Trips to Lourdes financed by the sale of Durex – u hallina
Madonna and Lourdes are right up Noel Arrigo's street, but he's stuck with the pilgrim version and a couple of rosary rings for now.
Fortunately (or perhaps not, because it has been so very farcical) the end of this trial marks the end of Noel Arrigo’s invitations to ridicule.
Yesterday he brought out the priests – ah, but they weren’t his three confessors – to say how he prays, goes to mass, is a Holy Joe, has been to Lourdes many times, really, really wants to take all his family to Lourdes as well (as though they don’t have legs and money and can make their own way there if they want to, but need papa to take them in their 30s), and so on and so on.
The priest with the soap-smuggling brother told us how wonderful Arrigo’s values are, and what a man of principle he is.
You could hear the sound of laughter right across the island, because if there is one thing that this trial proved, it is that Noel Arrigo has shoddy values, no principles, and is unable to distinguish right from wrong.
Even now, he doesn’t understand the magnitude of what he did, or why he should have to pay the price.
This place is thick with paradox. Maybe I shouldn’t be taken aback that there are priests who rail against condoms and then praise the man who sells most of them, and who pays for his trips to Lourdes on the back of Durex.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with condoms, but I think there’s a lot wrong with this kind of dualist reasoning. Condoms are bad but the man who sells them – well, he’s fabulous. He’s got values and principles, even though he takes bribes from time to time. He has three confessors and goes to Lourdes.
What next – he goes to prayer groups? He’s a member of the Charismatic Renewal Movement? He pays for the education of orphans in darkest Africa? He works with the victims of mines and washes the wounds of AIDS patients (but only if they’re really attractive ladies)?
Please, spare us.
If he paid for those trips at all, that is, given those questions in parliament, when he was appointed, about his vast unpaid bills for water and electricity, telephony, income tax and national insurance.
The way Arrigo snatched at that envelope of cash like a man dying of thirst falling on water tells me one thing besides all the above: the man had a serious liquidity problem and was desperate for what idiom calls flus kontanti.
The average person cannot see this because they believe he is ‘rich’. In the common way of thinking, business = riches when very often it equals debt as we find out when things collapse. Nobody truly rich, and most people who are nowhere near rich, would have grabbed at that envelope.
The sort of person who would grab at it? Somebody under a lot of financial pressure, with bills to pay and a lifestyle to maintain, and a bank that has put a stop to the cash withdrawals. That’s who.
It’s so bloody obvious that you don’t need to be an expert in human behaviour to work it out.
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I’d say ‘(flus) fuq xulxin’ rather than the Italianate ‘kontanti’.
This whole sorry mess is really sad, sad to the point of being depressing, depressing to realise what a shit pit we live in.
Fortunately, there’s a lot of good in the world too – (e.g. footie :-)). Whilst this story had to be told, or rather, your comments about it were well worth hearing, perhaps you could let us have something to warm the heart occasionally, and not sicken it, like this does.
Why was Noel Arrigo planning to go to Lourdes? To ask the Madonna for forgiveness?
[Daphne – Well, I sure as hell hope it wasn’t to grab her butt.]
To ask her to spare him a guilty verdict and a prison sentence?
[Daphne – Ah, but was he planning to take a brown envelope of Lm20 notes with him? That’s what we want to know.]
To ask her to make everyone forget what he did? I do sympathise with sick people who go to Lourdes hoping for a miracle because one tends to try anything when faced with a life-threatening illness, but to ask the Madonna’s intervention for a gross mistake which you brought on to yourself is, to put it mildly, very cheeky. It’s about time he stops feeling sorry for himself and take it like a man by facing the music courageously and then he might, just might, re-gather a teeny-weeny bit of respect from those around him.
Daphne, further to my comment a few days ago, now I understand better what was bothering you. I still think one could avoid being vulgar about the things others hold dear. However, having followed what happened in the last few days I understand how sometimes religion and religious objects are put to ridicule by improper use. I think that there is nothing wrong about a person showing what he believes in as long as he does not use it as an excuse or a show. The same can be said about one’s relationship with God. One cannot live life without God and then turn to him as soon as something goes wrong.
I think in this case our religion was put to ridicule because it was being used to try and portray someone in a certain positive light. I think that whether the accused was a good Catholic or not has nothing to do with the case. And also what can anyone know about how good or not a Catholic is unless he is in his heart and mind. The priests involved were also out of place and when you see what they said you notice that they had nothing much to tell us about the accused.