POSTVIEW
Beat yourself up if you think it's good PR
March 10, 2005
For a nation that leads the world in the number of agnostics per capita, there seems to be a remarkable fascination with religious ritual — or at least with one in particular: the custom of self-flagellation.
The top members of the ruling coalition in Parliament certainly seem enthusiastic about abasement these days, and perhaps for understandable reasons. Like many rituals, standing humbly before the world and uttering a mea culpa offers a wonderfully cathartic, maybe even cleansing, act. And, like most rituals, its meaning is chiefly symbolic.
Actually accepting specific blame for an act of wrongdoing, say, a prime minister's coverup of suspicious sources of income for a luxury apartment, isn't required for this exercise. Nor is coming clean about the real sources of the funds. As far as that goes, his wife need not explain exactly what her business relationship with a bordello's landlord consists of.
All that matters is contrition, humility and a convincing rending of garments (not in the bordello, of course).
Stanislav Gross' mentor in building the fortunes of the Social Democratic Party (CSSD), Milos Zeman, often ruffled feathers with many people, but some of his favorite pronouncements were aimed at the Catholic Church. Why should the state return to the church any of the more than 100,000 pieces of church property and thousands of hectares of land seized by the state after 1948, Zeman used to gleefully ask. With an estimated value of 80 billion-100 billion Kc ($3.54 billion-4.42 billion) at current market rates, the property signifies a touchy topic, to say the least.
Though the Catholic bishops have proposed an alternative to the return of the property, in which the state would pay the church 1 billion Kc a year for the next 50 years, for some reason the budget-challenged state hasn't jumped at this option either (see "Church proposes payment for seized assets," News, Feb. 9-15). Meanwhile, in Zeman's new, characteristically acrid memoirs (see story, page A1), he reiterates this argument, probably hoping to stir the incense embers yet again.
Zeman, though he takes great pride in personally being responsible for both the success of the CSSD and the Czech economy, in reality blew much of the party's credibility with his infamous opposition agreement, the power-sharing deal they struck with the Civic Democratic Party (ODS) in 1998, and with his own failure to rein in corruption. Though Klaus' ODS were the true pioneers of scandals in the mid-'90s, particularly dodgy campaign funding, Zeman certainly managed a few himself during his own administration (though, it must be said, for all his verbal blunders — and there were many — he was never directly connected to corruption). Now Zeman's protege, Gross, can take his place alongside all his predecessors who have still not quite delivered the free, fair and transparent society everyone dreamed of back in 1989.
Gross, the third Social Democratic prime minister in a row — and considered for a time the youngest, best prospect (if not the brightest) of all — stands at the center of another mess as embarrassing as any his predecessors could have cooked up, whatever their end of the political spectrum.
Yet true to his young, progressive reputation, Gross is opting for an approach that's truly novel in the halls of Parliament: He's going in for confession.
Gross' public apology March 5 was nothing if not spectacle, a ritual that would have fit in perfectly with any Gregorian penance rite from the Dark Ages. True, it might have been a touch more dramatic if he'd covered himself in ashes or at least torn a button or two off. But what a performance. And let's be fair, Czech prime ministers are still pretty inexperienced at such apologies.
So maybe the church shouldn't be tangled with quite so readily. Could it be that old Zeman was a bit premature in dissing the House of God? After all, this abasement rite could prove useful in the future.
Maybe there's still time to work out a land-for-penitence-lessons deal with a few monks from Strahov?
|
Purchase online
Spotlight on
Weekly list
BOL Online