(urth) Some Pirate Freedom thoughts and questions

[thalassocrat at nym.hush.com]

On Sun, 02 Dec 2007 07:34:56 +1100 "Fernando Q. Gouvea" 
<fqgouvea at colby.edu> wrote:
>>
>6) What is the chronology of Chris's story? How long does Brother 
>Ignacio wait? I agree that it might be interesting to see if we 
>get any 
>clues as to what he was doing. Of course, he may well have simply 
>been 
>slaving away, doing the proper penitence for his acts at last, and 

>
>learning that patience, too, is a virtue.

Oh, surely not. It could only be a "proper penance" if he did 
everything he could to stop "Chris1" from turning into a murderer. 
But he doesn't do that; he wants "Chris1" to do exactly what he 
did. 

I bet he tells himself: "Surely God can't blame me any more than he 
does already for not stopping myself from committing a sin I've 
already committed in the past." Just as he tells himself: "Surely 
God will not blame me for breaking my vow of chastity, when that 
vow will have been made in the future, at the time I break it." 

He's always got excuses, has Father Chris. He's a good, pious man 
right up until the point when being good & pious gets in the way of 
something he wants.

If you buy into a negative connotation for "Jesuitical", it's not 
surprising that Loyola is one of his favorite saints.

(Look what he does with the slaves from his first pirate action. He 
*wants* to set them free, but there's all these good reasons for 
not doing it. 

Thinking about it just bring him back to the priest in Veracruz. 
Nuttin' you can do.

Except the priest was doing something: he was giving them water, 
and teaching them about God, and trying to set an example to 
everybody, so that everybody might treat each other a little better 
than they do. Just like Chris says he always tried to do, except 
when he couldn't. 

So what does Chris do, when he's decided he can't free the slaves? 
He recruits some of them, gives one to his pirate-goombah as a sex 
toy, auctions off the rest after spending some effort fattening up 
the last of the batch, and keeps his share of the money. No telling 
them about God or setting an example. 

And when the nasty Spanish steal "his" money from him - the money 
he's kept from the sale of the ship and the slaves, unspent - he's 
just gotta become a pirate, because they forced him into it. 

His hypocrisy is appalling.)

Here's what I think "Chris2" was doing in Cuba, before the time-
slip. I think he was working for his father, or at least getting 
close to him. His father would like the man he's become. He'd feel 
good about sending young Chris to the monastery if "Ignacio" was 
there to keep an eye on him and teach him stuff. He'd say to Chris: 
"You do what that tall priest with the beat-up face tells you to 
do. He's a stand-up guy, for a priest. He doesn't get you down the 
way abbotts do." 

And while Chris and Ignacio are working away in the Dominican 
fields, Ignacio would be telling Chris stuff, hinting about girls, 
and how everybody else in the monastery is a leccacazzi, and how 
much the outside world has to offer. How everything is OK if you 
love God and he is your friend. How it's OK if you just do what you 
can do.

Chris speaks of Ignacio many times to Novia - so she says. She says 
he told her Ignacio was a second father to him. She says he told 
her he would trust Ignacio more than he'd trust himself. 

But I don't think he reports *any* conversation with Ignacio, from 
the monastery time. Nothing that was said, nothing that he learned 
from him, nothing of what must have been his greatest intimacy in 
that place. 

Why is that? Well, I think the answer is pretty obvious.