Weird morals and true heroism

 I can't help but comment on several news items, some personal some local. Locally, a priest has been suspended after being blackmailed and a schoolteacher saved a busload of kids from disaster.

So, firstly, the priest. He video chatted to a 30-year old gay man who recorded the calls and threatened to release them publicly unless the priest paid him money. The priest is the victim of blackmail and extortion, quite serious crimes here in Italy.

What happens? He is suspended with a severe reprimand from his bishop - yes, the same homophobe we've talked about before - who has ordered him to consider his wicked behaviour and how it brings shame to him and to the church, and that his parishioners will need to pray for him. A spokesman for the diocese says that whilst the priest has committed no crime, it's a serious personal and professional failing on his part.

Nothing about the priest being the victim of crime. I suspect he'll be pressured into not pressing charges with the police as that would protract the alleged shame. His parishioners seem to have written an open letter to the bishop saying that this is unjust. And they may be praying but they're also gossiping about it just like everyone else does!

The church here is obsessed with sex. Really obsessed. Indeed, another bishop's representative here said people don't have problems with faith or morals but they do have problems with sex. I'd suggest this obsession goes right back to Adam and Eve. You'll recall that they were tempted to eat the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. And what was the Good or the Evil that they first ended up knowing about? Not good things like love or co-operation or happiness, whiskers on kittens and warm woollen mittens, or evil things like violence or hatred or, er, blackmail, but that Adam's got a willy and Eve's got boobies, and that's bad. The rest of the bible is largely a discussion on what's to be done about this Bad Thing, now that mankind knows about it. Controlling other people's reproductive interests seems therefore to be the chief interest of the local religion and several others. Women have an inny and men have an outy and what they do with theirs is everyone else's business. Woe betide anyone who's intersex or transgender, then, as that really messes up God's arrangements!

Gimme a break! The priest seems to have the support of lots of his parishioners and the local LGBT group has written to say he's free to love as he likes. Frankly, gay love is increasingly old hat and ever fewer people are bothered by it and still fewer are going to condemn. To judge by all the local press commentary, it doesn't put the unpleasant local bishop in a good light at all. Maybe they'll get someone more humane soon.

This brings me to my religious sister, the one who hates LGBT people particularly, who rang me a few days ago to ask if she could come to stay after easter. I haven't seen her for some years and I was hesitant about this but I have agreed to have her for a couple of days. I hope I might be able to dampen some of her crazier hate-filled ideas about trans people, not that I would come out to her. If she is even more twisted than last time it may be the last contact I have with the family I come from. Which, frankly, would feel very liberating. But I'd rather see if some good can be done first. So it will be a high-stakes encounter. 

Also in the paper, and so much more uplifting, is the story of a young local schoolteacher who was taking her class out by coach when the driver fainted at the wheel on the motorway. Acting lightning fast, and despite being unable to move his heavy body slumped across the steering wheel, she managed to shift his foot from the accelerator to the brake and bring the bus to a halt, albeit against a wall. There were only slight injuries. When asked if she was a heroine she merely said her concern was for the safety of her children. I think the world could do with more people like her.

 

A dip in the archives

I haven't dipped in the archives for ages but someone left a nice comment on my gallery page so I dug out a photo of me sitting by the Regent's Canal in London as I am hoping to travel to London again in the spring. It's been some years since I was last there.

Sue x