Monday, May 16, 2005

Larry David finds religion

If he did (or maybe he already has?) it would sound something like this. (Link courtesy Dawn Eden.)

I can actually get behind what Joey ran into, because it's common all over, even here in the hinterlands. Yesterday's Mass reading from 1 Corinthians was just on this topic - one body, many gifts, given for the good of all. Too many times we start competing instead of cooperating. More subtly, people buy into the false idea that those with different gifts aren't genuinely Christian - or "saved," "born-again," or "in a personal relationship with Jesus as Lord and Savior." (In fact, sometimes people think that about people simply for using different words to describe it.)

I've known people who were seriously into a particular devotion or discipline letting it influence their opinion of others. I'm going to Hell, appararently, not for my sins but for my taste in music and beer. Another well-meaning guy recently told me that two Irish visionaries had said of Pope Benedict XVI, "He has no soul."

I suppose that makes him a divine jive turkey. What I really want to know is, if this is true, shouldn't one of these guys have spoken up before the conclave? Say, during the previous fifty years that Joseph Ratzinger's been a priest? Or are these two guys simply disgruntled Traditional Catholics still irked about the Second Vatican Council?

One of the standing orders from the Captain is "Love thy neighbor as thyself." I take it to mean that Jesus was totally about the people. There are always times for a believer to put God first (it comes with breathing), but that doesn't mean that our neighbors get nothing unless we are under exceptional circumstances.

1 comment:

The Barking Spider said...

I was once a roommate of The Nightfly at college. I am best described as an Evangelical Protestant (or a Fundamentalist, before that word became a perjorative) and Nightfly can be best described as a John Paul II Catholic.

Nightfly was concerned that I would be offended by a small picture of a Catholic saint on the wall. My thoughts were that as long as he could tell me who that saint was and what they did on earth, I had no problem. Now that damned Mets pennant was another story.....

Romans 10:9 "that if you confess woth your mouth 'Jesus is Lord', and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved."

If the above verse describes the reader, then I will be bumping into you at a social function in the afterlife.