A Seat at the Table: The Pope's Remarks on Islam

So last week, Pope Benedict was in Germany, and he quoted from some Byzantine Emporer who said that Islam's founder was "evil and inhuman." And surprise, surprise, this sparked controversy. Now we've had two apologies from the Vatican, including a person apology from Pope Benedict himself, and we've had, at last report, several Catholic Churches burned, a little desecration, and a nun who may have been murdered as revenge for the Pope's remarks.

And I read the news and I am incredulous.

Some think that the Pope's remarks were terribly inappropriate, the words of a stupid person. Folks, the Pope ain't stupid.

Some think that the Pope's remarks were taken out of context, since he was quoting a historical document, and he did not actually say himself that Mohammed was 'evil' or 'inhuman'. Folks, don't be fooled. As I said, the Pope ain't stupid. He knew just exactly what he was saying and how it would be taken.

Think about it - what possible purpose would an off-the-cuff remark like that have in a speech? Is there any way it could have gotten in there by accident? Do you not think that every word the Pope says is carefully, very carefully, crafted and examined?

This man was the head of the Inquisition. He is a very clever person.

And so. What was that all about? Why say such a thing, if he a) intended it and b) had a pretty good idea what would happen when he said it?

Let's think about this.

Before the Pope said what he said - was the situation in the Middle East being discussed alongside the word "Catholic" or "Pope?" No, it was not. The news around the world spoke of the US, Israel, Syria, Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Hezbollah, and so on - but not about Catholicism, not about the Pope.

Oh, there was a small news item - during the bombing and so on that was happening in Lebanon, the Pope ordered the Maronite churches there to open their doors and give sanctuary to the trapped domestic workers (mostly Catholic) who were from the Philippines and were trapped in Lebanon with nowhere to go. But that was about it. Jews and Muslims, Jews and Muslims - and the US Army. That's pretty much it.

So does the Pope have a really big ego and just like to hear his name? Well, that's possible I suppose, but I propose a simpler solution.

The Pope wanted a seat at the table. If we're going to talk about these problems in the Middle East and what might be done about them, he wants to be dealt in to this particular card game. The Holy Lands are not just about Jews and Muslims - Christians are in the mix too. And with one stroke, he got his face in there, didn't he? Clever guy. And by apologizing right away, but by keeping his voice out there, now he can try to keep some attention on himself and the Catholic Church, try to shift the light of public attention onto himself for awhile.

And there's more.

The Pope knows well that Catholicism is becoming splintered, and nowhere is it more obvious than in the USA. One of the first things he did when he became Pope was to fire the Editor of America magazine in NYC - a Jesuit organ that had been a thorn in his side when he was Grand Inquisitor and they thumbed their noses at him. Everyone knows that annulment is rare in the rest of the world, but common in the USA - US Catholic Divorce, they call it. Here in the USA, we're a tad liberal in our Catholicism, and Pope Benedict...well, he ain't.

So by making a statement like this - he gets the rats out of their holes. Church members cannot restrain themselves from making opinions and public statements - an Archbishop here, a Cardinal there - and bang, he's got 'em.

He also knows that this will make a strong showing among the hard-core conservative Catholics. They'll accept his original statement as being 'code' for what he really believes - that Islam is evil and should be destroyed. They'll think he's signalled to them just how far he'll go in support of them. They'll think his apology was the fake - the statement that caused it was the real deal. As they rally - making public statements in support of the supposed original meaning of the Pope's statement - they'll also self-identify. A list is made, a few names written down.

Conservative Christians who are not Catholic will also be forced to make more conciliatory gestures towards the Pope. After all, he's said what they've been saying on PTL and the 700 Club for awhile now - that Islam is bad, and one must call evil by it's true name and not shirk from the angriness of public opinion. A new link forged, even if many Conservative Christians are openly hostile towards and suspicious of Catholic motives.

Of course, when the Pope suggests, via an ancient manuscript, that Mohammed might be 'evil and inhuman', I am sure he was aware that violence would ensue. And what kind of violence? Of course. Religious violence, and all of it Muslims directed at Catholics. Makes the news, eh? And look, look at these martyrs. Why, it does seem interesting that if you say that Muslims are violent by nature, and some Muslims respond by, um, being violent, that you might have gone some distance to prove your point. Of course, only those who realize it is manipulated behavior would see past the violence itself.

So when I heard this, I did not for a moment think that the Pope believes that Mohammed was 'evil and inhuman' or that he put the ancient quotation into his speech by accident.

This was all very calculated. And it worked very well.

I leave it as an exercise to the reader and to history to see if I was right about this one.

Makes my head hurt...

Wiggy

Most Objectionable

I normally do not blog about work. Work is work, and who wants to hear about work. Look, ever buddy hates their job, is what. You know that. I know that. We know that. So I usually just leave it at work.

But. Not. This.

IDIOTIC PEOPLE WHO MANAGE TO BECOME BOSSES - PART ONE

My team lead had to go to a 'Valuing Diversity in the Workplace' class this week. You know, it is the kind of thing where ever buddy gets broken into groups and has a big old discussion about how diversity is good, it is good to value diversity, and not doing so - well, that's bad. And there are lots of explanations and demonstrations, and they get broken out into teams and they have to 'role play' and yadda yadda yadda. If you work for a big corporation, you know the drill.

Well, my team lead came back with a dazed look on her face. Seems she had been teamed up with a bunch of managers - local senior managers. Their team had been given the task of determining from a list of hypothetical people and their hypothetical personality traits, which person was considered 'most objectionable.'

The team was having trouble reaching consensus. Normally no big surprise, especially when managers are involved, right? But this time, it was all down to one manager and his continuing insistance on rating the 'worst' employees as if they were the 'best' employees and vice-versa.

Finally, someone asked him to explain his reasoning. As he did, the light slowly dawned on ever buddy else. This manager, this senior manager, thought that 'most objectionable' meant that the person 'met their objectives' most of the time.

She told me this, and all I could do was to gape at her in wonder. I felt divide-by-zero errors piling up in my punkin haid.

IDIOTIC PEOPLE WHO MANAGE TO BECOME BOSSES - PART TWO

Then, we all were forced to attend a meeting in which a video was shone. The video was produced by my employer and it featured several of our VERY BIG bosses, senior executive management, talking to us about the 'Really Good Customer Experience'.

It was in this professionally-produced video that one of these million-dollar-a-year salary guys explains to us, patiently, as if to a child, that the word 'aptitude' means 'how well you know how to do your job'.

And we wonder why the Chinese are buying up land in the USA. They'll win the next war without firing a shot. And probably deserve to.

It is to weep.

Have a good weekend, my little droogies.

Wiggy

The Fountainhead. No, Really.

So there I was, standing in the shower this morning, and I got a little bit of soap just under one of my nostrils. I must have inhaled or something, because the next thing I know, I've got that slight burning sensation that tells me I've accidentally huffed some soap. This is no fun at all, I'm sure it happens to everyone, so you know what I'm talking about.

Well, usually when something like that happens, I just kind of ignore it and try not to breathe in through that particular nostril for awhile, to avoid fouling my spark plugs. But this morning for some reason which escapes me at the moment, I thought that maybe if I angled the shower head up just a trifle, I could dislodge the soap from just inside the rim of my nostril, where it was stinging me.

OK, I'm going to put that one down as a generally bad idea. See, what I found out is that the human head will fill up with water in about 1/10 of a second, which is not really a lot of time when you're shooting water right up one nostril at a high rate of speed and watching it shoot right back out your mouth like some kind of bizarre fountain, er, water feature I think they call it these days. Yes, I filled the inside of my head up like an evil piñata. If I could have seen myself in the mirror, I probably looked like one of those toys you squeeze and the toy's eyes pop out. It felt pretty amazing having water shoot out of my mouth like a dang water hose, is what.

Have you ever gone swimming and gotten water in your ears? Well, imagine that when the water is on the other side of your eardrum, trying to get out. Wowzer.

So, I get out of the shower and I yell to Mrs. Wiggy, "Hey hon? Guess what I just figured out?"

She sticks her head in the bathroom with one of those resigned smiles on her face like she gets when I make her pull my finger, and she replies, "Do you know what you sound like when you say that? It reminds me of the Redneck's Famous Last Words, 'Hey, y'all, watch this.'"

Now, she is only saying this because it happens to be true. I figure things out about myself all the time. This is a Guy Thing (tm). See, you may have seen on some educational television program about some Swami or Guru who managed, after years of meditation, to control his heart rate or lower his blood pressure, or levitate, or figure out his taxes without getting mad, something that would otherwise be impossible. You might have figured that was pretty amazing stuff.

But in truth, guys do that kind of stuff all the time. Only most of us are not very interested in learning to control our heartrate. Our bodily functions and noises, on the other hand - well worth the effort.

For example, in my well-spent youth, I learned to raise and lower my eyebrows independently of each other. I can still waggle one eyebrow while the other stays perfectly level, or make one go up and the other go down, etc. This is hours of fun when I'm home amusing the dogs. Mrs. Wiggy is not surprised at all when she calls downstairs and says "What are you doing?" and I reply, "Making faces at the dogs." She knows that is literally what I'm doing.

I can also flare my nostrils as long as I am not laughing at the time, which is not always that easy to do, since I can flare mine so quickly it looks like my nose is fluttering in the breeze like a sick little pair of flags. Mrs. Wiggy is not fond of that stunt.

I have been working for years on the art of making my internal organs produce noises. Not gaseous noises, anyone can do that. I mean making them move around in there, maybe produce a flapping sound or a sproing kinda thing. For awhile, I claimed that I had broken my flapper by sucking air out of an empty coke bottle and holding my tongue over the end of it and waving it about, attached to my tongue just by suction alone. I have also claimed some dominion over my spleen, which is the name I give to anything that is inside of me and which I have never seen.

A word of advice: If your mother-in-law comes to live with you, and she discovers you chasing your shrieking wife (her daughter) through the house while wearing a towel, and she asks you what in God's Name you are doing, do not reply "Hot spleenal love, mommie pie." This does not play well in small towns. A little tip from your Uncle Wiggy.

So anyhow, another day, another lesson in what not to do to your nose.

I like to think I'll never stop learning, and this morning, the shower was my classroom.

Keep Yer Stick on the Ice,

Wiggy

Saddam is Crushing Your Head!

BBC News Story

The BBC reported today that Saddam Hussein, former Penis Potato (oops, sorry, I mean dictator) of Iraq, addressed the judge at his trial and said, "You are agents of Iran and Zionism. We will crush your heads."

It is quite clear that Spudboy Saddam has been viewing reruns of old "Kids in the Hall" episodes. The 'crushing your head' reference is clearly taken from the character played by Mark McKinney, that of "Mr. Tyzik," who felt that 99.999 percent of all humanity deserved to have their head crushed:

Wikipedia Entry - Mr. Tyzik

Well, all I can say is that it is a sad, sad, day when a former Tyrant Tuber can blithely go around crushing heads.

The next time he does it, I suggest that the judge simply raise his thumb, block out Saddam's face, and declare "There's nobody home."

And while I'm thinking about it - do you suppose Iran or Israel either one have a problem with them both supporting the judge in Iraq? You'd think they'd have trouble getting along. I dunno, maybe it is just me.

Hey, don't crush my head.

Smooches,

Wiggy

Katie Couric and Free Speech

Saw the news last night with Katie Couric as news anchor. I comment on this only because of something she said during her intro, something that made me choke on a waffle I was snarfling at the time. She introduced a new segment to the show, something she calls "Free Speech." Interestingly, she characterized it as "a privilege we have."

Now, I don't know about you, my little droogies. Maybe things are very different where you are. Where I am from, the gold old US of A, a 'privilege' is a 'right or benefit granted someone'. See, what she's saying is that we have the 'right' to 'Freedom of Speech.' But by calling it a 'privilege', she's also saying that it has been granted to us. That implies it could be taken away again.

This bothers me no little bit.

See, Freedom of Speech is not a privilege. It is a right, acknowledged by our Founding Fathers as being a pre-existing condition, as it were. It was not given us by the US Constitution, we had it already, by the natural state of being born in the USA as citizens of this great nation. For Christians, this right is seen as given by God or our Creator. For those of non-religious persuasions, let's just say that Freedom is a condition that attaches to personhood - all people are born free as part of their human condition.

Our rights, our civil rights, cannot be 'taken away' by the US government. In fact, that is precisely what the Bill of Rights is - not a declaration OF our rights, but rather, a list of prohibitions against the federal government.

Does the Bill of Rights say "You have the right of free speech?" No! It says that the federal government is PROHIBITED from infringing on free speech. Do you understand the difference? This is critical.

What is given can be taken away again. If our 'Free Speech' is a privilege, as Katie Couric seems to think, then the government, having given us it, can take it away, as one can revoke a driver's license.

The Founding Fathers, in their wisdom, simply identified the rights that human beings, and more specifically, citizens of the USA, already have, given us by our Creator.

I'm sorry Katie; you're not allowed to take our rights away.

Smooches,

Wiggy

Hey! A plug for a friend of mine!

I've been promising to do this for some time, and a few weeks ago, I lost my hard drive and all my emails dating back years and years. So I feel really bad that it has taken so long. Diane Wolfe is a friend of mine, and she is an author and a member of my photography club, and here is her latest news release. Ya'll should check it out. Thanks!

Smooches,

Wiggy

Thanks to all The Circle of Friends fans for making this latest Press Release possible!

Keep updated at www.thecircleoffriends.net and the blog - http://circleoffriendsbooks.blogspot.com/

PRESS RELEASE

*FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE*

Contact: L. Diane Wolfe

919-221-1689/1-866-627-5887

DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOUR TEEN IS READING?

Author L. Diane Wolfe’s series, The Circle of Friends, refuses to compromise

GOLDSBORO, NC (PRWeb) September 6, 2006 – Today’s young adult novels are full of salacious and immoral acts, portraying children involved in sex, drugs and witchcraft. Many of the latest titles glorify frequent sexual activity, negative attitudes, and deviant behavior. Morals are abandoned for the sake of controversy. Yet despite this trend, many authors continue to focus on wholesome and uplifting stories, and Wolfe’s series joins the battle of decent books for young adults.

Her latest, JAMES : The Circle of Friends, Book III follows one person’s quest to overcome abuse and neglect. Meant to inspire as well as entertain, Wolfe’s books have been described as “encouragement personified”. The Circle of Friends series features positive, moral tales and offer readers hope. Centering on a group of college-aged kids, they portray love and friendship overcoming all obstacles. Book I, Lori, follows a young swimmer with Olympic dreams, while Book II, Sarah, focuses on a couple searching for trust and belief. Two more tales will follow: Mike and Heather.

Wolfe’s current book tour goes well into December, with stops as far south as Orlando, where Book III’s story takes place. Dubbed “Spunk On A Stick”, the author averages over eighty appearances and interviews each year, traveling from Ohio to Arkansas to Florida. In the top 1% of her publishing company, she was asked to attend this year’s Book Expo America in DC, and now has several larger publishing houses interested in her series. Wolfe’s motivational training makes her a natural for public speaking and her experience as a foster parent assisted with the creation of Book III. While negativity appears to prevail in the world, she aims to give others hope with the positive messages within her series. “When the dream’s big enough, the facts don’t count!”

Lori, Sarah, and James are published by AuthorHouse. For review copies, contact the Promotional Services Dept. at 1-800-839-8640 ext.5244 or by Fax 1-812-961-3113. For press kit and DVD, contact the author directly or visit www.thecircleoffriends.net.

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