REPRINTED FROM THE COMMENTS ON SOMEONE'S LJ

[fpb]

A MORON
...i wish the Church would go die in a fire =)

FPB
As a member of said Church, thank you very much for your kind intentions. I am actually quite grateful: you are yet one more demonstration that anti-Catholicism of the most poisonous variety is the group hatred of choice of our time. Vicious little haters like you need to be encouraged to speak their mind freely and without hypocrisy, so that our people realize that being nice to your likes will buy them exactly nothing. Catholics need to wake up to the way people like you really feel about them ("die in a fire" - and please let us have no garbage about the distinction between the Church and the members; the members are the Church), and the more your self-indulgent hatred is vented in public, the sooner we will all realize that there is nothing to expect from you but hatred. Too many of my fellow Church members have not yet awakened to reality, and only a constant barrage of this kind of thing will remove the stars from their eyes when it comes to your kind. Keep it up: they must realize that they have no friends in people like you, and the more you open your mouth (or whichever anatomical part you use for self-expresssion), the more they shall be waking up.

A MORON
I didn't read your rant, but if you want to argue, I don't think the correct place to do it is on someone else's LJ. =)

FPB
Happy now?

Comments

[thefish30.livejournal.com]

Apparently =) covers a multitude of insults. :P

[fpb.livejournal.com]

At least this individual is more truthful than a lot of his likes.

[sanscouronne.livejournal.com]

"I didn't read your rant" = "I'm too lazy to even logically question my emotion-based assumptions."

I would not even have responded to the Church death wish pronouncement.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Someone had to, or else he would have gone on feeling that he had really said nothing strange.

[sanscouronne.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, in some social circles, that kind of hateful non sequitur would not have questioned either on its appropriateness or its connection to logic. But

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Exactly. He'd have said it with a grin and had it received with other grins, or indifference.

[shezan.livejournal.com]

I'm with you in this, AND in your Own Goal theory.

[inverarity.livejournal.com]

I dunno, I can loathe an institution while still being willing to judge members on an individual basis.

Wishing for someone/thing to "die in a fire" accompanied by passive-aggressive smilies is fail, though.

"I can loathe an institution while still being willing to judge members on an individual basis..."

[fpb.livejournal.com]

And that is where you fail - even to appreciate what you oppose. That is why people imagine that they can remove the symbols of the faith from the public square without injuring the rights, let alone the feelings, of the majority of their fellow-countrymen. You do not see that there is any connection between the person and what you call "the institution" - although its institutional side is the least part of it. Our nation was made by Dante, and Dante is the greatest Catholic poet there has ever been. (In fact, he is the greatest poet, period, but that is another matter.) Our culture is woven on the Church as warp and woof; not only were all our greatest artists, thinkers and scientists, with very few exceptions, Christians or believing Jews, but what makes the culture itself - the educational system and the universities - was set up by the Church according to Christian principles. That these same institutions are now seized by a belated kind of Oedipal revolt against what made them matters very little, except that they will become the more sterile the more they imagine they can live for and by themselves. The pretence that you can take something you call "the institution" and separate it from the culture, not to mention the membership, serves two purposes, both fraudulent: to pretend to have a claim on the culture of Dante, Beethoven and Shakespeare, and to pretend you are not trying to exclude the majority of your fellow-countrymen from the public square by forcing on the official institutions - and yes, those indeed are institutions that can be separated from the citizenship - standards which are not indifferent, but downright hostile to their beliefs. Bullshit. The Catholic "institution" exists purely because of its members' free-will membership, and would not last a minute if several hundred million of us did not believe its teachings. There is a lot more to be said about this, but I don't have the patience just now.

Re: "I can loathe an institution while still being willing to judge members on an individual ba

[inverarity.livejournal.com]

As usual you're wrong about what I do and do not appreciate, see, and think, but if you won't take my word for it that I don't want Catholics to die in a fire (you do recall that I'm not the one who made the original comment, don't you?) then I suppose there is no way to convince you otherwise.

Re: "I can loathe an institution while still being willing to judge members on an individual ba

[fpb.livejournal.com]

You took the position that you can loathe an "institution" without loathing its members. That is incomprehensible. If I find that someone is a member of the Mafia or of the Nazi Party, am I going to judge them on their individual niceness? And yes, there are nice mafiosi and nice Nazis.

Re: "I can loathe an institution while still being willing to judge members on an individual basis..

[fellmama.livejournal.com]

"Even when people swear they don't believe in it, the fifteen hundred years of Christianity that has made our world is in their bones, and they want to show they can be Christians without Christ. Those are the worst; they have the cruelty of doctrine without the poetic grace of myth."
--Robertson Davies, Fifth Business.

[elise-the-great.livejournal.com]

I just think it's hilarious that you got the STFU treatment for essentially telling the guy you're glad he spoke his mind on his journal.

A moron?

[(Anonymous)]

Are you sure that this is a person and not, say, a cat with a keyboard? ai haz internetz?

-MrMandias

Re: A moron?

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Hey, what have cats ever done to you? Speaking as an honorary feline (I'm a Leo), stop comparing brainless humans to cousin Felix! 8-)