Crazy People Are Everywhere

This morning when I woke up, I pretty much had this whole post composed in my head, but of course, now that it's five hours later, I can't recall exactly I was going to say. In my head it was articulate. Anyhow, the gist of the post started because I'm on a mailing list for Sephardic Genealogy. I'd say a large portion of the members of this list are descendants of Sephardic Jews, the religious backgrounds of the membership is pretty mixed, with a large number of Jews and a probably a large number of Catholics of every flavor, practicing, cultural to lapsed and there are the evangelical too. Can you see where I'm going with this post? There's one person on the list who always seems to cross the line when it comes to posting unrelated material. There is one person who tends to post things of an evangelical nature and someone gets riled up. This is not a list to convert people to or away from one particular religion. It's an informational list, a place to come to look for information about names, traditions, histories of a large group of people, who has lost a lot of that. New Mexico is one place where much of it has been lost and is now being rediscovered-- none of this has anything to do with religious conversion.

While, I wouldn't say that it's the norm, but there have been a few insensitive remarks made about Catholics and Catholicism. There is no dispute that many evils were done in the name of the Christianity. There have been many evils done to the Church as well. You cannot deny all the good the Church has done in the past and continues to do so, however, this is usually not what this list is about. I'm tired of 2000 years of Church History being painted by the brush that is the Black Legend. Still, I usually take them in stride and not get offended, especially when it comes from the historical Jewish perspective. More than likely some of my ancestors when they settled in New Mexico were probably Sephardic Jews or Conversos.

However, when the commentary comes comes from the usual Evangelical/Former Ex-Bitter Catholic types, and that's when it gets offensive. There was recently a post on the list defending, yes defending Pastor John Hagee. Of course he was called a good example of a Christian, so I said... hello, he's the one who offended the Catholic Church, he had the audacity to say Hitler was doing God's work by getting the Jews to return to Israel. Uh... remember the Holocaust people? Hilter killed millions of Jews. If he wanted them to go to Israel because God willed it, why didn't he just send them there? Oh it didn't exist yet. Modern Israel was established after the war. Anyway, two people cited him (Hagee) as being a good Christian for all his good work on behalf of the Jewish people and Israel. I was troubled when I read that. When I cited the Hagee comments, I was asked to define a good Christian. Well, I certainly wouldn't consider Hagee or those like him who spread the same ilk of intolerance, hatred and moral judgment Good Christians. A good Christian wouldn't decry that Hurricane Katrina happened because God was upset that there was going to be a gay-pride parade the next week. That's almost as bad as blaming 9-11 on the feminists, liberals etc.