Out Loud And Proud

I’m currently reading “Cosa Nostra” which traces the history of the Mafia. Yeah, my kinda bedtime reading..why? Cos I'm a chronically violent psychopath ok? Idiot. Anyway, it convincingly demonstrates that the Mafia originated as 19th century Sicilian landowners seeking to monopolize via intimidation the island’s most valuable commodity of the time, that being the lemon orchards. Having found that their methods of “Your Lemons or Your Wife” worked effectively, they expanded into other enterprises, such as imposing and deposing Presidents. It’s a good read. But it’s all bollocks. The Sicilians were simply learning the tricks of the trade from their masters, the Maltese. And adding a touch of their Italian sense of fashion to create what was to become the Mafia’s intimidating signature apparel. Black on black. Not really very original considering that most people of the time wore black with a touch of black: priests, young women, old women, married women, widowed women, dead women….look at recycled Sicilian b&w postcards of quaint villagers in quaint village scenes (best shot in daylight cos you wouldnt be able to see the quaint villagers in a night scene).

Think I’m off my trolley? Yes I am but that’s circumstantial evidence. And doesn’t mean my theory is half-baked. Consider this: the Italian artist Caravaggio was a thug of the highest order with a criminal record to boot…..pure co-incidence that he escaped from the Italian cops by hiding out in Malta? He produced a couple of masterpieces while here so he must have felt securely protected. That his subject matter dealt with gruesome beheadings, suicide notes, rapes of the innocents (you know good ol’ bedtime reading Bible stories) might indicate a heightened sense of tension or just the workings of a criminal mind. But he sold his stuff to the Church so he was in with a bloody good patron.

Speaking of the Catholic Church, what happened to the poverty part of the Three Ecclesiastical Vows? Walk into any Maltese Church and you could easily be forgiven for thinking you’re in the “Found The Treasure” scene from “Indian Jones and The Raiders of The Lost Ark”. Whenever I hear a Catholic missionary TV appeal for more money to build a school in Zimbabwe, I almost throw my popcorn at the screen : why not start by getting your church to sell off some of its frigging solid silver alter candlesticks? Just one auction on e-bay could finance the feeding of a whole small Third World Country. If, quoting Christ, rich people can get to heaven as easily as a camel can pass through the eye of a needle, then the Catholic Church better consider going on a radical diet!

Malta's real religious. Blimey, it got more roadside shrines per square metre than the whole of Rwanda. Or the Vatican for that matter. Overtly hyper-religious. Covertly? Back to Caravaggio.