This just in: The Christian response to the Orlando murders... or why the ACLU blames Christians for the terrorist attack by a lone wolf ISIS 'operative'.

Homeless man lights candles for Orlando victims.

Factions are using the gay nightclub atrocity for ideological gain.

First, let me say, I am appalled by most of what I've been reading on social media regarding the attack on the gay nightclub in Orlando Florida.  Be it gay-Catholic activists seeking to force the USCCB come out and discuss the attack as a hate crime against LGBT people, to the right-wing nut-job Catholic fundamentalists who claim "when bad people get murdered by other bad people, it doesn’t make them suddenly good."  Even when they write PC posts purportedly caring about the state of their souls at the moment of death, one detects a sort of God-is-on-our-side triumphalism.  As I said to my friend Mack in the combox yesterday:

It was an act of terror by a fanatic fundamentalist.

The people killed were individual persons. The dignity of the human person is rooted in his creation in the image and likeness of God. No one knows the state of their soul at the moment of death, neither before or after. No one. Most were probably Catholics, going by the names. Not all were gay or bi or better put - lgbtq. As you know, gay bars - esp. big clubs host a variety of people - regulars often mix with tourists out for great dance music and/or an exotic experience or simply the entertainment. These are the people who go out night-clubbing on Saturday night.

Remember Paris when the Stepford fundamentalists focused upon the name of the group and the so-called satanic connection in the name "Eagles of Death Metal"?  The judged the victims and scorned those who mourned them and the manner in which they mourned them.  Imagine.

You are right Mack - their responses so far have the same 'tone of ridicule and superiority' and it arises from their habit of 'dehumanizing and demonizing others.' I think it's perhaps an insular coping mechanism, which allows them to go back to their normal life, assured that they are not like the rest of sinful humanity, many reassured by the sentiment Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick tweeted you "reap what you sow".

The wages of sin is death...

and,

We will all come to the same end unless we repent.  

Although Sunday night a Baptist preacher had this to say to his congregation:

Pastor Roger Jimenez from Verity Baptist Church in Sacramento told his congregation that Christians “shouldn’t be mourning the death of 50 sodomites.”

“People say, like: Well, aren’t you sad that 50 sodomites died?” Jimenez said, referencing the initial death toll in Orlando, which authorities later clarified included 49 victims plus the gunman. “Here’s the problem with that. It’s like the equivalent of asking me — what if you asked me: ​Hey, are you sad that 50 pedophiles were killed today?’

“Um, no, I think that’s great. I think that helps society. You know, I think Orlando, Fla., is a little safer tonight.”

He added: “The tragedy is that more of them didn’t die. The tragedy is — I’m kind of upset that he didn’t finish the job!”

ISIS wants Pastor Jimenez  dead too.  Strange bedfellows.  It appears as if Jimenez approves of ISIS tactics to rid the world of 'the rest of sinful humanity' - and he seems so grateful not to be as bad as those people who were killed.

Atrocity.

I guess I missed the announcement that the people who died in the Pulse attack are martyrs.  The man who killed them turned out to be gay himself.  So if these people at Pulse were killed out of homophobia, the homophobe himself was gay.  It's senseless.  It's senseless killing.  It's sheer evil.  It's an act of hatred for humanity.  ISIS operatives do that.  Nazis did that.

Christians killed for their faith are killed in odium fidei - in hatred of the faith.  This is the martydom of sanctity - this makes the martyred saints.

Naturally the world, secular culture, social media, shocked by the immensity of the crime, deeply moved by the sudden, unexpected deaths of a group of people totally unaware death came stalking, the secular concept of martyrdom comes to mind.

Stop right there.  Can't religious people sympathize and comfort the mourning and bury the dead and console the sorrowing first - before self-righteously Bible-thumping-catechetical-instructions over their heads?

The people killed were human beings - like you and me.  

Years ago, a local man - a minor civil servant, yet a known personality - was murdered down by the river in a gay cruising area.  I knew a priest who was his confessor and he told me the man was trying to live a chaste life but sometimes fell back into old habits.  The guy was back at the park and was shot and killed by an unknown assailant - it was considered 'gay bashing' at the time.  Long story short, I was at a religious book store shopping the day the story hit the news, and I heard two workers in the store speaking about it, one guy said, "As St. Paul wrote, "the wages of sin is death" - he got what he deserved."  The other guy said - "Yup.  Wrong place, wrong time."  The murdered man was thus dehumanized and condemned, and the workers continued talking, speculating when the warning and chastisement would happen.  They seemed to know all about that stuff too.

Though  ACLU attorney Chase Strangio is wrong to pin this on Christians - it becomes a convenient and easy scapegoat for angry individuals and mobs.  The ACLU is dead wrong.  ISIS hates them too.

Gay activists who insist that Catholic leaders make this out to be a LGBTQ hate crime while rejecting their call for prayers for the victims are dead wrong as well.

As one survivor from the Pulse shootings said - this is about hate - hate on human beings - not just gay people.  It's an act of terror.  Make it about gay - about yourself and your political causes - "YOU are part of the problem. Your words are empty and your hearts are hollow."  

Our own words, our judgments, frequently condemn us.

I stand condemned with the victims of terrorism.

Mr. Naulings

"This was a hate crime on people, not just gay people. We were never a disease or abomination. We are human. We wanted to be accepted, we were in our safe comfort zone. This was somewhere we can be us. There is no judgment when you enter somewhere you are safe at, it's like your home." - Survivor Demetrice Naulings CBS