In Memory of Fred Phelps of the WBC: RIP or RIH

Ah, Fred Phelps is dead. Whatever could we say about a man who insisted hat God really hated everybody? Except for him and his incestuous cult of a family?



Well, we can briefly discuss what has been said about him.



When I first learned about Phelps and his merry band of vile creatures, my response was "Mr. Phelps, you are disavowed." I discussed his history, his attitudes, and how he's basically a pure, unadulterated schmuck.



I later discussed how the Supreme Court went through a lobotomy over these morons.



And then there was the day where I got into a fight with some of the little retards ... and if you insist that I'm picking on the autistic, you know what I mean, stop being a douchebag.



Then my last shot was NOT God Hates .... Superman? a short story.  Completely not about Phelps at all. Honest. Would I lie?



We could all hope that he rests in peace. However, if he's as unrepentant in death as he was in life, then we can replace RIP with RIH -- rot in Hell.

Twitter Trolls: Writing in the Electronic Age

Should you want to become a writer, you're going to have to live with the Internet. You're already on the net, since you're reading this, but if you're just a casual user, get ready for culture shock. There are nut jobs all over the Internet. Normal, reasonable people, added to the Internet, seem to become quite psychotic. And I don't mean a little nuts -- because that can be any Friday afternoon after a busy week and you're stuck in rush hour -- I mean frothing at the mouth rabid, violently deranged.

If you want to go into writing, the Internet will be your friend. And your worst enemy. Probably at the same time. You will need it to sell your book. Interviews, book tours, podcasts, guest blogs, book reviews, all of it, are done online. It will be a valuable tool. Statistics seem to indicate that casual viewers of your material will not comment, one way or another. I have posted some stories from the blog for A Pius Man on another website, and have been rewarded with some glowing reviews of my work. One story got me three reviews in a matter of hours -- but only after nearly two thousand people had already read the story.

On this blog, some of the more viewed blog posts have come with people who have seriously, seriously hated me and everything I said. See the Lent post, if you don't believe me.

But, people are complicated: You could, for example, look at Matt's website. Matthew Funtime, artist for all of the good artwork on this blog, is an atheist. And I don't mean the casual "I don't believe in God, thanks, bye" sort of atheist. He's a bit of a die hard. And, if you look at his posts on religion, you might think he falls into the above rubric. He really doesn't. Unlike some people, who are reasonable until you lodge a disagreement, Matt seems to be in full Keith-Olberman-without-his-medication-mode to start with. However, if you lodge a simple, civil disagreement, he will politely disagree with you, and have a conversation.

Matt is a sane, reasonable person if you are a sane, reasonable person.

There are some that aren't so sane....



Long-time readers will remember that I dislike politics because the moment I have a label put on me, I have other people telling me what I think. I can't finish a sentence, or explain my long, thought-out, nuanced position, political philosophy.

Apparently, that's not even limited to politics anymore. Apparently, it's called the entire Internet

For example, there is a twitter exchange I had with one entity who made a casual mention about the Westboro Baptist Church -- that if they really hated gays, they should be outside the Vatican....

Now, after last week, you know my position on that particular cliche: it's overdone, overblown, and somewhat stupid. I figured I could take a swipe at him, or casually correct what he was saying. I could also call him out on the insult to gay people -- he was using the term "fag," and not referring to a cigarette or a piece of wood -- but he probably wouldn't get it.

So, as a lead in, I gave him a little counter attack, which was:

APiusManNovel JohnK
@GASmithIV Actually, if they wanted pedophiles, that's what the teacher's unions are for.

Yes, it's provocative. I wanted a reaction. When he asked for clarification, ("Are you saying that public school teachers are pedophiles?") I gave him

@GASmithIV Public school teachers had over 300K vics in the 90s, vs 10K for priests (1950-2002). So, yes.

@GASmithIV Teachers: http://tinyurl.com/y3423mc Priests: http://tinyurl.com/32oq9q

That was the total extent of it. Notice, if you would, that the numbers given only refer to numbers of victims. Nothing else. Yes, there are bad teachers, but there are still bad priests. The most I could make of "an argument" is that the priesthood isn't the only institution with a corruption problem.  The numbers in the report on teachers (cited last week) was that there were over 300,000 complaints registered against public school teachers over the course of more than a decade, and only 1% were investigated, or given any credence.  And that one in ten children go through the public school system and get abused at some point. From 1950-2002, there were only over ten thousand people who made accusations, and only 3% of those accused (the accused were about 4% of the overall priests during that time period) were convicted of anything. For a correction rate, 3% of 4% isn't bad. If you go by The New York Times, that boils down to only 100 bad apples over half a century.

Granted, 100 bad apples that should suffer horrors that would make GITMO detainees want to be water boarded, but still, for a corruption record, it's not that bad.

Now, I figured that, when this fellow read through the footnotes, the most he would do was correct me that the report cited above doesn't paint all teachers with a brush of child abuse -- a perfectly valid correction, one I would have easily accepted. We would smile, nod, and depart with an agreement. The sole premise: the Catholic priesthood might not be the most evil entity on the planet.

Then, in a reply peppered with foul language, this particular person on twitter said that was only because the Catholic Church hid everything. Muahahahaha .... okay, there was no evil laughter, but it would have been preferable to what he did say.

So, I blinked a few times. Wait a second. I cited a perfectly valid John Jay University study that examined the situation with science, psychology, statistical breakdowns and a full, nuanced report. John Jay U, an institution that deals heavily in criminal justice and related professions. It is a secular, impartial authority. You have to get up pretty early to pull the wool over their eyes. Since most Bishops don't get up until 8am, that discounted most Catholic clergy.

Hoping to prompt this fellow into reading the darn report, I decided to go the sarcastic approach, and underline the part I was certain he missed.

@GASmithIV Yes, because John Jay is in the pocket of the Catholic Church. #brilliant

Okay. Certainly, that would get him to read everything I had just sent him, right?

Not really. From the violence of his response, you would think that I had insulted every beloved relative he had. It took up three twitter replies, and the language was certainly R-rated.

The only salient point was that his reply was a little deranged. He wouldn't debate me on twitter, etc, etc, and there was a whole bunch of violence thrown in.

I went for the assumption of Godwin's law. He went postal, he lost. I told him so.

He proceeded to go even more postal. He suggested that I be hung from a lamp post, with every priest ever born, all of my twitter followers, and my little dog too.

I only had two answers for him.

@GASmithIV So, you approve of public school teachers as pedophiles? Good to know it's not the action you hate, just the priests.


@GASmithIV U do realize the only implication was that there r other groups with corruption issues? U jumped straight 2 lynching. Good job.
19 May via web

Yes, it was a little childish stab at the end, but after the homophobic, Catholic-phobic, and generally delusional replies, I figured I was owed the jab.

Now, for those of you who are wondering: "Why did John only post his own replies?"  Good question. The answer is that I have no idea.  As I write this (Sunday, May 22, 2011 -- if it weren't for the last minute, nothing would get done), all of the various and sundry comments made by GASmithIV have evaporated into the digital realm, yet all of my replies are still on my twitter feed. I have no idea why this is, or how, just that it is.

Unfortunately, there is a part of this story missing because it's my fault. Someone tried to get cute with me, and posted on my blog about the numbers I posted on Twitter. The moron read the numbers of victims as the numbers of the accused. He also told me not to debate him, because he was right, and I was stupid. So there.

Since he obviously didn't read anything I had posted, and he posted the comment in my Neil Gaiman post, I deleted it -- I mean, heck, he could have posted it in the appropriate slot in the cliche post. But he couldn't be bothered looking for that one. In retrospect, I should have saved the comment, but it didn't occur to me to write this post until after I deleted it

It was interesting. Without making any argument at all, I was subjected to a whole slew of death threats, ranting, raving, and general carrying on cranky.

So, welcome to the Internet. Lessons you should learn:

1. Don't feed the trolls.

2. No matter what your argument, people will disagree with you violently. Possibly because they have nothing better to do.

3. If you don't have an argument, people will fill in the blanks just so they can disagree with you violently. In all likelihood, because they want to be angry.

4. Don't go looking for attention from morons unless you know they will be morons in advance and you're ready for them. For example: when I had a twitter conversation with the Phelps spawn, I knew they would be morons in advance, and I spent most of my time laughing at them. I concluded they had no sense of humor. At all.

5. When they tell you not to debate you, laugh at them. A lot. Perhaps maniacally.

Illegitimi non carborundum

The Guest Blog Index -- "Catholic fiction"

This is going to look like a strange post.  But I like things to be organized.  I try not to buy history books unless I go to the index and see if they have certain topics.



For example, there is a recent biography of a Protestant minister involved in the Valkyrie plot to assassinate Hitler .... you may have seen the movie ... I went and looked in the index for Pope Pius XII.  And I found him!  I flipped to the page....



And the minister "met with an aide to Pope Pius XII for a meeting."  That's it?  That's all you had to say?  You don't know anything else?  Thanks, I'm not buying you, you stupid book....



Yes, I think of books in terms of anthropomorphized entities.  If you didn't know I was weird before, You do now.



But, our guest blogs have been some of our most popular thus far.  The only series to outdo them have been the Snarky Theology series, and the blogs beating up on the Phelps Family.



So, my mild OCD has kicked in, and I'm going to do a little sorting.

Our first official guest blog was from Ann Margaret Lewis, of Murder in the Vatican, the Church Mysteries of Sherlock Holmes.  THe premise isn't hard to deduce -- these are "missing" cases of Sherlock Holmes, cases that Arthur Conan Doyle aluded to, but never fleshed out.



Madam Lewis discussed what ie was like using historical figures as characters in a novel.  If you weren't here for it, I'd recommend it.



She was also gracious enough to let me interview her on the novel.  I got to ask her about how she wrote through the book in two different voices, that of Pope Leo XIII and Dr. John Watson.  We also touched on a few other topics along the way ... it was a fun interview.



And, last, and possibly least, I reviewed her book, breaking it down by story.  And by writing elements.  And a few other things here and there.



The three articles were a lot of fun to go through.  It was an absolute joy, and a pleasure to have Madam Lewis on the site.



Why did I host a Sherlock Holmes pastische on my blog?



A Pius Man is about a mystery surrounding the Vatican.  This had two murder mysteries IN the Vatican....  That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

Next came the virtual book tour for Infinite Space Infinite God II, an anthology of Catholic science fiction.



Yes, Catholics have science fiction.



First, we had the editor, Karina Fabian, discussing religion in science fiction. 



Then I pumped her for information on the book.  We wandered into Doctor Who territory, Star Trek, science fiction in general, and how religious folk always seem to be the bad guys, hmm....



And I wrap up the week of ISIG2 with my own review of the book.  Considering that I hate anthologies to start with, this came out relatively unscathed. 



And how can I justify science fiction on the blog?  One of the other popular posts on the blog is about my time at DragonCon in 2010.  In this case, demand creates supply.



There is one last thing that I should point out:  I was lucky enough to host both of these fine authors through my tenuous connection to the Catholic Writers Guild.  I'm not actually a member, since I'm too cheap to pay dues ... and I haven't actually published anything.  So, I have no bias towards them one way or another.  I think my review of ISIG2 showed that best -- it had some good stories, some stories I skipped, and some absolutely great tales.



In any event, I would like to extend my thanks to both of these fine authors once more, for allowing me to host them here at A Pius Man.



Have a good day.

GOD H8TS JAPAN; Twitting with Phelps & Co.

Subtitle: Evil Religions 1: Shinto.



I mentioned a while back that I would consider possibly doing a series on Evil Religions, and that I would save this for later.  But I had to get this one off of my chest.  You see, if you've followed my twitter (Apiusmannovel) lately, you will have noticed that I've been having a battle of wits with the Phelps clan. 



Yes, Phelps, of Westboro.  I've mentioned them once ... or three times ....



However, my eyes have been open.  All of that stuff about Japan they've been saying?  It's been right.  God took Japan by the shoulders and shook it like a rag doll.



Why?



Because of Shinto.



Yes, Shinto is the most evil religion out there.



As Jim Butcher has noted, Shinto is a nature religion—everything in nature, Shinto says, has a spirit, a kami in Japanese. You respect the kami of a mountain, because it will crush you like a bug! With the kami of a pebble, it's a pebble, who cares?



But Shinto has spawned the worst evil ever known to mankind.



Worse than Imperial Japan.



Worse than the Bataan death march.



Because, in the 20th century, someone decided that they were going to take all of the worse elements of Shinto, and merge it with all of the most violent, horrific aspects of pro-Wrestling.



The result....



POKEMON!



We have to get them all .... and kill them!



This proves it!



All religions are eeeeevvvvviiilllll, AND MUST BE DESTROYED!!!



SHINTO DELENDA EST!



MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAA.



…..



…...



…..



….



Happy April Fool's Day, from A Pius Man.



Yeah, it was a little obvious, wasn't it?



A real Evil Religion blog series will start after Easter ... maybe.



Oh, for those of you following my duel with the Phelps Klan, I sent them my original article on phelps.  Their response:

 MargieJPhelps @APiusManNovel Too many boring words Zzzzzzzzzz @jabezphelps

When I suggested that I had been writing for grammar school, and I should have written for the inbred, their reply:

jabezphelps @APiusManNovel @margiejphelps Or maybe you could stop being #boring and get your own sign and you cry out against this nation.

So I sent them Ann Coulter's article on the Westboro Baptist Church. I figure the venom would penetrate no matter what.

I didn't want to give the game away, but the title of todays blog: Tweeting with Twits.
 
Do you think I used enough small words for them this time?

And, yes, having a battle of wits with the Phelps people is like they brought a knife to an artilery duel.

“You're going to Hell.... Not.” I'm Catholic, not Puritan. Thank you.

[This is an article on what the Catholic Church believes, to the best of my knowledge. If you disagree with the tenants of the faith spelled out, if you dislike what they say, dislike what the Church says, disagree with the qualifications of what is or is not a sin, or if you do not believe that there is a God period … okay, that's cool. I'm not trying to convince you of any of the above, just trying to give you Catholic positions in layman's terms. Thank you. The disclaimer ends.]

I enjoy having other people tell me what I believe. It's amusing.

Recently, I was told that “hardcore Catholics think everybody's going to Hell.”

Hi, um, no.

Granted, my “hardcore” status involves going to Church on Sundays and Holy days, and knowing more about Catholic philosophy than the average bear. Aside from that... meh, not really.

But, for the record, unlike Dante Alighieri in The Inferno, the Catholic Church has never pointed to any person and said “He's in Hell.” The strongest the Church has done to anybody has been excommunication— which is a societal pressure, mainly used to get someone's attention, and requires that the penitent have done something REALLY messed up. The Church of Rome believes that it represents God, NOT that is IS God. No one knows what is in another's heart, head, or conscience.

And there's the usual anti-sex, anti-gay mythology.

1) No one is going to hell for BEING gay. A sin is an ACTION, not a state of being. You have to DO something. Nathan Lane has stated that he his gay, Catholic, and celibate.... but on the other hand, he could barbeque puppies for fun. On the other end of the spectrum, if anybody (gay, straight, male, female) is having sex with large amounts of people per month, I have several, non-religious things to say to them – and my mother's a microbiologist, I can footnote everything. One of the major concerns I have I share with most of the priests I meet, gay author Harvey Fierstein, and lesbian/former NOW President (LA) Tammy Bruce: promiscuous activity, which really isn't a gay/straight male/female problem, it's pretty much everyone. And many of my arguments come from one place-- the microbiology lab.

2) Sex. Ask at the Vatican, getting a (non-medical) abortion is a sin. So is using a condom, and so is (PREMARITAL) sex. Are any and all of those people automatically going to hell? Take Angelina Jolie: when she was fourteen, with a boyfriend, her own mother told her to take the master bedroom and “have fun, it's better than the back of a car.” I am hard-pressed to imagine anyone condemning her behavior at fourteen, and given what (very little) I've heard, I think it would be more reasonable to think “Wow, I'm surprised she's not REALLY screwed up.”

Do I believe that sodomy, premarital sex, condom usage, abortion, et al are sins? Yes, and I think that most of them are bad ideas independently of religion, mostly based on psychological, sociological reasons, and personal observation. But that's another story. Am I going to Judge those people who partake / have partaken of those acts and say they're going to Hell? No, no, no, and Hell no.

I think a lot of this can be covered under “conscience”-- con (with) (science) knowledge... There is something called “invincible ignorance,” something doesn't register on the conscience, for whatever reason. I naturally assume that (for example) teenagers are too stupid to know right from left, to hell with knowing right from wrong. which means that, yes, one can be too stupid to know one is doing something wrong. Now, who knows what evil lurks (or doesn't) in the hearts of men (and women) ....

God does.

No one else.

Have a nice day.

To make my point, I will use a personal example. I'm Celibate. An ex of mine slipped me a drug for the purposes of having me sleep with her. Am I going to say she's going to Hell? I can't say that one way or another, mainly because I know how utterly and totally screwed up she is. Looking at it from the distance of time, she's a LOT more than “standard” crazy, and I should have seen it coming. I can't say she's evil, because I know that she is lonely, believes that if someone (non related) isn't sleeping with her, they don't love her, and she's really screwed up in the head. I don't know what she was thinking at the time, since I wasn't going to have an extended conversation about it.

A lot of the misconception about the Catholic Church comes from the line “Outside the Church there is no salvation.” It's a phrase that people like to throw around a lot. However, if you talk to any cannon lawyer, you know there's a caveat to practically anything. “The Church” is defined as the “mystical body of Christ”.... take out the fancy language, the Church is God. God covers a LOT of territory. If you look up the phrase “Baptism of Desire,” even Wikipedia comes close: it comes about with an “act of perfect love and contrition which automatically cleanses the soul of all sin.” There is also the “baptism of blood;” Protestants have been accepted as Catholic saints and martyrs because they were “died for Christ.”

So, yes, the Catholic Church put in a loophole. A few loopholes. “Outside the church there is no salvation”... but. I know a few atheists, some who are probably better people than I am. Oddly, I think one was a better Catholic than I am.

Oh, and as several Popes have mentioned over the years, Jews are “inside the Church” because God does not renege on His deals ... we are not Fred Phelps and his incestuous, attention-seeking media-whore cult.

However, I have heard stories. “Catholics” who are holier than that, and think Protestants should be burned at the stakes for heresy, but that they, themselves, have never read the bible, “That's what the priest is for.”

Statements like that want to make me find these people and drop Aquinas's Summa Theologica on them.... all fifteen feet of shelf space worth.

The short version, if I may paraphrase Chesterton, is that the Catholic church doesn't work because people are perfect, it works because people AREN'T perfect. That goes back to St. Augustine, of the VERY early Church, concluding that it doesn't matter if the priest is a sinner (since, hey, we're human, we're sinners), because the power of the religious ministries he performs comes from God.

Being Holier than Thou isn't the sign of a “hardcore Catholic.” It's the sign of a stupid one.

For those unfamiliar with the Bible, look up the story of the Pharisee and the tax collector. The Pharisee (high ranking religious figure) stands in the temple talking about how perfect he is, thanking God that he wasn't some dirt bag like the tax collector. On the other end of the temple, the tax collector beats his breast, apologizing for being a sinner. In that example, the IRS fellow is the model held up as the better person. Also, Jesus had an instruction that, when someone prayed, they should seek out privacy (actually, He suggested praying in a closet) rather than go out into the street to make a public spectacle of themselves.

The Holier than Thou people remind me of the lesser half of each of those examples.

You have, on the other hand, the traditional Puritan, whose model of religion was that, not only were they saved, they had to SHOW other people that they were saved. This later turned into a logic that said “Well, if we are saved, then obviously God is going to grace us, so we should be prosperous as well.” A train of thought which makes me wince.

So, the next time that someone says that they're Catholic, and that “you're going to hell,” you can tell them that they make a better Pharisee/ a great seventeenth-century Puritan, or that they should consider praying in the nearest closet.

But “hardcore Catholics” not only believe in God, and Heaven, and Hell, and sin, and going to Church, and Jesus Christ, and the Pope, but they also believe in mercy, compassion, gentleness, and understanding. They can understand that good people can do bad things, and that we can condemn a sin without necessarily condemning a sinner. And that God is the only person involved in Heaven and Hell, no matter what Fred Phelps thinks.

Catholics believe that there is Justice, and Justice takes all things into consideration. To understand all is NOT to forgive all, but it plays a part.

And I have fifteen shelf feet of the Summa, in hardcover, with a dual translation, to back it up.