To Fr. Rudolphi

I attended the Thanksgiving Mass and wanted to comment on your central point: You claimed people should give thanks to god.

Among other things, you said you thank god for having good eyeglasses, which aid you greatly, day-to-day.

When we don't know who should properly be thanked for some good, it's bad to direct thanks to some arbitrary entity.  False thank-you's are nearly as irritating as false apologies.

  

Edina Catholics believe god to be a supremely good, all-loving force. Were such a force to exist, it would merit attention from conscious creatures; we would seek to understand it--how it functions, where it came from, why it does what it does.

  

For god to be supremely good, it would have to be fair.  Yet we observe great inequality in the distribution of economic opportunity, from one individual to the next.  Most have suffered vastly more want than have we.

  

Many people with faulty eyes do not have good vision correction. This results in enormous cost, in quality-of-life, around the world. Millions today cannot read or even watch TV or film due to inadequate vision correction.  

  

It is almost unimaginable to you and me--that we might have to go years without needed vision correction, in the contemporary world.

As beneficiaries of good optometry, should we attribute our luck to preferential love from the author of the universe?

That's the question I wish you addressed. You didn't.

Cloaked Episode

Ministers and priests act as public intellectuals, announcing their weekly truths, generally shielded from follow-up questions.  The flock is goaded into docility while simultaneously insulted for inaction.  The unaccountable, appointed pastor works hard at preventing parishioners from speaking openly with one another.

A blogger who bans comments from smart people is a disgrace:  Jeff Fecke, Jessica Pieklo, Sheila Kihne, etc.  Churches that impede the free exchange of ideas should be similarly disrespected.

St. Patrick's is the older and smaller Catholic church in Edina.  It's the church I grew up attending, and where I served as an altar boy in the 1970's, until our family migrated to OLG during a whispering campaign that coincided with Fr. Ambrose Mahon's ascendancy.  Fr. Mahon's replacement just retired and the church now has a fresh-faced Spanish-fluent leader in Fr. Tim Rudolphi.

On Saturday Fr. Rudolphi read The Sheep and the Goats from Matthew and then sermonized on it.  As ever, the priest speaks about the passage as if its historicity were above reproach. 

The author of 'Matthew' is unknown.  Contemporary scholars believe 'it was written between about 80–90 AD by a highly educated Israelite intimately familiar with the technical aspects of Jewish law, standing on the boundary between traditional and non-traditional Jewish values.'  An unknown, non-eyewitness ancient scholar describes a conversation that happened fifty years prior:  How reliable would you consider such quotations?

Within the narrative, Jesus is portrayed looking uncritically upon eternal punishment in response to some unspecified failure of righteousness.  In other words, Jesus is comfortable implementing a capricious and abusive judgment.  If the passage is true, Jesus is not an admirable figure.

Fr. Rudolphi segues into a discussion of St. Martin of Tours' episode of the cloak.  To be a Catholic is to voluntarily participate in one's own infantilization; again Fr. Rudolphi treats as factual fables that rest upon dubious foundation.  As with Jesus, if we take the stories attributed to St. Martin as true, he was a moral monster, destroying non-Christians' temples.

More than four-in-ten Catholics in the United States (45%) do not know that their church teaches that the bread and wine used in Communion do not merely symbolize but actually become the body and blood of Christ.

Priests frequently allude to 'what we believe,' pretending to be unaware of the social scientific research which confirms that the people in the pews believe a great variety of things, very often at odds with the Magisterium's prescriptions.  Congregants implement their own social strategies predicated on appearing meek, another facet in the Mass' backscratching dishonesty exchange.

Religious people perceive themselves to be in imagined dialog with non-believers; churches confer moral legitimacy, advancing the social status of those deemed trustworthy in their public acceptance of superstition and the god-conferred legitimacy of the present social order.  Churches pay professionals to spread their message.  Churches are publicly subsidized institutions.  Church leaders peddle falsehood and in exchange, receive admiration from a sleepwalking public.

Eden Prairie Community Celebration of Thanksgiving

Leafing through the community newspaper the other day, I notice Thanksgiving celebration this Sunday at Pax Christi:

The sixth annual Eden Prairie Community Celebration of Thanksgiving is set for 7 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 20, in the sanctuary of Pax Christi Catholic Community. To join the combined adult choir, attend rehearsal at 9 a.m. Saturday, Nov. 19, at Pax Christi.

“The theme for 2011 is Expressions of Gratitude – Unity, Hope and Love,” according to a news release. “The evening will offer Eden Prairie residents a chance to experience and celebrate the community’s ever-increasing diversity.

For the first time, this evening I attend the annual event.  A multi-faith let's-join-hands thing with prayer, music and dance of multiethnic religious traditions, with a Christian-led tilt and primarily Christian musical themes.  At the beginning we're told the entire event should be perceived as prayer.  The mayor speaks.

The two right-wing megachurches, Grace and Wooddale, snootily boycott.  Still, liberal Christian and minority believers happily exploit popular prejudice--that non-religious people care less about social and moral issues.  Religious devoutness should not be viewed as a secular qualification.  Why should superstition-experts constitute almost all of the speakers here?

Religious liberals exploit chauvinism against non-believers without embarrassment.  Religion often functions in this manner, providing cover for sleaze.  Churches apportion honor, within a large portion of the community, and encourage sycophancy.

Attributing magical qualities to a tendentious interpretation of a politically-selected stack of semi-reliable copies of ancient documents doesn't entitle you to any presumption of ethical superiority. 

During the entire event, I bury my nose in a book that I'd brought for precisely this eventuality:  If commanded to pray, I reserve the right to read an obviously non-religious or anti-religious book: I suppeth here not.