Monday, August 3, 2015

Greg Sheridan: The Making of a Gentile Zionist

I've always been interested in what goes into the making of a Zionist, whether gentile or Jewish. As with any other ideology, whether political or religious, childhood influences seem to be crucial.

Take, for example, the case of Greg Sheridan, Australia's most influential foreign affairs commentator, or so Murdoch's Australian, of which he is the foreign editor, touts him. Did Aunt Poppy hard-wire him in his early childhood?:

"The biggest influence on Dad's life was his Auntie Poppy... My mother firmly believed that Auntie Poppy was Dad's real mother. She told me many times after his death that Dad had believed that too... It is impossible to establish whether this is true or not. Auntie Poppy never married. The only man she had ever been known to keep company with, before Dad was born, was Jewish, so perhaps I have Jewish ancestry on my father's side. In those far off days, how would a Catholic-Jewish union have worked? Auntie Poppy's family could cope with an irregular child... but they could never have accepted Auntie Poppy leaving the Church, or bringing up a child other than as a Catholic. And what of the man's family? My family was always pro-Jewish and pro-Israel. Dad often told me that if Christ was the saviour, the Catholic religion was true, and if he wasn't the saviour, then the Jewish religion was true... Auntie Poppy always told me I must never forget that the Jews were God's chosen people... Dad and Auntie Poppy were always pro-Jewish and pro-Israel." (When We Were Young & Foolish: A Memoir of My Misguided Youth with Tony Abbott, Bob Carr, Malcolm Turnbull, Kevin Rudd & Other Reprobates, 2015, pp 21-22)

Has Sheridan ever struggled with such childhood/childish certainties? 

What, I wonder, would he make of 1 Corinthians 13:11?:

When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

A whole new meaning to the term 'agony aunt'.

Anonymous said...

Ah, the old Gods chosen people justification. Of course Greg's loving God moonlights as a real estate agent and property developer in his spare time. How does Greg [Jerusalem Prize] Sheridan know this? Well the fairies at the bottom of the garden told his aunt, Sloppy Poppy.

It seems that Greg is sympathetic to the old antinomian heresy : THE MORE YOU SIN THE MORE YOU ARE FORGIVEN !

Could Greg, acting as Prophet, toss and turn at night wondering just how to explain these 'divine truths' to the dispossessed Palestinian Christians?

Anonymous said...

Greg Sheriden reminds me of a character out of the classic 1970's Australian play 'A Hard God' by the late Peter Kenna. Even Greg's old clerical fascist outfit, the DLP, gets a run in this kitchen sink comedy/drama.

One review describes the semi-autographical play as 'A study of the emotional weight of time on the life of the Cassidy brothers and their wives. Touches the heart of Irish consciousness in Australia'.

A review of the 2006 film, '...the Cassidy clan in Peter Kenna's domestic hearth, they are clinging to austere comfort, trying to fathom life's cruel twists and crumbling at the seams'.

'But the illness, marital ructions and attempts to make sense of an apparently vengeful God are all part of the Irish-Catholic family's daily toll and counting of tiny blessings. Their need for communion comes in the wake of greater struggles and tests'.

'...as they quarrel, slumber or revel in blarney'.

A study of guilt, the depression and the 'bunkered and blinkered Irish-Catholic tribe'.

Move on Greg, you are dreary and your obsession with your maybe ancestor blinkers your judgement of reality.

Anonymous said...

Poppycock!