Go Lassie Go

As you sit down to watch X factor, say a little prayer for Aretha

 

I voted for scouse princess Rebecca Ferguson in the X factor final. She's a self-effacing girl who doesn't realise just what a beautiful soul voice she possesses. It's clear Rebecca grew up listening to Aretha Franklin, the Queen of Soul. Without Aretha there would be no Rebecca. It has just been confirmed that Aretha is suffering from pancreatic cancer and has had surgery. I cannot express in words the joy her voice has given me over the years. She once said: "Soul to me is a feeling, a lot of depth and being able to bring to the surface that which is happening inside, to make the picture clear. The song doesn't matter....it's just the emotion, the way it affects other people"

So as we sit down to watch the X Factor final, let's remember that for all its popularity, it's a derivative show that rides on the shoulders of ground breaking artists. Aretha and her contemporaries defied poverty and racism to create a new kind of sound that continues to uplift us. What joy she must have felt to sing at the inauguration of Barack Obama as her country's first African American President.  Let's say a little prayer for her tonight. Or, if like me you are not religious, you can write to her c/o the New Bethel Baptist Church in Detriot, which was where her late father preached and where she began singing as a child.

For rampant secularists in the RC tradition...Pat Kane Sings O Godhead hid

My ex, Pat Kane, recently wrote in the Caledonian Mercury about his mixed feelings of The Pope's visit as a Catholic who has embraced rationalism. We are both part of the secular society Benedict has been railing again. We disagree with him on homosexuality, the role of women, contraception, IVF, and the suggestion that only believers can be good people. Yet we both found the Mass at Bellahouston moving and uplifting. Perhaps that is because, as Pat says in his article, "skaffolics have the best tunes."  And just to prove it, here is his version of O Godhead Hid, a fabulous hymn written by St Thomas Aquinas. In the Latin it is Adoro te Devote. It was sung at every Communion in our childhood and conveys a lot of the mystery and magic that makes the church so attractive, even in the modern age. 

If you like it you can buy it with the Bitter Suite album

The i-pod Pope...just ask the kids

WHAT can you tell me about Pope Benedict XVI? I ask the primary seven pupils of St Ninian's in Gourock. "He's the first Pope to have an iPod!" they cry in unison. "And he plays Mozart and Bach on it."

The kids from my old school have a better grasp of the papal biography than I did back in the day. Eilidh Hudson knows he speaks eight languages and is learning another - Portuguese. He was forced to join the Hitler Youth at 14. "He never went," says Ryan McGregor, 11. "His cousin with Downs Syndrome was killed by The Nazis."

The rest of this piece is in The Scotsman

Live from Bellahouston:Ten things you might not know about the papal visit to Scotland

Archbishop Conti definitely more a unionist than Cardinal O'Brien. Conti reminds the crowd that Christianity arrived "before Scotland and England came into being". O'Brien drapes the Pontiff in a tartan scarf. Every kid in Edinburgh had a saltire.

The biggest cheer of the night came as the Pope left and stopped to bless a little boy with cancer interviewed by Jackie Bird the night before on Reporting Scotland.

Bumped into Professor Tom Devine, Scotland's leading historian, as we both gatecrashed the photographers' platform for a better view. He endorses my Scotsman column asserting that Scotland owes its statehood to the Catholic Church. Most relieved.

Glad I got a plug in for Mary's Meals on Five Live. They feed 400,000 kids in the developing world at school. Often this is the only way they get an education.

The Vat Pack (ok, international journalists) were sustained by complimentary Tunnocks Caramel wafers. The food of life?

The gold Papal Vestments were pure show biz, though I did think of Fellini for a second.

The crowd is not just smaller than 1982, but more varied. Spoke to Poles and Filipinos, lots of African families. Took leaflets from Sri Lankans protesting at the persecution of Catholic Tamils in their homeland.

Mass in the park not so easy for a crowd of 50,000 with about 2000 deckchairs between them. What do you do when ritual demands you kneel or sit? The most devout got muddy knees. I think they were Polish.

James MacMillan's sung Mass was incredibly moving as was all the music. Glad they sang Soul of My Saviour and included so much Gaelic and Latin.

Loved the Father who, descending from the altar after the Pontiff left, pulled out his mobile to photograph the crowd. The priests who distributed Communion were all accompanied by funky teenagers holding gold umbrellas.Quite a sight

Lassie gets Vatican stamp of approval

Lassie is pleasantly surprised to be one of the few bloggers given media accreditation for the official Papal Visit.  The Vatican, it seems, are aware of the shift away from mainstream media and are welcoming t'internet folk into the flock.

I won't be wearing the T-shirt, though must admit that some of the slogans - see left - on the merchandise are wittier than I expected. There are more here at jctees.

The visit is less controversial than the last one - a survey at the weekend showed the vast majority of Scots either welcomed it or had no view.

Preparations for the Scottish leg appear to be going particularly well compared to down south.  The Telegraph's religious affairs correspondent Damian Thompson was today bemoaning the "tired and trendy" folk hymns chosen for some English events and praising James MacMillan's setting of the Mass, which will be heard in Glasgow. He wishes the MacMillan Mass could be repeated in London, but makes no bid for Susan Boyle...

Meantime, the visit has stirred up the (apologies in advance) poisoned chalice that is the Act of Settlement . Angus Brendan MacNeil MP calls for the repeal of the 1701 law which bans Catholics from sitting on the British throne and stops heirs to that throne marrying Catholics. It states that no monarch nor his heir “shall profess the Popish religion or shall marry a Papist”.

It is unequivocally sectarian and several politicians have previously made efforts to change it. New Labour certainly made lots of noise about it, particularly from Scotland. Dr John Reid called it "discriminatory and divisive" when he was Scottish Secretary and one of his successors, Jim Murphy, said he was pressing hard for change  Even Michael Forsyth, the Secretary of State for Scotland under the Conservatives in the early 1990s, backed repeal. David Cameron also criticised the discriminatory law before he became PM but has done nothing about it since his election - it is not included in Nick Clegg's planned constitutional reforms.

Isn't it strange that none of these calls have actually resulted in change? After reading Allan Massie's book The Royal Stuarts, I suspect I know why. The House of Hanover only exists because the Act of Succession banned the Stuarts from the party for ever and a day.  In the book Massie says it is ridiculous to suggest that repealing the act would result in the usurping of the Windsors (a name assumed for patriotic reasons when Britain was fighting the Germans). However I suspect someone in the palace disagrees.What other explanation can there be for political promises running into the sand? 

It's always enjoyable to indulge in "what ifs" though. If The Act had been quashed and the Windsors squashed, perhaps Franz of Bavaria would welcome the pontiff instead of the Queen. Franz, widely recognised as the Jacobite heir, is from an eminent German Catholic family who were persecuted by the Nazis. He spent his teenage years in concentration camps including Dachau. I suspect he and Benedict would have lots to talk about.

Girls' school defies Taliban

 
I was moved by Marie Colvin's piece on a girls' school in the Taliban stronghold of Kanadahar. Whatever you think of the war there, the efforts of the international community to educate young women must be applauded. The education of girls was banned under the Taliban and today only 15% of the female population can read and write.  In November 2008 motorcycle riders, believed to have been sent by the Taliban, threw acid at a group of 15 schoolgirls, blinding one and scarring several others. After that, many parents were afraid to send their girls to school. Yet within weeks, they were defying the women-haters and classrooms opened again. One of the girls scarred in the attacks is pictured above. Ehsan Ullah, 39, founded the school Marie visited,and used his own money to set it up. It has been expanded and improved by funding from the Canadian government and a private benefactor from the same country. Ullah has kept the school going at considerable person risk to himself and his family. He tells Marie he received a call from religious fundamentalists who demanded he close the school or they would 'boil his children'. 

The return of the Taliban

From the Herald http://www.theherald.co.uk

Occupation or liberation? The next time a British soldier is killed in Afghanistan and you ask why we remain there, get hold of Siddiq Barmak's powerful and profoundly sad film, Osama.
The title does not refer directly to the al Qaeda leader. Osama is in fact a little girl who disguises herself as a boy in order to get a job in Taliban-controlled Kabul. Made by an Afghan director with Iranian support, it offers a desperate insight into life as a female in a state ruled by misogyny and the lash.

Joan McAlpine asks: Is the Scottish media institutionally racist?

From the Herald   http://www.theherald.co.uk/

The Scottish media stands accused of institutionalised racism this week, so how does it plead? A genuine mistake is forgivable. But journalists did not just get it wrong in the case of the missing Scots schoolgirl, who popped up in Lahore, Pakistan. Some failed to check the facts at all. Worse, they are accused of ignoring Scottish Asian contacts who knew the father, Sajad Ahmed Rana. They preferred to perpetrate a cliche of the evil Pakistani snatching his daughter to present her as some kind of matrimonial prize.

The Herald can hold its head up in being one newspaper that did not reprint the line about 12-year-old Molly/Misbah being forced into an arranged marriage with a man twice her age. From where did this rumour emerge? A glance at the family suggests it was unlikely, given the father's social position and the fact she has elder siblings who chose their own marriage partners. Allegations about the mother's lifestyle were also fed to journalists last week – but these remain private for legal reasons, while the father's reputation was trashed. Might this be because the mother is white and the father Pakistani? Obviously that was not the intention of editors or their staffs. Unfortunately, that is not how Scotland's Asian and Islamic community views things, and who can blame them?

Boruc's blessing, Scotland's shame

From The Herald      http://www.theherald.co.uk/

Artur Boruc was born in the very year Solidarity took Polish workers on to the streets of Gdansk, so changing the course of European history. His parents no doubt told him what life was like before his birth in 1980, when puppet governments following Moscow's command tried to impose official atheism on the deeply religious country. Catholic priests were gagged, senior clergy placed under house arrest, convents raided and church magazines banned. But no-one was ever cautioned for making the sign of the cross.