Category: Faith

In case anybody out there is still somehow wondering just what kind of an enemy we’re up against, Michelle Malkin has put up an excellent accounting of the events surrounding the two Fox News journalists who were recently kidnapped in the Gaza strip and forced at gunpoint to “convert to Islam.” Remember this story the next time you bellyache about Christian “intolerance.”

Some things just make you shake your head. Like this, for example. I’ve known for a long time that many so-called “liberal” types, who howl so long and loud for their own liberties, separation of church and state, and who knows what else, were really nothing more than thinly-veiled God-haters. And now we have proof. Or should I just say, more proof?

As Licia Corbella reports in today’s Calgary sun:

Maybe if Artur Pawlowski had been holding a flag of the outlawed terrorist organization Hezbollah, Calgary Police would have left him alone.

Perhaps had they seen him on a street corner smoking crack cocaine — or selling it — they would have turned the other cheek, as is so often the case.

But Pawlowski was clearly doing something much more provocative Wednesday afternoon on the corner of 17 Ave. and 8 St. S.W. He — along with about six other people — were praying and reading the Bible.

The full article can be found here. I’ll keep an eye on this one and follow up with more as I get it.

Enough already! Knock it off and get the hell on with your life.

As usual, I’m sick and tired of hearing all the droning and bleating about the latest apoplexy-inducer, but this time all the moaning and groaning is coming from people that I usually agree with. It’s baffling, I know, but a great many of my fellow right wing nut jobs have their panties all in a bunch over something that I think adds up to no more that a fart in a windstorm.

For the record: Yes, I’m Catholic; yes, I’m serious about it; and no, I couldn’t give a rat’s arse about Dan Brown’s The daVinci Code. I haven’t read it and I have no plans to go and see it, mainly because I’m not one of those types that goes out of my way to get offended. Indignation is not a food group.

It’s a work of fiction using a slipshod misrepresentation of history in an effort to rehash a story that was old hat a thousand years ago. Gnosticism (which is what Brown’s work is derived from) has been around as long as humans have had religion. Gnostics’ only consistent trait is their ability to latch onto an existing system of beliefs and then smugly declare that they know something that the rest of us don’t and that knowing it makes them special and somehow smarter than the rest of us. This coming from an ideology that can’t even come up with its own ideas. Give me a break.

But, say many of my friends, what if it causes some Catholics to start to question their faith? Or other Christians, for that matter? What if it makes people believe that Christianity really is a scam? What if, what if, what if, ad nauseum. It’s almost enough to put me off my beer.

The answer is so simple that I can barely contain the urge to bat some folks over the head with it: Anybody that is going to lose their faith over a novel or a movie never had that much of it to begin with. Friends tell me about others that they know who say they are now questioning their beliefs over all this. So what? What’s the difference if we lose a few that were only nominally Christian to begin with? The answer is, nothing.

Christianity hasn’t lost any faithful over this, all that has changed is that a few of those who were faking it have now dropped the pretense and admitted what they really thought all along. Just because someone says that they’re something doesn’t make it so. Just look at Paul Martin or James Loney, both of whom claim to be “devout Catholics.”

Martin, while PM, supported same sex marriage, abortion and numerous other things that Catholic beliefs are dead set against. Loney (who, you may remember, was damn careful to shut up about his homosexuality while being held hostage by a bunch of Iraqi head-hackers) avoids prayer “like the plague,” thinks Mass is a waste of time, says “the thought of fasting nauseates me,” and that “my appetite for spiritual striving and self-discipline has diminished in corresponding measure,” as he becomes more comfortable with himself “just as I am.”

Are these guys even Catholic, let alone devout? The answer is no, plain and simple, no matter what they say to the contrary. Just saying that you’re Catholic isn’t good enough, no matter how much you might whine about it. You have to believe and you have to act on those beliefs. Catholics believe they must strive against the urge to sin; they believe in the right of the unborn to be born; they believe that the Mass is an act of communion with Christ; and they sure as hell don’t support any government monkeying about with a holy sacrament. These guys are no more Catholic than David Duke is a civil rights champion.

These two windbags, and other faux Catholics like them, are the only people that are going to be knocked loose by anything that Brown wrote. And, let’s face it folks, they were never in the fold to begin with. We have lost absolutely nothing. So, quit all the whining and bellyaching, get back to your lives and find something important to focus all that extra energy that you seem to have on. There are too many better things to do for us to be wasting any more time with this claptrap.