Bill Kassel's Blog

Occasional reflections on religion, culture, politics, and anything else that comes into my mind...

bill kassel

Moral Choices & Actions

Holy Attire

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LET’S TRY TO LOOK
DECENT IN CHURCH

When I was a kid attending a Presbyterian church, people dressed to the nines for Sunday service. Ladies wore hats. Gents came in suits. Little girls carried their collection money in their lace-trimmed white gloves. Little boys wore ties — grudgingly — and did their best to keep shirt tails tucked in.

Well…that was the 50s and early 60s. Times have changed.

When I began attending Catholic Mass, I was taken aback to see slacks on the women, open-neck knit shirts on the guys. That was the 70s. Things have gone completely to hell since then.

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The Deaths of the Innocents

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MEMORIAL DAY IS A GOOD TIME FOR
CAREFUL THINKING ABOUT TERRORISM

The carnage at that Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, England has brought forth some really stupid statements. For instance, interviewed by Anderson Cooper on CNN, terrorism analyst Paul Cruickshank shared that…

“in recent months in Europe there’s been a number of false flag plots where right-wing extremists have tried to frame Islamists for terrorism.”

Blessedly, Cruickshank didn’t carry this line of speculation too far. Somehow, a guy named Salman Abedi blowing himself up with a bunch of innocent little girls didn’t have a right-wing feel about it.

Perhaps the stupidest pronouncement came from Katy Perry, a member of that exalted sisterhood of pop divas to which Ariana Grande belongs…

“No barriers, no borders, we all just need to co-exist.”

Okay, Katy. I’ll ignore the implied slam at Trump’s border wall and just suggest that you and all your sister pop tarts go over to Syria, look up the ISIS guys, and deliver your impassioned plea to them.

Let me know how that turns out.

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The Coulter Effect

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BLOCKING ANN COULTER
IS HAVING CONSEQUENCES

Ann Coulter is a force of nature.

I had occasion to interview her once, sitting in as guest host on Ave Maria Radio’s flagship talk show, “Kresta In the Afternoon.” I asked her an opening question, the content of which escapes me now.

And that was that. She was off to the races.

Who can remember what she said? It didn’t really matter at the time, and it doesn’t matter today. She was just being Ann Coulter, dominating the twenty-or-so minutes of our interview.

This is the inimitable Ann Coulter style: a barrage of ideas, pointed observations, and inflammatory lines, fired at machine gun speed. It’s how she’s made her name.

The nation is blessed that her fusillades are made on behalf of conservative ideals. If her political/philosophical bent was toward the left, she’d be a genuine threat.

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Back to the Ashes

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IT’S GOOD TO REMIND OURSELVES
OF OUR FLAWS AND FAILINGS

Ash Wednesday kicked of Lent last week. Perhaps some thoughts I posted back in 2014 would be of interest…

____________

I have to confess that there are certain Catholic pious practices I don’t entirely get.

It probably reflects the fact that I’m an adult convert and wasn’t raised in the Church — or that I’ve made less progress on my spiritual journey than I like to assume.

One of the things I don’t get is fasting.

As I understand it, the Church advocates self-denial as a way of detaching ourselves from fleshly preoccupations. Yet I’m never more preoccupied with concerns of the flesh (that is to say, eating) than when I deny myself food.

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A Journalistic Ideal

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TRUMP GAVE THE MEDIA
AN OVERDUE SCOLDING

You think Donald Trump is exaggerating when he complains about the media being biased against him? Here’s Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts…

“Dear Mr. So-Called President:

“So let me explain to you how this works.

“You were elected as chief executive of the United States. I won’t belabor the fact that you won with a minority of the popular vote and a little help from your friends, FBI Director James Comey and Russian President Vladimir Putin. The bottom line is, you were elected.

“And this does entitle you to certain things. You get your own airplane. You get free public housing. You get greeted with snappy salutes. And a band plays when you walk into the room.

“But there is one thing to which your election does not entitle you. It does not entitle you to do whatever pops into your furry orange head without being called on it or, should it run afoul of the Constitution, without being blocked.”

Now, Pitts is certainly correct when he says Presidents shouldn’t do things that “run afoul of the Constitution.” I don’t see that anything Trump has done so far rises to this level of concern, but the point is well taken.

HOWEVER — can you imagine the furor that would have ensued if a nationally syndicated columnist (of any ethnicity) had addressed Barack Obama as “Mr. So-Called President” or mocked any thoughts germinating inside the Obamian head by describing its color and hair texture?

Just ponder that for a moment.

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Book Bind

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EVEN JESUS’ RELATIVES
ARE NOT SCAM-FREE

Today’s high-tech pirates will use anything in their nefarious schemes. I’ve discovered that some bad characters are using my novel about the family of Jesus.

If you should stumble onto an alleged free book site designated “ePm.eBook,” that displays the cover of my novel, do not — repeat, DO NOT! — click on any of the links or buttons. You won’t get a free copy of MY BROTHER’S KEEPER.

What you will get is malware that can foul up your computer or co-opt it for some unknown wicked purpose.

I suppose, in a perverted sort of way, this is a testament to my book’s appeal. But I hate to think of playing even an innocent part in causing harm.

When I discovered the “ePm.eBook” site, I contacted my eBook distributer. A tech-support agent advised…

“This is not a legitimate outlet. It’s an automatically generated page created by internet trolls using publicly available information off of Amazon or other sites. They don’t actually have the book, they just put up a ‘free download’ button to trick people into clicking download and inviting all sorts of malware and viruses onto their computer. Your best bet for combating this is to report them to Google and have them remove it from their search indexes.”

I’m doing that. But “ePm.eBook” or some other version of this scam will likely just pop up under a different name, and my book could appear again.

So be careful.

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The Prophet

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HIS WIN WAS DOWNRIGHT RELIGIOUS
CAN HE SATISFY THE HOPES RAISED?

Let’s be honest. Relieved as we are that the nation’s leftward march has been interrupted — and despite expectations of positive change — there’s no denying that the Trump Era is beginning in deep uncertainty.

We’ve come through a very odd election that offered a choice between two candidates with unusually high negative poll numbers. And while I believe that people decided early on how they were going to vote, most still went into the booth with conflicted feelings.

As I observed in a blog post back in August…

“…Republicans and Democrats alike don’t really support either candidate. Rather, they feel they must cast their ballots against either Clinton or Trump — choosing to oppose the one they’re most desperate to keep from winning….

“…this year, people really aren’t voting to elect their favorite candidate. They’re voting to avoid their worst nightmare.”

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La La Land

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TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME
IS AN EPIDEMIC IN HOLLYWOOD

A recent bomb threat at one of the U.S.-Canada border crossing stations set me onto a bit of fantasy conjecture…

“Canadians aren’t fools,” I said to myself upon reading a report of the incident. “This is a warning to all those movie stars and celebrities who threated to go north if Trump got elected.”

Hey, it’s not all that implausible. Canada has its own crackpot entertainment industry. They don’t need to import ours.

As noted by Breitbart News…

“Rosie O’Donnell, Debra Messing, Ed Asner and Michael Shannon are among the dozens of artists, entertainers, and activists who have attached their names to an effort calling for a month-long protest to stop President-elect Donald Trump.

“‘No! In the Name of Humanity We Refuse to Accept a Fascist America!’ reads a full-page ad placed in the New York Times on Wednesday by the group Refuse Fascism.”

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The Destroyer

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OBAMA IS DOING DAMAGE
RIGHT TO THE LAST MINUTE

Now then, do you really still have any doubts about the destructiveness of Barack Obama?

Twenty-two days before he’s set to leave office — three weeks — he tries to instigate a major diplomatic crisis over the assumption that Russian hacking influenced the outcome of our presidential election.

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Generosity

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BE A CHEERFUL GIVER WITH BOTH
DISCERNMENT AND GENEROSITY

(This brief reflection is has been appearing on American Thinker since Christmas Eve.)

Christmas has become a complete religious / commercial mash-up. From post-Thanksgiving “Black Friday,” it seems we’re in a virtual orgy of materialism.

But the Salvation Army bell ringers I’ve seen in front of Kroger over the last few weeks remind me that Yuletide highlights the spirit of generosity and a specific kind of gift giving that flows from it — namely, charitable sharing.

The surfeit of stuff that clutters most Americans’ lives today can mask the reality that there are people in need.

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Shoot-Out at the Vatican Corral

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THE FIGHT OVER MARRIAGE
IS CAUSING SERIOUS WOUNDS

Election hubbub and subsequent sneaky attempts to undo its results may have distracted you from the shootout that’s going on throughout the Catholic Church over the question of divorce / remarriage / communion. In case you’re not fully conversant with this issue…

The Church has always held that marriage is indissoluble. That is to say, once married always married, unless one or the other spouse dies.

This is based on a statement of Jesus in Matthew 19, where the Lord speaks against divorce…

“I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.”

And so, the Catholic understanding of marriage would seem to be simple and unambiguous. Except that it’s not.

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