One of my favorite Catholic websites is Eye of the Tiber. Essentially, it does with Catholic and Church-related events what The Onion does with mainstream news. Their most recent contribution, however, is as funny as it is absolutely true. Via EOTT:
Radicalized Catholic Becomes Priest
San Diego County Sheriff’s Department officials arrested a “middle-aged Caucasian man” after he allegedly attempted to bless a large group of people in public late Sunday evening.
Fr. Richard Whitaker of San Diego was arrested on suspicion of attempted blessing, sheriff sergeant Roger Burgess told EOTT, and deputies are now confirming that the 31-year-old man had traveled to Rome years prior to becoming a priest.
“A Bible and other items were located inside the suspect’s residence, leading investigators to believe Whitaker may have been a radicalized Catholic,” Burgess said at a press conference earlier today. “Among other things found in his apartment was an arsenal of sacramentals, a Vatican flag, as well as a copy of The Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, suggesting that Fr. Whitaker may also have been lazy.
Authorities began surveillance of Whitaker’s rectory shortly after the public blessing, and Whitaker was taken into custody when he returned to his apartment shortly after morning Mass.
A cousin of Whitaker, Donald Powell, told EOTT that his cousin began acting odd after returning from a pilgrimage to Rome.
“He just seemed different when he got back,” Powell said. “He began to frequent churches for Holy Hour and visiting monasteries and stuff. All weird, zealot kinda stuff. Within a year of returning he had entered seminary.”
Powell admitted that he may have missed signs that his cousin was being radicalized, pointing out that he had once found what looked to be “bits and pieces” of human remains held in reliquaries in his Whitaker’s bedroom.
A “radical” Catholic indeed.
I do not like and will not use the term “radical” when describing Islam or Catholic because by the very nature of the word, “radical” implies something that is extreme or abnormal. It signifies a deviation from rather than the practice of behaviors considered healthy or normal. “Radical” is also dangerous because it is a subjective term whose meaning can be interpreted in different ways depending upon what one establishes as it definition.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the term “radical” is a negative definition- it defines what something is NOT, as opposed to what it is. For example, in the statement “This book is not bad,” one can assume the obvious, that the book is not “bad”, but one does not know what the book is. Is it good? Is it mediocre? Is it terrible? Defining something by its negative can be helpful in uncovering what something is, but it does not define what that thing is. If a person wants to be deceitful, it is an excellent way to obscure the truth because you can continually define what something is not without actually saying what it is (which is something that Islam does frequently).
Instead, what matters is orthodoxy. “Orthodoxy”- meaning “proper teaching”- is what defines something for what it is.
When it comes to religion, orthodoxy is very important, because it is by following proper teaching that one properly follows his religion and, theoretically, receives the benefits promised to him and it shapes a man according to its teachings.
Two brief examples can illustrate this clearly of two men who lived around nearly the same time in almost the exact same social circumstances.
Both of these men lived during the middle ages. They came from rich families with promising careers. Neither cared much for religion, and instead took to wild parties, drinking, and the general debauchery associated with would be considered college life today. Both of these young men eventually realized the emptiness of their ways and had a religious conversion- one to the Catholic Faith, and the other to Islam. Both dedicated the rest of their lives to live out their respective faiths as fully as they possibly could.
The Catholic man renounced his inheritance put on rough garments, and began to live and work among the poor. He severely punished himself with severe punishments and fasted continually. He rejected all the beauty and luxury he was so accustomed to and prayed instead for suffering. His suffering increased with each year until in the final years of his life he was given the gift of stigmata. His religious order, which he did not even intend to found at all, grew across Europe and is one of the largest religious orders in the world today.
That man was St. Francis of Assissi.
The Muslim man began to practice Islam fervently, and instead clung to his inheritance. He seized power and waged a continual jihad against Christians and other Muslims, even to the point of skillfully exploiting the differences between the different Christian sects, as well as persons of other religions, to his advantage. He would have possibly succeeded in wiping out Christianity in parts of the Middle East were it not for the heroic actions of Richard I, King of England, who checked his power and stopped his army. This man died, surrounded by luxury and failing in his dream of a Muslim conquest of the Holy Land.
That man was Salah Ad-Din Al-Ayyubi, better known as Saladin.
To borrow and modify a phrase used by Walid, Christian perfection is found on the way of Calvary, but Islam places perfection in the use of cavalry.
There is no such thing as a radical. There is only orthodox, and outside of orthodoxy, varying degrees of separation from perfect truth.
-- Delivered by Feed43 service
Post a Comment