Cap’n Ken’s Homespun Wisdom

The parents of the kid who went missing (and turned up alive yesterday) out in Utah were live on CNN this afternoon talking about the ordeal. And the dad laid out what he told Brennan after he was found alive (love that DVR):

“You know what, Brennan? Heavenly Father has taken care of you. And your prayers, and our prayers and everybody”s prayers have brought us back together.”

Then he summed up his beliefs about Brennan”s ordeal:

“We do believe that God had his hand in everything that took place and transpired. I think as a world we need to understand that there is a God. I think we need to be rooted in these fundamental principles that the Savior taught of love and of service.”

So my question for Brennan”s dad is if God had his hand in everything that helped bring Brennan home alive, what”s been His hangup in delivering Garrett Bardsley (missing for almost a year in the Utah wilderness) back to his family, or Natalee Holloway back to her folks down in Aruba? Hell, there are prayer vigils going on in Aruba all the time for her.

Did the Heavenly Father cast off Natalee because she left a bar with three guys she didn”t know? Did that little Garrett boy kill kittens or something?

Just curious.

Bobby Bowden, head football coach at the Florida State College For Women, is on a Crusade to make saving boys for Jesus a more acceptable aspect of major college football.

Of course, we all know Bowden has had tremendous success instilling solid Chrisian values in all of his players.

Here”s hoping Bobby B can help spread his foundation of Christian values across the NCAA – to places like Auburn, Tennessee and Florida specifically.

I love that there”s controversy circling around Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as the pick-a-pope conclave gets underway in the Vatican.

Ratzinger”s comments about “a dictatorship of relativism” is coming under fire from some Catholics as being – apparently – too Catholic.

What the good Cardinal said, in effect, is that Catholics should follow Catholicism. You know, the actual religious order founded by Friends of Jesus back in the day. Catholicism teaches things like “divorce is bad and not allowed”, “if you”re not a good Catholic, you”re going to hell” and other things that can really bring down a weekend in Vegas.

Of course, a lot of Catholics (especially in the U.S.) don”t particularly like all these rules, and look for ways around them. Annulment is a fabulous loophole for a church that won”t recognize divorces, for instance. Married seven years? No problem! I”m sure we can squeeze out an annulment somewhere.

Then there”s the whole P.R. nightmare of a doctrine that assigns 83% of the world”s population to eternal damnation.

So The Ratz, obviously not happy with the notion that the Church should be a kinder, gentler place – and the treatment of the conclave as a political caucus where pope candidates are vetted against standards such as “media presence” – used his last public statement before being sequestered into pope-picking to give a shout-out to old-school religious rigidity:

“Having a clear faith, based on the creed of the church, is often labeled today as a fundamentalism,” Ratzinger said. “Whereas relativism, which is letting oneself be tossed and “swept along by every wind of teaching,” looks like the only attitude acceptable to today”s standards.

“We are moving toward a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as for certain and which has as its highest goal one”s own ego and one”s own desires.”

Damned right.

If you”re going to have a religion, people, have a religion! If there are rules, follow them. If you”re not going to follow the rules, don”t claim to be a part of the religion that has these rules.

Now get in there and pick me a pope!

There”s a great Hollywood-type event that”s going to be played out in Alabama and Georgia today. The Feds have to get pissed-off Christian bomber Eric Robert Rudolph from a Birmingham courthouse to one here in Atlanta (so he can cop pleas to his bombings), and then back to his cell in Birmingham.

John Law fears potential problems both from pro-abortion and/or pro-gay and/or pro-Olympic Park concert people who might want to kill Rudolph and from Christians and/or anti-abortion and/or anti-gay and/or anti-Olympic Park concert people who might want to liberate Rudolph – or maybe also kill him as a martyr.

Where”s Clint Eastwood when you need him?

Word on the street is that the Feds will likely use decoys, diversions and other tactics to throw potential wackos off the trail. The convoy of cops that will no doubt be seen on I-20 today might have Rudolph with them, or maybe he”s on an FBI plane landing at Peachtree DeKalb Airport. Or maybe there will be two planes – or three – all landing at different Atlanta airports and deplaning in secret inside hangars. Maybe each flight will be followed by a convoy to the courthouse, with Rudolph riding in one of them – perhaps.

Could be they”re all decoys and Rudolph actually travels in the back of a lone minivan driven by an FBI agent who happens to resemble a soccer mom.

I hope some screenwriter is taking notes on this. It should be fun.