Good God, can’t you see what they are doing? This is obviously a ploy to attract more young boys to the Catholic Church to be used for sexual purposes!!!
Uh, you might want to check the original date on that story.
New York Times, April 1, 2002.
Ooops. Sorry. Not New York Times. Times News Network.
I thought the same when I first read the story, but as far back as January there’s been a legitimate push from Catholic magicians to have Don Bosco made their official patron saint, since he already operates as a de facto patron for them. So it appears the story’s for real, if published on an unfortunate date.
No, Speaker, Who goes on first, What goes on second, and I Don’t Know goes on third.
If you’re fundy and you know it, thump your Bible! If you’re fundy and you know it, thump your Bible! If you’re fundy and you know it, and you really want to show it, if you fundy and you know it…Oh forget it. I’ll be nice.
What have we let ourselves do? Just because some parents aren’t religious conformists and they aren’t making their children conform, fundamentilists, (e.g.-Jerry Falwell and his Flying Monkeys) are turning this country towards a “Religious McCarthyism”. Well, I for one won’t stand for it! Why try to place a limit on childrens’ imagination? Why bar them for thinking a certain way or acting a certain way (pending that noone gets hurt or lives aren’t harmed.)? My parents went and still go to church, and they took me as a child, but they never prohibited me from reading any type of literature. I grew up watching every James Bond movie ever made. Oh, but he’s a womanizer. He kills people…blah, blah, blah…blah. The books I’ve read are full of sex, corruption, murder…well, everything in everyday life. My parents wanted me to realize the “real world” and everyday life through my own imagination and exploration, thankfully. I’m not saying that you should give your children books full of sex and corruption, I’m just saying, let their imaginations run wild. You only live once.
Hope I haven’t offended anyone!
DesertGeezer wrote:
Heh. I like how the author of this article complains that the Harry Potter website has “lots of black and dark colors” – and the website this article is on has a black background! 
interesting quote here
[q]
Attempting to dismiss the obvious evil in such a book, the author gushed, “Harry is a character whom few children can resist. He is plucky and real (sic). He has friends who support him, and they have their own distinct personalities, so much so that the reader looks forward to each of these characters. The plots that author J. K, Rowling has woven these characters into have wonderful twists and surprises that will leave even the most savvy reader satisfied, and entice the nonreader to yearn for more.”
[/q]
Apparently J.K. Rollings refers to herself in the third person(and spells her name with a comma). unless, wait, you don’t think some these quotes could be falsified, do you? wouldn’t that qualify as bearing false witness?
The [sic] thing annoyed me, too. There are two purposes for which [sic] is used. The first is to identify mistakes reproduced from referenced material that might otherwise be mistaken for the writers’; this is usually restricted to scholarly articles written in a very formal style or newspaper letters to the editor. The second is to show how much smarter you than the person being [sic]ed by nitpicking their spelling and grammar. [sic]ing someone for ending a sentence with a preposition is petty, especially when you’ve made many such small errors yourself.
This part grabbed me, though:
This just shows that Mr. A don’t know jack about reading instruction.
Attacking the teaching technique is a common tactic among people who actually object to the content being taught (and Mr. A distorts that, also). I wonder if he would object to teachers reading to students if they were reading the Bible to them? Oh, there it is a bit lower. He wouldn’t. This points to the key flaw in this argument. When Mr. A reads the bible to his students, it is for the purpose of teaching the truth of what he is reading. He projects this purpose on to the mother reading Harry Potter to her child’s class.
If a good book is chosen that will engage the students, and is read skillfully, the students can learn about plot structure, conflict, character development, theme, tone, point of view, etc. and can develop skills such as predicting, evaluating, ordering, summarizing, etc, with literature they are incapable of reading themselves. This is the content being taught by reading aloud to students. The book actually being read to them is the vehicle through which this content is being taught.
Hmmm. First he says that you shouldn’t read books children want to hear because such books are bad for them, then says that reading to children is a waste of time because they don’t pay attention. Could there be a connection here?
Bah! No cultist worth his/her salt reads harry potter.
The Necronomicon is the way to go. Now that is a mind-blowing book.
Wait, wait, wait! I was always good with these in school.
Harry Potter books are bad.
Children should be read only not bad books.
Children don’t pay attention when being read to.
That must mean, Satan has already captured their fragile little minds and molded them to reject all but the Satan-loving Harry Potter books.
Honestly, I could have sworn Limbo came before the big neon “Abandon all Hope” sign, and thus was outside of city limits proper. And I was confused by the fact that, as Amazing pointed out, Moses et al got out of Limbo, so abandon ALL hope would therefore be an overstatment.
Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa.
Oh, and Speaker, in the 2nd (apparently) circle, you get whipped around forever and ever in an eternal hurricaine very much like the frenzied lust that drove you while you were alive.
I’m sure I think it was worth it