Now religion, Anne Rice has had some famous/infamous connections with Christianity and Catholicism in particular. One of the vampire books (I believe it was Memoch the Devil) includes the crucifixion of Christ, she's written some books about Jesus (I have one of them though I haven't gotten around to reading it yet), and she publicly went back to and then left the Church in recent years. In Lasher she writes of how his character had once been considered a Saint and how he went to live and study with the Franciscan monks. I enjoy reading about the lives of the Saints already and then with this story it made me wish I could be Catholic or Pagan, the story talks about the intertwining of the two traditions. I don't believe I could be a Catholic for the same reasons I couldn't continue as a Southern Baptist, I barely pass the mustard as a Methodist. The book also talked about the bloody and awful ways the Catholics and Protestants treated each other, killings, burnings, all out wars on occasion. It seems to me that modern Christians (at least in my experience) are either completely ignorant or are choosing to be blind to our own history. Whenever I read or hear someone talk about how they believe the Bible the way Christians have always believed, or how there is no debating the meanings of scripture, I wonder if they've ever looked at Christian history. I know some have had too, surely you can't get a doctorate in theology without studying these things; and once you've seen them how can you say your way is the only right way? IDK? I once overheard a young associate pastor from an independent Baptist church tell someone he thought the KJV was the only version of the bible worth reading, then he said, "If it was good enough for Paul, it's good enough for me." I didn't know him, so maybe he had a dead pan sense of humor, I hope that was the case.
Anyway, I'm off to read some more of Taltos, it's started out very strong and I can't wait to see where the story is going to go from here.