[*] the Days of Whiners and Poses

I have filed this post under "Mote in their eye" because I can't figure out where else to put it. Pastor Doug Wilson has apparently had some flack over the upcoming Trinity Fest in Moscow, ID, re: the use of sacramental wine. It seems that Pastor Wilson (readers: shield the eyes of small children and the elderly) uses wine at the Lord's Supper and allows children to partake of the wine.

If any Catholics are reading this blog, I am sure you are crying-laughing at this point. You would be right to do so, in fact. This may be one of the dumbest controversies in the history of both temperance and church practice ever erected to scare away the crows of one's enemies.

BTW, I don't fault Pastor Wilson for either sticking to his guns or moving the morning worship service -- and I don't find much fault in this controversy on his part at all. I fault the people who are using the mode of the sacrament to interfere in the operation of church business -- that is, religious worship. It should disturb anyone interested in the freedom to worship. Consider it: a sip of sacramental wine is being called "serving alcohol to minors", and that is being leveraged to force a state university to require that the service be altered in order to be performed in its facility.

If this is the standard that these people want to uphold, so be it. But I do request that they ferret out all the debauchers who are serving wine to children. If the sin is drunkenness, then please visit St. Augustine's and St. Mary's in Moscow, ID, or perhaps St. Thomas More or Sacred Heart in Pullman, ID, and check the IDs of the participants there. This is a matter of selective reasoning on the part of these people -- whoever they are -- and I think they can win too much if they press the matter further.

On last thing if anyone in Moscow is reading. Pastor Wilson said this:

As I have meditated on the problems created by our adversaries here, I have been confronted with the oxymoronic issue of pettiness growing. How can pettiness increase and grow -- as it appears to be doing? How can smallness of heart and mind get bigger? I do not want to be the victim of an analogy, and so I have simply concluded that pettiness cannot grow, although it does appear to have the capacity to get swollen.

I recommend that Pastor Wilson consider that "smallness of mind" does not "grow" but it "spreads". In the same way cancer -- which is consumption -- weakens a body by spreading, pettiness spreads like wild fire. It is common among liberals and, sadly, baptists.