JUSTIFIABLE OUTRAGE: -- Open Up Your Hearts!

How can anyone not understand or sympathize with the latest pain and outrage of the Muslim world? I'm hardly a proponent or supporter of Islam's theology. Sadly, not in the least. I'm not that "ecumenical" or as open minded as our Vatican Catholic brethren. Yet these forthcoming opinions are also coming from someone who has been politically anti-Zionist and pro-Palestinian since his youth.

I've seen the horrors of where WW III began at Ground Zero (on February 26, 1993 at 12:17 PM actually, as well as 9/11) and have no empathy for facio terrorists. But this righteous indignation and justifiable outrage concerns the religion of Islam -- and so it concerns us all -- especially those of us who share a monotheistic faith and are children of Abraham..

The disrespectful cartoon-at-large of their Prophet Mohammed is a slam against all religions. Blasphemy against one faith opens the door to blasphemy against them all. It's been an ongoing affront against people of all faiths. It bespeaks a typical secularist attitude prevalent in the Western world which is a shameful disgrace and can no longer be tolerated: ANTI-RELIGION. Enough is enough. Regrettable, this might be the breaking point. Or, it could be the best opportunity for interfaith-intercultural dialogue and understanding we'll ever have..

The provocative cartoons of Mohammed first appeared in Danish paper "Jyllands-Posten" in September. Islam forbids depictions of Mohammed and many Muslims were furious at the drawings, one of which shows the religious figure wearing a turban shaped like a bomb. Several other European papers later published some of the cartoons, as a way of covering the controversy and also, some papers said, as a matter of freedom of expression.

Kudos to those media outlets which decline to run these cartoons out of respect to Islam. However, I think most would shit in their pants if they dared to do so, and I say -- it's about time the devout shoved your crap back into your faces. As long as nobody is killed or hurt then I can't lament burning the offending embassies and newspapers to the ground. Torch the flags and effigies as well. I wish were there to hand them some Molotov cocktails. Would also luv to see some empty abortuaries go up in flames at night - not that I'd do it myself..

Is nothing sacred anymore? Must anything and everything be tolerated in the name of progressive sophistication? I say lay off ALL religions, their deities and their pillars. That disrespectful cartoon (even though I, as a Catholic traditionalist, repudiate Muhammad's historical methods and teachings) was just as inflammatory and disgraceful to me as kiddy porn and the clergy sex crimes.

If blasphemy is what "freedom of expression and the press" must entail to a democratic Europe and America (sans the absence of journalistic responsibility) then give me some selective censorship instead. If only the Christian and Jewish faithful would take a lesson from this pain and justifiable anger... I share the righteous Islamic outrage.

The progressives and secular modernists are constantly trying to push the envelope. Just look at how far NBC has gone with our Lord Jesus Christ in the past few weeks. Their imaginative parody of Jesus on "The Book of Daniel" really pushed the limit for me. (I monitored every segment which ran before it was pulled.) How dare they put contradictory lies into the Mouth of Truth. i.e., Our Lord would never acquiesce to promiscuous teenage sex nor dissuade a father, especially a priestly one (a Vicodin-addicted Episcopal minister who sees and hears "Jesus") one, from being concerned about his kids and teaching them right from wrong. ....And then to contemplate running a mockery of His Crucifixion on this upcoming April 13th night before Good Friday on the "Will and Grace" NBC TV program. They better not.

However, it seems they finally got our message and are trying to back off on that one with lame excuses of a pending script in development. "Some erroneous information was mistakenly included in a press release describing an upcoming episode of 'Will & Grace,' which in fact has yet to be written," NBC spokeswoman Rebecca Marks suddenly told Reuters last Friday. "All that has been decided is that Spears will play a central role in an upcoming episode that will likely air sometime in April", Marks added. Yeah, sure. I hope and pray for the sake of their media enterprise that they mean what they say.

But I doubt it and wouldn't trust these liberal liars with the benefit of this doubt. NBC Chairman Bob Wright would not dare treat Jews, Muslims or other religions with such disrespect -- but he might be low enuf to try. The liberal NBC TV network demonstrates deep seated ugly hostility toward Christians. So don't believe them. Please sign this petition of protest to him anyway.

How appropriate that an Iranian newspaper called "Hamshahri" will run that "run the best Holocaust cartoon" contest on Feb. 13th. (The paper is owned by the Tehran Municipality, which is dominated by allies of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who is noted for his opposition to Israel. Last year he provoked outcries when he said on separate occasions that Israel should be "wiped out" and the Holocaust was a "myth."

Hamshahri invited foreign cartoonists to enter the competition and said it wanted to see how open the West was to caricatures of the Holocaust. It will test whether the West will apply the same principles of freedom of expression to the Nazi genocide against Jews as it did to the caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed, The Associated Press reports. I'm all for it. Let's see how THIS is tolerated. Now the shoe is on the other foot. Perhaps now the might finally feel something and relate.

...and suddenly the talking media heads, both conservative and "progressive" liberals, are attributing this to Al Quaeda as playing into Osama bin Ladin's divisive hands to provoke a jihad. Give our Muslim brethren some credit, guys. For once, I do NOT doubt their sincerity of heart and mind. Even though two wrongs don't equal a right, I personally say, "Don't fuck with our Father in heaven (or His prophets and/or saints, etc.) and we won't dis your mothers on earth or their memories!" If this is how they need to ram the lesson down those liberal media mogul throats then I'm all for it. And this is also coming from a 2nd Gen. Polish-American Catholic guy who lost many of his East European relatives in the Nazi Holocaust.

Several of my martyred family were courageous priests, both Catholic and Orthodox Christians. ALL of them resisted the Nazis one way or another. Most of the Christian clergy of occupied Europe were heroic - as also was the late Pope Pius XII of blessed memory. Let no secular revisionist or Holocaust denier dare to rewrite our proud Catholic Christian history.

HIDDEN FACTOID: Let the record also show that the Holocaust toll was NOT just the iconic number of "Six Million Jews" as is often cited. In actuality, it included more than 11 Million victims - five million of them non-Jews. But I guess those numbers don't count to some since they were not all Jews. As many as 45 million civilians died in WWII. (Last century alone, in addition to the 11 million victims of the Holocaust, more than 43 million people have been the victims of genocide.)

Ten thousand Poles were liquidated in the first four months of the occupation. 700 Polish priests were shot, and 3,000 were sent to camps, where 2,600 of them died. The majority perished slowly and methodically from medical experiments and starvation labor — compared to which a quick, horrible death in a gas chamber might have seemed a perverse kind of mercy. None of those priests shirked their priestly duties. In the first week of December, 1940, the SS consolidated the 1,197 priests from all the concentration and execution camps in Europe into a single camp: Dachau - where they could be tightly controlled. They were housed in two barracks, 26 and 28, ringed with a barbed-wire fence - a camp within the camp - in futile attempts to restrict their sacerdotal ministry. Upon liberation, 2,720 priests, brothers, and seminarians from 134 dioceses and 29 religious orders had dragged out their lives in Dachau. Over 1,000 died there. ALL were heroes of the resistance. Polish efforts and deaths, inspired by the clergy and suffered to save Jews, surpassed the sacrifices of all other countries combined.

[These numbers do not, of course, include priests executed in their towns and cities; of 162 French priests arrested by the Gestapo in February, 1944, for instance, 123 were shot or guillotined before reaching any camp. Nor does it count those priests who lived and died in other camps. The International Tribunal at Nuremberg said that 780 priests died of exhaustion in the quarries of KZ Mauthausen alone. Nor does it consider that one-quarter to one-third of those shipped to any camp were often dead on arrival.]

The clergy were the FIRST to be imprisoned, tortured and killed because each was recognized as the fearless core of their respective parishes. For this same reason, Polish Catholic and Orthodox priests were the ONLY prisoners brought to Auschwitz and executed by shooting or gassing for a full year before any other group was brought in. Then came prisoners from Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and Soviet POW's. Therefore, contrary to popular belief, Auschwitz was not originally built for the extermination of the Jews, but, rather to totally and systemically exterminate all representatives of Polish leadership and all the Polish intelligentsia (clergy), as noted in a Hitler directive. Speaking to his commandants, Heinrich Himmler stated that, "For the total extermination of the Polish nation, one must liquidate the Poles fast and according to a set timetable. The German nation must accept as its main goal the annihilation of the Poles."

Not until one year and nine months after the Poles were routinely imprisoned and executed did the first transport of Slovak Jewish women even arrive there. Franciscan priest, St. Maximilian Kolbe, martyr of Auschwitz, was one of many fearless priests and "good shepherds" murdered there when he exchanged his life for a Jewish family-man. Only in Poland was helping a Jew automatically a reason for the death penalty and annihilation by burning of whole Polish villages and communities. That's because Polish Catholics & Orthodox Christians always heeded the inspiration and leadership of their priests.

We hardly ever hear of the Warsaw uprising of 1944 (which is often confused with the ghetto uprising of 1943) where more than 200,000 Polish Catholic lives were lost. It was the Catholic clergy who also inspired and served that uprising. And ;et us remember that it was our late Pope John Paul II who heroically served the Polish resistance in a non-combative role as a secretive young cleric in Krakow. I'm sure that St. John Paul the Great shares the pain of this disrespect. May he intercede in these newest conflicts and inspire peace on earth.

And, lastly, let us not forget this outspoken German Protestant, anti-Nazi activist who was one of many Christian clergymen to be imprisoned in concentration camps... In 1933, he organized the Pastor’s Emergency League to protect Lutheran pastors from the secret police. In 1934, he was one of the leading organizers at the Barmen Synod, which produced the theological basis for the Confessing Church, which despite its persecution became an enduring symbol of German resistance to Hitler. From 1933 to 1937, Lutheran Pastor Martin Niemöller consistently opposed everything the Nazis stood for. At one point he declared that "it was impossible to point to the German [Luther] without pointing to the Jew [Christ] to which he pointed to.” He vocally rejected the Nazi distortion of “Positive Christianity” which postulated the ‘special virtue’ of the German people. He wrote this homily:

"First they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for the Communists and I did not speak out because I was not a Communist. Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me."

SO TODAY I SPEAK OUT FOR OUR MUSLIM BRETHREN!

RIGHT ON BROS!