You are the children of your father, the Devil, and you want to follow your father's desires. From the very beginning he was a murderer and has never been on the side of truth, because there is no truth in him. When he tells a lie, he is only doing what is natural to him, because he is a liar and the father of all lies. (John 8:44)

Sometimes it's hard to love those who hate you. But it's even more difficult to love those who refuse to see reason or to recognize their own errors, self-contradictions, mistakes and hysteria.

Misology is the irrational and intractable hatred of logic and reason. It's a deep-seated, delusional self-assurance that one is right not only despite logic, scholarship and scientific and historical reality but even despite one's own assertions. Misological people will demand they are right even after they've contradicted themselves thus proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that they are axiomatically and patently wrong. And it's never a pleasant conversation with them. Rather, it's a hormonally-fueled tirade filled with threats, invective and vulgarities and as often as not, ends in violence. It's perfectly devoid of reason. Logic means nothing to these individuals. They are anti-logic.

On September 12, 2006, Pope Benedict XVI presented his Regensburg lecture―probably the most epoch-defining and paradigm-shifting speech in recent memory.

But, like Cassandra before him, he was condemned to have his truth ignored.

In an effort to refocus Catholic-Muslim dialogue that had degenerated into "Show-n-Tell" cultural exchanges at a pleasant Sunday luncheon, Pope Benedict tried to lay bare the fundamental difference between the Judeo-Christian God and belief and, basically, everyone else. 

Benedict didn’t present anything earthshaking, even though Muslims around the world exploded at the perceived, nonexistent affront egged on by a secular, anti-Catholic media. In his Regensburg speech, the Pope distilled the basic, irreconcilable difference between us (Judeo-Christians) and "them" (everyone else.) He said that we understand God as essentially Logos (i.e., Divine Reason Who is the Word of God Himself) while Muslims saw their Allah as Voluntas. (i.e., Caprice). The former facilitates the growth of civilization, human rights, true freedom and an appreciation of reason. The latter leads only to violence, arbitrariness, dysfunction, oppression, misology and the decline of civilization.

However, the Pope's message wasn't directed solely to Muslims. Rather, it was to the entire secularized Western world. In his speech, Benedict called non-Judeo-Christians to examine their motives and ideals and check whether, like the Muslim world, if it had lost sight of Reason. To see if they had instead, nolens volens, taken up the banner of Caprice by reducing Christian faith to subjective opinion, wisdom to mere efficacy, natural reason to sterile empiricism, logic to functionality, love to sentimental humanitarianism and common sense, parity, fairness and justice to political correctness.

Like a concerned and capable physician, Benedict gently offered a cure to the closing of the Western secularist mind. Specifically, the Judeo-Christian understanding of God as Logos―the Reason that opens our minds to Reality. The word "logic" is derived from the same word which Jews and Christians use to describe God as exemplified by the Egyptian Jewish theologian Philo Judaeus of Alexandria, (25 BC-50 BC).

At the noon Mass on Easter Sunday at New York City's St Patrick's Cathedral, six terrorists representing Collectively Free, an "animal rights" organization, stormed in and desecrated that sacred space. With bullhorn in hand, Jacob Martin, a 23-year-old North Carolina kindergarten teacher, furiously screamed, "Only the devil" could create "animals capable of love and joy just so humans can make them suffer and die." 

This is exceptionally poor theology more reminiscent of a petulant kindergartener's babbling rather than that of an erudite and educated teacher of said kindergartens. Manicheans and their red-haired, left-handed, third cousins, the Albigensians, believed nonsense like this. However, as every Jew and Christian knows, Satan is incapable of creating anything other than lies and illusions. He is the Father of Lies and a murderer as his goal is to destroy the truth. (John 8:44)

Also, the protester forgot to mention, delicious animals in his rant.

The other protesters held signs and pictures of animals, shouting, "Easter is a time for love! No more shedding animal blood!" The police and security moved quickly to restore order.

The Collectively Free website claims to emphasize "Integrity and Empathy" and urges its members to "Show respect for and value individuals."

I'm grateful they believe this, otherwise, they'd interrupt an Easter Mass at the Cathedral.

Oh, wait!

One of the demonstrators wielded a camera disguised to look like a bomb strapped to her chest. She was deftly caught by alert security guards. Frightened worshippers watched as the security personnel grappled with these violent and selfish protesters ushering them into the waiting and eager arms of police officers―no doubt carnivores by the look of them.

When asked, Raffaella Ciavatta, co-founder of Collectively Free, explained that her group terrorized the congregation of St. Patrick's Cathedral because, "Ham is a big thing on Easter, so that is why we decided to bring those voices to the public."

Obviously Ciavatta is misological and unstable.

Actually, my family and I enjoyed a lovely chestnut-stuffed capon for Easter.

It was so delicious, it would have driven a vegan "animal rights" activist to strangle an overweight rooster with her bare hands in the oft chance that my mother would cook it for her.

I don’t write that to offend though I've no doubt it will. If someone holds an opinion contrary to mine, the last thing they should do is go ape as if they thought that the brute force of their fury would change my mind. That's just stupid. It's also unreasonable. It's misological. It's insane.

I'm open to any and all intelligent discussion even to topics that are near and dear to my heart such as God, the Catholic Church and chestnut-stuffed capon for Easter.

They are all delightful, to varying degrees.

Sit with me and tell me your thoughts. I'll tell you mine. Don’t yell at me about animal rights because, as God is my witness, I'll eat a ham steak right there and then. I might even throw half of it away just on spite.

But, the wonderfully egalitarian thing about intelligent, rational discourse is that I have the option and right to similarly convince you of the correctness of my opinion just as you think you can convince me.

Only a dictator would force others to agree with her and this isn't a value we should be supporting in a democracy. People have the right to worship as they wish. Our Constitution guarantees it and a tiny minority of wackadoos' right to "free speech" shouldn't trump religious expression and my right to worship unharassed. (Luke 1:73) Because, if one right can trump another, then I vote for my right to worship to trump these maniacs' right to "free speech,"

I should also point out that free speech isn't equivalent to hate speech. No civilized government should bestow the right to hate others upon its citizens. And absolutely NO ONE has the "right to be right." 

One is "right" when one eschews emotions and examines objective facts through the lens of logic and at no other time or circumstances. "Feelings" don’t make one right regardless of how offended someone is.

I had a chance to interview Raffaella Ciavatta and I took the opportunity to ask her about her group's values and behavior. I asked her if she was planning on disrupting Muslim services at mosques as they are required, by the strictures of their religion, to slaughter a goat per family in a particularly gruesome manner for Idil Fitri marking the end of Ramadan. 

Ciavatta insisted that she would "once we have a Muslim activist." 

I told her this is a convenient rationalization as she most likely won't get one any time soon. And, in the meanwhile.  she's allowing a great number of goats to die while she wastes her time at a Catholic cathedral where no such sacrifices are taking place, ever, at any time.

She gave no intelligent response to my remark.

Oddly, she referred to St Patrick's Cathedral a "place of violence." I can only presume she was referring to her group's own violence on Easter Sunday. Again, she irrationally rationalized her behavior by saying, "After the Mass you go home and eat the bodies of animals. What's the difference?"

I then reminded her that after people work at NBC, those workers go home to eat meat. After patrolling the streets, police go home and eat meat. After saving people's lives, physicians go home and eat meat. 

"What's the difference?" I asked.

In lieu of an intelligence response, Ciavatta said, "silence is compliance" referring to the Church's not requiring its followers to agree with her.

That's when she assured me that she and her group and, indeed most people who agree with her, were complicit with all abortions committed everywhere and at all times and, in fact, with the violence perpetrated by the most recent al Qaeda/ISIS attack which killed nearly seventy children and women, mostly Christians, in Pakistan.

Ciavatta assured me she was complicit in these horrible crimes because, she has neverspoken out about either and, based on her "logic," she is therefore complicit in them and all other crimes about which she has not spoken out. 

Again, she offered no intelligent response other than her silence. But, again, as she insisted, silence is equivalent to complicity in a crime, thus making my point.

I reminded Ciavatta that the US Army is the world's largest purchaser of meat and asked her why she has yet to protest any military camps or recruitment centers.

No intelligent response was forthcoming. 

I then pointed out that she had actively participated in the killing of countless millions of animals each and every time she had received a vaccination for any disease or had taken the Pill to regulate her ovulation. As such, she was actively benefiting from technology that required the slaying of countless animals over many decades to perfect their formulas.

She still had no intelligent response to my challenge.

Ciavatta and her ilk are cowards. They attack mindlessly and without warning. They attack soft targets unlikely to fight back while all the while congratulating themselves for their ignorance, self-righteousness and "bravery."

Sounds like al Qaeda/ISIS to me.

I pressed Ciavatta as to why she targeted the Catholic Church when there are 41,000 Protestant sects in the world, many of which are represented in the US. 

Again, she offered nothing even approximating an intelligent response.

I asked her as to why she thought anyone should accept her personal values when she had so readily abandoned facts and logic. 

Still…no response but, frankly, I was no longer expecting one from her. I had been hoping against hope that speaking to her in a calm, logical manner armed with facts and not feelings, surely the first time any person had ever done so in her life, that she would ultimately see reason.

Instead, she only rationalized her anger and rejoiced in her sadism, cowardice and subjective "morality" of convenience. 

But the worst of all of this is that Ciavatta and her mindless, hate-filled confreres will never know love or peace. They hope to create a world in which they will constantly be attacked every time someone disagrees with them. And all the while they are being attacked, they will wonder, "From whence does this anger come?"

Their hatred and misology blinds them so much that they will be unable to see that they are their own worst enemies simply because they refuse or otherwise cannot love.

That is the ultimate tragedy.

In writing his Divine Comedy, Dante was faced with the ultimate mystery of our Faith―how can an omnibenevolent God damn a soul to eternal punishment in Hell. The author gave the perfect answer: God doesn't condemn us to Hell…we condemn ourselves.

Those who abandon logic inevitably hate. They hate goodness and peace and justice. Hatred and the rejection of the Logos does it every time.