of faith: a passionate commitment to Christ, “the reviled, tortured, political criminal”. One can hear the Marxist language com- ing through in his theology. Eagleton cannot divorce his political views from his religious convictions and believes that the Left must do more to tap into religious ideas. “I can see ways now in which theology can be a very rich resource for radical political thought,” he said. “And I’m very struck by the way so many leading secular thinkers today like [Slavoj] Žižek, Alain Badiou and [Jurgen] Habermas [are using theology] and that prob- ably belongs to a period when the Left is licking its wounds and needs to lay in more resources. It now has the time to do so.” But what does he make of the orthodox


Christian view – articulated by Pope Benedict XVI in his encyclical Spe Salvi – that Marxism, while having some good ideas, is flawed because it denies faith and only believes in redeeming humanity solely through revolutionising the economic order? He smiles and replies that next year he is publishing a book titled Why Marx Was Right. “It says on a whole range of issues Marx still has much to say. But it’s not just about Marx. Marxism is an important part of a wider social- ist tradition. I’m not so concerned about whether people are Marxist, which is a rather technical term. I’m concerned that they should be fighting the injustices of the pres- ent system, particularly as Christians,” he said. “I think it’s appalling the way that so much religion has been turned into ideology, into a defence of the rich and powerful.” Christian theology in every age must


always, he explains, try to find a secular lan- guage to speak in and socialism fits the bill: “It [Christianity] has to find the language which deals with injustices, exploitation, oppression and see its mission in that light.”


twice-married father of five believes the question is not particularly relevant for the purpose of intellectual argument with non- believers. “Whether I’m a Marxist, or a Buddhist or a Christian is not the primary point, that’s purely autobiographical. You have to put forward an argument that is convincing even to the open-minded atheist.” With his public profile, wit and argumen- tative vigour, Eagleton is able to command the attention of audiences who may well be sceptical of faith. But perhaps his biggest opposition will be from among the ranks of Christians who dislike his coupling of Marxism and Christianity. He is a fan of Hans Küng and Karl Rahner but sees Pope Benedict XVI as a “renegade” and “oppressor” of that sort of theology. Nevertheless, his Catholic background runs deep and he by no means fits into sec- ular caricatures of religious people: as whiskies were poured after our interview he stood up to a microphone and sang an improvised Irish ballad to the delight of his audience.


W


hen it comes to his own personal faith, however, Eagleton is ret- icent: “You’d have to ask the Almighty about that one.” The


CHRISTOPHER HOWSE’S PRESSWATCH


‘There was every TV soap twist in Wayne’s wobble’


We’re worried about Wayne. The footballing half of Britain’s most famous Catholic couple, Wayne and Coleen Rooney, had dangled the sports pages on a fraying string of suspense for weeks as he threatened to leave Manchester United – a Catholic cultural focus still, despite its willingness long ago to embrace the Belfast Proddy-dog (the technical sectarian designation), George Best. There was every TV soap twist in


Wayne’s wobble – insults, sulks, cliffhangers, changes of heart. There was the money interest, with endless zeros, and the love interest, with tawdry claims about times when he was so lonesome, in Simon and Garfunkel’s words, that he took some comfort, for cash, playing away from home. Now, with Wayne having lost his form and most of his remaining hair, the father-figure in his life, Sir Alex Ferguson, has packed him off for physical and spiritual restoration in Portland, Oregon, at Nike Town, a sporting cross between Shangri-la and Boys Town. His departing jet passed through the thinning smoke from the ritual burning of “a 30ft paper and wire model of Rooney, showing him holding a Manchester United holdall full of cash”, reported the Daily Star. It was the choice of Edenbridge, Kent, for its Guy Fawkes Night bonfire effigy, and 10,000 turned out to see it burn. Makes a change from the Pope. The Daily Star meanwhile


reported that the Rooneys will have their marriage blessed by a Catholic priest around Christmas. The couple, you will remember, married in 2008 at Portofino in the presence of a priest, but in a chapel apparently not approved for weddings. Meanwhile a new Catholic hero has been written into the Man U script. “Javier Hernandez has already overtaken Wayne Rooney to become the club’s biggest shirt-seller,” reported The Mail on Sunday. “Fans flocked into the club’s megastore to buy the Chicharito number 14 shirt.” Hernandez’s nickname means “Little Pea” in his native Mexico, and loses something in translation. “Chicharito is a godsend,” wrote the paper’s Joe Bernstein, “a clean-living churchgoer who can appeal to the whole family.” One football blog commented: “Javier Hernandez is a devout Catholic and therefore does not drink alcohol” –


which shows a curiously poor grasp of Catholic culture.


It happens that Edenbridge’s celebrity effigy for 5 November, 2007, was Cherie Booth, whose husband had just ceased to be Prime Minister. In that year she made some remarks about Islamic veiling: “If you get to a stage where a woman is not able to express her personality because you can’t see her face, then you have to ask whether this is something that is actually acknowledging the woman’s right to be a person in her own right.” Two years earlier, she had acted as a QC on behalf of a schoolgirl who wanted to wear a jilbab, a head-to-toe garment, against school rules. Last week, in an interview with the Spanish daily El País, she developed her views. “Islam is an open religion”, she said, “in which women have influence, whether they hide their hair or not.” She told the paper that she had been educated by nuns who went about completely covered up. “We use the appearance of women as a metaphor of our fear of a supposed Islamic threat,” she said. This showed a certain magnanimity,


for Cherie Booth’s half-sister, Lauren, has been all over the tabloids talking about her own conversion to Islam. She told The Mail on Sunday that her children had been delighted, because “it seems they’d both been embarrassed by my plunging shirts and tops and had cringed on the school run at my pallid cleavage”. A strange case of conversion


figured in my own paper, The Daily Telegraph, which has just taken over as the partner of the Hay Festival. Gaby Wood, our glamorous literary editor, singled out this incident among the 2010 festival highlights: “Jimmy Carter hearing Bishop Gene Robinson and saying that as a Christian he’d always struggled with the idea of homosexuality and ‘it wasn’t until today that I realised I was wrong’.” Now that Dr Robinson has this week announced his retirement he could find even more time for such events. A platform appearance with Bishop Andrew Burnham, who this week also announced his resignation (in order to become a Catholic), might lead to a spectacular conversion, submission or a knockout.


■ Christopher Howse is an assistant editor ofThe Daily Telegraph.


13 November 2010 | THE TABLET | 15


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