Catholic Church Lady Swings and Misses.

The blogger I refer to as Catholic Church Lady often is so unintelligible to me she might as well be speaking Attic Greek. Part of that (never mind growing up Catholic) is that the entire phenomenon of faith, of religious belief is alien to me. In fact, way my mind spun it yesterday, is that I want the provably true answers. I don't want convenient answers that objectively are nothing more than (often ignorant) guesses. Anyway . . .

Today on her blog, she got on the more pedestrian matters of social and cultural shit, as demonstrated by her comparison of the (she JUST HAD to add in faith based jargon) the "Prophetic" book "A Confederacy of Dunces." Go Here for That.

Here is how she took a swing, and missed. She goes of about how the protagonist resembles too many current denizens of the USA. But chalks that up to urbanism and culture, and politics. And after that she vamps and remarks that the protagonist, if a character on "The Simpsons," would make a perfect brother for the comic book store nerd. Oddly enough, even if she picked up on politics, she missed the fact that the description of Ignatius, the protag, greatly resembled far far more so, the typical Wing Nut Tea Bagger, than any other "type" running around the USA these days.

Now the book is at least 20 years old, to my mind. If you want to use the word prophetic. Knock your self out. However I find it disturbingly humorous (if not predictable itself) that the right wing religious person looked at (an essay about) the book, skipped past the mirror and concluded, hey. That character reminds me of the comic book guy in "The Simpsons." All that mediation, and self evaluation, and not a lick of self awareness. But I should not be shocked. As opposed to Catholic Church Lady, I think a large amount of the disconnectedness that pervades society is directly related to right wing religion. Few things by default drive people apart like religion does.

And let's face it. Particularly those mega churches, but churches are a Reality TV version of community, often. It might seem to be authentic and genuine, but it really is only a placebo. And sometimes it's a damaging form of community. Where's the bright line between a cult or a legit church? Is there that much of a difference?