Welcome, Democrat Blog Readers

Welcome to the Vanguard.

Several liberal blogs have found Katie’s post about our brave pastor, Fr. Joel McNeil, and the letter he sent to the St. William’s parishioners recently.

These bloggers have unfortunately not commented on the post itself but instead made blog posts on their own blogs and linked to ours, which I discovered using my l337 hax0r skillz (aka Google analytics and wordpress incoming links widget).

So i went to two of their blogs, registered, and then commented on their posts, pointing out this or that fact or offering some constructive criticism about their criticism.

Some of them commented in reply and said hateful things toward me, a person unknown to them, and about Fr. Joel, whom they don’t know, and about the Catholic Church, of which they are (hopefully invincibly) ignorant.

Ms. Susan D. Bankston called me a “damn fool” (which is 75% worse than just a plain fool or a village idiot) and said that Fr. Joel crossed the line between the separation of church and state.  She demonstrates that she has a fundamental misunderstanding of what the separation of church and state means; I encourage her to read an earlier blog post I wrote about it here.

Excerpt:

[Thomas] Jefferson affirms that religious liberties were inalienable, God-given rights, and that the wall of separation between Church and State was “not to limit religious activities in public; rather, they were to limit the power of the government to prohibit or interfere with those expressions.”

I wonder if Ms. Bankston was as up-in-arms when Sen. Pelosi and Sen. Biden went on “Meet the Press” a few months ago and spoke (falsely) about what the Catholic Church teaches?  They crossed the same wall between church and state by making claims about the Church as senators of the State.

Moving onto some of the other bloggers, McBlogger became irate with me for connecting the same-sex marriage agenda with the parishioner at St. William’s who is running for office.  Why did I connect them?  Because two organizations promoting same-sex marriage have publicly endorsed this candidate and she has posted it on her website.  Why would an organization endorse a candidate who was not sympathetic to their ideology?

Planned Parenthood has given her tens of thousands of dollars and endorses her.  Are we not to think that she supports Planned Parenthood’s agenda?  Does Planned Parenthood often endorse candidates who hold views diametrically opposed to theirs?  Unlikely.

Off the Kuff linked to the post and called Fr. Joel’s charitable, pastoral, and tactful letter a pernicious attack.

I do not know any of these bloggers, but I am willing to believe the best about them.  I also don’t know my fellow parishioner running for office, but if we do meet, I would strive to treat her with the respect and honor that is due to each of us as children of God, or for our non-Christian brothers and sisters as children in humanity.

Minds and hearts aren’t changed for the better by being cruel to each other.  Only through respectful dialogue and charity (love) can we build relationships with others, even with those who disagree with us, and work for the common good of all persons.

I spend hours on a daily basis surrounded by people who do not hold the same beliefs that I do with regard to God, the sanctity of human life, and politics, just to name a few, but I count many of those people as my good friends and look forward to talking with them everyday.

We are all Americans, and whoever wins this election, we will lose the battle for the soul of our country if we let love of others die in our hearts.