Christmas 2021 is a quiet one in the Sherlock household.
“Adoration of the Shepherds” by El Greco
Agent 99 and I didn’t travel this year, as the airlines are in the grip of the CovidNazis and too many motels are germ-ridden pestholes, especially during the holiday season. Too many people in America doesn’t rate basic hygiene or child discipline as good ideas anymore, and most of the help are illegal, underpaid, or from lands where cow pies are used for cooking food.
We went to Mass, had pecan pie and coffee for brunch, and watched a little of the Olympic trials in Lake Placid, NY. We will spend the next several days working, calling friends, spending prayer time for us all, and ensuring gifts got to their recipients.
I was hoping to see our half-pipers, the Olympians most likely to test positive for cannabis, dude. But they had cross country skiing and ski-jumping on instead. Hopefully our female athletes will be good enough to win and ugly enough not to be kidnapped and used as sex slaves by Chinese officials. They know Joe Pudding and those who control him won’t protect our girls and the Euros won’t protect their girls from their top pervs.
SCHOOL CORRUPTION – YET ANOTHER REDUNDANCY
The Southeastern Conference has recently developed a behavioral code much like the Mafia’s Omerta for football that hides their “indiscretions” …. unless the indiscretion involves coaches and coeds (Arkansas, Auburn) or coaches and wives of powerful school officials (LSU, allegedly), so none of the cheaters gets punished. But the Southern Cal Trojans maintained questionable and/or illegal standards for college football as their incoming coach Lincoln Riley, who is sidewinding away from upcoming games in the Southeastern Conference and is heading west to California like a televangelist, has apparently tried or succeeded at using Oklahoma taxpayer money in moving some kids committed to Oklahoma to his new team at Southern Cal.
Riley will need a lot of new players. It turns out 36 Trojan footballers reportedly cheated the coronavirus lost income fund out of more than $900,000 — about $25K apiece. The FBI is investigating, allegedly.
The NCAA may or may not add penalties. Right now they are excited watching guys pretending to be girls competing with girls in swimming, wrestling, and other sports without undergoing sex change surgeries.
Trojan Song Girls in action on the field. Not a tranny in the bunch. Just yet.
And the NCAA grifters, err, officials, have been squeezably soft on colleges with sexual abuse of athletes and coeds (Michigan State, Ohio State, USC, and UCLA come to mind). Penn State got punished a little because their key officials weren’t smart enough to cover for Jerry Sandusky with bribes to the NCAA and the PA attorney general. Obama hired State Penn president Graham Spanier – a known deviate – after the case broke open to be a consultant. Spanier was convicted for covering up for Sandusky, but only did several weeks in the Centre County PA jail. Kathleen Cain, who became PA attorney general after the Sandusky case broke open, went to jail for several months for leaking grand jury info, lying about the leaking, and essentially trying to spy on the investigators of the case against her.
Against this backdrop of college sexual abuse and corruption, the Faucivirus disruption exposed the greed, laziness, and child-hating tendencies of far too many public school teachers. They don’t want to teach and offer extra help to kids in person, they want to stay and home and mail it in doing on-line lecturing, and they demand children wrap their faces like Moslem slave girls in their presence.
Public school teachers have been caught belittling and physically abusing children, teaching them hateful lies about their country, and failing to do their jobs of teaching to at least some standard of competence and objectivity.
That doesn’t count all the child molesting they have been doing.
I have not written in several weeks because I have been spending a lot of time pulling public records from state education departments. I am trying to identify all the scumbags who got license revocations or other administrative punishment for sexual abuse of children or other ugly crimes.
So far I have targeted the top 20 states populationwise. Texas officials have already delivered their records on thousands of public school pervs they took educator licenses from. Officials in California, New York, and Florida have acknowledged my request and are in various stages of getting the records together, I would hope. Pennsylvania officials, who typically release very little, have released good records so far. Illinois officials claim they keep such records back only a few years, and released records on relatively few of their offenders. I am aware of several hundred Chicago teachers who are credibly accused child molesters.
Michigan and Wisconsin officials have released their records. Ohio officials are having their database reprogrammed to show what the teachers on the discipline list did to deserve to be there. They currently keep such info separate from the other teacher discipline records. It took some prodding from me to get the info integrated. To their credit, however, it is possible to see detailed paperwork on many Ohio teachers’ discipline cases on line.
Indiana officials are lagging. I hope to see their records soon.
North Carolina and Virginia officials released their records. Georgia officials want some serious money for their records. There is a reason “Night the Lights Went out in Georgia” wasn’t about some other Southern state. Georgia has a long and gloomy history of official corruption, to include the theft of the 2020 election.
Washington officials released their records. Arizona officials are dawdling somewhat but have not ruled out releasing anything.
Los Angeles Unified School District perv teacher Mark Berndt was protected by LAUSD officials, his colleagues at the school, and his teacher union for more than a decade. Only a watchful and conscientious film processor came forward to the L.A. County Sheriff’s Office to report this vermin’s abuses. Photo courtesy of L.A. County Sheriff’s Office; one child’s face was blacked out.
Officials in Maryland haven’t deigned it necessary to reply to my request. One more entry for my to-do list. A Massachusetts official got back to us saying they would send records in the ballpark for what I am looking.
Tennessee records are not automatically open to out-of-staters. This may have allowed authorities to keep the Martin Luther King murder records away from the public and threaten Tennesseans who would have dared to request them. It is not unlawful for Tennessee officials to release such records to “furriners” but unfortunately too many Tennessee government officials don’t care to share the sunshine laws with people from states other than Tennessee. That state has had some ugly scandals over its history. I have reapplied using the researcher exemption.
Virginia officials oftentimes can be similarly mulish about the release of public records to outsiders, but when I told them I was trying to identify teachers who shouldn’t get credentials after committing sex crimes, they relented. Hopefully they are trying to live down their state’s past oppression of blacks and their forced sterilizations of Carrie Buck and tens of thousands of other poor girls, many of whom were rape or incest victims.
Officials in New Jersey and Missouri have refused to release such records.
In Missouri the problem seems to be a dork of a lawyer in the state’s teacher licensing office.
In New Jersey, the problem appears deeper. They act entitled. Also, it’s hard for them to solicit and collect a bribe by email.
I will let you know how the project progresses, and then I will go after the other 30 states. Together, the bottom 30 states populationwise have no more than 30 to 33 percent of the nation’s people.
THE CHRISTMAS SPIRIT MAY BE RETURNING
Starting with a black soul music station in Dayton on the day after Thanksgiving, I have heard more religious Christmas carols on the radio this Christmas season than at any time since the start of the century. Even some radio station programmers have figured out the resident of the White House is an installed puppet who crapped his pants in front of the pope, and the cabal running the country are full of narcissistic sociopaths who want to kill old people and sexually abuse children and young women.
Europe is in the same grip of the globalists, but even more so, since they don’t have traditions of self-reliance like we have. Their revolutions replaced kings with bloodthirsty bureaucrats like Cromwell and Robespierre and the Paris Commune and the Communists and Mussolini and the satanic gutter leftists in Spain, and the Weimar perverts followed by Hitler and the Nazi perverts.
Bishop Carlo Vigano, the Italian Catholic leader who was papal nuncio (ambassador) to America, loves the historic independence of America and has been praying constantly for America’s return. He is in correspondence with President Trump and his people. He realizes the Christian nationalists of Europe will need a strong and independent America to throw off the leftist vermin who control them. Bishop Vigano took the Vatican government from bankruptcy into surpluses. He also outed sexual abusers among the bishops and exposed corruptocrats handling the Church’s finances. Any denomination would want a man who serves God and the people, not the corrupt ones in the hierarchy.
These Slavic girls are clothed as Angel, Devil, and Saint Nicholas. In Czechia, Slovakia, Poland, and many other nations of Europe, Saint Nicholas is the present bearer for children. Saint Nicholas, the bishop of Myra, fought child murderers and sex traffickers in his diocese in what is now Turkey. In Scandinavia and in parts of Italy, which was her homeland, Saint Lucy is the saint of gift giving. In many Scandinavian homes, the oldest girl of the family, when she becomes a teenager, wears a crown with lit candles and distributes sweets to all. (See below.) This is a re-enactment of Saint Lucy wearing a crown of candles on her head so she could see in the darkness of the Catacombs and still have an extra hand to carry more food to the Christians in hiding. St. Nicholas suffered imprisonment during the persecution of Emperor Diocletian but survived until Constantine rescued the Christians and died in the 340s AD. The pretty, kind, and brave Saint Lucy was either speared in the throat or beheaded during the persecution of Emperor Diocletian in the early 300s AD. The peoples of Eastern Europe, who have battled Asian hordes, militant Islam, Nazism, and Communism, now fight secularism and globalism. The evil politicians of Scandinavia have let Moslems flood into their lands, and the girls and young women now are at constant risk of being raped and knifed. In Eastern Europe, the politicians are at least holding the line, as those of authority have tried to do in those lands for hundreds of years. Only patriotism and legitimate religious faith and deeds can save the Christian and Jewish peoples of Europe and the Americas.
Vigano was sent to America as punishment for his willingness to stomp on the corruptocrats. He didn’t want to leave Europe. But his time in American exile as papal nuncio served him and us well. He learned greatly about Americans’ traditional independence, and our historical willingness to clip government people who get tyrannical. He saw day to day how a nation of Jews and many Christian denominations can function. Bishop Vigano engineered the meeting between Pope Francis and Kim Davis, the Kentucky county clerk who refused to issue licenses for same-sex unions. This enraged the fageles and the militant pervs in government, media, academia, Hollywood, organized religion, and elsewhere.
Vigano is now in retirement, and can continue his outreach to President Trump and to American and European nationalists. He is an implacable foe of the globalists.
Here is his 12/18/2021 to Americans:
For two years now, a global coup has been carried out all over the world, planned for some time by an elite group of conspirators enslaved to the interests of international high finance.
This coup was made possible by an emergency pandemic that is based on the premise of a virus that has a mortality rate almost analogous to that of any other seasonal flu virus, on the delegitimization and prohibition of effective treatments, and on the distribution of an experimental gene serum which is obviously ineffective, and which also clearly carries with it the danger of serious and even lethal side effects.
We all know how much the mainstream media has contributed to supporting the insane pandemic narrative, the interests that are at stake, and the goals of these groups of power: reducing the world population, making those who survive chronically ill, and imposing forms of control that violate the fundamental rights and natural liberties of citizens.
And yet, two years after this grotesque farce started, which has claimed more victims than a war and destroyed the social fabric, national economies, and the very foundations of the rule of law, nothing has changed in the policies of Nations and their response to the so-called pandemic.
Last year, when many still had not yet understood the gravity of the looming threat, I was among the first to denounce this coup, and I was promptly singled out as a conspiracy theorist.
Today more and more people are opening their eyes and beginning to understand that the emergency pandemic and the “ecological emergency” are part of a criminal plan hatched by the World Economic Forum, the UN, the WHO, and a galaxy of organizations and foundations that are ideologically characterized as clearly anti-human and — this needs to be said clearly — anti-Christian.
One of the elements that unequivocally confirms the criminal nature of the Great Reset is the perfect synchrony with which all the different Nations are acting, demonstrating the existence of a single script under a single direction.
And it is disconcerting to see how the lack of treatment, the deliberately wrong treatments that have been given in order to cause more deaths, the decision to impose lockdowns and masks, the conspiratorial silence about the adverse effects of the so-called “vaccines” that are in fact gene serums, and the continuous repetition of culpable errors have all been possible thanks to the complicity of those who govern and the institutions.
Political and religious leaders, representatives of the people, scientists and doctors, journalists and those who work in the media have literally betrayed their people, their laws, their Constitutions, and the most basic ethical principles.
The electoral fraud of the 2020 presidential election against President Trump has shown itself to be organic to this global operation, because in order to impose illegitimate restrictions in violation of the principles of law it was necessary to be able to make use of an American President who would support the psycho-pandemic and support its narrative.
The Democratic Party, part of the deep state, is carrying out its task as an accomplice of the system, just as the deep church finds in Bergoglio its own propagandist.
The recent rulings of the Supreme Court and the autonomous action of some American states — where the vaccination obligation has been declared unconstitutional — give us hope that this criminal plan can collapse and that those responsible will be identified and tried: both in America as well as in the whole world.
How was it possible to arrive at such a betrayal? How have we come to be considered enemies by those who govern us, not in support of the common good, but rather to feed a hellish machine of death and slavery?
The answer is now clear: throughout the world, in the name of a perverted concept of freedom, we have progressively erased God from society and laws.
We have denied that there is an eternal and transcendent principle, valid for all men of all times, to which the laws of States must conform.
We have replaced this absolute principle with the arbitrariness of individuals, with the principle that everyone is his own legislator.
In the name of this insane freedom — which is license and libertinage — we have allowed the Law of God and the law of nature to be violated, legitimizing the killing of children in the womb, even up to the very moment of birth; the killing of the sick and the elderly in hospital wards; the destruction of the natural family and of Marriage; we have recognized rights to vice and sin, putting the deviations of individuals before the good of society.
In short, we have subverted the entire moral order that constitutes the indispensable basis of the laws and social life of a people.
Already in the fourth century B.C., Plato wrote these things in his last work the Laws and identified the cause of the Athenian political crisis precisely in the breaking of the divine order — the cosmos — between these eternal principles and human laws.
These natural moral principles of the Greco-Roman world found their fulfillment in Christianity, which built Western civilization by giving them a supernatural impetus.
Christianity is the strongest defense against injustice, the strongest garrison against the oppression of the powerful over the weak, the violent over the peaceful, and the wicked over the good, because Christian morality makes each of us accountable to God and our neighbor for our actions, both as citizens and as rulers.
The Son of God, whose Birth we will celebrate in a few days, became Incarnate in time and in history in order to heal an ancient wound, and to restore by Grace the order broken by disobedience.
His social Kingship was the generating principle of the ordo Christianus that for two centuries now has been fiercely fought against by Freemasonry: because the Revolution it promotes is chaos; it is disorder; it is infernal rebellion against the divine order so as to impose Satan’s tyranny.
Now, as we see what is happening around us, we understand how mendacious were the promises of progress and freedom made by those who destroyed Christian society, and how deceptive was the prospect of a new Tower of Babel, built not only without regard for God but even in direct opposition to Him.
The infernal challenge of the Enemy is repeated over the centuries unchanged, but it is doomed to inexorable failure.
Behind this millennial conspiracy, the adversary is always the same, and the only thing that changes are the particular individuals who cooperate with him.
Dear American brothers and sisters! Dear Patriots! this is a crucial moment for the future of the United States of America and of the whole of humanity.
But the pandemic emergency, the farce of global warming and the green economy, and the economic crisis deliberately induced by the Great Reset with the complicity of the deep state, are all only the consequence of a much more serious problem, and it is essential to understand it in depth if we want to defeat it.
This problem is essentially moral; indeed, it is religious.
We must put God back in the first place not only in our personal lives, but also in the life of our society.
We must restore to Our Lord Jesus Christ the Crown that the Revolution has torn from Him, and in order for this to happen a true and profound conversion of individuals and of society is necessary.
For it is absolutely impossible to hope for the end of this global tyranny if we continue to remove from the Kingdom of Christ the nations that belong to Him and must belong to Him.
For this reason, the movement to overturn Roe v. Wade also acquires a very important meaning, since respect for the sacredness of unborn life must be sanctioned by positive law if it is to be a mirror of the Eternal Law.
You are animated by a yearning for justice, and this is a legitimate and good desire. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,” says the Lord (Mt 5:6).
But this Justice must be based on the awareness that this is a spiritual battle in which it is necessary to take sides without equivocation and without compromise, holding transcendent and eternal references that even the pagan philosophers glimpsed, and that have found fulfillment in the Revelation of the Son of God, the Divine Master.
My appeal for an Anti-Globalist Alliance — which I renew today — aims precisely to constitute a movement of moral and spiritual rebirth which will inspire the civil, social and political action of those who do not want to be enslaved as slaves to the New World Order.
A movement that at the national and local level will be able to find a way to oppose the Great Reset and that coordinates the denunciation of the coup that is currently in progress.
Because in the awareness of who our adversary is and what his aims and purposes are, we can disrupt the criminal action he intends to pursue and force him to retreat.
In this, the opposition to the pandemic farce and the vaccination obligation must be determined and courageous on the part of each of you.
Yours must therefore be a work of truth, bringing to light the lies and deceptions of the New World Order and their anti-human and antichristic matrix.
And in this it is mainly the laity and all people of good will — each in the professional and civil role he holds — who must coordinate and organize together to make a firm but peaceful resistance, so as not to legitimize its violent repression by those who today hold power.
Be proud of your identity as American patriots and of the Faith that must animate your life.
Do not allow anyone to make you feel inferior just because you love your homeland, because you are honest at work, because you want to protect your family and raise your children with healthy values, because you respect the elderly, because you protect life from conception to its natural end.
Do not be intimidated or seduced by those who propagate a dystopian world in which a faceless power imposes on you contempt for the Law of God, presents sin and vice as licit and desirable, despises righteousness and Morality, destroys the natural family and promotes the worst perversions, plans the death of defenseless and weak creatures, and exploits humanity for its own profit or to preserve power.
Be worthy heirs of the great Archbishop Fulton Sheen, and do not follow those of your Pastors who have betrayed the mandate they have received from Our Lord, who impose iniquitous orders on you or who remain silent before the evidence of an unheard of crime against God and humanity.
May this Holy Christmas illuminate your minds and inflame your hearts before the Infant King who lays in the manger.
And just as the choirs of the Angels and the homage of the Magi united with the simple adoration of the Shepherds, so also today your commitment to the moral rebirth of the United States of America — one Nation under God —will have the blessing of Our Lord and will gather those who govern you around you. Amen.
May God bless you, and may God bless the United States of America.
+ Carlo Maria Viganò, Archbishop
18 December 2021
Reading about Bishop Vigano’s most recent work got me to thinking yesterday about another Italian priest, this one fictional, who loved his country and was friendly to America.
Don Camillo, the character created by Giovanni Guareschi, the Italian officer in WWII, POW of the Nazis, journalist, POW of the Italian government after WWII, and controversial author, cartoonist, and humorist, was the subject of six of Guareschi’s books.
Mr. Wilks, my 9th grade English teacher at St. Genevieve High School, introduced us to Don Camillo and his cast of rivals. Don Camillo fought in WWI, ran a parish in northern Italy and ministered to the Partisans during WWII, and butted heads after the war and through the 1960s with Mayor Peppone, the Communist mayor of their little town. Peppone, who was a mechanic by trade, was a WWI soldier who served with Don Camillo and a WWII Partisan leader. They grew up together and were friends despite their political differences, most of the time, anyway.
Guareschi illustrated his books with cartoons. He showed Don Camillo as a mischievous angel and the Communists as devils.
Don Camillo was like my father in that he was big, loud, tough, and settled a number of disputes with his fists and his feet. Peppone was as big and almost as tough; he was like my Uncle Rusty. Don Camillo and Peppone as rural tough guys were also suspicious of their superiors, politicians, wealthy people, and city people. Peppone had an elementary school education but was a leader of men, including his Communist followers. Don Camillo, who came from peasants, had a high school and seminary education; his supporters came from among the tougher farmers who had little land but plenty of stubbornness, and from the women with traditional Italian values. The richer and more refined people of the area liked Don Camillo as little as they liked Peppone.
Don Camillo of course had the greatest ally – Christ Himself. Guareschi had the crucified Christ above the altar in his church advise, berate, and praise Don Camillo depending upon what he did.
The French/Italian comedian Fernandel starred as Don Camillo in films that followed the plots of five of the six Don Camillo books. Fernandel was of peasant stock himself, and he made a good Don Camillo. I searched in vain on the Net for footage of where he and Peppone slugged the hell out of each other in the bell tower of his church (the dispute was over Peppone’s desire to have his son baptized with the names of Communist leaders to spite Don Camillo), and the bells kept ringing because one or both of them would slam into the bell pull cable during the fight.
Fernandel, who played Don Camillo, and Italian actor Gino Cervi, who played Peppone, looked like two tough customers.
Guareschi’s books have been released as PDFs by fans of his, and I’m assuming they have the OK of his family to do. So as a little present from Giovanni to you, I am enclosing two PDFs – one for “The Little World of Don Camillo” and the other titled “Don Camillo and His Flock.”
Don-Camillo-and-his-Flock
little-world-camillo
Guareschi’s formula continued thru two more books, then the last two were novels with different styles. “Comrade Don Camillo” is about how Don Camillo blackmails Peppone into including him on a trip of Italian Communists to the Soviet Union. It switches from hilarity to tears almost chapter by chapter as Guareschi eviscerates Communism but shows the decency of the people – including their attractive and patriotic Russian female tour guide – who had to live under it. The book has a tragedy near the end, but ultimately a happy and unexpected ending. It is a triumph!
Giovanni Guareschi, 1908 – 1968. Requiescat in pacem!
“Don Camillo and the Flower Children,” released in 1969 just after Guareschi died, dealt with the changing morals of the 1960s and how they affected Don Camillo and Peppone. Peppone’s youngest son is a biker hellion, and Don Camillo’s tarty niece is the darling of the rival biker gang. Don Camillo has to deal with a pushy leftist priest and Peppone has to deal with Communist Party bureaucrats who were too young or cowardly to fight in WWII.
If you like the excerpts that follow – one an “ordinary time” story and the other a Christmas story, you will love these two books. Watch out for the story of Maroli and little Rosa …. it will tear at your heart.
SHERLOCK JUSTICE
WE CAN SHOW YOU HOW TO BE YOUR OWN DETECTIVE.
THE AVENGER
Smilzo rode up on his racing bicycle and braked it by letting his rear end slip off the seat backwards and stop the wheel. Don Camillo was sitting reading the newspaper on the bench in front of the rectory. He looked up. “Does Stalin hand you down his trousers?” he asked placidly.
Smilzo handed him a letter, touched his cap, leaped on his bicycle and was about to disappear around the corner when he slowed down. “No, the Pope does that,” he called, then stood on his pedals and was gone in a flash. Don Camillo had been expecting the letter. It contained an invitation to the inauguration ceremony of the People’s Palace, with a program of the festivities enclosed. Speeches, reports, a band and refreshments. Then in the afternoon: “Great Boxing Match between the Heavyweight Champion, of the Local Section, Comrade Gagotti Mirco, and the Heavyweight Champion of the Provincial Federation, Comrade Gorlini Anteo.”
Don Camillo went off to discuss the event. “Lord!” he exclaimed, when he had read the program aloud. “If this isn’t vile! If Peppone weren’t an utter boor, he would stage the return match between the Knights and the Dynamos instead of this pommeling bout! I’m going to . . .”
“You’re entirely wrong,” Christ interrupted him. “It’s perfectly logical of Peppone to try something different. Even if his champion loses, he is still all right: one comrade fights another; it all remains in the family. But if your team beat his, it would be detrimental to the prestige of his party. Don Camillo, you must admit that Peppone couldn’t possibly have staged a return match.”
“And yet,” exclaimed Don Camillo, “I did stage a match against his team, and what’s more, I lost it!”
“But, Don Camillo,” Christ put in gently, “you don’t represent a party. Your team was not defending the colors of the Church. Or do you perhaps think that that Sunday afternoon defeat was a defeat for the Catholic Faith?”
Don Camillo began laughing. “Lord,” he protested, “You’ve got me wrong if You accuse me of any such idea. I was only saying, as a sportsman, that Peppone is a boor. And so You will forgive me if I laugh when his famous champion gets such a licking that by the third round he won’t know his own name.”
“Yes, I shall forgive you, Don Camillo. But I find it less easy to forgive your enjoying the spectacle of two men pounding each other with their fists.”
Don Camillo raised his arms. “I have never done anything of the kind. Such manifestations of brutality only foster that cult of violence which is already too deeply rooted in the minds of the masses. I agree with You in condemning any sport in which skill is subordinated to brute force.”
“Bravo, Don Camillo,” said Christ. “If a man feels the need to limber his muscles, he doesn’t have to fight with his neighbor. He can put on a pair of well-padded gloves and take it out on a sack of sawdust or a ball suspended somewhere.”
“Exactly,” agreed Don Camillo, crossing himself quickly and hurrying away.
A little later he passed through the church again. “Will you satisfy My curiosity, Don Camillo?” called Christ. “What is the name of that leather ball which you have attached to the ceiling of your attic?”
“I believe it is called in English a ‘punching bag’,” muttered Don Camillo, stopping for a moment.
“And what does that mean?” “I don’t know any English,” replied Don Camillo, making a quick escape.
* * *
Don Camillo attended the inaugural ceremony of the People’s Palace, and Peppone accompanied him personally upon a tour of the entire grounds; it was all thoroughly up-to-date. “What do you think of it?” asked Peppone, who was burbling with joy.
“Charming!” replied Don Camillo, smiling cordially. “To tell you the truth I never would have thought that a simple builder like Brusco could have done it.”
“True enough!” muttered Peppone, who had spent God only knew how much for the best architect in the city.
“Quite a good idea to make the windows horizontal instead of perpendicular,” observed Don Camillo. “The ceilings are not very high but it’s not too obvious. And this I suppose is the warehouse.”
“It’s the Assembly Room,” Peppone explained.
“Ah! And have you put the armory and the cells for dangerous adversaries in the basement?”
“No,” replied Peppone. “We haven’t any dangerous adversaries, they are all harmless little people who can remain in circulation. As for an armory, we thought we would use yours if we needed to.”
“An admirable idea,” agreed Don Camillo politely. “You have been able to see for yourself how well I look after the Tommy gun which you entrusted to my care, Mr. Mayor.”
They had pulled up in front of a huge picture representing a man with a heavy walrus mustache, small eyes and a pipe. “Is that one of your dead leaders?” asked Don Camillo, respectfully.
“That is someone who is very much among the living and when he comes you will end up sitting on the lightning rod of your own church.”
“Too high a position for a humble parish priest. The highest position in a small community always belongs to the Mayor, and from now on I put it at your complete disposal.”
“Are we to have the honor of your presence among us at the boxing match today, Reverend Sir?” asked Peppone, thinking it best to change the subject.
“Thank you, but you had better give my seat to someone who is better qualified to appreciate the innate beauty and educational significance of the performance. But I’ll be available at the rectory in case your champion needs the Last Rites. Just send Smilzo and I can be with you within a couple of minutes.”
During the afternoon, Don Camillo chatted for an hour with Christ and then asked to be excused: “I’m a bit sleepy and I think I’ll take a nap. And I thank You for making it rain cats and dogs. The crops needed it.”
“And moreover, according to your hopes, it will prevent many people from coming to Peppone’s celebration,” added Christ. “Am I right?”
Don Camillo shook his head. But the rain, heavy though it was, didn’t dampen Peppone’s festivities: people flocked from every section of the countryside, and the gymnasium of the People’s Palace was as full as an egg. “Champion of the Federation” was a fine title and Bagotti was popular in the region. And then it was also to a certain extent a match between town and country, and that aroused interest. Peppone surveyed the crowd triumphantly from the front row. He was sure that at the worst Bagotti could only lose on points, which would be almost as good as a victory. On the stroke of four, after an outburst of applause and yelling, the gong was sounded and the audience began to get tense and excited.
The federal champion surpassed Bagotti in style, but Bagotti was quicker and the first round left the audience breathless. Peppone was pouring with sweat and looked as if he had swallowed dynamite. The second round began well for Bagotti, who took the offensive, but suddenly he went down in a heap and the referee began the count.
“No,” bawled Peppone, leaping to his feet. “It was below the belt!” The federal champion smiled sarcastically at Peppone. He shook his head and touched his chin with his glove.
“No!” bellowed Peppone in exasperation, drowning the uproar of the audience. “You all saw it! First he hit him low, and when the pain made him double up he gave him a left to the jaw! It was a foul!” The federal champion shrugged his shoulders and snickered, and meanwhile the referee, having counted up to ten, was grasping the fallen champion’s hand in order to pull him to his feet.
Then the tragedy occurred. Peppone threw away his hat and in one bound was in the ring and advanced with clenched fists upon the federal champion. “I’ll show you,” he howled. “Give it to him, Peppone,” yelled the infuriated crowd.
The boxer put up his fists, and Peppone fell upon him like a Panzer and struck hard. But Peppone was too furious, and his adversary dodged him easily and slugged him one right on the point of the jaw. He put all his weight behind it, as Peppone just stood there motionless and wide open; it was like hitting a sack of sawdust. Peppone slumped to the floor and the audience froze into silence.
But just as the champion smiled compassionately at the giant lying prone on the mat, there was a terrific yell from the crowd as a man entered the ring. Without even bothering to remove his drenched raincoat or cap, he seized a pair of gloves lying on a stool in the corner, pulled them on, and standing on guard squarely before the champion aimed a terrific blow at him. The champion dodged it and danced round the man who simply revolved slowly. Then the champion launched a formidable blow. The other barely moved but parried with his left while his right shot forward like a thunderbolt; the champion was unconscious when he hit the center of the ring. The crowd went crazy.
It was the bellringer who brought the news to the rectory, and Don Camillo had to leave his bed to open the door because the bellringer seemed to be insane, and if he hadn’t been allowed to pour out the whole story from A to Z, there seemed every reason to fear that he would blow up.
Don Camillo went downstairs to report.
“Well?” Christ asked. “How did it go?”
“A very disgraceful brawl; such a spectacle of disorder and immorality as You can’t imagine!”
“Anything like that time when they wanted to lynch your referee?” asked Christ casually.
Don Camillo laughed. “’Referee, my foot! In the second round Peppone’s champion slumped like a sack of potatoes. Then Peppone himself jumped into the ring and went for the victor. Naturally, although he is as strong as an ox, he’s such a hothead that he slugs like a Zulu or a Russian, and the champion gave him one on the jaw that laid him out cold.”
“And so this is the second defeat his section has suffered.”
“Two for the section and one for the federation,” chuckled Don Camillo. “Because that was not the end! No sooner had Peppone gone down than another man jumped into the ring and fell upon the victor. Must have been somebody from one of the neighboring villages, a fellow with a beard and a mustache who put up his fists and struck out at the federal champion.”
“And I suppose the champion dodged and struck back and the bearded man went down too and added to the brutal exhibition,” Christ remarked.
“No! The man was as impregnable as an iron safe. So the champion began dodging round trying to catch him off guard and finally, zac! he puts in a straight one with his right. Then I feinted with the left and caught him square with the right and left the ring!”
“And what had you to do with it?”
“I don’t understand . . .”
“You said: ‘I feinted with the left and caught him square with the right’.”
“I can’t imagine how I came to say such a thing.”
Christ shook His head. “Could it possibly be because you were the man who struck down the champion?”
“It wouldn’t seem so,” said Don Camillo gravely, “I have neither beard nor mustache.”
“But those of course could be acquired so that the crowd wouldn’t suspect that the parish priest is interested in the spectacle of two men fighting in public with their fists!”
Don Camillo shrugged. “All things are possible, Lord, and we must also bear in mind that even parish priests are made of flesh and blood.”
Christ sighed. “We are not forgetting it, but if parish priests are made of flesh and blood they themselves should never forget that they are also made of brains. Because if the flesh and blood parish priest wishes to disguise himself in order to attend a boxing match, the priest made of brains prevents him from giving an exhibition of violence.”
Don Camillo shook his head. “Very true. But You should also bear in mind that parish priests, in addition to flesh and blood and brains, are also made of another thing. And when that other thing sees a Mayor sent flat before all his own people by a swine from the city who has won by hitting below the belt — which is a sin that cries to Heaven for vengeance — that other thing takes the priest of flesh and blood and the priest of brains and sends the lot of them into the ring.”
Christ nodded. “You mean to say that I should bear in mind that pariah priests are also made of heart?”
“For the love of Heaven,” exclaimed Don Camillo. “I never presume to advise You. But I would point out that nobody knows the identity of the man with the beard.”
“Nor do I then,” replied Christ with a sigh, “but I wonder if you have any idea of the meaning of ‘punching bag’?”
“My knowledge of the English language has not improved, Lord,” replied Don Camillo.
“Well, then we must be content without knowing even that,” said Christ smiling. “After all, culture in the long run often seems to do more harm than good. Sleep well, champ.”
APPOINTMENT AT MIDNIGHT
At last, the big river returned to its bed and the people were busy putting their land and homes in order. A thick autumn fog hung over the drenched valley but everyone felt the danger had passed and that above the mist, the sky was serene. And so, in fact, it was; but just as surely as the waters receded and the threat of the flood passed so did trouble of another kind flare up in the village.
It had all begun one day in July, when Peppone and his gang appeared in full force at the rectory. “We want a Te Deum!” Peppone shouted. “A public thanksgiving. Someone has shot at our national Leader.”
Don Camillo was perplexed. “I understand,” he said calmly, “but I don’t see why we should hold a service of thanksgiving just because a poor devil has been shot. Say what you like, he’s a human being.”
Peppone clenched his fists. “We want to give thanks because he wasn’t killed! And don’t try to be funny, because we’re in a state of national emergency. So here’s the plan. You organize the Te Deum, complete with music, singing, flowers, curtains, lighting effects, and bells, and announce it by means of a poster with an angel on either side on the church door. Meanwhile we’ll print leaflets and put them prominently on display. Then we’ll see who shows up. Everyone that fails to show up is a filthy reactionary. We’ll take down names of the absent and then make a series of house-to-house visits.”
“Well spoken, Chief,” Smilzo said solemnly. “We must first identify and then punish all those guilty of incitement to public disorder. The people have had quite enough!”
Don Camillo looked over at him. “Are you going to list names?” he asked.
“Of course,” said Smilzo.
“Then put mine down at the head of the list, because I won’t be at the thanksgiving service.”
Peppone pushed his hat back on his head and put his hands on his hips. “So you refuse to publicly thank the Almighty for having saved an honest man from an attempted crime, is that it?”
“No. I won’t let a religious service give you and your hotheads an excuse to beat up innocent people. If you really want to thank the Almighty, come with your friends and I’ll say a Mass, just as I did yesterday when Gigino Forcella fell off the roof without getting a single scratch on his body.”
Peppone brought his fist down on the table. “The people want a solemn ceremony, a Te Deum, I tell you, not just an everyday Mass. This is a cause for national thanksgiving.”
“The thanksgiving is a strictly private affair,” Don Camillo insisted. “Every good Christian should rejoice when his neighbor is saved from danger, to be sure. But by your reasoning Gigino Forcella’s family was entitled to a Te Deum, too.”
Peppone’s face looked like an advertisement for apoplexy. “How can you mention Gigino Forcella in the same breath with our Leader? Gigino doesn’t interest anyone outside his own family anyhow. And our Leader is known the world over.”
Don Camillo was not impressed. “Gigino Forcella’s family is a small one, while that of your Leader is made up of several million people. That’s the only difference. It’s a bigger family, if you like, but it doesn’t include the whole nation. If the local members of your Leader’s family want me to say a special Mass, I’ll be glad to oblige them. But in view of the threats you made a few minutes ago it will have to be a purely family affair. I won’t have anyone that doesn’t belong to your Party in the church. Otherwise I should be abetting your blackmail. People must come to church of their own free will and not because of the fear of punishment. The church is no place for political propaganda.”
Smilzo pulled the visor of his cap around to one side, put his hands on his hips and looked up at Don Camillo. “Look who’s talking!” he said with a leer. “If there happened to be a God, He’d freeze you to the ground for such a shameless lie.”
As for Peppone, he was bursting with things to say but didn’t know where to begin. “You Judas!” he shouted. “You’ve sold Christ for thirty American dollars!”
“Don’t pay him any attention, Chief,” Smilzo begged him. “Certain people can’t be treated any other way.” He took a notebook out of his pocket, licked the point of his pencil and wrote something down. “Don Camillo!” he said. “Exclamation point! Now that you’re on my blacklist not even the Almighty can save you!”
And Peppone added: “Keep your Te Deums and your Masses as well. The Party has no use for your Madonna and saints. And here’s what I’ll do to the next Party member that sets foot in your church!” So saying, he picked up a chair and crushed the backboard of it in his fingers, looking straight into Don Camillo’s eyes.
“Mind you get it mended now,” Don Camillo said calmly. Peppone made no answer, but turned on his heels, and walked out, followed by his gang, who slammed the door behind them. A moment later Smilzo came back, with a defiant look on his face, picked up the chair and bore it away. He held his head high and his chest stuck out, and he strutted as triumphantly as if he represented the inevitable onward march of the proletarian revolution. Don Camillo got his chair back but Peppone and Peppone’s followers and their families stayed away from church.
* * * * *
Three months later Bigio had a baby, but as he was a Party member the question of a baptism never came up. When Bigio saw the priest coming he dodged out of the way, but one evening Don Camillo managed to stop him. “If it’s in obedience to Party orders that you’re not coming to church, transeat, I can let that go by. Your sins are on your own conscience. But you let your son come at least once in his life, to be baptized. Or have you already enrolled him in the Party?” Bigio, who was the most reasonable of the gang, threw out his arms. “The order goes for the whole family,” he said. “If the Chief were to know that I’d had my baby baptized he’d take my hide off.”
“Peppone doesn’t have to know,” Don Camillo suggested. That night they brought the baby to him for a clandestine baptism. That was all Don Camillo managed to achieve, but he was not discouraged. “Lord,” he said to Christ, at the altar, “I’m waiting for Christmas. In all the years that I’ve been here they’ve never missed the Midnight Mass. A few years ago, when Giubai was wanted by the police, he came on Christmas Eve and I saw him in the far corner, with his coat collar turned up all around his face. Lord, just have confidence in me!”
“I’ve always had confidence in you,” Christ said to him with a smile, “but can you have confidence in yourself?”
“Well … to a certain extent. I have more faith in You.”
As Christmas approached Don Camillo tried to find out which way the wind was blowing, and word came back to him that husbands and wives were arguing over the question, with the wives maintaining that on Christmas Eve they really must break the rule. As the time grew shorter and shorter, the arguments became more and more heated, until finally the women flatly declared: “We and the children are going to church; you can do what you please.” Peppone, whose wife had given him an unforgettable kick in the shins, was well aware of what was brewing and finally decided to leave the women and children free while the men kept up the boycott.
They had said they wouldn’t set foot in the church, and they would stick to their word. In order to prevent any last-minute weakening Peppone summoned the men to an appointment in the People’s Palace. There they would answer the challenge of the Midnight Mass with a democratic “midnight cell meeting,” whose ceremonial would consist of readings from the classics of the religion of Marx and Lenin and selected passages from such great democrats as Stalin and his ilk.
When Christmas Eve came the church was filled with candlelight and singing, while on the hard benches of the bare People’s Palace the men listened to Peppone reading things none of them understood. Every now and then the wind blew a few notes from the church organ against the closed windows.
The Mass was over early, because something was tormenting Don Camillo’s mind. When he was left alone in the church he took off his vestments and padlocked the church door. He walked up and down for several minutes and then stopped before Christ on the Cross. “Lord,” he said. “Did You see?”
“Yes, I saw,” Christ answered. “You were over-confident. You relied too much on your own powers.”
“No, that isn’t it,” said Don Camillo. “I pinned all my faith on You.”
“And so now you’ve lost your faith, is that it then?”
“Never!” said Don Camillo indignantly. “If a starving man sees a crust of bread on the table before him, he can’t just sit tight and say: ‘I knew God wouldn’t let me die of hunger.’ God isn’t going to put it in his mouth; he must stretch out his hand. To have faith that God will provide doesn’t dispense a fellow from using his head. If the bread doesn’t jump into his mouth, he has to go get it. The Scriptures tell us that if the mountain doesn’t go to Christ, then Christ will go to the mountain.”
Christ smiled. “Only it’s not Me, it’s Mohammed,” he objected.
“Forgive me,” said the chagrined Don Camillo, “I only meant…”
“There’s nothing to forgive, Don Camillo. It’s not words that count, it’s intentions.”
Don Camillo ran his big hand over his forehead and looked up at Christ. But he was thinking of Mohammed, and Christ knew it and smiled.
….
“Comrades,” Peppone was saying, “as a fitting close to this meeting at which we have borne witness to our democratic faith, I shall read you a masterly profile of Mao Tse-tung…”
Just then the door opened and in came a powerfully built man in a heavy coat, who made his way like a tank through the benches on which the men were sitting, went up onto the platform where Peppone was holding forth and set a gray-green box on the speaker’s table.
All the men in the front rows recognized the box immediately. They had seen it during the war, when Don Camillo risked German bullets in order to visit them up in the mountains. And automatically they rose to their feet. Don Camillo lifted the lid off the box, and there was his field altar. Peppone stepped quickly down from the platform, and a moment later, when Don Camillo turned around and grunted, Smilzo proudly leapt up beside him. As he had done so many times in the old days, he helped the priest don his vestments, lit the candles and knelt down at one side of the altar to serve him.
It was a simple Mass, military style, and of an almost clandestine character. But they had put out the lights in the hall, so that the candles on the little altar stood out in the dark. The organ notes that had blown against the closed windows were still vibrating and from the towers of church and town hall the chimes echoed through the valley while the golden wings of the great angel seemed to spread over the little world.
