OC Weekly: In the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Aznar

[question everything]

April 15 - 21, 2005

In the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Aznar

Former Spanish prime minister proclaims new Trinity at UC Irvine appearance

by GUSTAVO ARELLANO

For two millennia, Christians worldwide have believed the Holy Trinity consists of God, Jesus and the Holy Ghost. But last Saturday, at UC Irvine’s Beckman Auditorium, former Spanish Prime Minister José María Aznar offered listeners an alternate cosmology, one more adept in this modern world at delivering mankind from evil.

Heaven and earth, meet your new Triune: George W. Bush, Tony Blair and the crucified savior, Aznar.

This extraordinary reconstitution of faith came near the end of Aznar’s hour-or-so-long sermon, one in which a discussion of the purported topic at hand—“Leadership in the Global World”—was ignored in favor of a service for the Light. It started with a procession: the diminutive, mustachioed Aznar descended the auditorium’s steep steps, underlings carving a path through the adoring masses. Aznar greeted the high priests of his Orange County denomination—UCI Chancellor Ralph Cicerone, Republican mainstays Marian Bergeson and William Steiner—but he laid hands only on George Argyros. Orange County knows Argyros best as a developer; the world knows him as the former ambassador to Spain who strained relationships between the United States and the Iberian nation in a way not seen since the sinking of the USS Maine. But to Aznar, Argyros is Cephas.

(snip)

The capacity crowd mumbled. They were there to hear Aznar speak about his Fall, about the March 11 Madrid bombings that left 191 souls killed and knocked his party from power. But as Aznar went on and on about the recently deceased pope, the audience began to understand. Aznar, like Yeshua of Nazareth, was using the lives of John Paul II and his conservative peers, Reagan and Thatcher, as a parable for a bigger Truth. His.

(snip)

Aznar finished and took some questions from the audience, written on index cards and recited by Bergeson and Steiner. Someone asked why he involved Spain in the Coalition of the Willing despite polls showing that more than 90 percent of Spaniards opposed invading Iraq. Aznar furrowed his brow and cited the same principles with which he had earlier described Pope John Paul II. The parables ended. “The world’s better,” he insisted. “When I watched the election in Iraq, I thought to myself, ‘I think we were right.’ Now, I watch people live freedom, speak freedom, think freedom. I think we are right.”

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