The Joy of Suffering

The steeple of the town church was just barely visible over the horizon, about five miles away. That was as far as Giuseppe was allowed to venture on his own. He stopped in the middle of the dirt road, staring out towards the hills beyond, and waited.

The first sun had set a little over three hours ago, and now the second one, further and dimmer, was dipping ever closer to the horizon. A cold wind was blowing from the south, stirring the fields of dry grass and making them look for all the worlds like a beige ocean, waves crashing and white caps shimmering in the waning light. The air was pregnant with the smell of straw.

A shiver caught Giuseppe off-guard. Now that he had stopped, he was beginning to cool off. The antarctic breeze made the small rivulets of sweat feel as if they would freeze to his skin.

The wind carried with it the deep bong of the church bell, sounding the evening Angelus. Giuseppe turned around to look.

You could go back, a whispering voice as cold and subtle as the wind said to him. Papa would understand.

Read the rest here.

Against Breakfast Grains

I have so many tabs open right now.

Thank God for the Brights. Every time I find myself at the top of the cliff of doubt, staring down into the dark and murky abyss, contemplating how much fun it might be to jump off and fly through the air, and listening intently to the voice that incessantly whispers into my ear, "go ahead; it won't hurt," all I need to do is read from a Bright. It is as if a bony and gnarled claw reaches up from the abyss in an attempt to grab me... but flails so wildly and inaccurately that it ends up knocking me back several feet from the abyss, and the force of landing so hard on my ass knocks me from my stupor and cleanses the voice from my ears. Their complete and utter misunderstanding of all things religious never elicits anything more than an eyeroll from me, and always serves to remind me of why it is I actually believe.

The strawmen erected in their arguments are always so laughably inept attempts to characterize the Church. It is as if I am kneeling at the glorious altar, adorned in gold and precious gems, sitting atop of which is the King of Glory to whom every knee must bend, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth, when a Bright comes up behind me and taps me upon the shoulder. "What a stupid and ugly god you worship," he says. I look up at him, incredulously. He points and says, "why it's nothing more than a heap of feces and straw." I look at where he is pointing and notice that he has his back to the throne, and is looking off into the distance behind me, at what is indeed an ugly and stupid altar that he's erected from nothing more than fecal matter and straw. The Bright crosses his arms, a smug look of self-satisfaction on his face. Of course, it's impossible to get him to actually turn around. "No thanks, I can see your idiotic god just fine from here," he'll say confidently. The only thing you can really say in response is "yes, it is idiotic. Don't back away from it so fast you trip on my kneeler and land on your ass." (Which has happened at least a few times.)

The indispensable Archbishop Fulton Sheen summed it up so perfectly: "There are not more than 100 people in the world who truly hate the Catholic Church, but there are millions who hate what they perceive to be the Catholic Church. Which is, of course, quite a different thing."

Fr. Robert Barron, in one of his Catholicism series documentaries, commented that he actually agrees with a lot of atheists. They'll complain about how stupid it is to worship a "magical sky-fairy", to which Fr. Barron says "yeah, I agree." Or they complain about the sky-bully who arbitrarily condemns people to hell fire for breaking nonsensical rules. "I agree," says Fr. Barron. It seems to me that the majority of the arguments against Catholicism, against the Church, and against God that I hear (at least on the Internet, which isn't exactly known for intellectual thoroughness) are little more than strawmen.

All this is a very roundabout way of bringing me to a recently-posted "The Oatmeal" comic. Now, I'm a bit of a fan of The Oatmeal, so whereas I'd normally just ignore this type of slight, I though, in the interest of fanboyishness, to respond. It also helps that his comic is a collection of all the "best" arguments against religion (so I can rebut them all in one place), and actually is still kinda funny.