Bishop to Book Five

Apologies for the interruption in the regular service, but with the demands of academia being what they are, work has kept me away from the ribaldry that is reading The Times. Even for one such as myself, who has studied at three universities, the pressures of writing even half-decent academic copy does not come easy.

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The authority of Bishop Emeritus Nikol Cauchi is immediately evident from the austere, ultramontanist severity of his face. But quite how he thinks his gilt crucifixes and collection of porphyry cameos of the Virgin Mary give him the authority to lecture me on my reading habits is beyond me. Wringing his porky, episcopal fingers, he appears to wonder whether the book in its current form will even last to the end of his days. Amidst feverish visions of incarnadining hosts he has seen the future, and it resembles a nightmarish enactment of Fahrenheit 451, the flames of hell burning away at the wafer-thin leaves of civilisation that keep us from the edge of madness:

"Yet, in this electronic age, where computers and the internet have become so widely used, some people inevitably ask whether it is anachronistic to talk about books and other printed material."

Words that most people will have read on precious, flammable paper. But what vice-bound human folly could be at the source of such lascivious abandon of the written word, one is almost compelled to ask.

"The use of free time is one of the most pressing problems confronting people today. There are so many forms of amusement in which people can indulge, that many may doubt whether reading continues to be a popular pastime in the same way it was before."

Being a bishop, Cauchi will of course be profoundly alive to the dangers that an excess of free time will leave one open to. But can he really be writing in the Times of Malta when he ascribes the reason for this assumed decline in reading hours to the difficulties of free time? (Not the lack of it, mind. The ecclesiastical scamp!). But for all his years of dabbling in the dark arts of popery, he is quite unable to bumble into irony. Speaking of the reading habits of his compatriots:

"... it seems the majority are content to have a look at their favourite daily newspaper"

Well, I suppose if Jesus Christ was content to be nailed to cross for our sins, then that sentence could just about stand. Sure enough, the implied rebuke of that statement portends a sermon on the wholesomeness of literary indulgence, as long it is of the right type:

"Some books are capable of doing more harm than good while others should only be taken on by those who are knowledgeable about a particular subject. So selection is important."

If anyone had been so naïve to venture into this article with the belief that it would not be deadened by the heavy hand of monkish prescription, that line would pretty have much killed all residual hope. Patronisingly, he affects an avuncular concern for the reader’s ability to read Milton and Shakespeare.

“But for lighter every day purposes a number of shorter books and booklets are available on a range of subjects that are educational and escapist.”

Booklets? Everyday purposes? A range of subjects? Who exactly does this man think he is talking to? As if Malta doesn’t have enough bishops who always talk as though in conversation with the mentally subnormal, Cauchi contrives to effortlessly insult those very few who will have bothered to read his article all the way through. I really don’t think that “content” is the word he should have used back there.