That Will Show Us!
Mark Shea here mentions this odd, ugly, and irresistibly funny disaster:
It seems that a bishop gave a homily at the shrine in Knock in which he reportedly said that godless culture was attacking the Church.
The being post-Christian Ireland, all this is being treated with great seriousness and nobody is laughing. Prayers for the good bishop and his irony-impaired antagonist would be appreciated.
My comment: One of the articles of faith of modern secular humanism (or whatever its is calling itself these days) is that it has no articles of faith, but instead promotes beliefs that are merely scientific conclusions of objectively verifiable truths. Another article of faith is that Christianity is not the special and particular target of their enmity, and Catholicism even more particularly. Another article of faith is that they are purely rational and enlightened, motivated by pure altruism, and that their foes are purely irrational yet ignorant, motivated by pure hatred and bigotry. Therefore, by definition, whenever worldly men insult or attack the Church, the Church is always the party in the wrong, always the aggressor, always benighted and evil. You don’t want the Spanish Inquisition back, do you?
The Enlightened (or whatever) grow quite irate when you ask them to justify any of their articles of faith. It requires an elaborate mental effort on their part to hide from themselves the fact that they can neither justify their faith with reason, nor admit that they take their faith on faith.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
