Virtually every time a story about
the Catholic Church appears in a major metropolitan newspaper, like this from
the Los Angeles Times, you can invariably see profound irony all over the page.
Featured here is the newly minted pope merrily greeting the faithful. The story
declares how much he's going to be "open" and "dialogue" with everyone and
everything.
But right next to the story, and directly underneath his image in the photo, is
a story titled "Happy to Feed 'Em a Line." The story is about a
dedicated street poet, but
the irony here is anything but poetic.
Tripling the irony are the two stories on the right of the page. A
particularly tragic story from the always tragic Iraq situation, it and other
such horrors
would not happen and appear prominently in the paper if it weren't for the pictured Agent of
Cain leading a gargantuan sin management operation
showcased by its idolatrous mass and sacraments of magic arts. This
system actually encourages people to do things like machine-gun people
lined against a wall, for then he may proudly proclaim how much he is against
that sort of thing and make yet another call for peace.
Then there is inflation, which for all its lint-picking
economic analysis is certainly one thing: the overestimation of people's value
demonstrated on the macro level. This comes about because so many
people do not have Christ, the One from Whom an individual can securely
identify his or her value. Without Him they
must flounder trying to get some value elsewhere —
somebody
must tell them that they have value, but they have so much trouble finding it
that they must go overboard in assessing their productive capacity.
It is a futile effort based wholly on fear (and, I might add, a daft ignorance
about the impact of violating the Tenth Commandment) because it comes down to
this: Without the Son, they don't have life. Those with the Son have life, are
heirs to His riches, and cannot inaccurately appraise their value by Him.
It is supremely ironic that these people continue to live in their agony with
pasted smiles, and they don't seem to have a clue that the Pope is the most
instrumental force behind it all. Does anyone really know that the reason that
Jesus plainly commanded us to call no one Father or Teacher was because we
are who we follow. Follow the Vicar and you get the World. Follow the
Lord and you get your soul back.
So there it is, all on the front page of the Los Angeles Times, April 21, 2005.
The whole story: People murder a whole bunch of other people because they don't
have the One Savior who'd free them from their sin, a fact revealed all too
plainly by unending inflation. Thank goodness there is the Pontiff, Ruler of the
World, who is happy to feed them a line about all he's doing to fix things.
Oh, and I can't help but mention that also featured on this
very front page,
just below the fold (not pictured above), was a story about another savior of the world. It was about the new CEO of Disney, Robert Iger, and everyone's beloved,
Mickey
Mouse.
Talk about irony.
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