Stoke up the Fire

I guess I am to Catholics as Michael Savage is to the parents of autistic kids.

I just heard what Savage said about autism. He says 99% of autistics are brats who have never been told to knock off the act. Ooooookay. After we get done spanking the autism out of them, we really need to go the other fakers, such as the blind and amputees.

I sympathize with the parents who are mad at Savage. I've had a lot of people tell me ADD doesn't exist. Rush Limbaugh, the great neurologist, pushes that theory. I don't know if it's right to call ADD a disorder, since it's so common, but it absolutely exists. As a person who has been known to put cereal in the freezer and ice cream in the pantry, I am aware that it is all too real.

I made some Catholics mad by observing that the Pope was criticizing materialism while living in an opulent palace and wearing handmade clothes and so forth. I can't believe that upset people. I didn't call him a fraud or accuse him of eating Protestant babies. And fundamentally, I was right. It's kind of weird for a church leader to live in such earthly splendor. It doesn't mean he's a charlatan, but it doesn't look good, either. CEOs of companies which are openly unreservedly dedicated to the accumulation of wealth can't match the Vatican's trappings. It seems odd for a clergyman to live there.

So far, I've been favorably impressed by this Pope. He seems to be a sincere guy with a low tolerance for BS. He appears to be a reformer, and churches need more of those. I'm sorry if it seemed like I was accusing him of being a fraud. I hope he'll be more sensitive than the last Pope, who made the mistake of posing with his arm around Yasser Arafat. When I was in Jerusalem in the 80s, that photo was everywhere. Someone turned it into a poster, and every Arab in town had one. I have to wonder how the Jews felt about that. It had to make peace overtures a lot harder to take seriously. The US equivalent would be the current Pope posing with Osama bin Laden.

Popular churches tend to have problems dealing with wealth. The excesses of Protestant televangelists are horrifying. They're not fit to lick the Pope's pricey shoes. If these guys want to receive comfortable salaries and live in nice homes, that's swell, and they are absolutely entitled to anything they can earn outside of their jobs, but taking money from old ladies on Social Security and buying private jets and air conditioned doghouses...come on. That's a bit much. And those things actually happen.

I've been learning a lot about Judaism. I read Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein's book, How Firm a Foundation, which explains the Jewish roots of Christianity. He says the Jews differ from Christians in that they don't have a negative view of materialism. That's pretty much how he puts it, and it sounds bad when you put it that way, but what I believe he meant was that Jews believe it's good to earn money and build a financial base for yourself and your family, and that asceticism is generally not good. I think that's the correct view. Most Christians probably misunderstand the Bible's teachings about money. I think the New Testament's message is that money shouldn't control you, not that you should not have it. It would be a little odd for a Jewish Messiah to condemn all wealth, especially since the disciples were businessmen who had servants. Abraham was rich. Isaac was rich. Joseph was rich. David, Solomon...it's a long list. The Bible says a good man accumulates wealth and passes it on to his children. You can't really reconcile that with a view that we should all wear dirty sandals and live in the gutter.

If they elect me Pope, I'll probably tell people to be responsible and earn money and manage it well, but not to be greedy, status-driven idiots who waste their money on yachts with gold-plated faucets in the bathrooms. I can't think of any Christian church that teaches a good balanced way of dealing with money. Maybe there's one out there somewhere.

Anyway, I would appreciate it if the people I annoyed would refrain from burning me at the stake.