Peter B. Lockhart's Blog

Recently I watched the film “The Big Short”, and to say I loved it would be an understatement. Suffice it to say that film rang a lot of bells with me.

The men in the film all saw the meltdown that was the Subprime Housing Crash and the Global Financial Crisis coming years before it happened – as I did. Nobody listened to them just as nobody listened to me. Well some listened to me.

Watching the film I was impressed by the similarities between some of the characters and myself. The biggest thing that struck me was grief. One character had a brother who suicided, while another had his father violently killed and taken from him when he was but a boy.

Recently I have been reading a lot about the Second World War, and especially Japan. Of course, to discuss any aspect of that war in a blog is a flea bite out of an elephant of a subject.

Other than the fact that the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour was similar in so many ways to the attack on Darwin Harbour just 10 weeks later, mostly because of complacency and stupidity, both attacks by the Japanese caught the Americans and the Australians, asleep at the wheel. The Pearl attack and the Darwin attack were done by the same group of Aircraft Carriers commanded by Admiral Nagumo.

In both attacks, the early warnings were ignored, the element of surprise was maintained, and the damage was severe. Darwin was important strategically after Singapore fell to the Japanese just four days before the first air raid, and it seems, only the Japanese understood that. The raids on Darwin were done in order to disrupt and degrade the efficient functioning of the important port.

What struck me most of all in my recent reading, was the role the Shinto Religion played in the Japanese war machine in the hostilities, which Japan began in 1931.

Question: This week we have had the revelation of some 796 or so human remains – children – found in an old Septic Tank in Tuam Galway, in what used to be a Roman Catholic Unmarried Mother’s Home. How did you feel about this business?

Peter: I was appalled but not in the least bit surprised.

Question: This week we have had the revelation of some 796 or so human remains – children – found in an old Septic Tank in Tuam Galway, in what used to be a Roman Catholic Unmarried Mother’s Home. How did you feel about this business?

Peter: I was appalled but not in the least bit surprised.

Dear Sir,

You will excuse me for not using your official titles such as “Father” or “Your Holiness”, because I simply cannot bring myself to compromise my principles by doing so. Principles are a subject I would like to discuss at a later time.

Firstly, by way of something of an introduction, I was one of the thousands of children in the tender mercies of the Nuns in the Catholic Orphanages. I am a survivor not a victim, and I appreciate that neither you nor any of the members of the Roman Catholic cult could care less about hapless children who, because of the vicissitudes of life, end up in Catholic institutions.

I was on a train in Perth, on my way to a friend’s house in a Northern Suburb. At one stop, a young man and young woman entered and sat near me. They then began a conversation in Spanish, some of which I could understand.

I love the music of the Spanish language, and I don’t know why, but I like to learn words and phrases of that beautiful and powerful Latin language, which appeals to me more so than Italian or French.

We live in a time of great change. That is of course something of an understatement as I am sure you understand, and one of the greatest changes is the fact that religious beliefs and religious institutions are being challenged as never before.

Atheistic books are being written, published and read like never before, and people are abandoning the religious organisations like never before, to the point where church services on Sundays, are for all intents and purposes all but empty, as both attendance and membership dwindles with each month that passes.

Some people such as me are happy to talk about the subject and engage in conversation regarding the veracity of religious beliefs, and some are not willing to discuss the matter. Many atheists just say nothing because they know it’s not even worth trying to debate the subject with people who tell them they are just wrong.

I think debate is important, as young people mature and see this debate, they think religion is absurd and refuse to be a part of it, while the old fuddy-duddies cling to their beliefs and die off, taking their beliefs to their grave with them. So therefore I believe debate is important, so the young people can see and hear the debate and make up their own minds.

I like to cook. When not reading books on History, I read cookbooks. As a boy my Mum made the best Cornish Pasties in the Universe, which I always ate with HP Sauce. There was a recipe for a dish I was interested in making – Jamaican Curried Goat, as it happens, and I needed a tablespoon of HP Sauce. I didn’t have any so I went to shop after shop, four in all, but with no luck.

The generation of people who like HP Sauce are a dying breed. The shops stocked everything but HP Sauce. There was Sweet Chilli, Soy, BBQ, and on and on the list goes, but no HP Sauce. The younger generations just do not eat it, so therefore the shops do not stock it. Eventually I got some, but it took quite a bit of time, effort and petrol.

As a boy I was captured by the TV series Superman starring George Reeves (not to be confused with Christopher Reeve). On the small black and white analogue TV, the magic of the man, who was faster than a speeding bullet, and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, held my imagination transfixed.

It would seem I was not the only one, as now, even as I type these words, yet another version of Superman is gracing the screens of my local cinema. Not only was I merely another person who enjoyed the Superman stories in my youth, I was often called Superman.

The title is a line from Hamlet: Act 2 Scene 2. Polonius asks Hamlet what he reads, and Hamlet replies by saying the same word three times. “Words, words, words.” I mention that because I am going to talk specifically about some men and their books, and the power of those books and the words contained within them.

The Roman Catholic Church now has a new Pope. This new Pope, Francis I, is the leader of 1.2 billion Roman Catholics all around the world. There was a time when the authority of the Pope was absolute, but now the Pope no longer commands an army, as was the case in the past, and people have had more than enough of all the child sexual abuse from priests.