Blasphemy

"Blasphemy kills even the ashes in the fireplace." --St. Padre Pio repeating what the old Italian wives say


In addition to the list of telltale signs of a neo-conservative, one can add the astounding ability to abide blasphemy, and to make clever apology for it. Someone insulted your mother? Well, says neo-con, the fact is, that person does not believe in the existence of your mother, and therefore is unaware of what he is actually saying; therefore how can it be an insult? I mean, after all, for the insult to be an insult, it would presuppose that the person has some sort of relationship to your mother, a relationship to betray through insult, right? Well, that person does not have a relationship with your mother, so his insult is really just an unawareness of your mother's existence.

Likewise, someone does not really believe that the Eucharist is sacred, that it is truly the body of Christ? Well, if that person flushes it down the toilet precisely to show that he does not believe it to be sacred, then what he is doing is not really an act of profanation. Nobody blasphemes Thor, because Thor isn't real - as Chesterton said, and what people do blaspheme goes to telling us what is sacred. Thus, when someone who does not believe that the Eucharist is actually the Body of Christ (which is what makes it sacred) flushes the Eucharist down the toilet to express the fact that he does not believe it to be sacred, that he believes it no more than a variation of Thor, then it is not really profanation.

Yes, that must have been what G.K.C. was saying. Isn't that wonderful? Doesn't it make you breathe a comfortable sigh of modern day relief? You don't want to be mistaken for a reactionary religious fanatic by expressing horror, dejection, discomfort and anger (and atonement/reparation) when faced with people blaspheming - indeed, greater and greater waves of blasphemy - the God you claim to believe in? Well, now you have your nice, clever, pat little excuse out of this one, don't you? So don't get all chivalrous in defending Christ's honour and the honour of our Lady and of the Saints; after all, they don't need you to defend them, and the blasphemy and profanations are quite easily explained, you see.

For, you see, even when the neo-con Catholic Apologist recognizes that blasphemy carries its own objective weight of punishment, like a self-inflicted curse, for some strange reason the neo-con Catholic Apologist still goes on to say that the blasphemy committed by those today, those who make it plain to say they are blaspheming, and do so, is not really blasphemy, but only the fake, cowardly, hermetically-sealed, envelope-pushing attempts of a dung-heap culture that keeps melting the snow off of itself by the heat of its own self-destruction.

You will notice how when Jesus was being crucified and mocked, He did not say, "Father, do not bother forgiving them, for they know not what they do, and therefore what they are doing to Me is not really sin."

Too bad it won't work out for the neo-con explanations, since Christians claim the belief that our God is an actual Person - and not just a "sacred thing" - so that, you know, when someone blasphemes, profanes, insults this God of ours, even if that someone does not believe in this God's existence by not having a relationship with Him, there is still materially a blasphemy committed; and then the question of your relationship - you, the Christian - with this God comes to the forefront, and the question is asked of you and of the neo-con Catholic Apologist, "Who do you say that I am?"

And certain people believe that waterboarding is not really torture. I guess that means that when people are waterboarding a prisoner, and they don't believe that what they are doing is torture, then they are not really torturing someone.

Oh, by the way, this has nothing to do with state-sanctioned measures and whatnot anti-blasphemy laws and all that boring crap that I couldn't care less about. It has to do with neo-conservative pundits and their clever apologia.