Blogging Around: Right Wing Asshole, the Miracle and the Jihadist, and Charlottesville

Ask Andrew W.K.: My Dad Is a Right-Wing Asshole

You’ve reduced your father — the person who created you — to a set of beliefs and political views and how it relates to you. ...

The world isn’t being destroyed by democrats or republicans, red or blue, liberal or conservative, religious or atheist — the world is being destroyed by one side believing the other side is destroying the world. The world is being hurt and damaged by one group of people believing they’re truly better people than the others who think differently. The world officially ends when we let our beliefs conquer love. We must not let this happen.

Ask Andrew W.K., The Village Voice

Truer words were never spoken. Go read the letter and Andrew W.K.'s whole response. Via Tony Rossi.

The Miracle That Saved a Priest From a Jihadist’s Knife

I don’t know what I prayed at that moment. I was very afraid, and I told Marie Alphonsine, “It can’t be by chance that I’m carrying you with me. If it is necessary that the Lord take me while I’m young, I’m ready, but if not, I ask you that no one else die.”

And what happened next was a miracle. Get the whole story at Aletia.

Charlottesville — Two Articles, One Answer

Former neo-Nazi Joseph Pearce (yes, that Joseph Pearce, now a well known Catholic author) examines Charlottesville Through the Eyes of an Ex-White Supremacist

I recall three separate occasions when I confronted an enemy with hatred and enmity and received in return love and friendship. In each case, the receiving of love when I was expecting hatred sowed seeds of healing in my hate-battered heart. ...

This is the challenge we face in the wake of the horrors of Charlottesville. It is to love our enemies. We should not demonize the white supremacist or the abortionist, but should love them into submission. We should not prey on them but should pray for them, hoping that, in the future, by the grace of God, we can pray with them.

Matthew Archbold looks at a moment of grace in The Suprising Thing That Happened in Charlottesville. Mark Heyer, father of the young woman who was killed, shows Christ-like love.

He spoke of forgiveness. “I include myself in that in forgiving the guy who did this,” he said. “I just think about what the Lord said on the cross, ‘Forgive them. They don’t know what they’re doing.’ … I hope that her life and what has transpired changes people’s hearts.”

Words like that are the only things that can.

Mark Heyer called the young man who killed his daughter “stupid.” And that's the thing. Hate is stupid. It makes you that way. There's a reason they call it “blind hatred.”