Fr. Z's Blog

This is what Huffington Post is offering on 24 February from the pen of the self-amused Larry Doyle.

Larry Doyle is supposed to be a humor writer, a humorist.  He writes for sophomoric TV shows.

I don’t know if he was trying to be funny in this column, but this doesn’t sound to me as if he were joshin’.

This is pretty high test bigotry, worthy of the Know Nothings (which class is making a come back) or the KKK.

The Jesus-Eating Cult of Rick Santorum

It’s time to take a good hard look at Rick Santorum’s faith.

Many of you will be shocked to learn what our possible future president believes, who he answers to, the bloody jihads his so-called church has carried on for centuries, and its current role as the tactical arm of the North American Man-Boy Love Association.

As a former member of same sect (an Irish-Catholic, the worst kind), I have read the texts, participated in the rites, and even seen behind the curtain, as it were, as a one-time altar boy, so help me. I managed to escape, but then, Santorum is in much deeper than I ever was.

Unlike Christians, Santorum and his fellow Roman Catholics participate in a barbaric ritual dating back two millennia, a “mass” in which a black-robed cleric casts a spell over some bread and wine, transfiguring it into the actual living flesh and blood of their Christ. Followers then line up to eat the Jesus meat and drink his holy blood in a cannibalistic reverie not often seen outside Cinemax.

[…]

Ordinarily I would be loathe to discuss all this, feeling that issues of faith and religion should be kept out of politics. But it’s far too late for that, and I have an obligation to expose this phony theology that threatens to supplant Christianity as our official national religion.

Need I remind you that only once in our great history has a Roman Catholic been elected president, and how tragically it ended.

Was that a subtle suggestion that Rick Santorum should be assassinated?

Irish ex-catholic anti-Catholic bigot. I’m guessing he isn’t voting GOP these days.

There’s more in his urine-yellow screed, which I will spare you.

Oh, before I forget: Benedict XVI is a Nazi.

I would not get overly worked up about this. Consider the source. What other view of the Catholic Church or of Rick Santorum could these numbskulls have?  It’s Huffington Post, after all.

My suggestion is, rather than write angry notes, right now pray Psalm 68 (Douay).  This is one of the Maledictory Psalms:

[1] Unto the end, for them that shall be changed; for David.

[2] SAVE me, O God: for the waters are come in even unto my soul. [3] I stick fast in the mire of the deep: and there is no sure standing. I am come into the depth of the sea: and a tempest hath overwhelmed me. [4] I have laboured with crying; my jaws are become hoarse: my eyes have failed, whilst I hope in my God. [5] They are multiplied above the hairs of my head, who hate me without cause. My enemies are grown strong who have wrongfully persecuted me: then did I pay that which I took not away. [6] O God, thou knowest my foolishness; and my offences are not hidden from thee: [7] Let not them be ashamed for me, who look for thee, O Lord, the Lord of hosts. Let them not be confounded on my account, who seek thee, O God of Israel. [8] Because for thy sake I have borne reproach; shame hath covered my face. [9] I am become a stranger to my brethren, and an alien to the sons of my mother. [10] For the zeal of thy house hath eaten me up: and the reproaches of them that reproached thee are fallen upon me. [11] And I covered my soul in fasting: and it was made a reproach to me. [12] And I made haircloth my garment: and I became a byword to them. [13] They that sat in the gate spoke against me: and they that drank wine made me their song. [14] But as for me, my prayer is to thee, O Lord; for the time of thy good pleasure, O God. In the multitude of thy mercy hear me, in the truth of thy salvation. [15] Draw me out of the mire, that I may not stick fast: deliver me from them that hate me, and out of the deep waters. [16] Let not the tempest of water drown me, nor the deep swallow me up: and let not the pit shut her mouth upon me. [17] Hear me, O Lord, for thy mercy is kind; look upon me according to the multitude of thy tender mercies. [18] And turn not away thy face from thy servant: for I am in trouble, hear me speedily. [19] Attend to my soul, and deliver it: save me because of my enemies. [20] Thou knowest my reproach, and my confusion, and my shame. [21] In thy sight are all they that afflict me; my heart hath expected reproach and misery. And I looked for one that would grieve together with me, but there was none: and for one that would comfort me, and I found none. [22] And they gave me gall for my food, and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink. [23] Let their table become as a snare before them, and a recompense, and a stumblingblock. [24] Let their eyes be darkened that they see not; and their back bend thou down always. [25] Pour out thy indignation upon them: and let thy wrathful anger take hold of them. [26] Let their habitation be made desolate: and let there be none to dwell in their tabernacles. [27] Because they have persecuted him whom thou hast smitten; and they have added to the grief of my wounds. [28] Add thou iniquity upon their iniquity: and let them not come into thy justice. [29] Let them be blotted out of the book of the living; and with the just let them not be written. [30] But I am poor and sorrowful: thy salvation, O God, hath set me up. [31] I will praise the name of God with a canticle: and I will magnify him with praise. [32] And it shall please God better than a young calf, that bringeth forth horns and hoofs. [33] Let the poor see and rejoice: seek ye God, and your soul shall live. [34] For the Lord hath heard the poor: and hath not despised his prisoners. [35] Let the heavens and the earth praise him; the sea, and every thing that creepeth therein. [36] For God will save Sion, and the cities of Juda shall be built up. And they shall dwell there, and acquire it by inheritance. [37] And the seed of his servants shall possess it; and they that love his name shall dwell therein.

I think it is within the bonds of charity to pray for a sweeping failure of all of Huffington Posts’ servers.  Also, for HufPo and for Larry Doyle personally, parking tickets and car towings, flats and transmission problems, unrecoverable hard drive failures for every computer of every employee at work and at home, toothaches and chilblains, an invasion of bedbugs, incessant diarrhea, relentless dandruff and all manner of mange for their pets and for their pets’ offspring.

May they all be given special thorns until they come around.

Seriously … pray that psalm. You might also consider an additional offering of a fast. Some demons are dealt with through prayer and fasting (Matthew 17:21).

I also recommend to priests and bishops that they consider using the old “Leonine Prayers” after Masses in their parishes, cathedrals, etc.

And there is this.

UPDATE 29 Feb 14:10:

I see that the young papist, Tom Peters picked up on this story also.

He makes a good point: “the double-standard the Huffington Post applies: a standard which allows their writers to publish literally anything offensive about catholics, however untrue or mean-spirited, while other “protected” groups are never portrayed negatively (just compare the HuffPo Religion section and the HuffPo LGBT section to see what I mean).”

But then again, hating Catholics is the Last Acceptable Prejudice.