You may disagree about Dom Mintoff. But I trust you don’t expect Pol Pot and Adolf Hitler to be rubbing shoulders with you in heaven.

You see, this is the fundamental flaw of this particular religious philosophy – a child who has been tortured all its life until it is murdered at nine or 10 will receive the same reward in heaven as Adolf Hitler should he have repented at the point of death.

I have been asking about this since I was a child at school, and four decades later I still do not have an explanation that isn’t completely risible and offensive.

The Roman Catholic Church’s policy of repentance and the failure to explain the above rationally (impossible, I know) is, I suspect, the reason some of the worst criminals and crime syndicates have their root in Catholic culture. The flipside of the above reasoning is that you may as well behave as badly as you please while alive because you can always repent and share paradise with people who have spent their lives being good, kind and decent.

This is exactly how lots of people in RC society think.

There are blue-eyed Palestinians. I know at least one with blonde hair and she isn’t Russian.

You’re probably right about the Toni Abela likeness. Why not introduce a novelty line of pasturi? You’d be just in time for Christmas.

Right. Let’s raise the stakes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIVB3DdRgqU

When I was a nipper (as Kenneth would say) I asked the MUSEUM “pref” why Jesus is always blue-eyed and sometimes blond in movies and pictures when Palestinians are all swarthy pot-bellied grouches as you describe them.

I was told some bullshit about how there are lots of blond Israelis, upon which I remarked that it’s only because of all the immigrants from Russia.

Needless to say, I wasn’t liked, even as a child.

Robert Powell, my arse. He probably looked like Toni Abela.

“Come on Jesus, take the fucking photo, my soup is getting cold.”

Would you still find it in poor taste, or would you manage to see a little humour in it?

I did not ‘admit’ anything of the sort. To me, this is a description of facts and not a for or against.

The difference between you and me, on this particular subject, is that you are emotionally invested in it and I am not.

Roman Catholicism, too, was a political system in Europe for centuries.

It was Malta’s political system until the arrival of the British, and it continued to shape our laws in one form or another right up until four years ago, when parliament finally legislated for divorce after a referendum.

Speaking of escort girls, the apostle on his right seems rather fey. Are you sure he’s not a she?