Replying to Gregg and Alexandra

Gregg writes:

Mr. Sullivan maybe you should learn how to give a speech without reading it directly from a piece of paper if you want to represent our nation, just a suggestion.

Ps. I still intend to keep you in my prayers.

Thanks for your comment, Gregg--and for so politely entertaining my improbable-sounding idea. Your suggestion is completely correct, and I shall heed it going forward.

You've commented twice now that you're praying for me:

We seldom acknowledge:  Prayer is weird.  When people 'pray for someone,' they believe themselves to be emitting magical brain-beams to the author of the universe, giving It advice on how to improve life for their prayer-object.  

I mean...for Pete's sake!

I observe no evidence for believing there's a brain-beam-monitoring 'god' waiting on the other end, always looking for good ideas on how to make life rosier for my family and friends.  A moment's reflection reveals this to be wish-thinking.

I wish you happiness in life and think generally that you should do what you like.  When someone says, 'I'm praying for you,' I divine a power play at work--an assertion of moral superiority while playing 'kind-hearted, indulgent friend.'

Just to be clear:  Pray all you like, for Lassie or Kim Kardashian or me.  Needless to say, I don't admire you for praying for me:  I'm utterly indifferent--and want us to be clear it earns you no points.

Reader Alexandra writes:  Were you once Catholic, Gavin?

I was a good altar boy to the legendary Frs. Byrne and Mahon, at the same church I continue to attend--Edina's St. Patrick's.  I don't take communion or genuflect and generally read a novel during mass, though I still enjoy listening to the music. 

I'm one of those who believes the continued bullshitting evasion of the Catholic Church, on its collusion with Nazism, is disgusting.  But all kinds of herd behavior prevail within a Catholic church:  To be a Catholic is to acknowledge one has no role in guiding or judging the moral teachings of the church--one must submit.  A social reality where adults must pretend 'all is apolitical'--yields psychiatrically stunted people, the underlying contempt for the individual being the precipitating variable.

The non-believer has an important role to play, in the church community, since she is the one who approaches magical issues without bias.  If you believe your religion to be truthful, you should encourage atheists to join and to give unvarnished feedback.

The church and the school are of course Unvarnished Feedback Avoidance Systems.  But that's their problem.

To be a parishioner is to be treated like a 12-year-old, often--and the pew-warming atheist is, unavoidably, a symbolic reproach.  I occasionally meet Catholics resistant to the idea of atheists being on-the-membership-roll parishioners:  They'd prefer to engage in their self-abasement unobserved.

So, yes.