I just posted a reply to a rant by Bill O'Reily on his "The O'Reilly Factor", but don't expect to see it read or shown anytime soon on "The No-Spin Zone". In effect, I pointed out to him that the Tampa Tribune made a very valid comparison of the Virgin Mary to a woman who had recently gotten fired from her position as teacher at a private Catholic School. The woman had become pregnant, and had stated she had no plans to marry the father. She was summarrily fired from her job for failing to live by Church standards of decency and morality. The ACLU has filed a motion for a lawsuit on her behalf. The Tampa Tribune, to O'Reilly's petulant outrage, has compared the woman to the Virgin Mary-Christ's mother who was, after all, pregnant and unmarried.
O'Reilly has completely lost his head and is in a complete outrage over this, or so it would seem. One has to wonder just exactly how much of this outrage is directed more at the Tribune over past problems he has had with editorial writers, at least one of whom has written about him in very unflatterring terms.
I mean, really, what's the problem? I see the Trib's point, very well. After all, taking for granted just for the sake of argument that the story is a literal one, that it actually happen as recorded, then the question becomes, just how would the Jewish people of the time have reacted to Mary.
Would they have as a general rule said, "Oh look, there goes Mary, have you heard, she is even though a virgin, blest to have been impregnated by way of the Holy Spirit with a child who shall save us from our sins, as he is the only begotten son of God himself."
Or would their position have been more along the lines of "Oh look, there goes Mary, did you hear, she up and got herself pregnant, the sinful little slut, and now she has married that old man Joseph, the foolish worthless cuckold, to try to hide the circumstances of her sinful actions."
It doesn't take much imagination to imagine what their reactions would have been, and I don't think it would have been anywhere remotely somewhere in between, either.
