Category: Catholic

EEK! Those nasty, totalitarian Catholics are at it again. No doubt emboldened by a mean, nasty, evil Tory government (who plan to destroy health care, rip the country apart, force women to get pregnant so they can deny them abortions, yaddayaddayadda), the Catholic group Genocide Awareness Project has set up a graphic display at St. Michael Catholic secondary school in Stratford, Ontario. The display leaves no room for doubt that abortion is the killing of an innocent human being and puts it in exactly the context that it belongs in, which is the last thing that the anti-infant bragade ever wants anyone seeing.

Included with pictures of aborted babies were other images of death, including a lynching and the Nazi Holocaust during which six million Jewish people were slaughtered.

The display, belonging to an anti-abortion group called the Genocide Awareness Project (GAP), was set up near the building’s main entrance yesterday. It was part of “pro-life events week” at the school.

Naturally, the pro-infanticide crowd are busily making fudge in their collective Stanfields over all this. Look for lawsuits, rent-a-crowds and all the other usual tactics to be pulled out of the coat hanger crowd’s tickle trunk in the next few days. Look for a Charter challenge too, no doubt. Never mind that the Charter says NOTHING about the supposed “right” to slaughter the unborn but lists “freedom of conscience and religion” before anything else (even with all its flaws, the Charter managed to get at least one thing right)! That’s just a pesky little detail that the coat hanger commandos would rather you not bother yourself with.

The teachings and position of the Catholic Church on the subject of abortion are both clear and well known: it’s murder and it’s a sin. Period. And no amount of browbeating by the schreeching hoardes is ever going to change that.

Many say that the battle is already over, because abortions have been happening for decades. Nothing is over.

Many more say that this is a divisive issue that should “be allowed to just go away so we can get on with more important things.” Well, here’s a surprise: I actually agree with that statement. This is a divisive issue and we do have other important things that need to be done.

So ban abortion and let’s get on to them.

THAT is how it will go away. That, and no other way. Because we will NEVER give up.

The cries of outrage have been coming from all the predictable quarters and suspects. Multicultists, Islamofascist apologists, and a host of others have called the Pope’s remarks during a lecture at Regensburg everything from “intolerant” to “bigoted” to “a prelude to a new Crusade” to God knows what else.

Only one thing seems to have escaped their notice: His Holiness is right. Benedict has always stated he is against any use of violence in the name of religion, so why should Islam be immune to scrutiny? As William Rees-Mogg points out in the Times:

Benedict did give offence — but no great religion should be immune from difficult questions.

This is true of any faith, whether it be Christian, Muslim, Jewish, or any one of the host of others. But where criticism of Christianity is outright celebrated in some quarters, any critique of Islam, no matter how minor or legitimate, is instantly labeled as proof of Western, racist, Islamophobic, etc, etc, etc, ad nauseum.

This double standard is getting very, very old. And, it’s bullshit to begin with. As one writer points out:

But also like the Danish cartoon scandal, the real reason for the supposed worldwide Muslim “anger” isn’t the perceived slight to Islam. Rather, Muslim leaders have malevolently distorted Benedict XVI’s words and intentions, speaking of blasphemy and slander, as they see in the Pope’s comments a ready-made opportunity to subordinate Christendom’s highest and most important representative to Muslim demands. In other words, they want to turn him into a “dhimmi,” a person of another religion in an Islamic country who holds a second-class existence. Such Muslim leaders had a trial run with Denmark nine months ago, intimidating that small European country and showing the precariousness of liberal freedom in Europe, which has probably emboldened them now to go after bigger game.

Which begs the question: after Salmon Rushdie, Denmark, and Pope Benedict XVI, who is next?

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.