WANNABE VICTIMS?

I've been meaning to write about this for a couple of weeks.  I came across an article written by somebody named Jeffrey Weiss.  He was reacting to a couple of articles he'd read and felt the need to weigh in on the problem of whining Christians, describing them as "wannabe victims."

Apparently a bunch of priests from nearby Catholic churches - this is Boston, after all - rushed to the scene seeking to offer spiritual succor to their faithful. Only to be turned away from the actual blast site. She quotes a priest who had been turned away; "Once it was clear we couldn't get inside, we came back here to St. Clement's, set up a table with water and oranges and bananas to serve people, and helped people however we could."

To which Lawler said: "Doesn't that nicely capture what a once-Catholic, now-secular culture expects from the Church? It's not essential for priests to administer the sacraments; in fact it's unwelcome. But if they could just stay out of the way, and give people something to eat, that would be fine."

Proof that anti-Catholicism has wormed its way back into American culture? You have got to be kidding.

Then he elaborates on his objection:

Did you watch any of the video of the blast scene? Chaos and danger and hundreds of wounded for whom any delay in care could have meant the difference between life and death. Anybody who rushed to help get the wounded to safety and medical attention were welcome. Prayer dispensers - Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster - not so much.

Yeah, I know some Catholics want to claim that their sacraments are so important that an exception should have been made. But to non-Catholics, that's just so much abracadabra. Many faiths have their own rituals for the dying just as important as [sic] them as the Last Rites are to Catholics. And first responders had no time to sort them out.

Yes, there were victims in Boston that terrible day. None of them happened to be Catholic priests.

This, of course, is asinine.  Nobody is claiming that the priests were the "victims."  Certainly not the priests themselves.  No, the victims here were the blast victims who were denied the comfort and reassurance of a priest or other clergy.  Some of those victims may very well have been the kind of Catholics who take the sacraments seriously.  That was the point of the article that so irritated Weiss.  Here's a sample of the egregious "whining":

Father Carzon, the seminary rector, said he was "disappointed" when he wasn't allowed at the scene of the bombing, but he understood the reasoning and left without protest. "Once it was clear we couldn't get inside, we came back here to St. Clement's, set up a table with water and oranges and bananas to serve people, and helped people however we could."

By that point, spectators and runners who had been unable to finish the marathon were wandering around, "frightened, disoriented, confused and cold," he said. Father Carzon was able to minister to a runner who wasn't injured but had assisted a bystander with catastrophic injuries. Two hours later, the runner, a Protestant, was still walking around the area in shock and disbelief.

"He came over, and said, 'You're a priest, I need to talk to someone, I need to talk,' and he was able to pour out some of the story of what had happened," Father Carzon said. "Then there was an off-duty firefighter who was there as a spectator, and he, too, got pushed out of the perimeter, and he ended up here to pray. There was a feeling of helplessness we had when we couldn't get close. But doing the little that we could - putting out a table with water and fruit, being there - I realize how much that 'little' was able to do."

Boy, that priest sure is obnoxious!  No wonder Jeffrey Weiss is annoyed...  The Wall Street Journal article concludes this way:

In light of the devastation in Boston, the denial of access to clergy is a trifling thing, and it might even have been an individual's error. (The Boston Police Department did not respond to a request for comment on its policy regarding clergy at the scenes of emergencies.)

But it is a poignant irony that Martin Richard, the 8-year-old boy who died on Boylston Street, was a Catholic who had received his first Communion just last year. As Martin lay dying, priests were only yards away, beyond the police tape, unable to reach him to administer last rites - a sacrament that, to Catholics, bears enormous significance.

As the Rev. Richard Cannon, a priest in Hopkinton, Mass., where the marathon begins, said in a homily on the Sunday after the bombings, "When the world can seem very dark and confusing, the presence of a priest is a presence of hope."

How DARE they! How DARE those priests want to minister to the wounded and the distraught!  Those heartless bastards!!!

All kidding aside, I do find it fairly pathetic that some guy in Dallas, far removed from the scene of the terrorist bombing in Boston, felt the need to write such an article in the first place.  Who is the real "wannabe victim" here?  I'd say it's the clown who feels compelled to complain about a priest who simply wants to do what priests are called by God and trained to do: minister to those in need of spiritual comfort.

Now let me introduce you to the true "wannabe victim."  His name is Mikey Weinstein and he has a bug up his ass about Christians in the military.  A clown like Weinstein would be good for a few laughs if it weren't for the media and military types who actually take him seriously.

Mikey Weinstein

This guy has a slightly different outlook than a Fred Phelps or a Terry Jones (in fact, he undoubtedly sees them in his mind whenever he thinks about Christians in general) but the reality is that he's no better than they are.  They are lunatics who go out of their way to be as offensive as possible.  That's what he does, the disturbing difference being that unlike the other nutjobs, he has had the opportunity to meet with generals at the Pentagon!

Weinstein is a guy who goes around calling himself a Republican, based apparently on his claim that he was a low-level staffer in the Reagan White House.  Who really knows if that's true or not.  But to give you a taste of just how confused this creep really is, here's what he told an interviewer from The Advocate back in 2010:

We thought to be a good soldier you had to shoot straight, not be straight. I felt this was a huge cop-out by Clinton, and we are furious with the Obama administration. I'm a Republican, but I'm also a Republican who voted for Clinton twice, Gore and Kerry, and for Obama. I get the fact that our economy and health care are important. However, the concept of "don't ask, don't tell" is the most pernicious, evil thing that I've seen come out in regard to privacy in America ever.

Got that?  He's a "Republican" who hasn't voted for a Republican presidential candidate in more than 20 years.  (Note that in the article he also claims to have been an "adviser" to Ross Perot...but apparently didn't vote for him, either.)  He claims he voted for Clinton twice, despite the fact that in Clinton's first term he signed "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," which Weinstein describes as "the most pernicious, evil thing" that he's ever seen.  And yet the so-called "Republican" still voted for Clinton rather than Dole in 1996.

Is Weinstein insane?  A pathological liar?  Or some bizarre combination of both? Whatever his problems are, they clearly render him totally unfit for an audience with Pentagon officials.  Would anyone let Fred Phelps or Terry Jones have a meeting with military officials?  Of course not.  

But, hey...maybe I'm getting a little carried away with my descriptions of him.  Surely he can't be as bad as all that...right?  Via David French at National Review:

In describing Weinstein, I don't use the word "extremist" lightly. In fact, I hate how the word is over-used — often to dismiss truly mainstream opposing views as a means of avoiding argument. But how else can one describe a person who would make statements like this:

Our Pentagon has been turned into a Pentacostalgon, and our DOD has been turned into an imperialist, fascistic contagion of unconstitutional triumphalism by people that want to kill us – or have their version of Jesus kill us if we don’t accept their Biblical world view.

or this:

The dominionist Christian will say, "Nothing can constrain me from proselytizing my version of Christianity." And these people we find have several particular malodorous stenches about them. It’s like walking into a stench in my native state of New Mexico here on a hot August afternoon and having your nostrils assaulted by the stenches of 10,000 rotting swine it's so bad.  The first stench is viral misogyny. The fact that women should be consigned to selecting food, preparing food, cleaning up after meals, spreading their legs, getting pregnant and raising children. The next [stench] is virulent anti-Semitism. The next is virulent Islamophobia.

or this:

We're fighting al-Qaeda. We're fighting the Taliban, and we're turning our own military in the exact same thing.

 or this [speaking of Jerry Falwell]:

The dead guy – Jerry Falwell, and I'm sorry but I’m very glad he's dead. [applause] I'm very sorry if anyone is upset about that.

or this:

Today, we face incredibly well-funded gangs of fundamentalist Christian monsters who terrorize their fellow Americans by forcing their weaponized and twisted version of Christianity upon their helpless subordinates in our nation’s armed forces.

I'm sorry, but these are just ravings. And he met with generals? And the Washington Post, CNN, ABC News and others treats him as a serious commentator on faith in the military? Substitute "Muslim" for "Christian" in any of these comments and the brass wouldn't let him darken the Pentagon's doors.

Fortunately, the House GOP is aware of this nutjob and they are looking into his questionable activities.  As with most cockroaches, when the light gets turned on him, he'll scurry back to his nest, where he can spew hate speech to his heart's content.

Here are some related articles:

Pentagon Taps Anti-Christian Extremist for Religious Tolerance Policy

Pentagon May Court Martial Soldiers Who Share Christian Faith

Pentagon Defends Unconstitutional Policy Against Soldiers Sharing Faith

Senators to Hagel: Explain DOD Policy on Religion

Congress Must Tell Pentagon to Protect Troops' First Amendment Rights

59 Congress Members Demand Hagel Explain Meeting with Anti-Christian Extremist

Congress Investigating Obama Admin’s Hostility to Religion in the Military