of Mind, the 1997 album that featured Not Dark Yet:

Shadows are falling and I've been here all day
It's too hot to sleep time is running away
Feel like my soul has turned into steel
I've still got the scars that the sun didn't heal
There's not even room enough to be anywhere
It's not dark yet, but it's getting there

"Dylan goes towards the Pope's stage, doesn't know what to do with his hands and nearly trips over the steps while he takes his stetson off. Then he kisses the Pope's ring and talks briefly with him. The Pope picks up his sermon again and repeats the key ideas. Suddenly again, a hatless Dylan and band are back onstage to perform a beautiful Forever Young." As the man said, it's not dark yet, but it's getting there.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on 1 April 2005 at 7:38 PM | Permalink

Richard Delevan, who describes himself as "a stray Yank in Ireland", is settling in nicely, if his ear for the local argot is anything to go by. Responding to the Euro Growth Indicator from EUROFRAME — a wretched 1.5% for 2005 and an anaemic 2% for 2006 — he declares: "Lisbon Agenda me arse". That's as authentically Irish as one could wish for. But just to show that he has not abandoned his stateside linguistic heritage, he also notes that "the forecast is pretty crap". Language apart, Delevan makes a very valid point in his post about the numerical illiteracy that bedevils most Euro journalists and bloggers, Rainy Day included:

"One of the things that has frustrated me no end since moving to this part of the world from the States is that economic coverage is so completely rubbish in media over here (maybe that's why there seems to be a surfeit of econo-bloggers in Ireland who feel the same way). Something as basic as a graphic showing how growth is going, whether at national or European level, is an instant, relatively easy way to get a fix on how the economy is moving. Every 8th grader in America who gets assigned viewing of the NBC Nightly News or whatnot for Social Studies or Econ class can give you a rough idea of how the American economy is doing. Not so their European counterparts."

Is geography numeracy? Could it be that Europeans are hardwired to prefer failed Marxist theories to dry balance sheets, while the Yanks are simply genetically enabled to cope with capitalism's monotonous nuts, bolts and bottom lines?

By the way, if you find Hiberno-English more interesting than ideology, Richard's blog is worth visiting regularly. Two examples: First, the reaction of eponymous Evening Herald editor Jimmy Spangle to the papal deathwatch and its impact on his valuable free time: "Jaysus, they're only af'er givin' us the fookin' weekend off, and it's not worth a bollix. He could go any minute, and where we would be den? You tell me dat. No, I'll fookin' tell you where we'd be, we'd be up to our bollix in shite, dat's where we'd be." Second example: Apparently, the drama in Rome so transfixed Today FM star DJ Tony Fenton that he played the same five LPs on repeat all day to which station talkmeister Matt Cooper responded: "All I can say is, thank fuck we have no listeners." Sounds right, that, the language, I mean.

Posted by Eamonn Fitzgerald on at 12:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)