Friday, October 16, 2009

Religious Terrorists

Got this email:

Hello heathens and bretheren,

Ye olde fashioned Atheist/Agnostic Association hereby bequeath unto you the following affadavit by rote, deed, or correspondence:

Wednesday, Oct 14: Debate on the historicity of Jesus's resurrection (Our own Yaroslav Naumenko will be taking the negative position to Brad Lippincot's

positive) 4 p.m. - 262 Willard

Saturday, Oct 17: A blasphemy event, hosted by some members of the club, will be taking place at the intersection of Shortlidge and College (by McLanahan's). We will be having a Muhammed drawing contest and desecration of a consecrated communion wafer. The hosts take this event as a response to several anti-blasphemy laws and violence that has been perpetrated against those who blaspheme around the world.

Now I could care less about muhammed, I draw pictures of him whenever I urinate in the snow, but if these people follow through with their threat to desecrate our Lord, I will not pray for God to have mercy on them. Scan the news tomorrow and report back here if you have any news.


6 comments:

Anfinion said...

I am a citizen of Scranton and a former christian. I came upon your blog completely by mistake. Usually when I come across sites like yours I just pass them by. This post however made me stop and stay a while. I should say upfront that I don't follow any religion at all, I consider myself, what I like to call, a Secular Theist. So odds are we won't see eye to eye.

I must say that I was greatly offended by what you said of "muhammed", which by the way is spelled Muhammad. I cannot see how you could expect others to respect your religion when you clearly don't respect theirs.

Now as I said I was formerly a christian. I was baptized, raised by two catholic parents, and went to a catholic school within the Diocese of Scranton. I went through all things expected of a young catholic, I regularly went to church and said my prayers everyday. I considered myself a strong catholic up until just after my confirmation. It was then that I started to actually read the bible.

I was horrified and deeply confused by what I was reading. I went to my catholic parents, teachers, and priests with questions. None could give me an answer that made any sense at all. So I started to read everything on the religion I could. I read different versions of The Bible and The Gnostic Gospels. It was then I decided that Christianity held nothing even remotely true. So I have since then dedicated my life to studying several religions.

I found that Christianity was the most boring of them all. The Qur'an or The Tibetan Book of the Dead inspire far more images of beauty than anything in The Bible. While I think all religions are the wrong way to go, I find the phrase- "Now I could care less about muhammed, I draw pictures of him whenever I urinate in the snow, but if these people follow through with their threat to desecrate our Lord, I will not pray for God to have mercy on them."- to be extremely disrespectful to the prophet and the Muslim people, not to mention awfully unchristian.

Anonymous said...

Hello Sir Rockin One:

I am going to sound like some liberal wacko- and I hate myself for it--but I think we ought to be careful here.

Though we believe the Blessed Sacrament to be Jesus, and Jesus the one true God- I don't think that excuses us from respecting other people's religious beliefs. Do not confuse "respect" with "agree with" or "accept."

That is to say that though we do not believe Muhummed to be anything of importance, that does not mean we should go around trashing him. If we expect people who do not believe in the Blessed Sacrament to treat it with respect, then we can do no less ourselves with people who do not believe what we believe.

What if a Muslum said "Well, I am offended they are going to trash Muhammed, but I take consecrated hosts and trash them all the time." How would you feel?

The question is not whether Catholic Christianity is the true religion- of course it is. The question is how we treat other people, and things they hold sacred. We can evangelize people without being disrespectful.

As for those who will be desecrating the hosts- what did Jesus say in the greatest act of desecration that could take place? I would be speaking of the Crucifixtion? He said "Father forgive them, for they know not what they do." These people do not know what they are doing. It is difficult for me to pitty them and love them, and easier for me to be angry with them and hate them. But the reality is that they are blind- and we must pray that God gives them sight.

Sir Rockin One: Healthy people do not need a doctor- sick people do.

Father Dave Bechtel

The Rockin' Traddy said...

Father - I'll get back to ya, I'm sorta on holiday today, and to Afinion, thanks for stopping by. I'm often told I have offended someone, and yet, people keep reading. And for the record I really don't draw pictures of Mohamed in the snow. I was joking. It's very sad I actually had to say that.

Anonymous said...

Father Dave--Very beautifully stated. Exactly what was on my mind, but could not find the right words. You did. Although we may not always agree with each other on ANYTHING, we should always respect their opinion, esp. when it comes to religion. Thanks.
Elaine

Anonymous said...

Sir Rockin One:

For the record, I was not offended by anything you said. I am a big boy, I am a grown up. If I could not stand the heat, I would get out of the kitchen.

Father Dave Bechtel

Anonymous said...

"If I could not stand the heat, I would get out of the kitchen."

Lol I use variants of that saying a lot, so it amuses me to see it said by someone else!! Let alone a priest! :P

- L