John C. Wright ([info]johncwright) wrote,
@ 2008-10-30 22:59:00
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For all you vampire fans out there
Here is Anne Rice (yes, THAT Anne Rice) talking about her return to Catholicism, and the influences on her writing. Short version: her vampire novels were her lament over her loss of faith.

The link is to an audio file:
http://www2.nationalreview.com/dest/2008/10/28/1a30bfee729efe48f1cfc909b13fd7a1.mp3

The web page is here.

Interviewers frequently ask me how my conversion to Catholicism has influenced my writing. I tell them that writing the books is still pretty much the same, but that, now the I am Catholic, I am not allowed to interpret my own books, nor read them in English, but must have my books interpreted by the magisterium, based on the findings of a general council.

(On the other hand, if I had been a Protestant, I would have been able to interpret my own books howsoever the Spirit led me: but anything I said aloud and did not write down, things I said in interviews and stuff, I could not use.)

I agreed right away, of course, thinking that by the 'magisterium'  they meant the sinister baddies from Pullman's GOLDEN COMPASS, who send out Jesuit ninja to kill people and stuff. I could not wait to perform my first intercission on some bratty girl or gypsy streetrat! But no, it was just some dumb teaching authority. 

And all it teaches is the love and forgiveness fluffy-nuffy stuff that is so opposed to my cold and savage Romulan nature. What a letdown.

And here I thought the pope was going to be Darkseid seeking the Anti-Life Equation, and he turns out to be this nice old scholarly man of the cloth who does not approve of  war, torture, sodomy or aborticide.

No interviewer has ever asked my what it is like being the chief of sinners, however. No one asks me why the Church is so beautiful, like a bride adorned for her wedding, or so frightening as a sharp and shining sword whose scabbard has been tossed away. In other words, they ask me about my religion, but not about my faith, if you see my meaning.


(47 comments) - (Post a new comment)


[info]danguyf
2008-10-31 10:34 am UTC (link)
There's an Opus Dei house in D.C. I hear if we join then we get to do the assassination stuff.

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[info]arhyalon
2008-10-31 12:49 pm UTC (link)
Did you see John's post when he first became a Catholic (back in March, I think) and he was trying to join the Albino assassins? He's all signed up and everything...only they won't let him go out and kill stuff unless he gets is shape.

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If you don't mind, I'd like to ask...
[info]justgin1228
2008-10-31 02:48 pm UTC (link)
What was it like having your sinful nature revealed to you? How deeply did this affect you? What changed in your philosophy, other than the obvious one, atheism? How do you live now because of these changes?

This is pretty personal stuff. If you don't want to answer here, or at all, I understand.

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Re: If you don't mind, I'd like to ask...
[info]johncwright
2008-10-31 04:36 pm UTC (link)
"What was it like having your sinful nature revealed to you?"

Distressing. You see, I had never before known what it was like to fight temptation and be utterly defeated because in my atheist life, I never fought temptation. I simply assumed that I had the strength of will to overcome bad habits. And when it came to the test, nay, I did not have any such strength of will. That to me was the most shocking eye-opener of the whole experience.

I cannot shake the suspicion that my atheist friends are in the same swamp I was in: blind to their own weakness and filth. My pagan friends I am confident are that way, since the witches I know became witches only because they wanted some sort of spiritual comfort, but did not want to be chaste, humble, loving, and obedient to the worldly authorities placed over them.

The short answer is that learning one's true nature is like opening a treasure chest and finding inside a mass of writhing maggots twitching over lumps of rotting wormy meat. It may not be as pleasing as the brittle gossamer of "high self-esteem," but it is more honest by a long mile.

"How deeply did this affect you?"

Not as deeply as it should.

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Re: If you don't mind, I'd like to ask...
[info]justgin1228
2008-11-01 01:49 am UTC (link)
Saint Paul discussed at length this distress you felt in Romans 7. But I'm sure you remember this. Personally, I remember being gripped by the gravity of my condition. I was hopelessly lost and needed a savior. This was something that needed and got my urgent attention. Just like Isaiah (chapter 6), I saw the Lord, then I saw myself and said "Woe is me, for I am undone..."

How was your sinful nature revealed to you, if I may ask? And what did you do in response to this revelation?

When you said it affected you "not as deeply as it should", do you mean that this experience and it's effects have worn off a bit? Or did you mean something else?

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Re: If you don't mind, I'd like to ask...
[info]johncwright
2008-11-03 03:06 pm UTC (link)

"How was your sinful nature revealed to you, if I may ask?"

I do not recall any specific event. The pursuit of pleasure, which I took to be the ground of morality, began to disgust me. My natural desires began to become increasingly unnatural, and my response to those things that should have pleased me began to grow inert. More I will not say in mixed company.

The process is described adroitly by G.K. Chesterton (everything Chesterton describes, he describes adroitly) in the first chapter of his book on Saint Francis of Assisi.

"And what did you do in response to this revelation?"

Back when I was an atheist? Nothing. The atheist world view has not concepts, no mental tools, no habits of virtue, related to these questions. In the whole, gigantic area of the human condition, the area related to concepts like sin and forgiveness, wholesome and unwholesome, and the self loathing that arises from one's recognition of one's inability to clean oneself from spiritual filth, is merely a null set in the atheist world. It is an aspect of life of which they never speak, or, if they do speak, only in a childish, simplistic, ignorant, innocent fashion.

"When you said it affected you "not as deeply as it should", do you mean that this experience and it's effects have worn off a bit? Or did you mean something else?"

I mean only that I regard my response to the bad news of my sinful nature as inadequate.

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Re: If you don't mind, I'd like to ask...continued
[info]johncwright
2008-10-31 04:37 pm UTC (link)
"What changed in your philosophy, other than the obvious one, atheism?"

Excellent question, and one I have not leisure to answer at the length it deserves. The short answer is that there are three philosophical ramifications: 1. the paradox between determinism and free will, as far as I can see, becomes a non-issue, if determinism is used to describe physical reality and free will to describe spiritual or mental reality; 2. The mind-body problem becomes much less vexing if matter is not thought to have independent existence aside from its continual support from the divine mind of the creator.

An analogy might clarify these first two points: from Shakespeare's point of view, the physical properties of the skull of Yorick in the hand of Hamlet is not different from the mental properties of Hamlet's doubts and anxiety. From the point of view of Shakespeare, the creator, both the physical and mental substances of the pretend-world he creates are under his control. The law which says the skull of Yorick must drop under the influence of gravity should Hamlet open his fingers is a law only insofar as the will of Shakespeare so determine. Shakespeare could, with equal ease, suspend the normal and expected laws, for example to have the ghost of Hamlet's father, a supernatural apparition, appear before Hamlet's astonished gaze.

3. The question of why the universe is rational and why the mind of man is rational, and why the mind of man just so happens to be situated as to be able to reason out the mathematical and conceptual underpinnings of the laws of physics, the laws of economics, and the laws of morality, now have an easy and clear answer, whereas previously this was a paradox and a mystery to me. 4. My moral code now call upon me not merely to do my duty as a husband, father, and citizen, but also to love and forgive, which is a difficult process. I have calculated how to be more emotional and less cold than previously. 5. The disregard for death and humiliation which informs the stoic doctrine I could not live up to back when I was a stoic, now I find, as a Christian, I am at times equal to the task.

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Re: If you don't mind, I'd like to ask...continued
[info]justgin1228
2008-11-01 02:15 am UTC (link)
I recall you saying that you became aware of a spirit world or spiritual nature of which you had been previously unaware, and that you perceived Christ in you. Please explain more about this.

Beside being curious to see how you explain it, I am trying to understand why or how ex-Christians may have lost their perception of God and spiritual reality and become agnostics or atheists.

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Re: If you don't mind, I'd like to ask...continued
[info]johncwright
2008-11-03 03:20 pm UTC (link)
I saw that I had a soul. I was previously unaware of it: as if an inner eye had opened, or a blindness passed, I saw it. Every relation and idea in my life and mind I now saw had an additional dimension. Nothing was lost but much was gained.

I felt the Holy Spirit poured into me: it was almost like a physical sensation. The word 'inspiration' which means 'breathed in' no doubt has its roots in the fact that many people feel such a sensation at one point in their lives or another. When I pray, I can feel someone listening.

Now, these sensations are either hallucination, or self-deception, or a reality. Since I have no history of mental illness, and none of the surrounding symptoms of hallucination are present, I cannot in good faith dismiss these sensations as hallucination. If it is self-deception, I would like someone to explain how and why a man whose entire life, and all his pride, are devoted to the atheist world view would get any satisfaction out of the public overthrow of his most strongly-held and deeply cherished beliefs. Occam's razor leaves me with the option that it is veridical.

"I am trying to understand why or how ex-Christians may have lost their perception of God"

That I cannot explain, as it has never happened to me. All I can report is that, in my own life, if and when doubts about God arise, they do not arise as philosophical or rational doubts, but instead as the type of thing that happens to a bird when hypnotized by a snake: mere unreason. It is more akin to the night-terrors of a small child than to a rational philosophical deduction.

When I argue with atheists these days (and such arguments are astonishingly rare) all that happens is the atheist rejects evidence, no matter what it is, that disagrees with his conclusion. He does not even make a token effort at trying to fit the facts into a scientific model.

I do not recall atheists being so bankrupt even as few years ago. James Ingersoll, at least, knew how to cobble together a rational argument.

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Re: If you don't mind, I'd like to ask...continued
[info]justgin1228
2008-11-04 12:16 am UTC (link)
Without realizing it, you did answer my question about how or why an ex-Christian loses his perception of God.

Regarding the bankruptcy of atheists nowadays, it's bigotry plain and simple. It's also time to for everyone to get off the fence. The whole of society is being pushed to choose one way or the other. There is no more room for neutrality. I forsee, even here in the United States, martyrdom in our future. It's happening now in many other countries.

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Re: If you don't mind, I'd like to ask...part 3
[info]johncwright
2008-10-31 04:37 pm UTC (link)
"How do you live now because of these changes?"

I actually try to forgive people who offend me. Often I fail. When I fail, I try again.

And I threw all my Playboy magazines and John Norman paperbacks into the trash. Sorry, Gor fans, there are some good action-adventure sequences in the early books, but it is basically softcore porn. I feel anger at all the preachers I heeded in my youth, back when I was green and stupid, because I did not listen to Christian preachers: I listen to Ayn Rand, who told me adultery was fine and dandy, and to Bob Heinlein, who told me strip clubs and polygamy and do-as-thou-wilt was fine and dandy. Fucking liars. Lying to a child, of all things.

You might wonder why I do not believe the party line that kids should be allowed to read whatever they will, or the party line that the parents have the sole responsibility to monitor their kids' reading and viewing, but that the surrounding society is free to use every pressure, every trick, every form of propaganda relentlessly to undermine the parents and corrupt the children. The reason why is because I am a victim, because I fell for the deceptions and propaganda practiced on me by the pervertarian lobby.

Now, you cannot excuse my deceivers by saying that no one forced me to read or believe their lies. But of course not. That is the nature of deception. Anyone who is deceived is someone who trusts his deceiver. Anyone who is betrayed is someone who trusts his betrayer. That is the thing that makes betrayal more hurtful than an honest and outright attack.

What was I supposed to rely on to tell me that I was being lied to? My experience? I was a child. The other voices giving the other side of the argument? There were none.

I have a particular abhorrence for the practices of Sulva, if you catch the reference.

The other major change in my philosophy is certain things that had no connecting tissue in my former beliefs now are organically part of a whole. I had no way, previously of reconciling my romanticism and my stoicism, for example. Christianity is both more romantic and more stoic, or, in a word, more chivilric than the classical religions, and far more romantic than the Oriental religions.

Philosophy is less central to my life. Philosophy is the art of asking questions about truth and discovering how little you know. In effect, it is the art of learning how to seek and never to find.

As a philosopher, I quested like a knight errant in wild places, and I fought monster, or, at least, monstrous ideas, as I wandered. Now I am ceased from errantry, and found a strong castle where I can rest, and whose walls and battlements my arms are not unsuited to defend.

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Re: If you don't mind, I'd like to ask...part 3
[info]gryphmon
2008-10-31 06:08 pm UTC (link)
"And I threw all my Playboy magazines and John Norman paperbacks into the trash. Sorry, Gor fans, there are some good action-adventure sequences in the early books, but it is basically softcore porn."

I suppose its a result of going through my Catholic High School as a volunteer in Library, but I have always felt that throwing away books in the trash is a sin and you will Burn In Hell for it. Catholic Guilt plus Library equals no trashing books.

I wouldn't even throw away one of your books, if I owned any. And when Orson Scott Card turned out to be such a jerk I didn't throw away his books either.

If you do have books you don't want I suggest joining Books For Soldiers. I'm sure they wouldn't mind some John Norman. http://booksforsoldiers.com/ Don't send the Playboy's though.

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Re: If you don't mind, I'd like to ask...part 3
[info]johncwright
2008-10-31 07:29 pm UTC (link)
"I have always felt that throwing away books in the trash is a sin "

You and me both, brother. I have the highest imaginable respect for books. These were collector's items by now. Had it been any other author, I would have sold or given them to a bookstore. But they were filth aimed at impressionable teen boys; and I had no desire to see some other innocent young goof get his hands on this ersatz-Barsoomian bondage porn.

You can imagine -- or maybe you cannot -- how painful it is for me to throw a book away.

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Re: If you don't mind, I'd like to ask...part 3
[info]gryphmon
2008-10-31 08:16 pm UTC (link)
"But they were filth aimed at impressionable teen boys; and I had no desire to see some other innocent young goof get his hands on this ersatz-Barsoomian bondage porn."

I don't think it would be any worse than letting a girl read a romance novel. The Romance genre is America's largest porn market without pictures.

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Re: If you don't mind, I'd like to ask...part 3
[info]kokorognosis
2008-11-01 09:26 am UTC (link)
The question then being, should girls read romance novels?

I certainly wouldn't be letting my hypothetical daughter read bodice bursters-- assuming that I had not managed to make her a nerd by the time she was old enough to tackle something that "large." I have a fairly good track record in twisting both of my sisters to the nerdy side, though, I'm sure I could do so with a child.

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Re: Pick the right book
[info]carbonelle
2008-11-01 10:07 am UTC (link)
Give her Mary Stewart and Georgette Heyer early enough on and she'll be well spoilt for the trash.

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Re: If you don't mind, I'd like to ask...part 3
[info]johncwright
2008-11-03 03:23 pm UTC (link)
"I don't think it would be any worse than letting a girl read a romance novel."

Since I have not read romance novels, I cannot say. I regard bondage porn to be unhealthy and unwholesome; and regard normal animal interest in the sex act between male and female to be wholesome.

There is a distinction between healthy sexual desire and fetishism or perversion. It is like the difference between adultery and pedophilia. Adultery is a sin, but a natural one; pedophelia is a sin and is unnatural.

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Re: If you don't mind, I'd like to ask...part 3
[info]gryphmon
2008-11-03 07:55 pm UTC (link)
I guess I'm not familiar with Corman's work, but I'm also guessing you haven't read many romance novels lately either.
;-)

I had them somewhat forced upon my me as a child, when there wasn't anything else to read in the house and that was all that was around.

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Tossing a book.
[info]kokorognosis
2008-11-01 09:44 am UTC (link)
To date, I think I have thrown away one book that hadn't been beaten to a pulp by multiple reads-- Debatable Space by Philip Palmer.

Talk about a lousy work. Boring. Preachy about annoying Euro-liberal views. Arrogantly full of itself.

One day, while I was reading it, I was standing in a bus stop at the airport waiting for an employee shuttle, and the hand holding it, by sheer coincidence, happened to be positioned over a 55-gallon garbage can when I hit a passage that went on and on about history "defanging Islamophobic American neocons" and it suddenly became an enormous temptation to just open my hand and let the book fall out of it...

Finished the book, though. Then I dropped it in the trash.

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Re: If you don't mind, I'd like to ask...part 3
[info]surrealseraphim
2008-10-31 07:35 pm UTC (link)
He's right, throwing books into the trash IS a terrible sin - you ought to be recycling them, John!

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Re: If you don't mind, I'd like to ask...part 3
[info]carbonelle
2008-11-01 10:08 am UTC (link)
Don't forget compost!

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Re: If you don't mind, I'd like to ask...part 3
[info]justgin1228
2008-11-01 02:48 am UTC (link)
I meant to ask this question in part 2: specifically what were the characteristics of the God you perceived?

Besides what you wrote above, was there any sudden aversion to certain habits and practices that are not generally considered bad? I remember hearing a man say he lost interest in hunting.

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Re: If you don't mind, I'd like to ask...part 3
[info]johncwright
2008-11-03 03:31 pm UTC (link)
"specifically what were the characteristics of the God you perceived?"

Read the first few verses of the Book of John. That is a fairly accurate description of what I saw and felt. God is light. God is love.

"Besides what you wrote above, was there any sudden aversion to certain habits and practices that are not generally considered bad?"

Please do not get the impression that I had a religious experience and suddenly regarded myself as a sinner. That is not the order of events. My disgust with my own lack of self-discipline, my revulsion at my bad habits, habits I could not break, came first. I was not washed clean and then became aware that I was dirty. I was dirty first: albeit, as an atheist, I thought the spiritual dirt was merely a matter of psychological maladaptation, which could be cured and corrected by a proper application of human willpower.

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Re: If you don't mind, I'd like to ask...part 3
[info]justgin1228
2008-11-04 12:57 am UTC (link)
Thank you. The gospel of John, especially 1:1-18, contains my favorite verses in the bible. The symbolism and poetry with which he wrote is nothing short of beautiful. My perception of God, in case you want to know (and even if you don't - smile) comes from Revelation 4, the whole chapter, and as aforementioned, the first few verses of Isaiah 6.

I know I'm asking you questions as though I've never experienced the same thing, but I have. I just wanted to get your take on it, and not knowing the mindset of an atheist, I had no idea how to ask you. Unlike you, I've always had a belief that there is a God and I've been a churchgoer all my life, yet I was never a Christian until I turned 20. Imagine that! Sitting in church all those years didn't make me a Christian anymore than sitting in a garage one hour a week made me a car!

So I do understand the process of becoming Christian, or being born again. Like you, I had no concept that I had a sinful nature prior to this experience. I compared myself to others and felt as though I were the chief of saints, not sinners. I hated people and felt perfectly justified in my hatred. I could justify nearly any sin I committed.

Not so once I began reading the bible. I didn't start in Genesis, but in Revelation. That's when I saw God, then I saw myself, and I KNEW I was abominable. When "the Light" shines in the darkness, one of two things will happen: you will either shut your eyes or you will open them to see. I was utterly disgusted with myself, but the Light was too beautiful to close my eyes; then I was washed clean.

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Re: If you don't mind, I'd like to ask...part 3
[info]johncwright
2008-11-04 03:24 am UTC (link)
"Like you, I had no concept that I had a sinful nature prior to this experience."

Actually, what I said was the opposite. I became aware of an addiction to filth in my life back when I was an atheist, an addiction I could not break. It was a self-demeaning and self-destructive behavior which my philosophy based on self-interest gave me no tools or concepts by which I could grapple it. It was not even clear to me, in my self-interest based philosophy, why self-indulgence was a bad thing.

Then I found that none of my fellow atheists, not one, not a single freaking one, had ever addressed this problem OR EVEN ACKNOWLEDGED ITS EXISTENCE. Even though sin and forgiveness are the most common of all human experiences, more common than war, more common than true love, the atheist world view has no model for it. Imagine having a scientific theory that left out one of the basic forces in the universe, such as gravity or electromagnetism. It is that gaping a blind spot.

I was reading G.K. Chesterton and C. S. Lewis. I told myself I admired their Englishness rather than their Christianity, their common sense. Then I realized that their common sense came from their Christianity, not the other way around. People without Christianity who seem like they have common sense at first always eventually end up promoting one form or another of something revolting and diabolical: sexual perversion, polygamy, cannibalism, pedophilia, incest. Why else does common sense Robert Heinlein end up praising, or, at least, dulling the revulsion for, cannibalism and incest? Why does Ayn Rand end up praising Abortion, Adultery and Selfishness?

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Re: If you don't mind, I'd like to ask...part 3
[info]justgin1228
2008-11-04 12:38 pm UTC (link)
Like you, I had no concept that I had a sinful nature prior to this experience. (What I meant is I justified any sin I committed, I felt no remorse.)

"Actually, what I said was the opposite. I became aware of an addiction to filth in my life back when I was an atheist..."

I don't see where we are in disagreement here. No one comes to Christ because she is a clean person who needs no help. First you must become aware of your disease, while you are still in your filth. Then and only then can you come to the doctor for help; that's the way it happened for me too. I would say that the moment you became aware of your problem was the beginning of your experience; the Light shined into darkness. By what other means could you have become aware of the problem? Your fellow atheists were not aware and did not acknowledge its existence.

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[info]mistressannie
2008-10-31 02:57 pm UTC (link)
I saw an article about you in my church bulletin a couple of months ago, hence why I added you to my FL. I gotta represent for Catholic sci-fi writers and junkies. Your posts have been throughly enjoyable to read, and in the case of the giant rubber duckie, downright hilarious! =D

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[info]luckymarty
2008-10-31 03:16 pm UTC (link)
You have an interesting church. My parish bulletin has never once mentioned any science fiction writer.

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[info]mistressannie
2008-10-31 03:50 pm UTC (link)
LOL...my church is rather traditional without being overly stuffy. We have a latin mass and still use communion rails. When my fiance and I went to one of our pre-wedding meetings with our parish priest, we discussed doctor who and star trek, in between paperwork and general premarital counseling questions. It was great! =)

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[info]johncwright
2008-10-31 04:43 pm UTC (link)
"I saw an article about you in my church bulletin a couple of months ago"

I think I saw that article. It was entitled CHIEF OF SINNERS JOINS THE CHURCH, was it not?

Or perhaps it was MOTHER CHURCH ONCE AGAIN EMBARRASSED BY LOUDMOUTHED SCIFFY AUTHOR -- Bishop Advises Looking Straight Ahead and Pretending He's Not With Us In Public.

Maybe I am thinking of a different article.

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[info]mistressannie
2008-10-31 04:57 pm UTC (link)
Haha! No, it wasn't anything that fun. They needed room in the bulletin to recruit for those Jesuit ninjas and albino killer priests. There's a massive shortage, dontcha know! =)

Here's the bulletin that your story appeared in. http://www.stthomasaquinas.org/Bulletins/2008-08-24.pdf

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Oh dopey me
[info]johncwright
2008-10-31 05:48 pm UTC (link)
Yes, the nice girl reporter wrote me and asked for permission to reprint my conversion story. I forgot.

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[info]fuzzybunny916
2008-11-01 04:54 am UTC (link)
Whaddya know! I go to St. Thomas Aquinas whenever I can (I live about half an hour away). Do you know Fr. Orosco? I'm trying to book him as a spiritual adviser here at the University of Dallas (I believe hes part of the attached seminary).

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[info]mistressannie
2008-11-01 03:25 pm UTC (link)
hmm....the name sounds familiar. I almost always go to the 7:30p mass, which is usually done by Fr John or Fr Vic ( aka Fr Speedy! He's from NY and talks really fast ).

Ah, UD. I've known many a person to go there! I'm poor, so I go to UTD. LOL! Well, poor AND a CS major, which I don't think UD has as a program.

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[info]fuzzybunny916
2008-11-10 03:07 am UTC (link)
I've never met Fr Vic but I love Fr John! He's so...priestly. And such a wonderful voice! And no, UD has no computer science major, only a concentration (a fancy word for 'minor'). I'm actually a bit surprised you know many who've gone there. Most of the people I talk to have no idea it exists, with a few rare exceptions.

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[info]deiseach
2008-10-31 04:55 pm UTC (link)
Also, having to have your manuscripts hand-written by monks in European scriptoria makes the time waiting for publication so much longer.

Never mind the additional production costs of gilding and lapis for the illuminations :-)

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[info]johncwright
2008-10-31 05:46 pm UTC (link)
SWEEEEET! Never realized that converting to a religion would AUTOMATICALLY allow me to have my manuscripts hand-illuminated like the book of Kells! Bring on the ninth century Irish monks! You rock, Catholic Church! Whoa-- is there a fee or something?

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Oh, absolutely!
[info]deiseach
2008-10-31 09:40 pm UTC (link)
Because the printing press is a Protestant (and hence the devil's own) invention.

I know this, you see, because in a thread on indulgences I am enmeshed in elsewhere, a poster (whom I rather suspect was a troll, because if he was serious...) claims that God raised up Gutenberg at the same time as Martin Luther to liberate the true Gospel and smash the power of the Roman church.

Obviously, once one becomes a mind-controlled slave of said Romish abomination, one must bear in mind that we don't approve of printing presses.

So monks and scriptoria it will have to be from now on, Mr. Wright :-)

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Re: Oh, absolutely!
[info]carbonelle
2008-11-01 10:09 am UTC (link)
So what do you make of nice Lutheran women who are teaching themselves hand-book binding and illumination?

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)
The reform of the reform
[info]deiseach
2008-11-01 05:38 pm UTC (link)
Those are not nice Lutheran ladies; those are deep-cover sleeper agents, infiltrated years ago, who are being activated over a carefully planned period of time, in accordance with forecasts for maximum effectiveness at turning the splinter movements back to the One True Church by seducing them through the sensual media of arts and crafts, and away from the free access to the Gospel and interpretation by the Holy Spirit.

Hey, it's all in Trent! :-)

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)
Re: The reform of the reform
[info]carbonelle
2008-11-02 05:13 am UTC (link)
***falls about laughing***

(Reply to this) (Parent)
Are you sure?
[info]surrealseraphim
2008-10-31 07:27 pm UTC (link)
Perhaps you were right about the Pope, though. After all, here he is force-choking my friend.

Okay, so maybe that's not the Pope. Maybe it's a wax sculpture of him. Either way, he finds your lack of faith disturbing.

(Reply to this) (Thread)
Re: Are you sure?
[info]johncwright
2008-10-31 07:33 pm UTC (link)
TOTALLY AWESOME!

I knew I joined the right Church! Did Martin Luther ever force-choke anyone, well, did he? The answer is of course, no! The only thing Luther ever did was expose Superman to Green Kryptonite, while attempting to sink California into the sea with a nuclear-tipped rocket!

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)
Re: Are you sure?
[info]surrealseraphim
2008-10-31 07:40 pm UTC (link)
In a word: PAPAL P0WN

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)
Re: Are you sure?
[info]surrealseraphim
2008-10-31 07:40 pm UTC (link)
Although I guess that's two words.

(Reply to this) (Parent)
The only time I ever felt a faint tinge of sympathy for Luthor
[info]deiseach
2008-11-02 05:41 pm UTC (link)
Not the attacking Superman with green Kryptonite, but sinking California beneath the waves - never could see what was wrong with that.

Sorry, any Californians out there, but you have to admit: being the New Atlantis can only be an improvement ;-)

(Reply to this) (Parent)
Re: Are you sure?
[info]gryphmon
2008-11-03 07:59 pm UTC (link)
I think Luther still owes the Pope some repair work on certain door he was rude enough to pound some nails into.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

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