Matters of the Spirit

There was a time when dying and inarticulate old men were dragged out to wave at parades in Red Square - Brezhnev, Andropov, Chernenko - and we shook our heads sadly. Pope Wojtyla, who seems to be dying and has lost the power of speech, was wheeled out before the faithful in St Peter's Square this Sunday. He wheezed and croaked a bit and was wheeled away again; the faithful, it appears, found it all very uplifting. Such is the difference between Communists and Christians.

Wojtyla's henchman, God's personal assistant in England and Wales, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, has said that he did not intend his declaration of support for a proposal by Michael Howard to be a declaration of support for any one political party, even though only one political party, so far, is being led by Michael Howard. It seems that not even God can distinguish any longer between the various prosperity-enhancing, terrorist-fighting, immigrant-busting white Christian males who litter our political landscape like fleas in a hair shirt.

In the course of not telling Catholics which way to vote, the cardinal did his bit for fairness and rationality by comparing his opponents to the Nazis: "That way lies eugenics, and we know from German history where that leads. We are already on that road, for what else is the termination of six million lives in the womb since the Abortion Act was introduced?" No doubt the Holocaust mention was charitably made; I am sure Pope Pacelli would have approved.

Meanwhile, that unctuous old hypocrite the Archbishop of Canterbury - some of his best friends are gay, they probably have a wonderful sense of rhythm, but they just don't make good bishops - has noted that, "Quite a lot of our contemporary culture is actually shot through with a resentment of limits and the passage of time." Presumably this resentment is why our contemporary culture invented those idiotic myths of resurrection and immortality. The inquisitor of Tarsus and his witch-burning, woman-hating, Jew-lynching followers - those eternal enthusiasts for relieving others of their limits - could never have promulgated such unhealthy propaganda.

However, at least according to the Guardian's very incomplete report, Dr Williams appears to have rejected the Pauline lunacies and come down more or less firmly against the Resurrection and the immortality of the soul: "Refusal to die, that fearful denial of our limits, is the root of our self-paralysing habits of sin," he said.

There is progress here, it seems. Not before time, the Archbishop has realised that denial of the limits of a certain Palestinian preacher - specifically his mortality, fallibility, carnality and barbarity - has been at the root of many of the church's most repulsive crimes. If the church can be made to realise, and repent, the similar denial of human limits by its priesthood and the evil consequences of that repression, we may soon take another small step on the road to civilisation.