WYD Party-Poopers

Reasonable protesters have had enough! They want their Cologne nice and secular like they're used to. They're sick and tired of these state-supported Fools cluttering up the joint with their Christian nonsense. Don't they understand how unReasonable it all is? IPS has the hatchet-job here.

Like all good Reasonable journalists, Maricel Drazer makes sure that the readers get the only side that matters--the Reasonable side. Thus, dribble like this makes it to print:

The "Committee for Pagan Fun", born out of opposition to the Roman Catholic Church's World Youth Day, was created by organisations and individuals who called for the creation of "religion-free zones."

Um, "religion-free zones" would be any big European City on any given day where a WYD was not happening. Do you think you could suck-it-up for one week? Do it for the kids, man!

The German city of Cologne has been flooded this week by hundreds of thousands of young Roman Catholics from all over the world, who have occupied just about every public space, to take part in the World Youth Day activities that began on Tuesday and included a visit by Pope Benedict XVI.

"Occupied." Now there's a nice, neutral term. It has all the peaceful imagery of an infantry charge with gunships launching rockets overhead. I half expect to see Tom Hanks come screaming over the Rhine!

It's a pilgrimage! Get a hold of yourself! You're practically wetting your pants over a pilgrimage!

The Committee, made up of artists, psychologists, philosophers, pacifists, atheists and people who do not identify with any religion, has organised marches against World Youth Day, whose events stretch through Sunday.

Yes, how brave and noble of these representatives of Europe's overwhelmingly secular intelligentsia to attempt to upstage a pilgrimage for the world's Roman Catholic youth. What undeniable courage! To actually advocate the overwhelmingly accepted practice of secularism during a one-week pilgrimage! I'm overwhelmed. Overwhelmed!

The Committee also complains that one denomination has temporarily taken over this city on the banks of the Rhine, and to a lesser extent the nearby Düsseldorf and Bonn.

Yeah. It's not as if that one denomination doesn't have strong cultural ties to the city of Cologne or Germany. It's not as though one-third of Germans are Roman Catholic or anything. What an imposition by a "denomination." How dare they show their faces in public!

"Cologne has been invaded by an army of sanctimonious people," said theologian Michael Schmidt Salomón, spokesman for the Committee. "With our religion-free zones, we want to offer asylum to all of those who feel persecuted by this state-sponsored 'holiness'," he told IPS.

Isn't this gentleman in an odd profession, considering how he scare quotes "holiness" and sees young international pilgrims as an "army of sanctimonious people." With that kind of power to read hearts and minds, he'd put John Edwards out of business! Imagine: He knows that 400,000 young people from all over the world are all sanctimonious! Incredible! What could he tell about the rest of us! Somebody give that man an agent!

Mr. Drazer continues his defamation of characterbalanced report with such wonderful insights as the following:

"many of the conflicts and wars around the world are caused by religion or fuelled by religious propaganda.

Yeah, like World War I, World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Persian Gulf War, The War on Terror, The Iraq War. Yeah, religions been so busy in the last ninety-one years! Oh, wait! Wasn't it the Atheistic totalitarian regimes of Nazi Germany and the Stalinist Communists states in Asia that started these conflicts? Could it be that Atheism has killed more people in sixty-five years then all of Christianity did in 2,000? Perish the thought!

The peace movement used to fight for nuclear weapons free zones, and today we believe it's a good idea to also fight for religion-free zones."

Of course that makes sense! Everybody knows how many lives religion can incinerate indiscriminately with temperatures hotter than the sun! Why didn't I think of that?

"We are wondering why those who have no religion should subsidise this Catholic show. Non-believers who pay their taxes are forced to help finance an event of Catholic propaganda," protested Schmidt Salomón

The same reason why believers that oppose abortion are forced to help finance mass murder and secularist propaganda. That's the price one pays for living in a representative political system. I guess Mr. Schmidt Salomón would prefer to live in a totalitarian dictatorship like East Germany used to have. If he was in charge, of course.

Man, I'm laughing so hard I'm losing my lunch. I could fisk this thing all night and still not stop laughing! I'm going to eat. Let's continue this later.

Update: Well, that was fast, wasn't it? Time for more fisking!

Mr. Drazer, undeterred by the his boyz' incomprehension of reality, continues:

The Committee is not opposed to Catholicism, but argues that religion should be a private matter, and demands the effective separation of church and state.

That's right! Get out of public. Religion is embarrassing! Only secularists deserve subsidies. It's the only Reasonable thing to do! So what if 2/3 of the country is religious? So what if the only German tradition of church-state separation in recent memory was the Third Reich or Warsaw Pact East Germany? Next thing you know, these Fools will start yiping about democracy and majority rights? Puh-lease!

"With 100 million euros, unemployment subsidies could have been paid to 23,000 people for a year," he added.

This sounds familiar. Almost like this:

Judas the Iscariot, one (of) his disciples, and the one who would betray him, said,
5
"Why was this oil not sold for three hundred days' wages 3 and given to the poor?"(John 12:4-5)

God clearly has a sense of irony. I wonder if Mr. Schmidt Salomón does?

The Committee also took aim at the media, saying coverage has been uncritical and excessive. "The German media have become a clone of Vatican Radio," complained the Committee.

"It's as if all of a sudden everyone were interested in hearing things about the Church and its Youth Day 24 hours a day," Katrin, a student who supports the ideas of the Committee, remarked to IPS. "It's impossible to listen to the radio or watch TV without hearing about this event, almost exclusively."

Um. WYD is a major religious event in an anti-religious time and place. Think it might be a story for the MSM? If you're jealous that your event isn't getting enough coverage, try holding it some other time!

"The Church is an old, wrinkled, obsolete dinosaur," said sculptor Jacques Tilly, who created a float of a dinosaur wearing a crown and watching over a flock of sheep.

"I don't want to insult any Christians, but I want to show that we are also still here," he added.

Come on, man! Show some guliones! What would you're barbarian ancestors say if they could see you now. You make a sculpture that calls the Catholic Faithful sheep and shows the Pope as a crowned dinosaur. You can't even honestly say, "Yes, I want to offend every Catholic and Christian within an inch of their lives!" I'd have had more respect for you, sir, if you possessed the courage of your convictions. Instead, you just weenie out. Oh, and buy the way, 400,000 young people from around the globe spent a week on pilgrimage in Cologne. How many young people showed up to your shindig? I thought so.

The enthusiasm, banners and singing of those taking part in World Youth Day have not silenced the differences that some young Catholics have with certain stances taken by the Church and the conservative Pope, especially the ban on the use of condoms, the secondary role given to women in the Church, and the refusal to recognise homosexuality.

This is the heart of the Committee for Pagan Fun protest. The Catholic Church refuses to sacramentalize the free pursuit of the One Thing that Matters. It will not bless the use of contraception, even though such practice dis-integrates the mutual sign of wholistic self-giving love that sex between spouses is. The Church will not ordain homosexual activity to it's rightful place. All Reasonable people know its the ultimate expression of the Great-I-Am in pursuit of the One Thing that Matters, version 2. The Church can't ordain women because Christ hasn't given her the authority to do so, but this doesn't matter to the Committee. God doesn't exist; Jesus Christ is a myth. At best, the corpse of Jesus the Nazorea has rotted to dust in Palestine. At worst, delusional fanatics made up the whole tale. Either way, the Church is no body of Christ. It's just another institution of men putting the smack-down on women. These old celibates refuse to ordain women, who would sacramentalize the Worship of Moloch that ensures the free pursuit of the One Thing that Matters. If the Catholic Church reversed herself on these pelvic issues tomorrow, this Committee of Pagan Fun would sing Alleluiah arm in arm with every WYD pilgrims. Their hypocracy could not be more evident. How sadly Reasonable of them. I'm laughing so hard I can't stop crying! But I must. For these Reasonable mouth-foamers need a message delivered to them.

Leave. The kids. Alone. Let them offer their worship unmolested by aging cynics unhappy that history has passed them by. Let them praise Jesus Christ in fellowship without suffering the slings and arrows of embittered and agenda-obsessed secularists. Let them celebrate WYD in joy and peace. Then the Reasonable Committee may have their secular paradise back.

"the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it." (John 1:5) May the joy of the young pilgrims of WYD bear the light to even these Reasonable souls that yearn for the darkness. May these witness to the Faith open all of us more fully to the Savior they love.