Jim Austin

His previous columns are archived HERE.

JIM AUSTIN

Yea, Verily

So when the Pope was giving his I'm your new conduit to the Almighty address last week he said, "If the secular trend continues Western Civilization is doomed." As a former Hitler Youth he should know about doomed regimes.

My question is: "What secular trend?"

All the news this past week has indicated that half the population of this country is ready to don sackcloth and ashes and speak in tongues. Dim bulbs in Chicago are dodging traffic to light a candle at a water stain that they said is an earthly manifestation of the Virgin Mary. What is in Illinois water that makes Chicagoans as naive as a herd of golden retrievers?

"People of Chicago, it's a water stain." If your sister's new baby looks like Winston Churchill that doesn't mean that she really is Winston Churchill. If you have a meatball in the fridge that looks like Elvis or a Minnie Pearl potato chip, it's not really them.

GOP Senate leader Bill Frist was the guest speaker at a "Justice Sunday" meeting all across the bible belt where he exhorted the multitudes to bring a plague of frogs on the godless Democrats who hate Jesus as well as the Right Reverend President George's roster of far-right wing judicial nominees.

The deal is that the Democrats are threatening to filibuster in the Senate should the GOP insist on cramming a cadre of borderline Nazi judges down this country's throat. Filibustering is a procedural check that prevents the "tyranny of the majority." The GOP will flush the filibuster rule if they can. Then they plan to remodel the Senator's lounge to resemble a certain beer hall in Munich.

Another little indication of official disdain of all that is secular emerges whenever our President decides to show his diversity chops by having an array of Christian faiths, a Muslim Mullah, and a Rabbi sharing his stage.

What about agnostics, atheists, and undeclared? Don't we have any status in this government? Do they realize that the secular minority is bigger than all other non-Christian religions combined? A secular humanist on the dais is not likely for this regime. We'll see a priest of the Holy Church of the Tooth Fairy first.

Maybe by "secular" the Pope meant Catholic-Americans. The Catholic Church on this side of the pond has pretty much written off the Pope as irrelevant. Sensibly, they roll their eyes at the Vatican's medieval laws against masturbation, homosexuality, and birth control. American Catholics don't have litters of children anymore just to add more souls to the Vatican's ledger.

The trend here in America is a drift away from the droning pageantry of the Catholic Church and even the more liberal churches like the Anglicans and the United Church.

Where are they going, you ask?

They are off to the Pentecostal Church, the Southern Baptists, and various other holy jive centers. Apparently people want a church that will kick out the jams and get the blood flowing, speak in tongues, and lash out at their enemies with some good old fire and brimstone plus ping-pong in the basement. Transubstantiation and genuflection is tedious and old school. Love thy neighbor is way too touchy-feely. After all, the neighbor you love might be gay.

James Dobson, chairman of Focus on the Family and one of the nation's most influential evangelicals, criticized the majority of the appellate judges for being: "unelected, unaccountable, arrogant, imperious and determined to redesign the culture according to their own biases and values, and they're out of control."

It's scary to think that someone with exactly those characteristics could utter such a statement without being struck by lightning by his own God.

I say "Gimme that old time religion." That was the religion where people sat in church on Sunday, eyeballed what the guy next to them was putting in the collection plate, and the dude at the pulpit threatened you will hellfire. He didn't talk about radical judges or godless Democrats or Sainthood for influence-peddling slime merchants like Tom Delay.