Posted on 09/18/2008 9:37:00 AM PDT by Southside_Chicago_Republican
Let's fill some trucks with books, drive them downtown and burn them in front of the Chicago Public Library. Let's drive other trucks to the regional libraries and burn them, too . . . I mean the books, not the libraries, though libraries are the source of the problem. If it weren't for the libraries, it would be hard for innocent young people to be corrupted by the filth pouring out of the country's printers.
Instead of burning books or libraries, perhaps we ought to start smashing printing presses. They have served as tools of sin and the devil since Herr Gutenberg invented them.
When the radical evangelicals take over the White House, lists of books that one shouldn't read or in fact are forbidden to read will spread around the country like wildfire, you should excuse the expression. Unless a much tighter control is imposed on distribution of books, the morals of the country will continue to deteriorate, which will in turn weaken us in the long war on terror.
I say that as a member of and indeed a priest in a denomination that originated lists of forbidden books. I don't know whether we ever piled them up in front of cathedrals and set them on fire, but I can't imagine that a tradition that has always valued dramatic rites could miss the possibilities of an auto da fe against books. If you'd burn humans at the stake, why not books?
The so-called "fundamentalists" came into existence to destroy one book in particular -- Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species. As one of their 19th century leaders remarked, "If we don't resist Darwin, we lose the Bible."
Oh ye of little faith! Why must ye think that the power of the biblical stories depends on their literal, word-for-word inerrancy? Why can't you see that those men and women who study it so closely actually enhance its wonder? Why instead must ye wander through the desert searching for the pillar of salt that was Lot's wife? Why can't ye understand that ye continue the battle between science and religion with thy concern about routing evolution from the classrooms? Don't ye realize that ye reinforce the paradigm, so loved by thy friends in the national media, of the battle between science and religion? When the results finally leak out about the European Organization for Nuclear Research experiments in Switzerland, just watch the stories confronting religious ideas about creation with "scientific" knowledge.
The religious truth is that the universe was created from nothing, indeed in a huge explosion that is still going on and preceding according to complex mathematical formulae around which we are still trying to wrap our brains? Isn't that wonderful enough for you? Why do you have to postulate a God who set up evidence that there were dinosaurs to test thy faith?
The real argument against listing books for possible burning (or removing from a library) is that, as we Catholics learned, it doesn't work. Tell humans that they can't read something and of course they will find ways of reading it -- as the Stalinists learned from Aleksander Solzhenitsyn. You could burn all the copies of Harry Potter, and young people would still read these classic stories of the triumph of good over evil. Get rid of Catcher in the Rye from your parish library and kids will pass around mimeographed copies of it. Banish The Canterbury Tales and you will enhance Geoffrey Chaucer's readership.
Do I really think the Supreme Court would permit such violation of human rights, should an evangelical become president? The Supreme Court, as Mr. Dooley said, follows the election returns. Haven't you noticed?
I get giddy when bugs like Andrew Greeley wax apocalyptic.
Is he still allowed to be in the Church?
PDS
I thought...
Must not be a Jesuit; they are heavily taught logic and reason.
It's a huge leap from not funding public access to perversion literature, and burning books.
Of course, to those of us who see the obvious, this sermon is meaningless.
To the perverts, the sermon is unnecessary.
(There's 5 minutes of my life I will never get back...)
You know, books and their corrupting influence are a small drop in the bucket compared to HOLLYWOOD! LETS BURN HOLLYWOOD! Oh, wait, I think THE LORD is going to take care of that...
Greeley needs a good ol’ fashioned Southern Baptist exorcism, that’s where the deacons take him ‘round back of the church and beat the Devil out of him.
In Greeley’s case, that might take a while, so bring your picnic baskets and umbrellas, and don’t forget your hymn books. :)
Yep, this guy’s theory was proven when that Christian named Bush moved into the Whitehouse.
Hey idiot author, if it didn’t happen over the last 8 years, it is idiotic to claim it will happen under McCain.
These dolts never have an original thought.
Father Greeley? A man of the cloth? Doesn't he have an obligation to speak the truth?
It must be kept in mind that people like this fellow actually believe this tripe. And some of these people are in the congress and some will be in positions of authority and power in an Obama administration. To them the “Fairness Doctrine” and “Hate Crimes” are tools for rooting out and silencing bigots who poison the public discourse and incite public unrest. Not for a second do they recognize the contradiction in their position. They will act to silence their critics and opponents and the leftist media will support them in this. Most of the public will pay little or no attention and of the remainder who do pay attention about half will be in favor of the restrictions leaving the rest (who will be a decided minority) as targets of the restrictions.
Tyranny is always imposed for the “greater good”.
What I want to know is this: How can a person be in such frequent proximity to the Body of Christ, and still be so firmly under Satan’s thumb?
what a partisan liar
Excellent point. There are fringes of the right that would go for censorship. But the real calls for censorship, masked in Orwellian terms like the “Fairness Doctrine” and “hate crimes” is coming from the mainstream of the Democratic Party and its highest leadership.
It is Leftists who shout down speakers whose ideas they don't like--who silence opposition whenever they can--who insist on "Political Correctness" which is nothing more than dogma--who hate freedom of speech--who will, if they can, silence "Talk Radio" because they don't like the ideas expressed thereon--who seek to censor and silence ideas they do not like by ad hominem attacks--who refuse to allow speakers whose ideas they dislike to speak on college campuses--who distort, manipulate, and censor information presented to the public.
The VAST MAJORITY of Americans who are not part of the Left want one thing: freedom of speech and the free exchange of ideas.
I hate Illinois Nazi Priests.
...are you kidding? People don’t read books anymore. They access electronic media. And mob thuggery is already doing the equivalent of burning books by shutting down free speech on radio stations and invading people’s private e-mail. And guess who’s behind it Chicago? That’s right, your latter day National Socialist and his brown shirts...Barrack Hussein Obama...it’s not what is next,
IT’S HAPPENING NOW.
You must work for the Chicago Behind The Times not to recognize what is happening under your very nose.
Burn the librarians in the ALA instead < /SARCASM >. They encourage giving all materials to anyone including children. If a bookstore did this with Playb*y or other adult only publications, there would be a vice squad charge of corrupting a minor. Not so with the library.
The ALA also has provided information to kids on how to circumvent filtering software.
Librarians also have refused to shelve conservative books that have been donated (find them unopend and untagged at your library book sales). Okay, so they didn’t burn them. But they did supress them.
I spent some time studying at a Jesuit school, and was well impressed. I don’t know what happened to Greeley.
Libs assume that we would use political power the same way they want to use it.
Exactly. See my post #13.
I thought that the Church maintained a library of such works (wasn't there one in "The Name of The Rose"?).
It was the muslims who burned down the library at Alexandria.
Who is in favor of burning books? Why doesn’t the man talk about reality? Or is this reality for him?
I guess this priest is FOR banning the Bible under the mistaken belief that it will get more people to read it.
It doesn't work in Saudi Arabia and it didn't work in the USSR.
I’m for banning the use of the Saudi book that calls non-muslims the offspring of pigs and monkeys. That is inappropriate for American schools. If it is to be used as a learning tool, it should used to point out modern bigotry among the muslim world.
Not all books, just Greeley's.
Andy who? He’s so ‘60’s.
Father Greeley is not a Jesuit or a member of any religious order. He is a secular priest, answerable to the Cardinal Archbishop, not a religious, or member of a religious order, answerable to an Abbot or Superior.
I believe you’re right about Alexandria.
I don’t know about the Church maintaining a library of forbidden books, but I do know that the Church did preserve a lot of culture that would have otherwise been lost during the Dark Ages.
Greeley should have done a little more research here, and they he would have easily found out the answer to his question without having to “imagine” it.
My mistake. I seem to remember seeing his name with an S.J. after it, but it must have been someone else.
I had no idea to toady that this guy is a Catholic Priest. How does the POPE allow this hateful man to exist?
In the hard-copy edition of the Sun-Times, published yesterday, there was a photo of some church in 2000 burning Harry Potter books, among others, in the churchyard. I know that stuff happens, but it is rare and isolated.
Kind of reminds me years ago when I was doing an internship in D.C. There was supposed to be a joint Klan-Nazi rally someplace out there. One of my associates was very disturbed about it, but I told her about the big Nazi rally I witnessed in St. Louis — four Nazis in the back of a flatbed truck. I told her not to worry. Turns out I was more than accurate — the joint Klan-Nazi rally was one guy with a sandwich board who happened to be a Nazi and a Klan member.
“Next chapter for radical right: Burn books (BARF!)”
This is the crap we get from the left while Obama tries to burn down WGN in Chicago. Apparently they don’t think actually knowing what they’re talking about is necessary.
Yep. Just another example of their duplicity.
Thank you Fr. Greeley. One question though, do we burn the books before or after we round up the Jews? You seem to have much better sources than me.
Lets burn newspapers!
I find it difficult to believe the good father is this ignorant of the history of his own Church. Burning of impious books in public was a common Catholic practice. A most famous one was carried out by Savonarola, the Bonfire of the Vanities, many of which were books.
Unfortunately for Savonarola, not too much later they had another bonfire, with him as the guest of honor in the flames.
Or that a serious newspaper published it !
I am not a Catholic, but I understand Andrew Greeley to be a priest in good standing. As to the Sun-Times being a serious paper — well, it has its good points and its bad points. Lately, bad is winning.
I’m in Bush Alaska, about 80 miles from the Bering Sea, and I can feel the love, tolerance, and compassion from this man all the way up here.
Right — it’s all based on lies and fearmongering. If Greeley actually believed this, he would have to be considered deluded or not quite all there. But he and others like him count on people being deluded or uninformed enough to believe them, which makes them to worst of demagogues and shows the level of contempt they have for people.
Remember the burning black churches in Missouri last election? Right — that never happened either.
I question whether a society can remain free for long when its dissenting voices are silenced by those for whom freedom of speech ought to be most precious. Our cultural institutions, universities and media are dominated by a uniform point of view and united by disdain for the opposition. Many of them do not merely believe Conservatives are wrong, they think we're evil. If our government comes to be controlled by people of similar mind (perhaps led by some charismatic, Messianic self-promoter), I think it will be only a matter of time before voices of dissent come under attack (Fairness Doctrine, anyone?; targeted IRS audits?).
And from there, things get very murky indeed.
I wondered myself how someone at the Sun-Times decided to publish something that is obviously not true, unless they were bound by contract to publish whatever Greeley sent them.
My fear is that there are great numbers of Americans who do not fully understand, or have not adequately bought into, the American understanding of a free society. They have either never been educated about what it means, or they are possesed of an ideology and a power agenda that gives no value to it.
Burn this lecherous old fool's dirty books, and no one will care.
Where Andrew Greeley writes “ radical evangelicals” or some other reference to conservative Christians, substitute the word, “Jew” or "Jews".
I'm not saying that Greeley would round us up and ship us to concentration camps, but he wouldn't be objecting.
Greeley's a hateful bigot.
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