"We are not to cower. We are not to run away."
Or as Sean Connery's character said in the movie The Untouchables just before joining the unit, "Well, the Lord hates a coward!".
Fantastic, Dale
Just fantastic
Great post.
Snif. No fair making me tear up.
Excellent post.
I will be printing it out and saving it.
So, does this mean that I can't hate secularism - on the basis that I therefore must be hating secularists? (This is a serious question of great importance to me).
This post was outstanding!
Thanks for this, Dale. I'm still struggling with how to react to this man - on the one hand, I must respect him as a human being and the suggestion to make August a month of prayer for him is a good one.
On the other hand, if he really did do this, I want to smack him in the mush.
Well, succumbing to schadenfreude, I will so far indulge myself as to say:
We have two scientists. One is a Bright and bestest pal of Richard Dawkins. One is a believer - and to make it worse, a Christian believer, to boot.
Now, which of the pair is the one teaching Introductory Biology to Arts students at a former Minnesota cow college, and which is the one who headed up the Human Genome Project, an endeavour which is a Really Big Deal as far as the impact upon the science of biology is concerned?
Yes, children, that's right: the irrational, illogical, superstitious, half-crazed fanatic is the one who has made the greatest contribution to their shared field of science. Oh, the sweet, sweet irony 
On the other hand, if he really did do this, I want to smack him in the mush.
The backwash of the net is that people can enagage in and trumpet disgraceful behavior out of punching distance. I say the response should be more Eucharistic adoration and public processions at parishes.
Scott W., I acknowledge that even if I were within mush-smacking distance of the man, he'd just take it as vindication of his brave stance against persecution.
Wish he'd pick on some Odinists, though; I'd love to see what those guys would bring to the discussion 
Louise:
To answer your question, I would argue that "secularism" and Catholicism are essentially different, in that Catholicism implies not only a system of belief but also a body of believers joined together to Jesus Christ, whereas "secularism" is a blanket name for a large number of errors rather than a defined system of belief and action. When you hate "secularism," there is no church, as it were, necessarily linked to the ideas, but with Catholicism there is.
My wife pointed out to me that my argument could be applied, mutatis mutandis, to, say, Lutherans or Muslims. I don't think we can maintain the notion advanced in the top post that hatred of the Church implies hatred of the people in the Church.
"All so that he, as a droll Catholic commenter noted, could demonstrate the superiority of pure reason by gleefully assaulting a foodstuff. To the triumphant howls of fellow "rationalists.""
That's about the funniest thing I've read in quite awhile, Dale, who was this anoymous droll Catholic.
This post is really why I read this blog. As an atheist, I could puzzle out that Catholics wouldn't like what Myers did (also, the sky is often blue, didchaknow) but I wouldn't have been able to figure out all the colors and textures.
I don't really think you get the impulse that Myers and Dawkins (and people like Amanda Marcotte, who's the one to read) are coming from here. I don't think its hate. Now, I'm an atheist who doesn't care if you or your kids are Catholic or something else, but I don't read hate for you as a person from PZ Myers' post. (I don't mean this as a defense of him, because it's not nice to be a jerk) Derision, at worst. I'm not a personal fan of being derided, but it doesn't sound to me like it's hatred of you as a person.
I think Myers is just what he says he is, an evangelist for atheism. Which is another reason I don't like him, because who really likes to hear from an evangelist?
And Bill Donohue is well-intentioned? He's not an attention-grabber who jumps up only when some supposed affront against Catholicism matches up with popular American conservative political causes?
Dale,
Very touching. Thank you. When I read the news of what happened I was sitting at the computer and I said out loud, "he did it." My husband, who was making pancakes, and the kids, who were playing in the living room stopped everything and the house was silent. My son then went to his room, the way he does when he looses a game. He went to his room to cry alone. A few days later we took our son to camp and we shared the sorrow with the priest there. Fr. just said, “We can't hurt God. God is love.” And he smiled. His comment made me feel safer. Somehow pz Myers and the like seem to have power that they really don't have. The devil, too, must have thought he had a victory at 3pm on Friday. And the apostles must have despaired too at the thought that the devil might have won something. That Christ lost his life at the hands of gloating evil-doers. Like my son, they went to their room to cry alone. I'm just thankful that God doesn't allow us to see all that happens in this world. My heart would surely break into pieces. The challenge is to love - to always love all people at all times. To love pz Myers, to will his good, to look at him with the same love that Christ looked at his executioners - Father forgive them, they know not what they do. This is our hope. This is our victory. This is the truth about Christ on the cross. Saint Longinus pray for us.
Thanks, everybody.
wc:
Thanks for stopping by, and for your contributions. I appreciate them a lot. Always good to get a perspective check. As to the wag who came up with the foodstuff line, it was some clever commenter over at Rod Dreher's. Here's hoping it lives forever.
To respond--I'm as familiar as I want to be with consistent awfulness of the Marcotte oeuvre. The less said the better.
Maybe it's simply a matter of defining terms, but I can't see "bright" commentary as anything except hatred. The unceasing animosity and contempt, the hysterical ranting, all presented without a hint of nuance or concession of anything good in religious observance--it goes well past the post of derision. In the case of Myers, he simply cannot call what the religious education of my little ones *the worst crime ever* and *not* hate me as a person.
In fact, I've missed any suggestion of "hate the sin/love the sinner" in bright polemics on the topic of religion.
I can, perhaps, be talked into regarding the mindset as "not hatred" with some countervailing evidence, but at a minimum, it's quite malign.
Oh, and I'm not exactly a fan of Donohue, either, especially when he goes political. That's beyond cringe-inducing. But I don't think his detonation on this subject falls into one of those categories.
"Thanks for stopping by, and for your contributions. I appreciate them a lot. Always good to get a perspective check."
Thanks, Dale. It's certainly nice when we can recognize our common humanity across the dividing lines of belief and culture, even though I still have my doubts about you people. U of M fans, I mean. (Wait 'til October, when you'll either have to hear a bunch of taunting from Green-clad yahoos who've been saving it up since 2001 or a lot of talk about basketball season starting soon)
"In fact, I've missed any suggestion of "hate the sin/love the sinner" in bright polemics on the topic of religion."
I read some of that dynamic with Amanda Marcotte, but I'd assume you'd be wading through a Great Lake of stuff that you wouldn't like to get there.
"In the case of Myers, he simply cannot call what the religious education of my little ones *the worst crime ever* and *not* hate me as a person."
Obviously easy for me as an attempted non-combatant to say.
And I guess I don't have anything more than my pretty uneducated sense of where people are coming from. I certainly won't flatly state you're wrong and maybe I shouldn't comment without more than a feeling. Maybe I should say I hope your wrong, though I wouldn't blame you if the gradiations in motivation of the guy trashing your faith aren't a topic of immense concern.
And to speak of happier things, when are you going to install the countdown clock for Sept. 2, by the by?
Arrgggh. Long, well-thought out and well-written post, (honest it was!) with amusing allusions to the U of M/MSU rivalry eaten by haloscan.
So I'll just say the short version.
Thanks for having me, Dale.
Oh and when does the countdown clock for Sept. 2 go up?
Hey, look I made myself look dumb by not just waiting for haloscan to work itself out.
In penance I'll offer a link that involves medievel Catholicism.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/...h-the-
Pope.html
I don't imagine Benedict was expecting to have to deal with this one during his pontificate.
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