TO HELL WITH THE FUTURE AND LET'S LIVE IN THE PAST: The Belfast Telegraph reported on March 19th (sorry; I don’t have a link to it) that the Evangelical Protestant Society of Belfast has condemned Mel Gibson’s film The Passion of the Christ as being “too Catholic.” You could laugh, but it reminded me of Winston Churchill’s description of this mindset in The World Crisis, his history of the First World War. The Cabinet was discussing the possibility of civil war in Ireland in June of 1914 when Sir Edward Grey, the Foreign Secretary, came in and began to read the Austrian ultimatum to the Serbs. The Irish problem vanished into the background as the damn fool thing in the Balkans Bismarck predicted would cause the next great European war was finally upon them. Four years later, after millions of deaths, the collapse of monarchies, and the upending of entire societies, Churchill wrote,

"The whole map of Europe has been changed...The modes of thought of men, the whole outlook on affairs, the grouping of parties, all have encountered violent and tremendous changes in the deluge of the world. But as the deluge subsides and the waters fall short we see the dreary steeples of Fermanagh and Tyrone emerging once again. The integrity of their quarrel is one of the few institutions that has been unaltered in the cataclysm which has swept the world."

If Jesus died for these dummies then he wasted his time.