Garish and Awkward Manipulations

That would make a good name for an edgy indie rock band.
Or an punk chiropractor.
Or my forays into athletics.

But it's actually a reference to the methods used by those who take advantage of the Biblical illiteracy wrought by the secularization of our society (I would add, though the CNS article does not, that cultural illiteracy, and plain ol' illiteracy PERIOD, also make many easy targets for dor-to-door evangelists, heretical preachers, and agenda driven ersatz Catholic middle management types -- the "demi-clerics" as I've hread them described.


VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- A lack of biblical literacy can make people, even Catholics, more susceptible to believing the distortions and falsifications in biblical texts published by the Brooklyn-based Watch Tower Society, said an article in the Vatican newspaper. While secularism "poses serious problems also for the preaching of Jehovah's Witnesses," the article said, the religious illiteracy that comes with secularism also can create fertile terrain for creating new converts. L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, published an article called "Jehovah's Witnesses: Just Incredible!" in its Oct. 29 weekly edition in English. The article, written by author Valerio Polidori, first appeared in the paper's daily Italian edition July 25. "Poor knowledge of the sacred texts favors the spread of garish and awkward manipulations" of the Bible, it said. It said the Watch Tower Society's "The New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures" contains text that has been manipulated by translators making "completely arbitrary additions or subtractions."