An epiphany

That burning smell isn’t your computer. It is the smell of a soul experiencing fire and brimstone.

No, it isn’t Father Pflager. He’ll be back at St. Sabina’s in a couple of weeks. He just needed a theological time out. Besides, his parishioners demand that the Archdiocese return him. They just love the way he talks like a black preacher. Why, if it wasn’t for Pastor Pflager they’d go back to being Baptists or maybe become Muslims with mystical names like Mohamed or Kareem.

Besides, Mayor Daley’s brother-in-law (Father Vanecko) needs to get back to his other duties as a Catholic Priest over at St. Kilian’s.

Anyway, the burning smell…Some poor drug smuggler will have Hell to pay for his latest stunt. He decided to mix plaster and cocaine and create a statue of the Savior. Now, who’s going to question a Mexican woman bringing a statue of Jesus across the border?

Well, normally no one. Except that the dogs went crazy over this particular statue and they figured out why.

The woman told police she was paid $80 to haul the statue into the United States and take it to the Laredo bus station. She then slipped back across the border into Mexico (sounds like an act of spontaneous justice to me) but the narcs did pick up the 61-year-old Mexican man who arranged the delivery.

I’m thinking he’ll do better in front of the judge in the black robes than he will with The Judge Himself.

As for the law, he might have tried to pass it off as a means for enhancing spirituality. The Native American Church is granted the right to use peyote as a sacrament. Timothy Leary wasn’t so successful with LSD for the same purposes.

Either way you’re still in trouble with God but the courts and the ACLU try to keep morality out of the equation. The doctrine of “different strokes for different folks” allows a great deal of leeway in court cases these days. John Adams had a different idea. He felt that our freedoms need some restraint supplied by God-fearing citizens. He wasn’t alone in his day but you’d be hard pressed to find a leader in Washington willing to stand up and say that today.