Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Physician, Heal Thyself

Anti-Catholicism has been taken to a new level in this country. First, Dan Brown's completely fictional DaVinci Code is taken as "gospel" by many who either don't know better, or don't want to know better. Jesus is seen as merely human and Mary Magdalen as His wife (and a goddess, apparently). The DaVinci Code is one of a long line of heretical novels which prey upon people's ignorance of Catholicism and portray the Church as a corrupt secret society with evil designs upon the world.

Recently, though, this blatant anti-Catholicism has risen to new heights. Not content with merely spreading fabricated accounts of the inner workings of an "evil" church, intolerant atheists are now stooping to the level of the blatantly malicious. On Sunday, June 29, Webster Cook, a Student Senator at the University of Central Florida smuggled a consecrated Host out of Mass and "held it hostage" before returning it a week later.

Paul Zachary Myers, a professor at the University of Minnesota, responded to the University of Central Florida incident by requesting, via his blog, for someone to "score" him some "consecrated communion wafers". He promises to "show you sacrilege, gladly, and with much fanfare."

This is an adult! This is a professor whose blog, at the time of its posting, was accessible through the university's website. I can't imagine such public disrespect to any other religious group being allowed to take place.

There are now websites, books and YouTube videos who seem to derive their sustenance from mocking all things Catholic and deliberately desecrating what Catholics consider holy.

A new breed of atheists, dubbed "Evangelical Atheists" by some, seem to think that it is their job to wrench people out of their faith. Using the same tactics that playground bullies use, they make fun of people who hold strong beliefs, until many who are alienated and disaffected join their bandwagon and abuse others in order to inflate their own fragile egos.

Richard Dawkins is one such atheist. He blames religion for every evil in the world and urges atheists to be more forceful in expressing their beliefs. His arrogance has provoked many with little knowledge and less respect to disdainfully defile others' beliefs for their own self-aggrandizement.

In short, it is now sanctioned in many circles to perpetrate what amounts to hate crimes against Christians. Some who would be rightly horrified at a crime against a synagogue or a mosque, think nothing of laughing at someone who sees fit to deliberately profane something held sacred by Catholics.

Extremism of the kind thought to be the sole bastion of various cultist religious groups is now seen as "edgy" and humorous by many. Those of us who are offended, just don't get the humor, apparently. We are "out of touch" and overly sensitive, it seems.

Why aren't we laughing?

When a society decides that physical or emotional violence against any group is acceptable, funny and entertaining, it is sliding down the road of 1930's Germany. If it is ok to belittle and dishonor an entire religion and culture, we are not far from open persecution of the type seen under the Nazi Regime. If we have no compunction about pointing our finger and openly ridiculing the dearly held beliefs of fellow human beings, and, indeed, actually committing violence against their houses of worship, far from being enlightened scientific humanists, we are no better than the depraved doctors of the Third Reich.

Our Lady of Sorrows, Pray for us!

5 comments:

Paul said...

You just identified one of the main reasons why I left a social website that I had enjoyed for a couple years and made a number of friends from. They had absolutely zero respect for my Catholicism or my beliefs. So I shook off the dust from my shoes in protest and slipped out quietly.

One paragon of tolerance from that board (and former Catholic, of course) said that according to the Catechism, every Catholic politician who supports capital punishment should be denied the Eucharist. She also didn't hide her contempt for those from the unenlightened central part of Pennsylvania (she's from Pittsburgh), and is campaigning for the Presidential candidate who shares that contempt. I couldn't hold a civilized discussion with her; she only wanted to bash.

But hey, it's nice to know we're worthy of such insults, and have been for centuries. After all, anti-Catholicism is the last safe prejudice.

Michele said...

i will add my 2 cents not just about catholicism, but about a cult i was involved with for 10 years, the jw's
(jehovah's witnesses for those who don't know the abbreviated term, jw.) mine was a particularly difficult situation. i was married to a man (civil ceremony) who was not a jw but his parents were. i was not a jw at the time it all started. once his parents found out i was catholic, and my family catholic, they started a 10 year war of ridicule and shaming me. i stood up for the faith despite their ridicule and humiliation. the pressure was so intense, that i thought becoming a jw would shut them up and leave me alone. well, that was a joke. it only made things worse. how so? then they expected me to fully live up to the jw belief. aside from that, they never stopped ridiculing my mother and my family of whom they had never even met!
so, in disgust i left in 1997. the point iam trying to make here, is that even though i was put to shame and ridiculed, in never once bit back and ridiculed their belief at all in those 10 years. i could have! indeed! but, i didn't. i stood up for our faith, and for my family. when you attack someone's belief, it can truly hurt them. i know. i will not attack a jw, but i will try to expose their belief as false in a Christian way to them so as to help save just one of them. that belief is dangerous because people willingly will die for it (no blood transfusions) and knowingly jeopordize the lives of their children because they think that by doing so, they are pleasing God and fulfilling His commands. thousands have died for this belief that has been putting the lives of its members in danger for over 100 years. you can often point out to them that God did not command us to refuse a blood transfusion and die from a lack of it. quite the contrary, He would want us to have life and chose life , not to die. the whole point of this is iam making, is not to attack witnesses, because they firmly believe what they have is the "truth" ( yes, they refer to their belief as the "truth") but to help them out of the cult. one can be charitable towards them, and not attack what they hold dear, yet help them to see the REAL truth! as a former jw, and also a Catholic, i can tell you that it truly hurts when someone ridicules your belief. no matter what you believe on earth, it someone willfully and deliberately attacks what you hold dear, then they are acting out of malice towards you and not trying to reason with you and ask you about your belief and why you believe what you do. charity goes a long way friends. i wish someone had been charitable to me when i was being humiliated and scorned. but hey, iam out, and that is because of God that i am out of the watchtower organization and home to rome! praise God!

Staying in Balance said...

I've been ridiculed by people otherwise "close" to me as well, for my Catholic beliefs. These people have come from various backgrounds and age groups. It hurts when people who are so "tolerant" of everything under the sun, decide that Catholicism is fair game, even when they are talking to an actual, practicing Catholic! Never ceases to amaze me...

But, Cyg, I think you have a point. They (and the fallen angel prodding them) wouldn't make such a fuss if they didn't "know" that Catholicism was right. Otherwise we wouldn't be such a threat.

Anonymous said...

growing up in the born again fundamentalist thing, i see anti-catholicism as being just as much of a problem within much of what is called christianity. i usually find that when someone has a problem with the catholic church, they're coming from that p.o.v. though, non-christians certainly have provided plenty of insult, as well.

the dan brown thing i find hilarious. if jesus was married to MM, he was just a regular guy, and therefore his descendants would not be anything special. so, from that p.o.v., who cares?!? it's dumb. the craziest idea is that they moved to france. yes, that's what a jewish couple 2,000 years ago would've done! WHA?!!? :)

Staying in Balance said...

Some of the theories out there are indeed unbelievable!

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"Slavery ended in medieval Europe only because the church extended its sacraments to all slaves and then managed to impose a ban on the enslavement of Christians (and of Jews). Within the context of medieval Europe, that prohibition was effectively a rule of universal abolition. "— Rodney Stark

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