... was a phrase I heard my public-high-school-educated daughter effortlessly spout the other day, clearly something she had heard repeatedly in school. I asked her what it meant and she just repeated it. I asked her what extremist Catholics might do. She had no clue as her education had been limited to slogans. Having met her teachers, it's a good bet that most of their knowledge is limited to slogans as well.
I pointed out that I was an extremist Catholic and I hung out regularly with other extremist Catholics. The most extreme of them put in a couple of nights a week at the local prisons, listening to the inmates, counseling them and doing what they can to let the inmates know someone cares about them. Ultra-extremist Catholics have even started a business designed entirely to help ex-cons get free of crime and lead a better life. These are the men I admire and seek to imitate in becoming an even more extremely extreme extremist Catholic.
So, yes, every religion has extremists. So what?
(Standard photo with snarky caption of extremist Muslims beheading or burning people omitted.)
I commend you on *your* teaching your daughter.
ReplyDeleteThanks, amigo!
ReplyDeleteOn a related note --
ReplyDeleteOne frequently sees people mindlessly repeating the Deep Thought (tm) that "Islam Needs A Reformation" ... and never grasping the fact (and doing their best to avoid even seeing it) that what we are daily seeing *is* the Islamic Reformation.
Jonah Goldberg's take on this was great: Islam doesn't need a reformation, it needs a Pope.
ReplyDeleteGood Lord! That's the last thing *we* need.
ReplyDeleteThe 'pope' in Islam is called a 'caliph'.