Eric Abetz bemoaned this week the hegemony of the left wing press – he must mean Rupert, surely – in running down the Christian Right while failing to name, let alone declare its alliance with, the Secular Left. It is time he said, quoting from his Climate Denier’s handbook, that the press put both sides of the debate.
I dispute his binary analysis, but he is entitled to his 15 minutes of fame like the rest of us.
Eric the Hun crossed the line into satire, though, when he lamented the loss of the Thought Leader, Tony Abbott, who was busy in a bow tie, lecturing the Angela Merkel on her misplaced altruism. Only by following Australia down the well-trodden path of torturing the politically unpalatable on remote islands as a deterrent to the more deserving poor can we find it in our colonist hearts to offer inclusion to a select few who fill in the paperwork and plead correctly.
As The Cross sat down to push aside the latest sex abuse scandals and wax lyrical about the failure of the Abbott to sear his fanatic brand of religion onto Australian society through sheer political incompetence (he was made Prime Minister for god’s sake, and blew it!) the Curia started to tear itself apart in response to the Pope’s edict to stamp out corruption.
Like a flash of divine inspiration, like the slashing of the Gordian knot, The Cross solved a number of problems with one simple thought. We can leave Abbott in Europe to advise the Vatican. He is trained up in the faith, his surname gives him the semblance of some sort of liturgical authority. Born in England he can wangle an EU passport.
Abetz can join him. He only renounced his German citizenship in the weeks before the federal election. Even if there is not a cool-off period that allows him to cancel the cancellation, he can eat some humble pie and throw himself on Chancellor Merkel’s charity to get himself allowed in.
Once there they will be able to apply their brilliance to the problems confronted by the Vatican. After all they are used to the budget emergency and the internal leaks.
Tone has learned a thing or two about the rat in the ranks through the coup he has just suffered down under and will be able to plot with his old mate Pell about how best to bring the radical reformer Frankie under control before he goes to Hollywood and wins the hearts and minds of middle class whites.
While Russia and the US harness Islam to battle out the positioning of the pipeline from the last reserves of cheap oil in the world, Tone and Eric can harness the energy of the Vatican to answer the important questions of whether or not women can be abolished and if God the Son is made of the same substance as God the father.
Many of you will have assumed that Constantine settled this 320 years after the death of our lord by killing and banishing all the Arian bishops and putting together the Nicene Creed. Unfortunately for those who like their philosophy simple, though, Simeon the Stylite took the awful truth deep into the caves of Syria and sat on a pole for thirty years to protect it.
The tearing apart of Syria to pipe the world’s last cheap oil west has released Simeon’s Secret. Observing Constantine at work, he noted that religion as we know it (as Constantine presented it) is simply a servant of the state that harnesses the fanaticism of the fringe dwellers in society to work for the State instead of against it. Using force to subdue your population is hard work and expensive, telling them that you are fighting for their beliefs though has the double bonus of freeing up your army to do other work and swelling its ranks with a bunch of manic fighters simply frothing at the mouth to die in the name of the cause.
As it was in the third century so it is now.
The fact that Tone failed to convince secular Australia that he was the true representative of the spirit on earth will not stop him having a go elsewhere.
The Cross will watch with interest.