Tony Blair a Catholic?

Fr. Dennis Brown sends me, Stan, a Zenit.org post:

Holy See Welcomes Blair's Decision to Convert
VATICAN CITY, DEC. 23, 2007 (Zenit.org).- Tony Blair's decision to enter into full communion with the Catholic Church has been welcomed "with respect" by the Holy See, according to a Vatican spokesman. “This is "good news that we welcome with respect…Catholics are glad to welcome into their community those who, through a serious and reflective journey, convert to Catholicism."

I wrote my Catholic friend Bill in the UK

Bill

I recall 4 years ago some of us thought both Bush and Blair would convert upon their leaving office. So, were you invited to the reception?

Stan

Bill wrote back:

Dear Stan,

No, I was not invited to the reception. With my opinions on Phoney Tony (or Tony B. Liar), the security guys would never have let me within a hundred yards of the ceremony. What has staggered both many Catholics and numerous secular commentators was the contrast between Blair's voting record on numerous key legislative issues (e.g. abortion, stem cell research, gay "marriage") where he proved himself to be one of the the most anti-Catholic British politicians since Oliver Cromwell, and his professed Christianity. How on earth could he possibly be accepted into the Church without public and unequivocal penitance for his past public outrages against Catholic morality?

But then the Blair contradictions are endless. When he sucked up to the loathsome hard-core pornographer Richard Desmond, who had just bought two major newspapers (admittedly, an action guaranteed to get most British politicians groveling at your feet) , one scathing columnist noted "the Reverend Blair was caught with a hard-core magazine concealed inside his Bible". When he came to power in 1997 in the wake of a string of corruption scandals which had dogged the outgoing Conservative government, he promised to be "whiter than white". Needless to say, the new Labour regime has been plagued by one accusation of corruption after another, culminating in Phoney Tony being the first British Prime Minister to be questioned by the police while still in office. Sadly, instead of serving a suitably enormous prison sentence, he is free to tour the world as a peace envoy (the most unlikely candidate since Henry Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize) and earn vast sums of money on speaking engagements and memoir sales.

I have pasted in below a very good article by Fraser Nelson from "The Spectator" of 28 Nov 2007. He gives a more temperate and balanced account of the Blair conversion issues than I would! Some of the quotations are very revealing, especially the one from the priest on working-class Irish in the church. As my late parents were both working-class Irish, I had steam coming out of my ears at his comments. The working-class Irish (and now the new working-class Poles, Slovaks and Lithuanians) have been the backbone of the Church in England for generations. If the bishops and other well connected clergy are so desperate for social acceptance in the higher reaches of the British establishment, it is plainly time that we had a new set of bishops.

I also loved one comment from a "Daily Telegraph" reader on Blair's first confession -that he would need a confessional with an en-suite bathroom...

Blair may be about to convert, but will that make him a Catholic? (by Fraser Nelson) from "The Spectator" of 28 Nov 2007

Tony Blair’s coming conversion to the Catholic faith will not be welcomed by all Catholics. There are many in the Vatican, and the Catholic church in this country, who wonder how a politician with his voting record can be admitted to the church.

‘My First Confession’ would be a great title for Tony Blair’s memoirs. At any rate, though the book may be years away, Tony Blair will soon confess his sins to Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, and later (no one is sure, but the Vatican has heard it will be after Christmas) Mr Blair will be received into the Roman Catholic Church. And in true Blair style, his decision to ‘Pope’ is creating a political storm.

In the robustly secular world of Westminster, few care what Mr Blair does with his Sundays. But Mr Blair’s conversion is a hot and divisive topic among priests and ordinary Christians in this country — and even in the Vatican itself. Churchgoers who wrote to their MPs in protest against the former prime minister’s various policy initiatives, from embryo research to laws on homosexual adoption, have good reason to be puzzled. Has Blair recanted? If he has, shouldn’t he say so publicly before he is received? Or has he decided not so much that he will go to Rome, but that Rome will come to him?

Many are remarkably keen to speak on the subject — but few on the record. ‘I cannot be identified,’ says one senior Vatican source. ‘The amount of good I am able to do here depends on it.’ There are pressing issues here, however. Some fear that Blair’s conversion has no deep theological basis, and that the rules are being bent in a most spectacular fashion to accommodate him. Others fear that Blair is no more than a secular liberal with broadly Christian — but not obviously Catholic — beliefs.

If Mr Blair were not a public figure, none of this would matter much; at any rate there would be none of the sort of anger that is now sweeping the pews. It is Mr Blair’s prominence and his outspoken religiosity that cause the problem. The former prime minister has spoken with obvious feeling about what he believes and how he fuses his politics with his creed. Alastair Campbell was not comfortable with this, declaring four years ago that ‘we don’t do God’. But Mr Blair most emphatically does.

Although Anglican, Mr Blair has always attended Mass with his wife, a convent-educated Catholic. He has done so, he says, to keep the family together on Sunday. He has described himself as an ‘ecumenical Christian’, which appears to mean that he confers on himself the right to attend any service he chooses. In 1996 the late Cardinal Hume wrote asking him to stop taking communion at St Joan of Arc, a Catholic church in Islington. He reluctantly agreed, but wrote in reply, ‘I wonder what Jesus would have made of it.’
He might also have wondered what the Anglican and Catholic martyrs would have made of it. Much as it may baffle Blair, people once died rather than deny — or affirm — Catholic Eucharistic teaching; and few practising Anglicans and Catholics would today dream of gatecrashing each other’s communion queues. Yet Mr Blair had come to his own, very unique conclusions about religion, and felt confident enough to lecture a Cardinal on Eucharistic protocol.

In Downing Street, Mr Blair’s faith was seen as a driving factor in his life — but few saw his beliefs as Catholic. ‘If you look at not just his voting record, but his legislative record, he has fought the Church for years,’ says one senior official who worked for him at No. 10. ‘That is why I cannot see how he can enter the Church now. Converts cannot cherry-pick which parts of the faith they agree with. It’s easier for cradle Catholics to dissent, but converts have to sign up to the whole agenda. Perhaps he has changed his mind. I just don’t know.’

To critics within the Church, Mr Blair was — as one priest puts it — ‘the most anti-Catholic Prime Minister of modern times’. Others, especially Evangelicals, go further and describe his policies as broadly anti-Christian. He has legalised homosexual civil unions and gay adoptions. He has championed stem-cell research — and with a fervour that contrasts starkly with his friend George Bush’s opposition to such research. He voted against lowering the abortion limit from 26 weeks to the present 24. His credentials are those of the perfect secular liberal. All this makes it baffling that he should now choose to join the Church that has so often attacked New Labour’s legislative programme. His friend Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor has been an outspoken critic, but Mr Blair has, apparently, been unmoved.

Joining the Catholic Church is not for the doctrinally fainthearted. The convert must first make confession of his serious sins. Next comes the Rite of Reception which includes the declaration: ‘I believe and profess all that the Holy Catholic Church believes, teaches and proclaims to be revealed by God.’ Ann Widdecombe says she had struggled with this sentence before being able to convert herself. ‘So either Tony Blair will perjure himself on a massive scale, or he has genuinely repented. But we can’t send a message that we accept people just because they used to be the prime minister.’

Other Catholics go further. ‘St Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus would pale into insignificance by comparison,’ says John Smeaton, director of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, who has a dossier on Mr Blair’s voting record. ‘We need to hear a full repudiation from him. Without one, having Blair as a Catholic is like having a vegetarian in a meat-eating club. It simply does not make sense.’

But might there be more leeway in the conversion process than Mr Blair’s critics suggest? Some would say that there is. The so-called Tablet Catholics — named after the distinguished liberal Catholic weekly — would argue the case for plurality. Cherie Blair puts it like this: ‘The Church isn’t just about the Vatican. It’s about all of us.’ This is the Catholicism of Hans Kung, a Swiss theologian who professes loyalty to Rome but rejects its teaching on celibacy and women priests. That he has been a house guest at 10 Downing Street provides another clue to the Blairs’ thinking.

Mrs Blair made her position explicit in an article two years ago in which she confessed to having ‘doubts’ about some of the Church’s teachings. ‘But I have been taught that you should stay and try to change things. It’s like the Labour party in the 1980s. I wasn’t happy with the way it was going, so I tried to help change it from within. Luckily, we won that battle.’ For all the breathtaking presumptuousness, one cannot fault her ambition. Today: Westminster. Tomorrow: Rome.

But one cannot join the Church as a liberal Catholic. There is only one kind of Catholicism, and its teaching is laid out in the Catechism. No doubt Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor will have discussed the Catechism with Mr Blair; certainly his spiritual adviser will have done. ‘If Cormac is for Blair coming into the Church, then there is nothing anyone down here can say about it,’ says a senior cleric in Rome.

Many priests I spoke to suspect that Mr Blair’s charm may have been impossible for the Cardinal to resist. ‘The Catholic Church in England has been working-class Irish for yonks and we’ve only become socially acceptable in the last 30 years,’ says one London priest. ‘It can be very flattering when you’re courted by the establishment. If Mr Blair came knocking on my door, instead of the usual hobgoblins, I’d be flattered. I can understand if Cormac has been.’

Yet it is just not possible to believe that the Cardinal would allow himself to be seduced into allowing an unsuitable candidate to become a Catholic. But why, ask liberal Catholics, hold Mr Blair to a standard of doctrinal orthodoxy that many of today’s faithful would fail? Mr Blair’s supporters believe opposition to his joining the Church is confined to a handful of Tories and ultra-conservative clerics.

‘Those objecting to Tony’s conversion are modern-day Pharisees,’ says one former aide. ‘How many Catholics can genuinely say they agree with every single one of the Church’s teachings? Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.’ Stephen Pound, a Catholic Labour MP, takes a similar view. ‘Perhaps Tony isn’t perfect. But there has only ever been one person on this earth who was. If he wants to join the one, true and indivisible Church then we should celebrate the fact.’

In the Vatican Mr Blair’s conversion has been expected for some time. When he met the Pope last June he brought as a present a picture of Cardinal Newman, the most famous Anglican convert. The meeting consisted of pleasantries, as is the custom on these occasions. An altogether tougher encounter had occurred earlier when Mr Blair met Cardinal Bertone, the papal secretary of state, who laid out the Church’s objections to Mr Blair’s legislation. But there is no Papal blackball on his conversion.

There is concern in Rome, however, over the liberal direction of the Catholic Church in this country. According to a senior Vatican source: ‘The situation in England, from mass attendance to vocations, is as bad as anywhere.’ But things in the US and Germany are bad too. That is why the Pope has decided that there are three appointments that will define what is expected to be a relatively short papacy: new cardinals in New York, Munich and Westminster. All three incumbents have reached the mandatory retirement age.

But finding a successor can be a slow process even under fast-moving Popes. ‘The Holy Father is a gentle man, he works very slowly, to the frustration of some,’ I am told. Vincent Nichols, Archbishop of Birmingham, has long been the frontrunner for Westminster. ‘But he is the Gordon Brown of the Church,’ says once source close to the Cardinal. ‘He thought the job should have been his last time, and he’s been gunning for it ever since.’ The Vatican suspects the Cardinal’s preferred choice is Arthur Roche, Bishop of Leeds.
Both may be in for a disappointment. I am told the Pope is sceptical about choosing anyone from England’s ‘magic circle’ of metropolitan bishops and is actively considering monastic candidates to succeed Cardinal Murphy- O’Connor — just as Basil Hume was plucked from the monastic seclusion of Ampleforth Abbey in 1976. Those already in Church hierarchy, it is feared, are liberals.

But the Cardinal himself is certainly no patsy. Catholic MPs were this week surprised to receive an invitation to a private soirée to discuss the coming ‘parliamentary agenda’ — the first time a ‘Catholic whip’ has been attempted. The head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales is clearly not going to stop his campaign against the anti-Christian policies of this government, or of any other. Tony Blair’s conversion may be popular at Westminster Cathedral — but his secular liberalism will not find any sympathisers there. When it comes to his first confession, he will have to follow his conscience — and listen carefully to the advice of his confessor.

Hong Kong, Progress, and Atheism

The day before Christmas, I received a Christmas package from Bill with a beautiful calendar from Hong Kong, and some British Humor magazines. Always a treat. I thanked him for the package, and he wrote back:

Dear Stan,

Glad to hear that you received the package OK. The Hong Kong calendar gives you some idea of the unbelievable vitality and economic success of this tiny enclave. Even though it was returned to Beijing rule in 1997, it is still a Special Administrative Region; the nominally "Communist" regime is smart enough to pay only lip service to Marxist and Maoist pieties and does not want to inhibit this goose from laying as many golden eggs as possible. I found the following web page while following up comments on Theodore Dalrymple's brilliant article on currently fashionable atheists. I was fascinated to see someone else supporting my speculation on the reasons for the phenomenal success of Hong Kong and Singapore. A major Chinese economist noted how civilized the Chinese in Hong Kong were and attributed it to Christian influence. Certainly I felt much safer on the streets of Kowloon and Singapore than on the post-Christian streets of Britain.

One amusing detail I found in Singapore which I had not mentioned before. On Orchard Road, the land of mega-malls, I found a huge and crowded branch of Borders. It was practically identical to the Borders on Orchard Lake Road in Farmington Hills. The layout, interior design and book stock looked as if they had been prescribed in detail from the corporate HQ in Ann Arbor. The only way you could tell you were in Asia was the inclusion of some Asian magazines among the US and UK titles in the magazine racks. Also I think the coffee shop was run by a different franchisee.

Bill

Reading Reading

Dear Stan,

Cafe Scientifique is a new venture by the University of Reading as part of its public education outreach. For years the University has run public lectures in the evening in the Palmer Building, in the same auditorium where Reading Film Theatre shows its arthouse movies. These lectures have covered a wide variety of fascinating topics and been delivered with an equally wide variety of skill by the eminent speakers. Just because you are the top expert in the world on Italy under Mussolini does not guarantee that you'll deliver a scintillating lecture on the subject, as I found out last March. As the lectures are all free, it is ungracious to complain and impossible to demand your money back.

Unlike the public lectures, Cafe Scientifique is held off campus - well, 200 yards off campus in one of the bars at the Queen's Head pub in Christchurch Road. This has the advantage of being less formal than the main public lectures where the lecturer is out front at a traditional lectern and the audience is in banked rows of cinema-style seats. At the pub we were all packed in close to the speakers. The disadvantage was the limited seating for the crowd who squeezed in to listen to two speakers on stem cell research. One of them was Dr Che Connon, a researcher in stem cell research specialising in using adult stem cells for treating eyes damaged by disease or accidents, such as having corrosive liquids thrown in the face. The other was David Oderberg, originally from Australia, now Professor of Philosophy at Reading. He has lectured and written extensively on the moral implications of bioethical research.

The evening held two stunning surprises. The first was Professor Oderberg's ethical approach. For much of his talk he sounded as if he was channelling Pope John Paul 2 on the sanctity of human life, destruction of embryos and so on. I had never heard of the guy before that evening although he lives only a quarter of a mile from Reading Prison and hence St James Church. See the attached interview with Prof Oderberg for a secular philosopher's views on some of the key aspects of morality. No wonder I had never heard of him; his opinions would not be welcome in the BBC or most British TV or newspapers.

The second surprise came in the shape of an American doctor who stood up in the question and answer session to declare himself a supporter of our old friend Jack Kevorkian and a long term campaigner in the USA for abortion rights. In a somewhat incoherent challenge to Professor Oderberg, he seemed to imply that universities were for 'intellectual' pursuits and lectures based on beliefs were somehow off limits in an ethical debate. I may be doing him an injustice, but he was almost a caricature of the moral liberationist so evident in much of the US and British media and parts of academia.

The Queens Head may sound like a bizarre venue for an educational initiative, but then Christchurch Road compresses the extremes of the British education system into a very small space. At its east end, less than 200 yards from the pub, you find the huge green campus of the University of Reading. Less than two hundred yards to the west of the pub there used to be Reading Alternative School. This sounds like a chic and radical school, with an imaginative curriculum and innovative teaching methods. Er, not quite. You went to Reading Alternative School only when there was no alternative for you. Your totally disruptive, violent or depraved behaviour meant that even the worst schools in town had washed their hands of you, but the luckless Local Education Authority still had a legal obligation to 'educate' you until the age of 16. A friend taught at this school for a few months and was lucky to escape uninjured when a pupil threw a pair of scissors at her. She is a really lovely and compassionate person and explained the horrendous backgrounds of many pupils; parental neglect and abandonment, physical, emotional and sexual abuse, drink and drug abuse, mental illness. The name was proof that local British government, like the national government, has no shortage of bullshit merchants.

I use the past tense because Reading Alternative School no longer exists. I walked past some weeks ago and Phoenix College had taken its place. My cynical sister suggested that the name was inspired by the 'students' torching the earlier school, but the buildings looked much the same. Plainly the bullshit merchants had paid a return visit. They must have trained the staff well because shortly afterwards an article appeared in the local paper. Reading Alternative School might as well have been on Pluto for all the press coverage it received. Every other school in town had newspaper articles describing its academic achievements, sporting successes, drama productions, musical concerts, fundraising events, etc. No parent would ever boast about their child going to Reading Alternative School. Now at last an article described a charity fundraising event at the Phoenix College. For the benefit of bemused local citizens,who had not a clue where this 'college' was or what it taught, a staff member explained that the pupils 'had many things going on in their lives'. It was like 'La Vie en rose' covering Edith Piaf's World War 2 career.

Walk less than 300 yards west along Christchurch Road from Phoenix College and you come to the junior department of Abbey School. You go to the Abbey School if you are female and your parents can afford £8,000 ($16,000+) a year in fees. Sally Taylor, who presents the local news on BBC South Today, went to Abbey School. In fact an astonishing number of TV presenters went to Abbey School. The Chief Vetinary Officer in Britain also appeared on TV quite a lot during the recent foot and mouth disease panic.....and she went to Abbey School. The pupils at Phoenix College probably have a better chance of flying to the moon than going to Oxford or becoming TV presenters, even when the school leaving age is raised to 18 as the Government plans. But the Local Education Authority will have the pleasure of educating them and keeping their teachers alive for even longer.

William Murphy

Irrational Atheism

Dear Stan,

Here is the link to the wonderful essay on modern atheists by Theodore Dalrymple in City Journal:

http://www.city-journal.org/html/17_4_oh_to_be.html
(Indeed, a brilliant essay. I actually believe Theodore Dalrymple is secretly a Vatican logician. If we knew his real identify, we'd find this stuff boring. But since he claims to be an atheist, we find it fascinating. - SW)

You can link it, spread the word and be free from copyright prosecution. As a follow up to Beckett's famous blast: "God doesn't exist - the bastard!", I am reminded of the old joke about the Irish atheist who went around wishing to God he believed in God. Trying to deny His existence is like the childhood game of trying to jump off your own shadow. As nature abhors a vacuum, other beliefs merely move in to act as unsatisfactory substitutes. Some of our most vocal British atheists sound like (and in some cases look like) religious crackpots in their propaganda zeal, especially on issues such as global warming which plainly play the role of surrogate religions for atheist advocates. George Monbiot and Johann Hari are prime examples, as in the recent case of a small but vocal demonstration against the expansion of Heathrow Airport. In his fervent denunciation of the demon air travel, the atheist Hari was reduced to raging against the gleaming streamlined shapes emitting CO2 and leading the planet "to Hell", which he does not believe in. Of course, Hari uses air travel, but only as a necessary evil in assisting his reporting on injustice in other parts of the world.....

English Language in Germany

I spent a few hours around the Central Rail Station in Cologne. In many cities (e.g. New York, Berlin, Turin, Prague) you are warned about the criminal dangers around the rail station - typically pickpockets, hustlers and drug dealers. But Cologne's station is brightly lit, well policed and busy nearly all the time. The historic station with its enormous curved glass roof sits on top of a good sized mall with numerous shops and cheap eating places offering cuisines from several countries. As the station is right beside the Cathedral, it was a very convenient spot to grab a quick meal before more sightseeing. But, best of all, it has a superb newspaper and magazine shop which illustrates the union of Europe better than any political speeches.

The shelves displayed publications from Germany, Britain, the USA, France, Italy, Spain, Poland, Russia, the Czech Republic and Turkey. Cologne has been a European crossroads for centuries; the collapse of the Communist block and the expansion of the European Union has increased the numbers of people traveling in all directions for work and pleasure. After being brought up for decades on stories of the austerity of the Communist countries, it still seems strange to see glossy fashion magazines with Cyrillic letters surrounding the supermodels on the covers.

The English language selection was as good as you would find in many magazine shops in England and the main British "newspapers" (or Prolefeed as George Orwell accurately called them) were on sale on the same day as they appeared in London. If you wanted to learn the latest non-development in the eternal saga of Madeleine McCann (the little English girl lost/murdered/abducted/??? in Portugal) you could pay three times the London price and read all about it. But then you could check out the 1,720,000 references on Google for free and be just about as wise (or ignorant). As one of my cynical colleagues observed 20 years ago, here was more proof of the tens of billions of pounds we waste on education each year.

The size of the English section is just another reminder of the worldwide triumph of the language. A friend who works for a large multinational told me that his German colleagues were ordered to speak English in business meetings - even if only Germans were present.

The English language is typically the only alternative to German provided in most public places. Despite the heroic rearguard efforts of the Academie Francais and other cultural bodies, the French language is never going to endure this sort of linguistic Juggernaut; this seems especially ironic for a city whose English name is actually the French one. You can get guidebooks for the city and the cathedral in 6 or 7 main European languages, and guided tours can be obtained in several languages. But the useful detailed instructions on signs and noticeboards can practically be displayed in only two or three languages and English is the inevitable choice.

Outside the station it is only a short walk to the pedestrianised shopping streets where you can max out your credit cards as quickly as in any other major city on earth. You could buy much of the merchandise in London (or in Reading for that matter), so there was little to excite my interest. The French might be losing the language wars, but they are triumphantly winning the shopping battles. The distinctive French labels like Louis Vuitton, Chanel, etc are as evident in Cologne as they are in the Far East cities I visited. Luxury goods have been a French specialty for decades and with the continuing expansion of many countries' economies they are uniquely well placed to reap the fruits of their carefully nurtured trade marks.

The local jewelery store named "Christ" has its name across the cover of the city's shopping guide displayed at the airport and elsewhere. For a while I thought that this would be the customer's stunned ejaculation on seeing their price tags, but in fact much of their jewelery and watch prices are mid-market by German standards.

The huge department store Kaufhof (rough equivalent of Sears or JC Penney) had a huge window display which will probably linger in the memories of local children for decades. It showed dozens of soft toy animals animated in a range of gestures - so the monkeys swung from a beam, the elephant nodded its head and the tiger crouched and twitched its tail. It provided a well designed and executed entertainment for the Christmas/Carnival crowds and children of all ages.

One shop outside the main shopping area had a range of beautiful Christmas manger sets and other religious statues which you would not see in many cities. The individual museums and galleries stock memorabilia specific to each site.

One big difference between Germany and Britain is the brewery distribution. The local beer Kolsch has to be brewed within the city limits to be called Kolsch; there are various breweries making their own beers so you can get Peter Kolsch, Sion Kolsch and so on. Practically every town and city in Germany has its own beer and brewery, just as Britain had before the national and multinational firms took over or bankrupted the local firms. A surprising number still hang on determinedly in various parts of Britain and their products are relished and publicized by the Real Ale movement. But the local brews' position seems much more assured in Germany.

Beethoven, Germany, Things that Fly in the Air

After visiting the Beethoven Haus in Bonn, I walked down the the Museum of the History of the Federal Republic. The title was not particularly inviting or exciting and I would not have seen it if a German friend had not recommended it. But it was wonderful! Everything from the Berlin Wall (building and destruction) to an old Miele washing machine to a Trabant, a piece of moonrock and one of the Beatles' drumsticks. As the museum covers the period of German history from 1945 to the present, it also chronicles many major European and American events, such as the 1960s student upheavals, the space race and European unification.

The exhibits start in the desperate days after May 1945 when staying alive was a constant battle. One room recreates the stark interior of a refugee camp hut. In 1945 at least 6 million Germans fled from the eastern provinces of Silesia, Prussia and Pomerania ahead of the Red Army, plus more who were expelled by the newly liberated Czechs from the Sudentenland areas of Czechoslovakia. They arrived in areas of Germany where the existing inhabitants had no homes due to the bombing and there was no public transport, electricity, gas or clean running water. It puts into perspective the current hubbub in Britain about the influx of less than a million East Europeans arriving in a peaceful prosperous country with adequate housing and all public services functioning.

The exhibits are arranged in date order, so you get some sense of economic, political and social changes decade by decade. Much of the emphasis is on the West German perspective, though changes in the Communist East Germany get some coverage. The museum covers my whole life, so it was a thrill to see the smallest BMW car ever made - the two -seater "bubble" car (with only one door - across the front of the vehicle!) they produced in the 1950s and which I dimly remember seeing gleaming new in a showroom when I was a small child - at a time when British car buyers were very patriotic and any foreign car was a rarity on British roads. It was so strange seeing this tiny, slow, bizarre vehicle sporting the familiar blue-and-white round badge which now adorns some of the most powerful and advanced sedans in the world. BMW are of course one of the major contributors to Germany being the biggest exporting nation on earth. Despite all the fuss about Chinese exports, Germany, with 7% of the population of China and 25% of the US population, out-exports both countries.

Most of the labels in the museum are in German, though I bought the very fat and informative English language guidebook to steer myself round the complex layouts. For film buffs, there was one amazing surprise - a huge temporary exhibition dedicated entirely to "Das Boot" (The Boat), the 1981 classic about WW2 submarine warfare. Surely one of the best war films ever, the exhibition brought it to life again, showing many details of the production, such as the make-up, custome design, camera work and the model submarines used for exterior shots, plus the numerous awards the film justly won.

One hilarious episode which is not mentioned in the museum is the prelude to the introduction of the Euro in 2002. The roads down to Switzerland and Liechtenstein were packed with top-of-the-range BMWs and Mercedes loaded with Deutschmarks which had never been declared to the taxman.This loot needed to be paid into suitably discreet banks before the marks became obsolete.

Walking down the road to this museum there were several surprises. There was an "Old Catholic" church; I had read about this breakaway group, which left the Catholic Church after the First Vatican Council, but had never seen one of their churches. Right next door was the Newman institute for Catholic students. A few minutes on there was the old foreign ministry and the old residence of the President of the republic. In the best civil service tradition, the united German government have built a new foreign ministry and a new Residence for the President in Berlin - but still keep the huge redundant old buildings in Bonn. And I suppose that , somewhere in East Berlin, there is a third foreign ministry left over from the DDR.... As long as there is only one foreign policy. It is difficult enough keeping up with one set of foreign policies (especially if they are French).

Back in Cologne, the preparations for the Carnival season were well advanced. I had a meal with Annette, my German friend who I met when she was a member of one of the St James music groups for a year in 2004/5. She then did a year's teacher training in Ludwigshaven, the very industrial home town of BASF, the huge chemical company. Happily she has now moved on to a teaching job (English and geography) in the much more attractive city of Koblenz, where the River Moselle joins the Rhine. She explained that Carnival (called "the Fifth Season") runs from late November to Ash Wednesday, with a break for Christmas. The area south of the cathedral is covered with rows of solidly made wooden huts which will house the Christmas Market - one of several around the city.

Germans are reputed to travel abroad more than any other nation on earth and Annette and her family certainly live up to this stereotype. She spent two weeks in Iran last summer, with no trouble whatsoever. She found the Iranians incredibly friendly and hospitable, ready to engage in conversation and exchange email addresses at the drop of a hat. Of course, she had to observe basic proprieties, dressing very modestly and covering her hair with a scarf. She also attended the wedding of a American friend (of Egyptian parentage) whom she met while studying in Chicago. The wedding took place in an idyllic village church in the Loire valley in France, followed by the reception in one of the beautiful chateaux for which that region is famous. Unfortunately, the bride's parents were absent, objecting to her choice of a Jewish husband. This did not deter her numerous other relatives who flew in from the Middle East and elsewhere. The local French villagers applauded and threw flowers as this wedding procession of total strangers progressed past their homes. The bride was originally Orthodox, but converted to Catholicism so that she and her Jewish fiance could get married in church. It was a reminder of how "globalised" people are becoming.

Annette's parents had been around much the same area as me this year, visiting Hong Kong, Singapore, Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur. I have not seen the last city, though it is certainly on my list for future holidays. But despite all this globe trotting, she was delayed in getting to our rendezvous outside the cathedral. It is only a hour by train from Koblenz, but there was a strike on! The train drivers were seeking a hefty increase. Still, most trains ran and she was only twenty minutes late.

When I took the trains to and from Bonn, they ran absolutely on time. It was a single decker train down to Bonn, a double decker on the way back - one of very few occasions I have ever been on a double decker train. Both trains were quiet, smooth and spotlessly clean. As with Singapore and Hong Kong, I felt very safe out at night in both Bonn and Cologne. It was such a pleasant change to going out after dark in Reading or London, where the massive alcohol abuse by thousands of people makes you all too aware that violence is never far away.

I went to Sunday Mass in Cologne Cathedral. The bishop lead the entry procession, which was swelled by a huge all-girl choir. The latter were mainly 10-13 years old; they looked suitably angelic in their white robes and sounded angelic as well. I checked out the wonderful St Gereons Church west of the Cathedral - no wonder Cologne is described as a Cathedral surrounded by Cathedrals. Several churches would be cathedrals in any other city. I then went to the City of Cologne Museum which boasts a winged car on its roof - this a tribute to Ford, a major employer in the area. A 1960s Ford is one of the exhibits inside.

The museum covers all of Cologne's history from Roman times to the present day, through the Middle Ages when it was the largest city north of the Alps, bigger even than Paris or London. A very frank area describes the Nazi period of Cologne's history, when swastika flags were hung even on the Cathedral. I had heard of the special cheap radios which the Nazis mass produced so that Germans could listen to their propaganda; sure enough, there were two samples in a display case. The WW2 destruction was apocalyptic; exhibits and photographs depict the devastation of the city's buildings, bridges and transport. 20,000 citizens were killed, 4,800 on one terrible night in 1943, more than a year AFTER the "Thousand Bomber raid". Other fascinating exhibits show the numerous industries and trades in the area. Most unexpected was the model of the enormous rafts of logs floated down the Rhine from southern Germany. The exhibit said that these were up to 300 metres long, which in one sense would make them the biggest vessels ever built up to that time.

I am now safe at home after a short but eventful flight from Cologne. We had a delay boarding the plane because it had been held up at another airport during its constant hops around Europe. Apparently one document said there were 137 people on board, while another said there were 134. Somehow three passengers were issued with duplicate boarding cards, which accounted for the three extra bodies. So by the time it reached Cologne/Bonn Airport and we were able to board, it was already well behind schedule. We thought that we were ready for take-off, but then there was a further delay because there was still one woman passenger standing without a seat. The crew argued over a cello which a musician passenger had brought on board. There were several other bulky instruments stuffed into the rear toilet compartment, which meant that no one could use that toilet for part of the flight. But this cello had a seat to itself, which the owner had paid for. This precious instrument was going into the cargo hold only over the owner's dead body.

After much negotiating and some surreal debate as to whether it was a "female" passenger, the cello was moved up to the flight deck the woman got her seat and we took off! I suspect the question of the cello's gender might have arisen from a head count of male and female passengers. There is always a spare seat (the "jump seat") on an airliner's flight deck, but the obvious solution (put a passenger in the jump seat) was forbidden by security rules. Part way through the flight, some of the musical instruments were taken out of the toilet so that passengers could use it, but don't ask me where the crew put them. The flight to London was less than an hour, but it was easily the bumpiest I have ever experienced. The aircraft flew only at 23,000 feet, which is much lower than most jets. I love flying, but was mighty glad to reach the ground this time. I was surrounded a a crowd of 10/11 year old children from a diving club who had been to a competition in Germany. Their harassed supervisors managed to retain their sense of humour while keeping the bored kids in order throughout the delays.

Back at Gatwick, you are inevitably reminded what total dumps the major London airports are in comparison with just about every other airport in the developed world. Going down the steps from the departure lounge to the tarmac at Gatwick was like descending to a 1950s urinal. Heathrow is little better. The enormous Terminal 5 finally opens at Heathrow next March; it has taken 20 years of arguing to get that erected after enquiries and planning consent delays and appeals. Unfortunately the ancient Terminals 1 to 3 will still be in business. Luton and Stansted are much more modern, but they are difficult to reach from Reading and offer fewer flights. But the real fun starts when you leave the bus to track down your car in the enormous long-stay carpark. Even with the benefit of a zone letter and a row number, I was wandering up and down for ages in the rain before I found it. I was 1:30am before I crawled into bed; up again at 6:30am for work on Monday......

Bonn, Germany

Dear Stan,

I am currently in Bonn, which makes it the 3rd ex-capital city I have visited in just over a year. (Turin used to be the Italian capital and East Berlin was the capital of East Germany). I have so far seen only the Beethoven House. He is plainly the city's most famous son, as you can tell from the numerous statues and signs pointing to the Beethoven House. It is well worth the €5.00 admission fee, as it contains the largest collection of Beethoven memorabilia in the world - his pianos, desks, viola, portraits, letters, manuscripts and, most poignantly, the ear trumpets and conversation books which he was forced to use as his deafness progressed. It also contains his death mask and a lifemask made 15 years earlier. I must confess that I had never even heard of a "lifemask" until I saw his, though it is a obvious procedure to use in the pre-photography age.

I had a fascinating few hours in the German-Roman Museum in Cologne. From the outside it is the sort of hideous square concrete box which gives neo-Brutalism a bad name - all the worse as it is right beside the peerless Cathedral. Once inside, it is endlessly enthralling. The interior design is far more appealing than the exterior, with one stairwell designed around a large Roman mosaic discovered in 1941 when building an air raid shelter. It boasts "the largest collection of Roman glass in the world" and I would not argue with this claim to fame. The beauty and intricacy of the craftsmanship in glass and ceramics surviving 2,000 years is a marvel in itself. It brings everyday Roman life back to life in a way better than any other museum I have seen. It includes children's toys, rings, hairpins and cosmetic pots used by the ladies, cooking pots, recreated domestic interiors, part of the Roman walls of Cologne and a rebuilt Roman carriage.

There was a wedding in progress when I visited the Town Hall, with the radiant bride and groom oblivious to the traumatic history of the building (totally rebuilt since WW2 leveling) and the nearby glass pyramid which covers the deep shaft of the Jewish ritual cleansing bath discovered at that site. The local Jews, as in every part of Europe, suffered pogroms well before the Nazis arrived. Round the corner from the Town Hall is the enormous tower of Great St Martin, a church which would be a cathedral in any other city, also totally rebuilt since 1945.