A Time to Say "Enough" (Artwork is SYMBOLIC of how fundamentalists try to cram their beliefs into the minds of others.)

painting by Tammy Anderson
(Some people apparently don't read and I had to clarify
the meaning for some of them who thought the picture
was depicting an atheist killing a Christian. LOL! )

I have a story for you ...one of the guys my husband worked with at his last company is fundamentalist Catholic and had been "evangelizing" to us via mail us for EIGHT YEARS. (I never knew Catholics could be so evangelical!) He would send us packages and envelopes containing rosary beads, holy cards, Catholic magazine subscriptions...we jokingly called him "Father Finegan" (his last name is Finegan).

In the beginning of this friendship with my husband, he seemed harmless. Annoying, however, but most of our family and friends are believers, so when he invited us to meet him for lunch one day, I went along at my husband's request, sort of reluctantly. Well, as we were eating our Chicago-style beef sandwich and fries, Finegan started telling us about the virgin Mary, then Jesus and that whole "he died for you" story...we told him we KNEW about all that and then I just wanted to leave. We made it through the lunch, him promising to "pray" for us and we politely smiled and ignored the statement and said farewell. We never saw him in person again, but he decided to pursue our "salvation" via the postal service. We had sent little polite notes and cards back to him thanking him for thinking of us, but to please not keep sending us religious material. But he was relentless. Saving our souls had become his mission in life.

On a regular basis we were sent mailings of religious literature and paraphernalia. The rosaries kept coming, the sad and morbid looking holy cards, cards that said a mass was being held in our name, booklets on how to be saved, and it went on and on and on until finally, last year when I had to put a stop to it. Our last delivery was a hard cover copy of a book about the making of Mel "Psycho" Gibson's Passion of the Christ...along with a rosary, holy card...magazine...and a letter saying how we were going to burn in hell and lost forever if we didn't accept Jesus as our savior and repent of our sins. I was furious! I threw the book in the dumpster. My husband, who hates to see books go to waste, said maybe we should have given it to our Baptist niece and I said NO...I didn't want in any way to perpetuate that garbage. I sat down and wrote Mr. Finegan a long letter saying how I threw everything away that he sent, and I told him not to send ANYTHING RELIGIOUS to us ever again. I told him we have respected his religious views and tolerated the total disrespect for our beliefs long enough. That happened last year and we haven't heard from him again.

Sometimes tolerance just doesn't work. Also just goes to show that it wasn't a true friendship. He was just on a mission to get more in favor with his god.