Top ten blog posts for "A Pius Man."

I must admit, working at Examiner.com has gotten me used to posting lists of things. One mass email told me that top ten lists were really rather popular.



So, since blog reads tend to be down for national holidays, I've decided to do my own top ten list for the blog.



The top five are, right now, always posted on the right hand side.

Disasters to Marvel At: A Comic Discussion. -- Discussing how Marvel Evented itself to death. I got there before Rebekah Hendershot did. Honest.

Mr Phelps, You Are Disavowed… Beating up on everyone's favorite loser.

Snarky theology 3: Evolution, Creationists, and other irritants. Part of my Snarky theology series. I'm not sure why this went anywhere. Seriously, I don't think the issue is half as interesting as some seem to think.

Snarky Theology 2: FAQs about Lent. -- this one started a nice little firestorm, mainly because someone decided to, well, slightly annoy me.

DragonCon 2010, Day 2, Part 1. I have no honest idea why this is so popular. I did several DragonCon reports from last year, and this one took the cake.



Now, for the rest of the top ten list, the you haven't seen posted anywhere ... because posting a top ten list isn't an option with this blog template. :)



Inspiring Authors: J. Michael Straczynski-- Exactly as the title says. I think this one was popular because I wrote it the week Thor came out in theaters, and he was credited with the story.

Snarky Theology 4: "Things that go boink in the night." I can credit my friend Jason for this title. I mentioned I wanted the Catholic position on sex. The title was the first thing that leapt to his mind. I guess it worke

Guest Blog: Murder in the Vatican Author Ann Margaret Lewis. When I was offered the option of allowing Madam Lewis on the blog, I was asked if I wanted a guest blog, an interview, or the option of reviewing her book, I went for all of the above.

The flame war is postponed .... While the little war of Lent was ongoing (see the comment section in the Lent link above), some idiot went online, and posted the most offensive post about Japan I have ever seen. I tore her a new one. Twice.

Snarky Theology 5: The Passion, Jews, and Good Friday... I posted this because, well, it was Good Friday, and I was tired of people who got their theology from Mel Gibson's The Passion.



Anyway, I don't think I'm going to waste anyone's time with a music blog today. I doubt many would want to read it. However, June had the record for most page views of any month. Almost for any three months.



I think July might be a time to break this record.

Week in Review: 6-25-2011

Monday was my Father's Day post. All about my father.



The music blog was one part Two Steps from Hell, one part Tom Smith.





Tuesday was my review of the man who should be running all of Star Wars: Timothy Zahn. So the post was called The Wrath of Zahn.  There's a bonus if you can ID what the blog post title references..



The music blog for Tuesday had a super villian in love, and muppets.



Could I make that up?



I have mentioned in a few other places my character Hashim Abasi. He shows up in A Pius Man, and he's a cop ... from Egypt.  The post is about writing with current events.



The music was an interesting counterpoint: with evil pizza, evil computers, and a body count.



And, for a bonus: my friend Jason discusses leaving Afghanistan.



My week ended with an Index: if you wanted my Lenten and Easter series, it's all here. Have fun. Or try to.



Then, we enter: The Eye of the Storm.



And, if you've been keeping track, my self defense columns from the week are

Evaluating a self defense class 

Defending against chokes from the front

And a review of a local, New York self defense school.

Index: Atheists, Lent, and Evil Religions

Throughout Easter and a Lent, I did a lot of what my friend Jason called "High Intellectual" articles.


I'm never making that mistake ever again.

However, since it did have some interesting fan support.... if "fans" could be people screaming for your blood ... I figured I'd put it into a nice, compact little section on the blog. Think of it as a season in review that, with luck, I'll never inflict on anyone ever again.

The Snarky Theology series. My way of translating dogmatic theology into something that human beings can understand.

Snarky Theology 1: Catholic Cannibals. Looking at the theology of Swallow the leader. Eating your deity.
Snarky Theology 2: FAQs about Lent. Some fun facts about Lent that turned into a minor war.

The Flame war is postponed:While I was busy having a flame war with an idiot on the blog, someone did something stupid online. I fought back in the name of all sane people everywhere.

Snarky theology 3: Evolution, Creationists, and other Irritants. Evolution, what is it good for? My answer: who cares?

Snarky Theology 4: "Things that go boink in the night." Catholicism on Sex and Gays Pretty much what it says.

GOD H8TS JAPAN; Twitting with Phelps & Co.  Hint, it was published on 4-1-11

Snarky Theology 5: The Passion, Jews, and Good Friday. 

Snarky Theolgy 6: Easter: HE IS RISEN





The Guest Blog Index -- "Catholic fiction"-- I had two weeks off from Snarky theology for two virtual book tours. One was a bit of Sherlock Holmes with Murder in the Vatican, and some Catholic science fiction from Karina Fabian's Infinite Space, Infinite God II

Murder in the Vatican Author Margaret Ann Lewis.

Guest blog (on writing historical figures in fiction) and Interview (on writing a book on Sherlock Holmes and Pope Leo XIII), and a Review of Murder in the Vatican, which can be found at Amazon.com

I did the same for Karina Fabian.

The Guest blog: where she talks about writing religion and science fiction

The interview, where I unleash my inner nerdom ...

And a review.

I think that was the most fun I had had that Lent. They were both a joy and a pleasure to have.

Evil Religions

And, at the end of may, when the Easter season was almost over, I did a series I call, simply "Evil Religion." The title, for the record, was Ironic. It wound up covering a lot of atheist theology. Not sure why. Maybe because the Dawkins-Hitchens crowd tend to whine alot.

I had a Preface to explain the premise.

One called simply "Allahu Akbar" Guess what that's about.

Jesus Freaks scare me

Baby-raping Catholic priests

The Ten commandments of Atheism, if I wrote them

Evil Religion: Atheism

Science and Religion: Stupid Catholics.

Anti-theist complaints: Literal interpretations. I asked my friend Matt what he thought was wrong with religion. I answered him.  This was pretty much a series all it's own from here on in.

Mormons and Gays.

Indoctrination of Children. Because religious education is brain washing, don't you know?

Doctrine Crapshoot. Because everything is just pick and choose, right?

Religious Superiority complexes: Because religion is the source of egomania, after all.

Random Beliefs. Because it's all so random, you know?

Conform, or else.... because no one ever goes against a secular norm.

Evil Atheist / Religion, Conclusion.  This is where I tie it all together.

Can you understand why this blog is now all nerd-dom all the time?  This was a draining, wrenching experience. One that I never want to relive. 

Snarky Theology 5: The Passion, Jews, and Good Friday.

Yes, I know I considered doing a post on Atheists, but it didn't really fit into snarky theology.  More like snarky good behavior...



This Friday is Good Friday, so guess what I decided to do instead.



You got it, we're looking at the last 24 hours of the pre-Mortem life of Jesus of Nazareth...



Yes, pre-mortem, as opposed to the postmortem life.  Back when I started these Snarky Theology blogs, I told you I had lived in a strange sort of rabbit hole. 



This one is going to be blogged more or less by random trivia I've had kicking around in the back of my head for a while now, so forgive me if there are any minor mistakes.  I would hope no one would try to use me for a footnote on a historical paper.  And, once again, this is my attempt to translate, to the best of my ability, Catholic theology into plain English.  If I thought Catholic education was worth a darn as far as educating Catholics in their own religion, I probably wouldn't bother.  But I don't, so, here we are.



Now, as far as Good Friday is concerned, that particular story has gotten a bad rap in the last few years, thanks to one particular film.



Does anyone remember when the film  The Passion was released by oddball, drug addict, and possible nutcase Mel Gibson?  Before the movie even premiered, people kvetched.  They talked about “passion plays,” they discussed pogroms, they whipped out everything that tried to say that the film was anti-Semitic. There are even a few idiots out there who try to say that Christianity, by its very nature, is anti-Semitic.



I saw The Passion with my friend Jason Bieber, who is an observant Jew.  When he saw the film, his commentary focused more on the bad acting of all the Romans, and was full of trivia about everything that had ever happened to actor James Caviezel during the filming of the movie (arm dislocated, flayed, struck by lightning).



Now, Professor Jason Bieber, currently of Florida State University's London Study Center, gave his evaluation of the history of anti-Semitism, which I think could be summed up as "It's not Catholic doctrine; the Popes tried protect Jews against anti-Semitic mobs. But people are stupid."



Anyway, so, just to clear away a lot of the stupidity, what exactly happened on Good Friday?



Believe it or not, a lot is explained by The Passion … only if you read the scholarship around the events, and if you have a very, very good editor.  Start by cutting out the boring parts with Judas and the hermaphrodite devil, and you have a start ...



In the film, if you blink, you miss dialogue that explains a lot (darned foreign-language films). If you saw The Passion, you might have noticed that, after Jesus was brought in the temple, the temple guards were shoving out a whole bunch of people. These people were shouting “Why are you meeting in the dead of night? Why isn't the full council here!”



The word used, if you listen closely, is “cabal,” implying a small clique was involved.



Something the film didn't mention, and would make the first half-hour make more sense, is what happened earlier that week.  Even if you've never been ten feet near a bible, you might vaguely recall that there is a story about Jesus going into the temple of Jerusalem, kicking over some tables, and driving out merchants with a whip, because they're trying to make money off of the religious pilgrims passing through Jerusalem for Passover.



One of those people Jesus drove out was the son of the elders who turn Jesus over to the Roman authorities. Guess what, it's personal. Hence Mel Gibson's council of elders being of about six guys.



Another factor, also touched on in The Passion, but from the political side, was best looked at in, of all things, Jesus Christ, Superstar. The Romans had come eleven times into Israel in a period of ten years, in order to quell riots. And now, all of a sudden, they have this moron, a carpenter with his own little cult of followers, coming into the holy city to the sound of trumpets, his way lined by hordes of people...



From a government point of view, "This cannot end well. This is bad politics, and cannot be good for business."



Pontius Pilot, Roman Governor of the State of Israel, was also in the movie The Passion. Mel Gibson says he tried to design him as this gray little man, this average, ordinary schlub.  It sounds like he tried to design Pilate on Eichmann, who was also a gray little man ... Given how screwed up Mel was, is, and may always be, I wouldn't be 100% sure that it was his idea.  He was responsible for keeping the peace.  And eleven invasions in ten years is a fairly cruddy track record.



Anyway, only the Roman authority in Israel could authorize an execution.  Bringing Jesus to Pilot, and viewing it in context, the argument for putting down Jesus could be read as “this annoying carpenter is trying to stir up rebellion against Rome, put down the little prick so we can get on with business.”



From the side of Pilot, it has to look odd – this Jesus twit is Jewish, the Rabbis handing him over are Jewish, and it looks like Pilate's being dragged into the middle of a civil war within a religion.  In standard bureaucratic fashion, Pilot tries passing the buck, twice, once by kicking it up the chain of command, and again by offering up Barabbas, another troublemaker, as part of his annual clemency.



However, something that wasn't covered in The Passion, and maybe not in your bible, unless you have some kick ass footnotes: Barabbas was a “murderer” because he was a rebel against the Roman Empire. It became a matter of “So, you're threatening me with a riot? Fine, how about I make you choose between a certified political nuisance, or this moron you want me to put down?”



Barabbas was only a threat to Rome.  He wasn't a rebel against the elders, and he didn't attack one of their sons. 



Barabbas wins, fatality.



So, any time I hear someone, at some time, mention “the Jews killed Jesus,” I want to tell them “Jews didn't kill Jesus, politics did!”

Who killed Jesus?

Everybody.



Theologically (you know theology had to come in somewhere), Jesus died for the sins of all people.



Think about it from a religious point of view. Humans screw up, offend laws of man, nature, and God—which have been the same thing for most of human experience. The magnitude of the offense is dictated by the magnitude of the offended.....



Right now, you're wondering what I'm talking about, aren't you?



Example: If you take a shot at some random idiot on the street, you may get a few years for assault with a deadly weapon. If you shoot at the President of the United States, you will probably disappear into the darkest hole they can find for you.



In this case, the offended is God … yeah, what gift can a human provide that can atone for offending against an all-power, enternal Being?

Previous generations used scapegoats. Literal scapegoats. They would write down sins, strap it to the goat's neck, and send it out into the desert, carrying the sins with it.  However, the goat doesn't really measure up.  It is a finite sacrifice trying to pay down an Infinite debt.  Sort of like trying to pay just the interest on a loan without ever paying the primary.  So, the answer is ....



So, you sacrifice something on par with God … but there's only one thing on par with God, and that's ... God.



Enter Jesus, "Son of God."  No, he's not direct offspring, and we're not going into Zeus here. And I had considered doing a post on the trinity, but I ran out of Lent....  For simplicity's sake, imagine the Trinity, defined as "Son, Father, Holy Spirit," and then think of steam, liquid, and ice -- they're all water, aren't they?  Well, Father, Son and Spirit are all God.  Long story.  See the Trinity and Augustine if you're really interested.



That is why, in the Catholic creed, you get the line that Jesus “died for us men and for our salvation.” Not Christians, not Catholics, men, period … and before someone gets pissed-off, it's men as in mankind, and not the pro-wrestler.



And as far as the historical elements of Jesus, the whole thing is well documented.  There is actually more, and better historical documentation for the existence of Jesus of Nazareth, historical figure, than for the warrior Hannibal ...  of Carthage, not "The Cannibal".  (Hannibal is best known for trying to march on the Roman Empire with war elephants.)  All evidence of Hannibal's existence comes from sources a hundred years after the fact.  Jesus has the historians Josephus and Tacitus -- one is a Jewish Roman citizen, the other is a Roman soldier, so you don't get more neutral as far as outside observers go.  And both historians swrote their histories within a generation of Jesus' crucifixion  They noted that Jesus existed, and that there was a potential for an uprising, and that Jesus was put down.



Sad thing is, that's still more primary document evidence than Hannibal has.



Now, as I mentioned above, The Passion came out, so did claims of anti-Semitism.  The anti-Semitism in Christian groups comes from some very strange places, mostly through stupidity.  As Professor Bieber himself has noted to me, Popes tried to protect Jews from Catholics everytime the Catholic populace did something stupid.  Every hundred years or so, it looks like a Pope issues a new Papal message on Jews within Christian theology. 



The message can usually be summed up as

"Salvation comes from the Jews, for we are merely an extension of the covenant that God made with Abraham.  God made a covenant with the Jews, and God does not reneg on His deals.  In short: leave the Jews alone, you frigging morons!"

Yes, I always thought of any Pope who issued that particular statement did so while leaping up and down, screaming, and pulling his hair out.

Anyway, I'm going to conclude with three quotes.



Maimonides: “Jesus of Nazareth interpreted the Torah and its precepts in such a fashion as to lead to their total annulment. The sages, of blessed memory, having become aware of his plans before his reputation spread among our people, meted out fitting punishment to him.”  This actually makes me wonder what inter-office memos he recieved on the matter ....



"Spiritually, we are all Semites." Pius XI



Vox Day: “My philosophy is that if a guy comes back from the dead, no harm no foul applies.”

Snarky Theology 2: FAQs about Lent.

For those of you who aren't Catholics, or for those Catholics who don't care, Lent has already started.  In fact, it started last Wednesday.  I suppose standard procedure would have been to post it then, but I had someone post a link I wanted to respond to, and I needed a few days for my blood pressure to come down.



So, what is Lent?  Lent is a part of the Catholic calender that is, essentially, a forty-day warm up to Easter. I've already started living on yogurt and berries.



As part of my Lenten series of sort-of religious blog posts, here are some FAQs about Lent.



FAQ: Why is Lent when it is?



A: Read the Bible. Pick a gospel, any gospel. While they can't agree on what Jesus' last words were, one thing they all agree on is that Jesus was nailed to a day of 2x4s the day after the Passover meal. The only reason Passover isn't always the same time as Easter: the math is different (literally, different astronomy, Judaism uses a lunar calender for such calculations, Catholics don't. Greek Orthodox do, however). 

FAQ: What's with giving up stuff?



A:  Religious reason: Traditionally, you give up stuff for the forty days of Lent because it's part of mental and spiritual discipline. Not to mention that Jesus got nailed to a set of 2x4s, we can give up Oreos for a few weeks.  And, forty is the running gag of Biblical numerology, so it's as good an idea as any.



However, giving up "stuff" isn't supposed to be the point.  Giving up any bad habit, sinful behavior, reflecting on your spiritual life, is supposed to be where the emphasis lies.  If you look at the question sheet my parish handed out, it's focused on spirituality, etc.  Giving up stuff isn't even mentioned -- the start of Lent is marked by "What are your resolutions."  Giving up material things isn't necessarily required.



“Real world” reason: Look at the time frame. Lent falls in late winter, early spring. Basically, when you start Lent, most of the world will be coming to the end of their winter stores of food. Lent took a problematic reality and turned it into a religious duty. Who says a religion can't be practical?



Modern "real world" reason, for the West: think of it as extra incentive for all of those new years resolutions you couldn't get through.  See above: Jesus got nailed to a set of 2x4s, we can give up Oreos for a few weeks.



FAQ: Catholics giving up “meat” on Fridays during Lent, yet eat fish? What, fish grow on trees now?



A:   I assume that no one who asks that question has ever done their own shopping. “Meat” is in one aisle, “Fish” in another.



The Latin word for meat is “Carne,” which translates more literally as “guts.” Meat, in the original language version, was anything that had internal organs. This is pretty much why fish is allowed on Fridays. I can't say that I've ever been able to identify any internal organs in any shell fish I've ever opened up; and any non-shelled aquatic animal tends to be gutted.



And, another "real world" reason: if you live near a large body of water, you could probably always find something to eat.  "Out of season" fish is a reletively recent concept.



Q: Why do you make children participate in Lent?  They're Children, they know nothing of sacrifice!  They can't understand!  This is child abuse!



A: Honest to God, I've seen this argument, I can't make it up.  I must thank Matt for this one.   He posted a link on his Facebook page, and I followed it through. 



Now, while this guy brought up some excellent points about Vatican II (which was administered by abject morons, and as well-timed as a pork roast at a bar mitzva), he shows about as much thought to the concept of religion and children as Richard Dawkins, whom he cites.....



I read the article. I found it a lovely piece of evidence that, while Catholic education is great for teaching reading and writing, they suck on teaching things like, oh, BEING CATHOLIC. I know, I went, and I had to look up everything myself.



The article author talks about fish not being meat [Again:  Carne (meat) meant "having guts." I've seen the internal organs of shellfish, they look less like guts and more like mush. Therefore they're "not meat."  And other fish are gutted]



Also, the article itself is a little confusing.  At the start of the article, his ten-year-old-self seems to understand everything about Lent, and does it quite well. By the end, he's whining that "no ten year old can understand" the concept of sacrifice; yet, at 13, he seemed to want a MORE stringent guideline. Someone should have told him that no one was going to stop him. He could have even gone to a pre-Vatican II church, Mel Gibson's father is part of one.



I liked how he seemed to have grasped the basics, until "Oh No!  It's Vatican II!"  Suddenly, he can't understand any of it, because "Vatican II radically changed the way Catholics practiced"..... 



Um, no, not really.  That may have been the way it was filtered down to this guy, but congratulations, it means that you're doing mass in English. You don't have to learn Latin, and the Vatican figured out that, gee, you don't have to fast every day of Lent anymore, since half of the planet is no longer in starvation mode by the end of winter -- the Church changed the bare minimum, that's all.



Vatican II (V2: Repentance Day) was supposed to have the church address the "modern world," instead of this guy's thought that we were losing members. The irony is that Rome hemorrhaged members AFTER V2, not before. There were enough internal memos that made it to the public, V2 looked like Obama's foreign policy during Egypt, for much the same reason. The Pope who called V2 wanted the church to keep up and adapt to the world. The argument the article gives is that nothing in the Bible, or Jesus, or any text, had changed, is true -- but the entire world had.



And so, V2, "Oh, we're going to bring the laity into the decision-making process."  Thanks, I've been through that process.  I'd sooner take the nuns.



The parts of Lent modified by V2 turned religious duties into mandatory minimums, since they were no longer harsh realities for half the planet.



After reading this twit's suddenly inability to comprehend, I wonder ... Does that mean I was a very bright eight-year-old, or does that make him a really dumb thirty-year-old?  I understood Lent while growing up, and so did he -- but, sometime between the start and the end of the article, he got confused, and fell down.



To actually answer this nitwit, I would like to direct him to my answer to the second FAQ.  I used a specific phrase:  the modern real world reason for the west.  Because, guess what, this isn't all about him. Screaming "child abuse" doesn't work, when you consider that the original, practical reasons for stringent fasting still apply to parts of the world he wouldn't be caught dead in. 



Now, I don't know if that makes him a provincial, small minded, "ugly American," or if that makes him a cranky Catholic who no one explained stuff to.  And, considering that half the kids in America are butterballs, taking away their junk food for forty days might, just MIGHT, be a good idea.



Not to mention that, oh, dear, Michelle Obama is also trying to make kids sacrifice food ... all year round .... I must have missed his article when he screamed that the First Lady was abusing our children. 



Oh, and, again, giving up stuff is a surface sign of faith, and is not the main point-- modifying behavior for the better, enhancing faith, is the point, and that is where the emphasis lies; maybe that's what he didn't, and doesn't, understand.



I also like the assumptions inherent there.  "I don't understand something, so why should I be expected to do it?"  Little kids sometimes don't understand the concept of "don't steal" (have you ever seen one with toy bins in Kindergarten?), or don't lie, or "don't touch the burner on the stove," or "don't stick that up your nose,"  "your face will freeze like that," and "Look both ways before crossing the street."  We expect them to do all that, though. This guy wants to cry abuse at "inflicting Lent on children."  Hey, Michelle Obama wants to legislate what they serve kids in public school, maybe he wants to bitch about that, too.



The complaint seems less a matter of "Lent is stupid" and more a matter of "Lent should be harder."  Someone should have told him that he could make it as hard on himself as he likes.



Unfortunately, I can't even blame this moron for his ignorance. Did I say he made excellent points about Vatican 2? Sorry, I meaant to say he's a perfect example of what went wrong with Vatican 2. Welcome to post-V2 Catholic education by the laity: "Just do this, we won't even attempt to explain it to you, because we don't believe it or understand it ourselves .... assuming we tell it to you in the first place."



I think this article and his author are great examples of arguing for more, better Catholic education.



And, for Lent, I'm going on a variation of his stringent fasting. I'm going to survive on fish, veggies, and yogurt. Since I'm overweight to start with, how's that for making a religious duty out of a practical necessity?



UPDATE:

As my friend Jason has pointed out, Jews + Fasting = Yom Kippur and Passover.  Catholics also took the same religious traditional definitions of fish and meat from Kosher laws.  Hmm, maybe the twit from that article wants to talk about Kosher as child abuse too. Hmm...