Posted on 10/12/2004 4:46:46 AM PDT by tcg
I was an altar boy.
I served in Vietnam.
I was in Cambodia at Christmas.
It's not my SUV it belongs to my family.
I knew Chris Reeves, he's my friend. He rang me last week when he was in a coma.
I was there when the cease-fire agreement was signed after the Gulf War, I went there after my wife and I attended a function in the US on the same night; it only takes an hour or so to get there.
I'm Irish. No I'm not, I'm French but my grandfather was jewish.
I hunt and fish and windsurf and I'm very manly, I've got good hair and I can pitch and kick and catch a ball very badly.
Did I tell you I was in Vietnam?
I got three purple hearts you know.
Wanna see the movie?
The CIA gave me a magic hat, I never go anywhere without it.
I've got a plan. A plan. A real plan. I'm the man with the plan.
(just fooling around on a quiet night. I hate that man!)
For those who didn't catch it, the original title was something like, "News/Activism, Religion and General Chat."
I was just poking fun at tcg.
oh, never mind....
Clearly you haven't got one bigot.
When you were young maybe you was cute. (okay maybe not) Many years ago maybe you was honest. At some point in your life maybe you had a soul.
One thing is for sure is you haven't been "Catholic" for a long, long time.
I was an alter boy too and was molested by a priest, then I became a drug addict, now I'm just a regular guy, reformed, saved by grace and thinking maybe I could run for president some day.
FRee Repbulic is not a Blog its a message board/forum. My nit to pick. Carry on.
This was certainly different from my experience. As I stated early, in my Diocese the overwhelming number of alter boys were trained by the Nuns, but had to be reviewed by a priest before being awarded Alter Boy status.
I cannot speak to your experience, only my own. I never remember any Public School kids, no less Private Secular kids becoming Alter Boys
I also doubt he was really an Altar Boy for the same reasons. Altar Boys were selected from the boys of the pairsh schools. Those attending secular schools (which was against Church rules) were not invited to participate.
Kerry's position on this is specious at best. It is analogous to John Kennedy or Richard Nixon saying in 1960, my faith condemns segregation, but I cannot impose those beliefs on public policy to enact civil rights legislation for Negro Americans.
The hypocrisy is stunning.
How can anyone vote for Kerry, when his comrades in arms call him a traitor?
How can anyone vote for Kerry? They have to have their value systems upside down.
I guess there's a sneering anti-Catholic bigot in every crowd.
I have a bomber jacket (but I stopped wearing it when the pajamajeen outed me for not earning it)
I do not call it bigotry, when one blames an institution for faults that it actually has.
The Catholic hierarchy was negligent when they allowed hundreds of dangerous men to become priests during the sixties. They are now justly blamed and execrated for their dereliction of duty.
A fundamental principle of conservativism is taking responsibilty for your mistakes. If you do wrong, if you screw up, you pay the price.
You are suggesting all clergy are guilty of or prone to the offenses of a few. That is the very definition of bigotry.
We already legislate articles of faith. Thou shall not murder. Thou shall not steal. This lame argument is so old and tired that it's grown moss. So much for Kerry the "great debater."
When I read this, I thought immediately of Richard Weaver's classic little book, "Ideas Have Consequences," or, as I used to put it when I was teaching high school students in a Christian school, "Belief leads to behavior."
When abortion is the law of the land, all kinds of unintended (?) consequences follow. Among them are: sexual promiscuity, child abuse ("If I could have killed them in the womb, why can't I mistreat them after birth?"), a broadening definition of what is dangerous to the mother's health, an increase in abortions for the sake of convenience, a redefinition of the relationship between the sexes (any "accidents" can be corrected without the inconvenience of dealing with an additional life on the way), a denigration of what it means to be human, and, in general, a weakening of the foundations that are necessary for any society to function without being reduced to moral chaos.
If Senator Kerry's position is any reflection of his overall approach to moral and ethical questions, his election would only speed up the moral decline that has been occurring in this country for decades.
I don't look forward to that!
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