CathInfo.com

Quote from: Kazimierz

A telling tale, and an interesting analogy. I knew the author and his brother, and their entire family, during my "tour of duty" at OLMC New Hamburg. I didnt know how bad though the seminary experience was in reality.


Being an avid historian of wars and conflicts, having read and watched almost everything concerning the Vietnam War (perhaps a bit odd for a Canadian but I am very much interested as well in the War between the States) I trust seminary was not anywhere as bad as serving a tour in the Nam. Nonetheless it makes for an analogy/metaphor that is worth exploring.

The author needs to read Digger Dogface Brownjob Grunt and see if he still feels his experiences compare with a Vietnam era infantry soldier, jumping out of a helicopter 8 ft from the ground with 70 lbs on your back to crawl through a jungle with leeches on you, not enough water in a million degrees, or during monsoon season with your feet always wet, picking up the pieces of your battle buddies and putting them in a plastic bag, shooting old people and children, having your testicles and limbs blown off your body, and multiply this a year of duty under threat of imprisonment doesn't compare to liberal seminary.

You're the first person to lambast him for using the Vietnam analogy. Kazimierz went about as far as one could reasonably go: "it's a bit weird, but I get it".

It was an analogy. You know what that is, right?

He is by no means saying that his experience was as harrowing as living through fighting the Vietnam War. He was drawing certain parallels, as seen in a particular movie at that.

He said his seminary experience was like Platoon, not like the Vietnam War. There is a difference.

And if you actually READ the work, rather than just the comments that followed it, you'd know what a great job he did of fleshing out that analogy.

Once again, people are quick to slam a work when they haven't produced anything better themselves.

I'd love to see Tiffany write a long, heartfelt story about a crucible she went through, and then post it online. I'm sure we could find much more fault in it than she found above.

Matthew anyone in seminary can leave, they can go work at McDonalds, they can go live in a cardboard box and eat in a soup kitchen, none of that is an option when you are being fired at with a machine gun and lying in feces and mud with leeches on your private parts dying for a drink of water and crawling to a battle buddy whose insides are torn out and making sure your men keep firing, or hearing one of your men scream and you cannot locate them due to the battle fog.

This is what's called "missing the point" and "getting lost in the example".

Have you ever heard the scholastic expression, "all comparisons limp, except for the point of comparison?"

omnis comparatio claudicat

You're right, he was downright comfy compared to that physical hell.

But imagine if you and your son were being imprisoned by horrible men, and you were made to watch them do various things to put him in anguish -- spiritual, mental, and/or physical. Or you woke up each day not knowing if today would be the day they'd torture your son and make you watch.

Wouldn't that be ITS OWN BRAND of hell, just as real as the hell you describe above?

Don't be so quick to dismiss someone else's suffering as "nothing". You come across very heartless and non-compassionate, and that's the polite, scientific version of what you seem like.

It is very unbecoming for a woman to be so lacking in compassion. You are obviously damaged goods; something happened to you to make you this way. You need to recover the "compassion" aspect of your feminine nature.