“To be lighthouse, we have to be light, even when the world prefers darkness.”

Msgr. Charles Pope replies to “Friendly Atheist” whose nom de plume is not exactly accurate and I am not referring to the atheist part. Really love the way the Monsignor takes up points in response in a clear and charitable manner. He points out logical fallacies and how words such as legitimacy don’t mean what this commenter thinks they mean.

It is also interesting how many atheists take up the side of liberal Catholics in this case the four Arlington Catechists who won’t take a fidelity oath. Really with the atheists point of view aren’t liberal/conservative/luke-warm/whatever-definition Catholics all just plain wrong for believing in God in the first place? Why take sides when all the players are wrong? Though as Friendly Atheist says “I’m loving this implosion from the sidelines.” The implosion he is referring to is 4 out of 5,000 cathechists not taking the loyalty oath. Not much of an implosion. Maybe it is a form of schadenfreude whenever there is some dispute within the Church with the Magisterium seen as the uber-theists and liberal Catholics seeming closer to the atheist position. Or maybe it is kind of like rooting for a football team you don’t really like because they are playing against a team you hate.

In related atheist comment box news, Mark Shea posts today:

So there’s some dude with the handle L.W. Dickel who has been trying to post here (unsuccessfully thanks to my sleek, leonine ban filter). He posts the same profanity-ridden blasphemous rant over and over again and, as is always the custom with these social inadepts, congratulates himself for being a Thinking Man. After the third or fourth try, I got curious googled his name to see if he was simply filled with hate for this blog or for theistic blogs in general. Turns out the dude is in comboxes everwhere, cutting and pasting the exact same blasphemous monomaniacal rant again and again.

Because Thinking Men cut and paste.

I got hit by the same commenter and while I am very loose in regards to allowing comments, this one was deleted for profanity. I have seen other commenter of this stripe who post the same thing on multiple blogs totally unrelated to the topic at hand. A form of atheist vain repetition like a Buddhist prayer wheel spinning out automatic prayers.

Though maybe the point of this post is to redirect my own constant atheist commenter to another blog as atheist link bait. Oh wait, did I write that publicly? Oh well, wishful thinking.