Well, I can tell already that I need to follow my last post with some words of explanation. You’d think I’d learn to predict when things I write will cause anger and hurt feelings. I can’t. I guess every writer is myopic in this way. If my words hurt someone’s feelings or insulted them, I’m sorry about that.

Because someone asked, yes there was a first piece, which was more angry. I suppose that was my own way of working some things out.

I consider what I’ve written to be in the spirit of a political cartoon. I have nothing against Catholicism. Heck, I’m a huge fan of Saint Francis, Thomas Merton, and Henry Nouwen. My artwork on this site is done by a Catholic brother. As a protestant, and a rather low-church one at that, I confess that the opulence of the papacy is beyond my comprehension. But I’ve not written about that.

But I do have a problem with the pope’s decision to go forward with such a public baptism. I mean, what is so special about this man? How many people does the pope baptize? Why was he chosen and why was this done in such a public forum? If the man wants to become a Christian, that could have been taken care of in the way that it happens 99.999% of the time. In a local church and not in front of the cameras.

I consider this satirical piece to be speaking against blatant proselytizing between religions. I’ve written about this before. [1] I think the amount of violence that has historically taken place between Christians and Muslims and Jews is shameful. These three religions, all of whom claim Abraham as a father, need to learn to respect each other. We are moving into a new world. There are new challenges ahead.

I believe trying to convert each other is “Old World” behavior and it needs to stop.

This man apparently wasn’t a practicing Muslim. And he wanted to become a Christian. Fine. Wonderful. That’s the free choice of any human being. But why would the pope go out of his way to make this a public spectacle? Why tweak the already sensitive noses of Muslims at a time like this? Someone in the comments suggested it might have been a reply to Osama Bin Laden’s recent statements. I certainly hope not. I certainly hope the pope doesn’t stoop to such a thing.

But this public baptism of a Muslim indicates the growing irrelevancy of the pope. That’s the point behind the symbolic gibberish Latin and poking fun of his opulent clothing. The pope seems out of touch with reality on this issue.

Major leaders of world religions need to be a part of the solution, not a part of the problem.

However, now that I read this with some distance from it, my teasing satire went too far. Ironically, that comes not from any sense of Protestant-Catholic division in me, but from a lack of it. I think we're all Christians. And I feel free to speak out when my own spiritual family does something like this. For the severity of my satire and for the feelings that were hurt, I apologize.

But I did write it, so I suppose I'll leave it as it is and simply take the heat for it. That's part of the world of blogging. People pounding away at their keyboards, expressing all sorts of things. Sometimes we do it well, sometimes we go too far, sometimes we don't go far enough. From behind the keyboard, it can be hard to make the right call.

rlp