Making a habit of being beatified by degrees

NOT a lot doing this morning, just the business of honorary degrees, the proposed rehabilitation of a Dominican priest and the sixth beatitude.

Tell us about the priest first.

There are plans (afoot) to beatify Girolamo Savonarola, the 15th century Florentine Dominican whose name is a byword for puritanism, and who was excommunicated, arrested, tortured and hanged for heresy.

The poor lad. Who's backing him?

His champion, is Father Armando Verde, a Dominican scholar who has all Savonarola's sermons on computer and wants to rehabilitate him in time for the 500th anniversary of his death in two years' time.

I suppose there is opposition.

There is. I myself am all for honouring the man who did his best to clean up a corrupt Florence, but I am distrustful of the reasons put forward by Father Verde, who says the alleged heretic's anti corruption campaign is of "direct relevance" to the moral impulse (whatever that is) behind the Italian left's election victory a few weeks back.

Direct relevance often means dragging in something which has nothing - at all to do with the subject, that's my, experience.

You have taken the words out of my mouth - a striking if rather unhygienic procedure.

In the name of God what has hygiene to do with it?

Quite a lot, metaphorically. Savanarola's expose of corruption among the Florentine clergy, and the Medici family in the 15th century, apparently reminds Italians of the mani pulite (clean hands) anti corruption campaign by magistrates in Milan which toppled the discredited Christian Democrats in 1992 after a near monopoly of power over four decades.

Why should they think of that now?

Because the chief architect of mani pulite, Antonio Di Pietro, has apparently agreed to serve as a minister in the new centre left Government of Romano Prodi.

So who opposes the beatification?

The London Times, to start with. In a leading article the paper says: "The present Pope's sunny demeanour should not be obscured by the cowled countenance of this joyless fundamentalist." The Times is keener on beatification for happy jolly sunny people.

Such as?

Chaucer. And Chesterton, who wore cut off pyjama bottoms.

Was Savonarola a joyless fundamentalist then?

He may not have squandered adjectives as joyfully as does the Times, but the editorial hardly does him justice. His battles were not with innocent pleasure seekers but with political tyrants and corrupt clergy, not to mention a Pope (Alexander VI) with a number of illegitimate children. He was also a fine scriptural scholar and preacher, and I don't need to quote here from Triumph us Crucis or the Compendium Revelationuin to back me up.

I don't know why but I am glad of that. Maybe The Times wouldn't know much about preaching.

As it happens, that newspaper sponsors the Preacher of the Year award, won last year by a vicar from Leeds.

His topic?

The vicar preached on the sixth beatitude (regarding the pure in heart) and said the secret of purity was "how to admire without envy, reproach without malice, care without condescending and love without lusting."

That's all still a secret to you I'd say.

Personal comments are out of place here. At, any rate the proposed beatification is merely an honorific.

A bit like the honorary degree.

Ah yes. One of our letter writers recently criticised such awards, pointing out that those deserving of our respect invariably have it and don't need honorary degrees to indicate the fact. The same could be said of Savanarola.

But the letter writer's argument is that people who acquire university degrees in the normal and difficult way cannot be pleased at such degrees being awarded for mere honorific causes.

Look. Say you are a (practising) Catholic. Presumably you have worked hard at it, no one ever pretended it was easy. Then you see - someone else beatified, someone who may have taken a controversial path. You wonder if this is fair.

I do.

Well, I must remind you of the labourers in the vineyard and the Christian notion of the same payment despite varying workloads or hours put in. Also perhaps of the prodigal son, though there is less "direct relevance" there.

You are preaching yourself now.

I am. The colleges also honour people in this life, so you do not die wondering if you will get the honorary degree in (ultima) absentia, so to speak. Beatification takes a lot longer.