Mourning the crazy King of Ulster

The orthodoxy of our time is that you must never say anything that is “offensive” to people of a different race or ethnicity.
The wellspring of this orthodoxy is a decent desire not to be a racist or a bigot. But when it goes into overdrive, it beggars common sense and human experience.
Thus Cardinal Camillo Ruini, the president of the Italian Bishops’ Conference, is in hot water for saying that Catholics should not marry Muslims.
He didn’t say it in a bigoted or racist way. He simply said, quite sensibly: “In addition to the problems that any couple encounters when forming a family, Catholics and Muslims have to reckon with the difficulties that inevitably arise from deep cultural differences.” Cardinal Ruini, who is a close advisor to Pope Benny, was particularly concerned for Christian women who marry Muslim men.
They are under pressure to convert to Islam, and very quickly lose entitlements over their children. For this, the Cardinal has been excoriated by Emma Bonino of the Radical Party – we have encountered this fiery feminist before – who has accused the Cardinal of breaking the Lateran Treaty which guarantees that the Vatican will not interfere with the Italian state.
But a Cardinal is as entitled to give his opinion as any other man, and what he says is only plain common sense. Any major difference in marriage is an extra burden on the marriage. Any marriage guidance counsellor will tell you that.
Matchmakers and dating agencies reiterate this. It is essential to have basic values in common for a marriage to work.
In Italy, there are a staggering 200,000 marriages between Muslims and Catholics: this year alone, there have been 20,000.
It is a considerable social trend. And while citizens are free to enter into any legal union that they choose, wiser counsels should certainly warn against the dangers of Christian-Islamic wedlock.
Islam is a highly patriarchal religion in which the father has total control over the children. Up to the age of seven, a mother is permitted to exercise influence on the child, but after that, the father takes over.
I have known of many tug-oflove cases where a ChristianIslamic marriage broke down, and the mother spent years trying to get access to her children.
Some might say that in the past the Catholic Church behaved dictatorially over the faith of children in a marriage. Maybe. But the Church never encouraged mixed-faith marriages. It was always considered a problem area, and I have found it to be so: even being married to a mild Anglican can cause tension. (I once asked Himself for some Spanish money when attending Mass in Madrid. “They’ll only spend it on torture instruments,” was the retort.) Love can of course overcome many obstacles, as can generosity of spirit. But if you have 20,000 Islamic-Christian marriages a year, it is a kindness, as well as sensible, to warn of the cultural trouble that could lie ahead.
PS : When a person dies, his obituary is the PS : When a person dies, his obituary is the summing up of his earthly life. When George Best died, opinions differed about that summation.
Some described him as the greatest footballer who has ever been: and my football expert tells me that Best was way better than Beckham, Owen or Ronaldo, and Mr Keane is not in the same class at all. Other commentators were harsher. Best was described as a weak-willed alcoholic, a man of domestic violence who assaulted the women who loved and cared for him, a hopelessly promiscuous womaniser who had given appalling example to young people.
In the end, judgment is left to the Almighty. However, it must be said in George Best’s favour that he united Belfast as Belfast has never been united, in living memory, before.
Those who claimed George Best in his native town came from every part of the political and religious divide.
It was uplifting to see that great vista towards Stormont thronged with all those who mourned George, rather than the provincial and bigoted political galère which has adorned it in the past.
Let the dead King of Ulster be a brilliant, crazy, flawed but alltoo-human footballer – yes!