It seems pretty obvious to me. Until it got yuppified/gentrified the neighborhood was dominated by Irish Catholics, so even if you weren't a practicing Catholic as an adult you were raised in it and would know plenty about it to not need this book.

Yes Really

By dan r on Mon, 01/15/2024 - 6:33pm.

I can take a bicycle apart and put it back together, I might still like having a quick reference.

Hmm

By lbb on Tue, 01/16/2024 - 10:17am.

You know, what you say makes total sense...and yet I don't think religions think of their teachings as something you would need a quick reference for ;-)

I read "Judaism for dummies", and it was...interesting. Half useful to me as a non-Jew, but I was definitely aware of how cursory it was.

Isn't that the entire point of catechisms?

By fungwah on Tue, 01/16/2024 - 11:20am.

I don't think religions think of their teachings as something you would need a quick reference for

I guess those are more common on the Lutheran side of things, but there's a bunch of them out there trying to serve the purpose of "here's the core beliefs of our faith, summed up in a straight-forward and easier to read way".

Think back a few years ...

By SwirlyGrrl on Mon, 01/15/2024 - 8:13pm.

As recently as 1990, Massachusetts as a whole was 55-60% Catholic-identified.

50 years ago, Boston was closer to 75% Catholic.

We all know how quickly that went south - between Cardinal Law's insistence on covering up criminal kid touching and demographic shifts on a national level resulting in more unchurched people in younger generations, the Catholic Church is long past calling the shots around here.

So, yes, it was highly likely that any given person might be Catholic in Southie years ago and thus have no need of a primer.

Never would have seen this in

By anon on Mon, 01/15/2024 - 4:56pm.

Never would have seen this in old Southie.

Because Whitey Bulger

By perruptor on Tue, 01/16/2024 - 12:06am.

Wouldn't have allowed it?

Looks like a good book

By BostonDog on Mon, 01/15/2024 - 5:21pm.

As someone who is endlessly confused by the different "Christian" religious, that looks kinda helpful.

Simple way to remember

By tachometer on Mon, 01/15/2024 - 6:19pm.

Jews don't recognize Jesus as the messiah.

Protestants don't recognize the Pope as the head of the Church.

Baptists don't recognize each other in the liquor store.

Old Joke

By FakeBostonCharlie on Mon, 01/15/2024 - 9:44pm.

Q: Why won't Baptists have sex standing up?

A: So people won't think they're dancing.

Next time I'm in Coolidge Corner...

By FakeBostonCharlie on Mon, 01/15/2024 - 10:01pm.

...I'll check the Brookline Booksmith for a copy of Judaism for Dummies.

It's not as if it's only a

By Rob on Mon, 01/15/2024 - 10:05pm.

It's not as if it's only a local offering.

A Catholic blogger friend of mine down in Florida recently had a photo up of the same mag at his local supermarket.
Doubtless it's part of the bulk-ordering swath of some publishing-house division of some company, trying to capture something. People or somebody has saturated the market on the British Royal Family with funeral & coronation issues, and desperately needs something/anything else. Francis is semi-trendy, whether you're of either idiot extreme cult (the ones that think he's the greatest thing since sliced bread & the only Pope to ever smile - or the ones who think he's the antiChrist or antiPope or something), so release a Catholic book!!!

What I want to know

By SamWack on Mon, 01/15/2024 - 10:27pm.

The first thing to look for in the user's manual for any religion is always the same: how do you open the escape hatch?

I was going to say, where is the self-destruct button? But really that's only for pros. You need the shop manual for that.

Al-Ash`ari's paradox

By necturus on Tue, 01/16/2024 - 11:14am.

The following paradox was proposed by the tenth century Islamic scholar al-Ash`ari as a test for his teacher, al-Jubba`i. It turned out to be a hot potato neither of them could handle. It applies as well to any monotheistic religion in which God is at once just, all-knowing, and all-powerful.

Al-Ash`ari proposed that three brothers are born. One grows up to be pious and righteous; the second becomes an atheist and a career criminal; and the third dies in infancy.

His question to his teacher was simple: what will happen to each in the next life.

Al-Jubba`i declared that the pious brother earns a high status in heaven, the criminal burns in hell, and the dead child gets into heaven, but without his eldest brother's high status.

So al-Ash`ari said suppose the child were to ask God: why didn't you let me live, so I could earn by brother's high status?

His teacher told him that God knew that if the child had lived, he would have become an evil person and gone to hell, so God acted to spare him this fate.

Then al-Aash`ari asked: then what would God say when the brother in hell asked him: Lord, if you knew what would be his fate, then surely you knew what would be mine. Why then did you not have me die as a child, too?

Al-Jubba`i had no answer, because there is no answer. Al-Ash`ari himself decided simply to declare that God is just, God is all-knowing, and God is all-powerful, "bila kayf" ("and don't ask how").

Not a real book

By Friartuck on Tue, 01/16/2024 - 9:02am.

Unless the forward is penned by John Costello

Saw On Amazon The Other Day

By John Costello on Tue, 01/16/2024 - 10:12am.

Pathetic Comebacks For Dummies.

They were out it though. They said some fairy in JP had bought them all up for he and his friends.

Really dude?

By fungwah on Tue, 01/16/2024 - 10:14am.

You're going with homophobic insults from the 50s now?

Wow

By lbb on Tue, 01/16/2024 - 10:23am.

some fairy in JP

I'd say this is beneath you, but I admit it, I do not understand you at all. I've seen you make comments that strongly supported LGBTQ people and called out homophobia and transphobia...and then you do something like this. Do you really not see what you're doing? Do you really not understand your own knee-jerk reaction, the insult you reach for when you are looking for the meanest, most vicious thing you could say about someone that you believe to be male?

Adam has tolerated many vicious attacks from you in the past, and I have no illusions that he will draw the line now. But I know that I'm not alone.

So Attacks Against Catholics?

By John Costello on Tue, 01/16/2024 - 10:39am.

That's Ok?

If you throw insults about someone's identity, don't cry when they are thrown back at you about their identity.

See how that works?

Ban Ban Ban

By John Costello on Tue, 01/16/2024 - 10:43am.

That's your MO time and time again.

I don't agree with that person - Ban them.

You are no different than those people who go after drag shows.

Adam

By John Costello on Tue, 01/16/2024 - 10:50am.

Delete this thread.

I was hit with a personal attack on the religion I grew up in by someone looking to score points.

I responded in kind yet somehow I am the meanie.

Let me try and explain it to you

By fungwah on Tue, 01/16/2024 - 11:26am.

Someone made a (frankly, fairly minor) joke about you specifically, so you responded by using a term that is insulting to all gay men indiscriminately. Hopefully, you get how that's worse.

Minor Joke?

By John Costello on Tue, 01/16/2024 - 11:30am.

Who are you to consider it to be minor in my interpretation of it?

It is absolutely amazing that you can't see the double standard at play here.

He's calling you the resident authority on Catholicism

By fungwah on Tue, 01/16/2024 - 1:10pm.

From where I'm sitting, that's a fairly minor gibe.

But even if it was the worst insult ever uttered - didn't your Catholic upbringing ever mention verses like Matthew 5:39 or Luke 6:28? Or perhaps Proverbs 12:16 is most appropriate here:

A fool is quick to show his anger,
but a prudent man ignores an insult.

No

By lbb on Tue, 01/16/2024 - 11:04am.

So Attacks Against Catholics? That's Ok?

No, but you have repeatedly proven yourself to be unwilling to discuss in rational terms what constitutes an "attack against Catholics", or to consider that Catholics do not occupy a marginal position in this country with legal rights that are incomplete at best. An attack against Catholics would be no more appropriate than an attack against gay men, such as you have made here. But you're not willing to have that discussion like a rational person.

I Was Attacked

By John Costello on Tue, 01/16/2024 - 11:10am.

I was made fun of owing to something that culturally makes up part of my identity.

I responded in kind to someone, who insulted me out of the blue, owing to something that makes up their identity.

Somehow in your narrow view, you can't see that the reciprocity was warranted.

Why, because it's not nice? Neither was the attack on me.

See?

Not reciprocal

By lbb on Tue, 01/16/2024 - 12:22pm.

Somehow in your narrow view, you can't see that the reciprocity was warranted.

I don't think that my view is narrow, and I don't think that the two situations are reciprocal. You have put yourself forth repeatedly as the arbiter of what is and isn't offensive to Catholics, and you have stated that anything that is offensive to Catholics is a personal attack on you. Both of these are questionable at best, but that's beside the point: you've made that part of your public identity on this site. So: subject of thread is a book, "Catholicism for Dummies". Poster makes a tongue-in-cheek comment about how surely the book can't be authoritative without a forward by you, the resident authority (my paraphrase). That was my interpretation, but I grant you, it's a one-liner and somewhat ambiguous. How did you interpret it?

ETA: I'm surprised that I have to point this out, but if the situation were reciprocal, the attacks on Catholics would include targeted assaults and murders, political figures calling for incarceration or execution of Catholics, death threats, armed protests outside Catholic churches during services, and more.