God Loved the Antichrist Just as Much as His Mother (and other half-baked urban legends and poppycock)

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The National Catholic Register ran a few sympathy for the devil articles yesterday that leave me a little perplexed about where EWTN is going with their newly-acquired publication.

I was actually shocked to read this doozy, called "The Shocking Truth God Loves Osama Bin Laden Too".

God loves murderers as much as he loves the rest of us, even as much as he loves the people whom they hurt. What does that say about our God? What does it mean for us, given that we are called to love as God loves?!

This most difficult of truths has come to mind again as I see Osama bin Laden’s image splashed all over the media, and hear the reports that he is now dead. God loves that man as much as he loved Mother Teresa? God loves that man as much as he loves the people on Flight 93? As much as he loves each of the other victims of 9/11? As much as he loves me? It’s true.

Saints preserve us!

Am I reading this right? Does this say that Mother Teresa and Osama Bin Laden are equitable recipients of God's love?

Dogs, sorcerers, unchaste, murderers, and servers of idols, and every one that loveth and maketh a lie are not to be left, as Scripture dictates, outside of the Kingdom?

The past few weeks of reading over there would leave one of the opinion that while God loves Bin Laden, it's Michael Voris who is on the highway to hell.

What madness.

Here's something well-written and succinct that puts things into the proper perspective:

But Proverbs 24:17 is indeed instructive; it is a call to humility and a recognition of the thin line between giving thanks for deliverance from evil and giving into the sort of pride that is itself the root of sin. Yes, we should rejoice in justice, but be soberly circumspect when it comes to the killing of those who are evil. God desires that all men be saved (1 Tim. 2:4), but he also judges justly and "will render to every man according to his works: to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life; but for those who are factious and do not obey the truth, but obey wickedness, there will be wrath and fury" (Rom. 2:6-8).

Of course God loves sinners, even unrepentant ones! But, the idea that He loves the children whose father is the devil the same as he loves His Saints is crackpot theology. Christ called some of these characters He came across in His days "dogs", "evildoers" and "swine" and warned the Apostles not to give pearls to them.

Scripture tells us that St. John was the disciple whom Jesus loved, the beloved disciple.

Did He not love the other eleven, or does this tell you that even among his most cherished faithful servants God does not love equally? Where do you suppose this put's Bin Laden, Hitler, David Duke?

Osama spent his life hunting Christ and His followers to annihilate them. Does that ring an identity bell with anyone who has read Scripture? Neutralizing the enmity which Scripture explains is Divinely placed is not something I would expect to read at a publication belonging to Mother Angelica. Is there an editor there that reviews the theological content or has the thing become a loose cannon?

There isn't a shred of evidence Bin Laden repented of his life's work of lying and murdering Christ. Can somebody please tell this teeny tiny blogger what the National Catholic Register is doing by suggesting Osama Bin Laden's life may have earned him a reward in Paradise?

It is a mockery of the theology of salvation.

The last paragraph or two of the Bible enumerates the public unrepented sin that leaves us outside of Christ's Church. You cannot simultaneously claim you leave judgments to God when you are out in the public square trying to trump those judgments.

Pleased to meet you

Hope you guessed my name, oh yeah

But what's confusing you

Is just the nature of my game

Just as every cop is a criminal

And all the sinners saints

As heads is tails

Just call me lucifer

Cause Im in need of some restraint

So if you meet me

Have some courtesy

Have some sympathy, and some taste

Use all your well-learned politesse

Or I'll lay your soul to waste,

Praying for souls, even the most hardened sinner is the duty of every Catholic. Mucking the theology of salvation along with it, is its antithesis.