The New Catechism
Andrews, B.A. St.
The New Catechism Notice how sparrows cluster like dried raisins in the knife-edge of North wind. As you listen to their incantations locked in ice, risk walking any street in any town in the...
...A god you least expected at the High Gates of Good Angels...
...Sooner or later, Blair will encounter real difficulty, of the harsh, character-building kind that he has so far been fortunate enough to avoid...
...A god with CP...
...B. A. St...
...Count one by one the moss-people curled against stone warmed by a distant sun witness how they fortify their cardboard nests and answer truthfully: Would you worship a god huddled there invested in the have-nots...
...Andrews complained of the '~oroad streak of silliness" evident in Blair's liking for the presence of pop stars and media personalities on official occasions (though one has heard less of that lately...
...Scotland and Wales have voted for devolved government, and there is a firm commitment to reforming the House of Lords and removing the hereditary element, a notorious anomaly in a modern democracy...
...Above all, there is the settlement in Northern Ireland, an extraordinary achievement, which I never expected to see (though its future is still precarious, hanging on the question of decommissioning weapons, which will involve the IRA in handing over a few guns, at least...
...Though the government is maintaining the Tories' strict fiscal policy, more money has been found for health and education, though not nearly enough, according to critics on the left and professionals in the field...
...Blair has made many things happen...
...Suffering and arrogance sleep uneasy as two thieves beside one fire...
...Blair's real opponents are all on the left, and some of them were recently voted into the party leadership, as a token warning that Blair cannot have everything his own way...
...More worrying is his naive regard for prominent businessmen, and particularly the egregious Rupert Murdoch...
...A god least likely to assume the Throne of Thorns...
...They are utopians, but the party would be poorer without any trace of a utopian vision...
...He wants to keep the support of Murdoch's newspapers, which he currently has in a tenuous way, but if Britain enters the European Monetary Union (EMU), which looks likely in the end, they will turn against him...
...but one can turn it off, which is a concrete sign of a better system...
...He can then expect serious criticism, which dictators can suppress but democratic politicians have to endure...
...Commonweal | 0 November 6, 1998...
...A god the color of Jordanian mud...
...Hattersley represents old Labour, still an active force despite the efforts of the Blairistas, which believes that a left-wing party should aim at the redistribution of wealth and be prepared to tax and spend in order to achieve it...
...not for any defects of personality, but because power corrupts and it doesn't do to trust politicians...
...Farther out are the pure old-time Socialists who believe that the market economy should not be regulated, as New Labour wants, but abolished in favor of a better and fairer system...
...Even Blair seemed to hint as much in his recent impressive speech to the party conference, which was charged with communitarian rhetoric about the need to say "we" rather than "me...
...even now, the god of sparrows is shifting shape...
...I do not, however, trust him...
...Would you crown again a god like Jesus was before the priesthood reconfigured Him in its exclusionary image...
...This meditation is an ancient offering, a kiss of consecration pure as prayers of atonement and desire...
...I think it will be good for him...
...In caves beneath the altarstone a winter wind is rising...
...And the difficulty will be all the greater if the tidal wave of global recession hits the economy...
...He will hardly be worried by the official Conservative opposition, a demoralized and divided rump after their electoral disaster, under a youthful, balding leader, William Hague, a stopgap figure whom no one expects to see as prime minister...
...Then there is the senior, respected figure of Roy Hattersley, a sometime Labour minister who is now a prolific journalist and political commentator...
...Reform of the welfare system, like entry into the EMU, is going to involve Blair and his government in harder and more potentially unpopular decisions than he has so far had to make...
...Sometimes Blair seems always to be on the television screen...
...Bernard Bergonzi writes frequently for Commonweal from England...
...If pressed, I would say that I admire him, notwithstanding the intermittent daftness and emptiness in his pronouncements, and still give him the benefit of the doubt about his aims and ideals for the country, vague though these are...
...I won't actually love Blair, but I will probably vote for him again...
...As Chesterton remarked, one must learn to love the world without trusting it...
...A queer god whose English is imperfect yet whose heart mirrors perfectly all hearts...
...In totalitarian societies there are portraits of the leader in every home...
...As you listen to their incantations locked in ice, risk walking any street in any town in the richest country in the world...
...The sparrow god is stirring...
Vol. 125 • November 1998 • No. 19
