It happens every Good Friday. The BBC choose the holiest day of the Christian year to vilify Jesus Christ. Their attack invariably takes the form of a documentary presented by an atheist/humanist/secular weirdo. This year's offering was no exception. Step forward Lord Braggart, aka Melvyn Bragg.
The Right Honourable The Lord Bragg, to give him his full splendid title, is perhaps best known for an amateurish novel about lust on the Yorkshire moors that earned him the Bad Sex in Fiction Award, so why not try his hand at a similarly crude exercise in amateur theology? In an hour-long BBC1 diatribe, the charmless churl tried to persuade us that Mary Magdalene was "the wife of Jesus", with the obligatory prurient sub-text. He based his argument on discredited Gnostic writings excluded from the New Testament centuries ago. If there was such a thing as the Bad Theology Award, his lordship's erudite-sounding but poisonous dross would surely win it.
The former Anglican bishop of Rochester, the Rt Rev Michael Nazir-Ali, described the programme as "hugely offensive" and asked whether the BBC would treat other religious groups in the same way. "I am concerned about the misuse of very obscure Gnostic gospels to impugn the integrity of the Bible. This is going out at 12 o'clock on Good Friday, which is exactly the time that Christians are thinking about Christ on the Cross."
Precisely. Our so-called public service broadcaster's anti-Christian vendetta is well enough known to be almost boring. But here was a new twist, a tightening of the screw. Their electronic sacrilege did not simply materialise on our screens at the appointed time. It took months in preparation. The premeditation gives the game away -- date and time being deliberately calculated to inflict maximum pain and distress. They knew exactly what they were doing.
As the late Cardinal Basil Hume observed, the world is in the hands of fallen people. It seems there's no shortage of them at the BBC.
Friday, March 29, 2013
Sunday, March 17, 2013
All bets off
However historic and significant the leadership contest, bookmakers can usually be relied on to supply a flippant subtext by way of betting odds on 'runners and riders'. But the recent Vatican Stakes, probably the most momentous event of the decade, seemed to attract few wagers
Where the bookies missed a trick was in failing to follow-up on the election of Pope Francis, the former Cardinal Bergoglio, of Argentina. They should have laid odds on the first anti-Catholic bigot to stick the knife in the new Pontiff. The field would have included some strongly fancied runners, with Richard Dawkins the obvious favourite at 6/4. Hard on the heels of this consistent if highly-strung performer, I would have nominated the steadier stayer, Philip Pullman, as second favourite at 5/2.
I'd have quoted Stephen Fry at 15/2, despite carrying top weight; Polly Toynbee, a fractious filly, at 10/1; the temperamental shaggy beast A.C. Grayling, 16-1. Others including the erratic Woody Allen and moody Martin Amis, listed at 20-1, would have headed numerous outsiders from the Beeb, Tablet and Gaydian stables, with the mare, Mary Warnock, perhaps past her best now, at 100-1.
Maybe I am missing my way as a turf accountant because, in the event, my book would have cleaned up -- the winner being Alan Rusbridger, editor of the Gaydian. Within 24 hours of the Pope's election, this dark horse tweeted a link to a 2011 article by Hugh O'Shaughnessy that accused Cardinal Bergoglio of conniving with the Argentine navy to hide political prisoners from human rights inspectors.
The source of this story was given as an Argentine journalist, Horacio Verbitsky. Unfortunately for the Gaydian, as the pernicious rag later had to admit, Verbitsky "does not make this claim". So as The Daily Telegraph gleefully pointed out, the story was false and a gross libel.
After a stewards' inquiry, however, the result stands: Rusbridger was first to put the knife in. His form guide now reads: very fast out of the stalls but runs out of staying power after a few yards.
Where the bookies missed a trick was in failing to follow-up on the election of Pope Francis, the former Cardinal Bergoglio, of Argentina. They should have laid odds on the first anti-Catholic bigot to stick the knife in the new Pontiff. The field would have included some strongly fancied runners, with Richard Dawkins the obvious favourite at 6/4. Hard on the heels of this consistent if highly-strung performer, I would have nominated the steadier stayer, Philip Pullman, as second favourite at 5/2.
I'd have quoted Stephen Fry at 15/2, despite carrying top weight; Polly Toynbee, a fractious filly, at 10/1; the temperamental shaggy beast A.C. Grayling, 16-1. Others including the erratic Woody Allen and moody Martin Amis, listed at 20-1, would have headed numerous outsiders from the Beeb, Tablet and Gaydian stables, with the mare, Mary Warnock, perhaps past her best now, at 100-1.
Maybe I am missing my way as a turf accountant because, in the event, my book would have cleaned up -- the winner being Alan Rusbridger, editor of the Gaydian. Within 24 hours of the Pope's election, this dark horse tweeted a link to a 2011 article by Hugh O'Shaughnessy that accused Cardinal Bergoglio of conniving with the Argentine navy to hide political prisoners from human rights inspectors.
The source of this story was given as an Argentine journalist, Horacio Verbitsky. Unfortunately for the Gaydian, as the pernicious rag later had to admit, Verbitsky "does not make this claim". So as The Daily Telegraph gleefully pointed out, the story was false and a gross libel.
After a stewards' inquiry, however, the result stands: Rusbridger was first to put the knife in. His form guide now reads: very fast out of the stalls but runs out of staying power after a few yards.
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