A christian nation! Where's Oscar?

‘We don't have any ‘forces of darkness’ we just have COMIN and the Chamber of Commerce’.

I’m not a ‘god squadder’ - even if I have taken to beatifying a few Ministers of late but I couldn’t help homing in on the news item about the late Archbishop Oscar Romero who is is line for ‘the big one’ from the Pope.

Oscar famously took a stance in El Salvador over injustice and inequality and of course ‘the forces of darkness’ got rid of him.

Fortunately in the Isle of Man we don't have any ‘forces of darkness’ we just have COMIN and the Chamber of Commerce. Both of the latter are more misguided than miscreants in that the policies they follow (the two are indistinguishable from each other) create misery for a swathe of the population.

Come on before you say I’m over egging the pudding ask yourself did we have food and fuel poverty before the Chamber and COMIN were doing a ‘Sonny and Cher’ rountinue.

Anyway getting back to god we are, I’m told, a Christian nation. I don’t have any truck with it myself but each to his own.

Right on cue when Tynwald or the Keys are kicking off we have the equivalent on Manx Radio of ‘The Angelus’ beamed out to us. Manx Radio also beam out those ‘uplifting spiritual messages’ periodically

I’m wondering how amongst all these buggers and this dross why we haven't got a Oscar Romero saying (as Oscar did):

“A church that doesn't provoke any crises, a gospel that doesn't unsettle, a word of God that doesn't get under anyone’s skin, a word of God that doesn't touch the real sin of the society in which it is being proclaimed — ​what gospel is that?”

Anyway that’s my ‘thought for the day’!

Bernard Moffatt