Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

Perplexing Questions, lousey answers

Perplexing Questions and Lousey Answers

I am such a jerk that my muse never sticks around for very long. Its like a revolving door on muses….one leaves and another moves in…

The latest resident muse has been by before and has this really strange sense of humor….When he starts in I write like heck and he makes me laugh and suddenly I’m not taking myself quite so seriously.

My wife says I’m extremely anal and whenever I get interested in something I really get interested….and she tells me to lighten up….Well the Good Humor Muse has been around the past couple of weeks and making fun of me and getting me to write things so I won’t take myself quite so seriously. The problem is that when I start writing what amuses me my anal friends think I’m laughing at them….They get mad and quit speaking to me….which is probably for the best because I really do need to concentrate on my novel…

I am at a part where King Ferdinand is going to get compromised and the chapter starts when the King and Brother Bernardo are together and the King is giving confession….Now I am not Catholic and have no idea what a confession is really like except for what I have seen in the movies.

So I went on line to some of the religious sites to get some scripture verses that pertain to human weakness…..I figure the priest would quote paragraph and line in the advice he gives to his petitioners….So I got about six quotes and drafted up a first cut…it was an interesting experience trying to visualize how these two character would interface.

The King is interested in an agenda of state and the Friar is interested in an agenda to make the Catholic Church the One True Faith and both are seriously deficient in the weakness they have for the fair sex. They know the others weakness and the other knows their weakness and so the dialog they share is both evasive and hypocritical.

Sex is a very powerful human drive and when it is suppressed it will find expression….This expression can seek take a normal, a perverted outlet or be canalized into a non sexual outlet. In my novel it finds expression in all three.

Of the three the scariest is Zealotry as demonstrated when the Catholic Church had the power of the Inquisition it used ruthlessly to influence behavior and consolidate its power.

In some cases we see religious leaders using it like Mother Teresa and Pope John Paul….but historically this has not always been the case….For ever sterling and saintly example there are many more who used their power in a less than stellar fashion….Its sort of like incest…..Ruling classes have used it in the past thinking that it amplifies both good and bad….That getting one exceptional human unit is worth the price of some genetically damaged units. Is a Mother Teresa or Saint Paul worth the minions of Priests who abused their powers for personal gain? The answer to me is no…..A celibate priesthood is an invitation to abuse so why does the church keep sending priests out into a lethal environment knowing that so many will fail and bring heartache and anguish to so many? A perplexing question for which I have no ready answers….