Blame it on Ockham

People will die because of the idiocy of a few dozen chuckleheads in Florida.

More precisely, people will die because of the idiocy of the media reports on a few dozen chuckleheads in Florida.

The media, of course, will blame Christianity in toto, rather than its own idiocy, though I suppose in this case some of its idiocy is honestly come by.¹ The false idea that Bibles and a Quonset hut suffice to form a church comes from self-professed Christians, not the media.

I blame that old book-burner² Martin Luther for the fact that Christians today make this claim (according to the principle that the originator of a bad idea is a more primary cause of the spread of the idea than are his opponents, however ham-fisted).

Granted, it's incendiary to insist that "ecclesial communities which have not preserved the valid Episcopate and the genuine and integral substance of the Eucharistic mystery... are not Churches in the proper sense." It might even be said that it's un-American to insist that there is a "proper sense" of the word "Church," that there is a particular meaning to the term even if people deny it. And for that, I am traditional enough to blame William of Occam.

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1. The media is capable of ginning up outrage over the fact that knowledge that an imprudent action will cause people to die doesn't prevent the imprudent actor from acting, indifferent to the fact that its own ginning up of outrage is an imprudent action that will cause people to die. That's a capability that won't impress at the Last Judgment.

2. I don't have any particular abhorrence of book-burning as an objective act. More, I'd say some books are fit only for burning -- and to those who deny this, I would ask, "How many advanced readers copies of self-published novels have you read?"

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