So, all groggy and using many tissues, I turn on my computer this morning and the first thing I see is When Your Mother Is a Witch.
DEAR MARGO: We are Catholic, but about eight years ago, my mother decided she was a Wiccan. I have tried very hard to accept it, but I cannot.
Margo Howard, daughter of the late Ann Landers, does a nice job, telling her to stop hiding the truth from her fiance, and to drop the devil worship bullshit. But the letter is irresistable, and while fisking is more common in political blogs than Pagan ones, I’m going for the gusto.
I find it humiliating for people to know because it’s embarrassing. She does, however, respect my need for it to be kept quiet.
She finds it humiliating because it’s embarrassing. Does she also find it cold because it’s chilly? Damp because it’s moist? Stupid because it’s dumbass? Just wondering.
The major issue is that I am pregnant and engaged to be married. My fiance is from Costa Rica, and his family is VERY religious, and in our religion, Wicca is the same as devil worship.
We must now pause to appreciate the stunninng hypocrisy. This “VERY religious” woman is unmarried and pregnant, yet is concerned about her mother’s sin? The sin of having a different religion? Cuz, I dunno, I think following your own religion might be a higher priority.
My little sister is very confused (she is 5, I am 23) as she cannot differentiate between being magical and riding brooms, and real life.
No, dear, you are confused. Do you honestly believe that five year-olds who are raised Catholic have a better ability to distinguish fantasy from reality? She’s five. If she was Catholic, she’d be asking Mary to make her a princess. Small children don’t understand where the dividing line on reality is.
In fact, lots of adults don’t either. I’d put magic on the “real life” side. “Hypocrite Guilty in New Jersey” wouldn’t. “Hypocrite Guilty would probably put virgin birth on the “real life” side. I wouldn’t.
I do respect my mother’s choice to be Wiccan, but I don’t want it in my life, and I don’t want my future in-laws to find out. I feel like I am denouncing a part of her, and I feel guilty for that.
Sweetiepie, you are denouncing her. See that part back there where you called her a devil worshipper? That’s a denouncement. See that part where you find her humiliating? That’s not respect. I have an urge to tie this back to the media’s use of meaningless language and Bush’s use of gobbledygook; personal accounts are not private accounts, global warming isn’t happening, a surge isn’t an increase, peace is war and we have always been at war with Eastasia. This poor, deluded soul doesn’t even know that saying you respect someone is not the same as actual respect. Actual respect means, for example, not being ashamed to tell the truth about the person you respect to your future husband, not calling the person you respect a devil worshipper, and not questioning the person you respect’s ability to raise her child based on the delusion you claim to respect.
Is this today’s meditation? It’s very soothing.
(oy vey.)
PS Margo is way better than the reincarnated ‘Dear Abby’, who gets it wrong like all the time.
LOL!!!!
Also loved Margo’s answer. The only thing I found strange was the assertion that her mother tried to convert her. Given the source I’m skeptical.
I suspect her mother tried to inform her and that was interpreted as conversion. Wicca doesn’t approve of conversion.
The new “Dear Abby” is lame. Margo used to do “Dear Prudence” because she was reluctant to divulge her real name; she didn’t want to ride mom’s coattails. The new Dear Prudence is a wingnut whose advise is to call women sluts.
I wasn’t in a meditative mood. I tried to write a meditation and it all came out being about phlegm. So.
I think it’s a fake letter…. and Margo fell for it.
I don’t think so, Ken. Sadly, it’s not unlike a lot of stuff I hear people say about Wicca.
People will beleive just about anything and with all the Fundementalist propaganda out there there are lots of folks who aren’t fundies beleive in the devil worship nonsense.
Personaly I had one basicly good person(a neighbor) have the police investigate me.When she realised she was wrong however she made ammends and were friends now.
Wicca doesn’t approve of conversion.
Indeed. Doesn’t one usually speak of “the craft finding you”, as if it were a calling you either had or lacked?
– oddjob
Doesn’t one usually speak of “the craft finding you”, as if it were a calling you either had or lacked?
You’ll hear that, or you’ll hear “coming home” to the Craft. You don’t convert, you come home.
It’s not the Wicca stuff that makes me think it’s fake…. it’s the “I’m pregnant and Catholic” part, information that is totally irrelevant to the reason for the letter. It just reads like one of those old National Lampoon fake letters…….