It's a common maxim in St. Blog's that "sin makes you stupid," and I suppose that the post immediately below might be offered as evidence.

But sometimes religion does, too. Or at least, religion does when it itself becomes a structure of sin, a means of perpetuating ignorant hatred.

I've often wondered when the lidless eye of wacky Fundamentalism would wake-up, and realize that Eastern Orthodoxy is much like the Roman Catholicism they usually attack, but much more attractive to their own confreres in religion.

Ah.. exhibit"A": Orthodox Catholic Idolatry, a fascinating collection of really cool photographs juxtaposed with barely-relevant Scriptural quotations.

For example, this picture is awesome!


And this quote is completely superfluous:
"Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as it is fit in the Lord." -Colossians 3:18

..unless they think the deacons are women??

The commentary says, "More idolatrous kissing!"
...aside from the fact that an idol is a graven image, and not a person...
...and aside from the fact that kissing isn't intrinsically an act of worship...

"Idolatrous" here basically means "something I don't really like."

But it gets better!

Veronica's Veil is misidentified as "the Queen of Heaven"...
"Mystics" are "Satan-possessed people" Sergei Radonevzhski...
Priests holding crosses with "the Illuminati skull and bones..."

..because the Illuminati actually weren't just a bunch of Enlightment frat-boys playing "history," they actually invented this symbol which predates them by a thousand years!! Who knew?

Look, especially, for the picture of the crazy "Patriarch" and his two dragons!
(And, even though you think his crown has the typical two-headed Imperial Eagle, you find out that it is actual... not one bird, but two phoenixes!!)

This picture was the most awesome:


And the commentary: "Czechoslovakian Catholics worship the skull of St. Vaclav"

Right. Friends, St. Vaclav lived centuries before your contrived version of Christianity began, and will be honored centuries after it has at last, like this saint, bit the dust--precisely because the Church to which he belonged can honor the past, with all the intellectual rigor and self-assured honesty that entails. No need for shocking captions; no need for blatantly false tag-lines.

Amazingly, people really think that this vitriol is attractive--that someone, reading it, will say, "Goodness! I want to be like them!"

How can anything appropriately end such a wonderful display of nuttiness?

"The Orthodox church is 100% ecumenical - just like Catholic!"

Ah. That'd be it.