The Thinking Housewife: "The Non-Gentleman From Wolfeboro"

The Pro-Islam Bergoglio 

(and the Phony Vatican II Church)

The Thinking Housewife
January 2, 2014
***

Mark 7: 1-23 

The Source of Your Pollution

7 1-4 The Pharisees, along with some religion scholars who had come from Jerusalem, gathered around him. They noticed that some of his disciples weren’t being careful with ritual washings before meals. The Pharisees—Jews in general, in fact—would never eat a meal without going through the motions of a ritual hand-washing, with an especially vigorous scrubbing if they had just come from the market (to say nothing of the scourings they’d give jugs and pots and pans). 5 The Pharisees and religion scholars asked, “Why do your disciples flout the rules, showing up at meals without washing their hands?” 6-8 Jesus answered, “Isaiah was right about frauds like you, hit the bull’s-eye in fact:

These people make a big show of saying the right thing,
    but their heart isn’t in it.
They act like they are worshiping me,
    but they don’t mean it.
They just use me as a cover
    for teaching whatever suits their fancy,
Ditching God’s command
    and taking up the latest fads.”

9-13 He went on, “Well, good for you. You get rid of God’s command so you won’t be inconvenienced in following the religious fashions! Moses said, ‘Respect your father and mother,’ and, ‘Anyone denouncing father or mother should be killed.’ But you weasel out of that by saying that it’s perfectly acceptable to say to father or mother, ‘Gift! What I owed you I’ve given as a gift to God,’ thus relieving yourselves of obligation to father or mother. You scratch out God’s Word and scrawl a whim in its place. You do a lot of things like this.” 14-15 Jesus called the crowd together again and said, “Listen now, all of you—take this to heart. It’s not what you swallow that pollutes your life; it’s what you vomit—that’s the real pollution.” 17 When he was back home after being with the crowd, his disciples said, “We don’t get it. Put it in plain language.” 18-19 Jesus said, “Are you being willfully stupid? Don’t you see that what you swallow can’t contaminate you? It doesn’t enter your heart but your stomach, works its way through the intestines, and is finally flushed.” (That took care of dietary quibbling; Jesus was saying that all foods are fit to eat.) 20-23 He went on: “It’s what comes out of a person that pollutes: obscenities, lusts, thefts, murders, adulteries, greed, depravity, deceptive dealings, carousing, mean looks, slander, arrogance, foolishness—all these are vomit from the heart. There is the source of your pollution.” http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark+7&version=MSG

Dear Fred,

Thanks for bringing Laura's comments to my attention. http://www.thinkinghousewife.com/wp/2014/05/the-non-gentleman-from-wolfeboro/

I am grateful she has the good sense to fault New Hampshire Police Commissioner, Robert --"Obama's a fucking nigger" -- Copeland, rather than laud or validate him.

Even so, I am not impressed.

Item: 

How can Laura "agree" that Obama's birth certificate is an "obvious forgery?"

Analogy...

When I first watched video footage of Building 7 imploding alongside The Twin Towers, I understood how "9/11 Truthers" could conclude that Mohamed Atta's "presumed" attack on the World Trade Center was an "inside job."

Watch the video yourself. Is it not "obviously" an inside job?

"9/11 Truth: What Happened to Building 7"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEuJimaumW4

However, when ideology's tunnel vision is expanded by brighter and broader light, what seems "obvious" at the outset is anything but. 

"Footage that kills the conspiracy theories: 

Unseen 9/11 footage shows WTC Building 7 consumed by fire"

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2056088/Footage-kills-conspiracy-theories-Rare-footage-shows-WTC-7-consumed-fire.html

As much as the "lesser angels of my nature" would delight in discovering Smirk and Snarl as traitors -- in addition to murderous war criminals -- I cannot agree that "Truther" conclusions about an "inside job" are "obvious," just as I cannot subscribe to the "obvious" falsification of Obama's birth certificate. 

(An aside... It is rarely remarked that Obama would remain an American citizen, eligible for the presidency, even if born in Kenya, just as Mitt Romney's Dad, George - a 1968 GOP presidential candidate - was an American citizen born in Mexico. http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/05/george-romney-for-president-1968.html)

The following Snopes analysis introduces sufficient doubt to prevent reasonable people from declaring Obama's birth certificate an "obvious forgery." http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/birthers/birthcertificate.asp

***

But back to "The Non-Gentleman From Wolfeboro..."

Remarkably, Laura's correspondent, James, invalidates his own position by arguing that New Hampshire Police Commissioner Robert Copeland should be faulted for using the verb "fucking," not the noun, "nigger."

How true-to-form that a blog "in bed" with White Supremacists sees fit to fault generic vulgarity while exculpating -- or at least diminishing the relative significance of -- hateful speech whose purpose is to strip human beings of dignity.  

The word "fucking" is indeed "vulgar." 

But if someone referred to me as "copulating," "mating," "love-making," "coupling," "laying," "humping," "shagging," "intercoursing" -- or even "fucking" -- no fundamental significance would attach. 

Yes, use of the word "fucking" is indecorous, but nothing more than a breach of courtesy, not a breach of morality. (I have long marveled that American conservatives are courteous-to-a-fault, yet just below their Pharisaic surface, lurks blood-lust passion to rain death and destruction on the poor and oppressed. It is rightly noted that right-wing Americans have never seen a war they didn't like - including the travesties of Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and Uncle Sam's surrogate wars in El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua. Ninety five year old Air Force general friend, AWC, says "We haven't fought a good war since World War II." See "Three Minute Video Excerpt" from Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Why I Am Opposed To The War In Vietnam" - http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/03/m.html)

On the other hand, if someone called me "sub-human," "bestial," or "animal" (in a specifically non-human sense), the animus behind such descriptors would intend the denial of my humanity, a judgment that would "justify" my sub-human vilification, thus depriving me of "equal protection" before The Law.

When modern "conservatives" are not showing someone The Gates of Hell, they just don't "feel right." 

"Obamacare And The Hard, Central Truth Of Contemporary Conservatism"

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/04/obamacare-and-hard-central-fact-of.html

Often, "conservative" "happiness" depends on the delight they take in wounding others. 

And if God will not wound others, conservatives will mete out punishment themselves, certain that God has ordained them to be his "smiting hand" on Earth. 

In the conservative mind, vengeance, vindictiveness and punishment trump love, mercy and compassion.

"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction." 

Devout Christian, Blaise Pascal

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blaise_Pascal

***

As you know, I believe there is as much truth in what is "unsaid" as in what is "said."

Similarly, rich contextualization provides our best approximation of Truth and deliberate de-contextualization is the work of scoundrels in league with The Prince of Darkness.

In order to probe my belief in "the visible and the invisible," I have used key-words to search all Laura's posts for the last six months and could find no substantive reference to "love," "mercy" or "compassion." 

"I want mercy, not sacrifice."

Matthew 9:10-13

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-mercilessness-of-conservative.html

On February 18, 2011, Laura did make reference to "Love" in a "Featured Post" entitled "Courtship and Love." 

That post began: "Brett Stevens on the Economic Value of Chastity" http://www.thinkinghousewife.com/wp/category/courtship-and-love/

And Jesus sayeth unto them: "Be ever cognizant of the economic value of chastity."

***

Then there's Laura's "last word" on the subject: "I’d have to think about a good insult that gets across that he (Obama) is a fake, a phony, a liar and a demagogue."

More than a waste of time, the belabored contrivance of "good insults" impresses me as spiritually toxic.

Elsewhere Laura refers to "other ways to insult him" as if devising insults is a laudable Christian enterprise. 

To what end Laura?

Is it the "trampling on" or the "arrogant exultation" that appeals most?

Jesus sayeth unto his followers: "Come, devise good insults."

in·sult

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2. 
   

   
   

Origin

mid 16th century (as a verb in the sense ‘exult, act arrogantly’): from Latin insultare ‘jump or trample on,’ from in- ‘on’ + saltare, from salire ‘to leap.’ The noun (in the early 17th century denoting an attack) is from French insulte or ecclesiastical Latin insultus . The main current senses date from the 17th century, the medical use dating from the early 20th cent.

'You can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out God hates all the same people you do.' 
Tom Weston S. J.

http://www.jrclosaltos.org/archive/person/fr-thomas-weston-s-j/

I stand slack-jawed at the lack of charity among traditionalist Catholics. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditionalist_Catholic

Pax tecum

Alan

PS The more I read Laura, the more she comes across as a person trying to avoid the punishment of a vengeful God -- even a terrorist God -- than someone eager to share "The Good News." 

"G.K. Chesterton: On Charity, Hope and Universal Salvation"

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/10/chesterton-on-charity-and-universal.html

Consider the following post -- "The Road To Hell Is Well Traveled" -- and try to square it with "The Joy of The Gospel."

The Road to Hell Is Well-Traveled

Sunday, December 29, 2013

MOST people, including most Catholics, end up in hell. St. Leonard of Port Maurice spoke on this “terrible mystery” in the 18th century.

POSTED BY LAURA WOOD. SEND COMMENTS TO: THETHINKINGHOUSEWIFE

***

"Do not dread sin.

Dread is sin."

Alan Watts

***

Alan: The Catholic Encyclopedia tells us that St. Leonard and his "colleagues always practiced the greatest austerities and most severe penances..." and that late in life, Leonard "founded the monastery of Icontro, on a peak in the mountains... whither he and his assistants could retire from time to time after missions, and devote themselves to... fresh austerities."

It is no secret that the church has always harbored a wide range of views and practices. In this trove of diversity we must choose the views and practices best suited to our own development. 

I was baptized at St. Philip Neri church in Rochester, New York, and have always harbored special devotion to this playful, generous, always charitable, laughingly cheerful man - "the patient reformer who leaves outward things alone and works from within, depending rather on the hidden might of sacrament and prayer than on drastic policies of external improvement; the director of souls who attaches more value to mortification of the reason than to bodily austerities, protests that men may become saints in the world no less than in the cloister, dwells on the importance of serving God in a cheerful spirit... the founder of a Congregation which relies more on personal influence than on disciplinary organization, and prefers the spontaneous practice of counsels of perfection to their enforcement by means of vows; above all, the saint of God, who is so irresistibly attractive, so eminently lovable in himself, as to win the title of the "Amabile santo". http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12018b.htm  

In Philip Neri's Wikipedia entry we learn  that "St. Philip possessed a playful humour, combined with a shrewd wit. He considered a cheerful temper to be more Christian than a melancholy one, and carried this spirit into his whole life: "A joyful heart is more easily made perfect than a downcast one." This was the secret of his popularity and of his place in the folklore of the Roman poor." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Neri

Wikipedia continues: "Practical commonplaceness," says Frederick William Faber in his panegyric of Neri, "was the special mark which distinguishes his form of ascetic piety from the types accredited before his day. He looked like other men ... he was emphatically a modern gentleman, of scrupulous courtesy, sportive gaiety, acquainted with what was going on in the world, taking a real interest in it, giving and getting information, very neatly dressed, with a shrewd common sense always alive about him, in a modern room with modern furniture, plain, it is true, but with no marks of poverty about it—In a word, with all the ease, the gracefulness, the polish of a modern gentleman of good birth, considerable accomplishments, and a very various information." Accordingly, he was ready to meet the needs of his day to an extent and in a manner which even the versatile Jesuits, who much desired to enlist him in their company, did not rival; and, though an Italian priest and head of a new religious order, his genius was entirely unmonastic and unmedieval, frequent and popular preaching, unconventional prayer, and unsystematized, albeit fervent, private devotion. Philip Neri prayed, "Let me get through today, and I shall not fear tomorrow." ... (H)is great merit was the instinctive tact which showed him that the system of monasticism could never be the leaven of secular life, but that something more homely, simple, and everyday in character was needed for the new time.

***

St. Philip Neri: Practical Joker

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/03/saint-philip-neri-trickster.html

***

In the end, "we pay our money and take our chances." 

I'll take my chances with St. Philip, a man overflowing with charity and cheer.

At the other extreme, I suspect St. Leonard of intimate familiarity with Hell because, due to insufficient charity and cheer, he spent so much time there.

***

Laura's community is obsessed with the humanly "built-up" structures of traditional Catholicism, not the actual life and teaching of Yeshua. She (and her readers) are unusually focused on "The Majesty of Monarchy," devoting more blog space to the pope's ermine stole than The Good News itself.  http://www.thinkinghousewife.com/wp/2013/09/an-interview-with-pope-francis/

The Non-Gentleman from Wolfeboro

http://www.thinkinghousewife.com/wp/2014/05/the-non-gentleman-from-wolfeboro/

JAMES N. writes:

After some reflection, I’ve developed some nuanced opinions about this story of the police commissioner in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire. This guy was sitting in Nolan’s, a family restaurant with a small dining room and bar. When you dine at Nolan’s, your fellow diners are not far away.

Excuse the profanity, but he called Obama a “f***ing nigger,” and when a person close by demurred, he snapped back something to the effect, “Yeah, I said it!”

Now when I was growing up, people, particularly our elders whom we were taught to respect, didn’t call anybody a f***ing anything in public. That remains a standard to which we should aspire. If this man had called Obama a “f***ing asshole,” for example, he should have been embarrassed at the least, especially if, as is quite likely, there were children within earshot.

So he’s not in trouble for the adjective, but for the noun. This is an important “social X-ray,” to borrow from Tom Wolfe, which should not escape our notice before Mr. Copeland’s upcoming inevitable decision to spend more time tending his roses.

The recent, and thankfully more well-known Cliven Bundy and Donald Sterling cases, as well as this minor local contretemps, all illustrate the moral panic brought on by the compulsive need to “discover the white racist”. Why has this become so intense in the second decade of the 21st Century, when white racists are so rare?

It has happened because the predictions of the great and the good about what would happen in America when the “freedom struggle” was won have not come true. Since it is no longer possible for what my mother used to call “people of good will” to ignore the evidence before their eyes, they have latched on to a narrative that ascribes all the growing disorder and dysfunction, the failure of everything they wanted and everything they have done, to “white racism”. Since real white racists are so hard to find, when one is (supposedly) discovered, he stands as proof of the theorem.

As with so much else, Lawrence Auster had the subject covered at VFR.

Anyway, Mr. Copeland, who was raised at a time when the concept of being a gentleman was widely taught and practiced should at a minimum apologize for foul language in public, especially in a family venue. Given the nature of his civic responsibilities, perhaps he will see the wisdom of tending his own garden, even at the cost of a small victory for the local leftists. His “principle” which he is defending isn’t really worth it.

Laura writes:

Well said. I have no sympathy for the commissioner. Any public official who talks about the president in such language is a disgusting low life and is not deserving of a public position.

— Comments —

George Weigenbaum writes:

I disagree. Until comments like the police commissioner’s are regularly made, we have no chance of ending BRA. Who do you think Obama is anyway? He’s your and my employee. We pay his salary. He’s just incompetent hired help.

Laura writes:

He’s more than just a hired employee. He’s a duly elected president and there are other ways to insult him without resorting to profanity.

Mr. Weigenbaum writes:

I am open to suggestion. How would you insult Obama? Have you seen his “birth certificate”? It’s an obvious forgery. I conclude Obama is no more legitimate in his office than the “Pope” is in his.

 Laura writes:

Agreed, but it’s wrong to use that kind of profanity in referring to either. The N-word, which blacks use all the time to put each other in place, is not the worst of it, but still there’s something low about a white using it toward a black.

I don’t know. I’d have to think about a good insult that gets across that he is a fake, a phony, a liar and a demagogue.

On Mon, May 19, 2014 at 9:48 PM, Fred Owens <froghospital911@gmail.com> wrote:

Laura Wood did not approve of the NH cop's harsh language  -- check it out

-- 

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