The Rhenish Missionary Society

[Michael Perez]

Doug wrote:
"Not all missions and missionaries are the same. How feeding a starving
person or making a dying person's last few moments on this earth a bit
more comfortable can produce the catalog of ill effects that have been
trotted out in this thread is beyond me."

They may not be the same, but their essential task, enlisting more
victims of what Pynchon calls the "Baby Jesus con game," is the same. 
As fond as you are of "clear moral judgments" it is difficult to
imagine that the SOS episode has not met your criteria.  Not one bit of
what I've said on the matter has focused on the "ill effects" of
feeding the starving or comforting the dying.  True altruism is not a
loan dependent eventual adherence to an invader's mythology.  In
addition, when what is done creates a situation ("we're saved, let's
have more babies") that will worsen the problem (that is, ever
worsening over-population due to the number of new births NOT because
no one is dying that should be), this is helping?  There is a
difference between evil intent (malice aforethought), evil actions, and
evil results.  If the results were accidental or unforeseeable some
forgiveness could be granted, but it seems to me in this case the
results would have been obvious.

Michael



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