martyrdom's fire

There's a line in a hymn to St. Patrick about "martyrdom's fire," and I can't help but think of it rather often these days. Even more now that I read about the three Indonesian Catholics who were executed on specious charges of fomenting a riot (!). And, of course, today's feast of St. Matthew fits right in there, too.

Being right now pretty much tied up with family matters, I have not kept up too much with how the fallout from Pope Benedict's talk is continuing. I noted that a Vatican spokeperson remarked on how widespread the reaction was even though the Pope's talk had not been translated into the languages of the countries where he was being burned in effigy and so forth.

That leads me to formulating...

 

Anne's First Rule of Reaction: "No person whosoever is permitted to respond in any way whatsoever to any presumed provocation whatever before actually informing himself or herself of the matter in its original context."

1. Verbal statements rule out any other than verbal responses.
2. Those who indulge in irrational hyperbole shall be respectfully ignored by communications media that serve the public interest.
3. Those who choose to respond with force or weapons exclude themselves by the very fact from public discourse.

Anne's Second Rule of Reaction is: "The validity of any verbal or written public response to any verbal or written public statement (whether spoken or written) shall depend directly upon the responder's having attentively read or listened to the entire prior presentation."

 

Anne's Third Rule of Reaction is: "The validity of any verbal or written public response to any verbal or written public statement (whether spoken or written) shall have weight and merit mention in the media in direct proportion to the number of the following criteria that it meets:

1. The original public statement has been read (or heard) in full and in context.
2. The original public statement has been read (or heard) in full several times. (Increased number of times correlates to increased validity of response.)
3. The original public statement has been read (or heard) in the original language.
4. The original public statement has been read (or heard), and all quoted sources have also been read in full and in context.
5. The original public statement has been read (or heard), and all quoted sources have also been read in full, in context, and in the original language(s).

 

Any other codicils to add before Anne's Rules of Reaction are promulgated?