Being a churchgoing Catholic Christian has an almost infinite number of advantages; one in particular appeals to me greatly right now:

I know of about half a dozen people who don't like me or want nothing to do with me. Now this is somewhat sad, I admit, BUT --

I don't need their permission to forgive them or pray for them.

I don't need their permission to ask God to show me how I may have offended them so I can ask them to forgive me.

So I get the last word! . . . or, if you will, the last laugh. :-)

Hitler, Arturo Ui, and . . .

In 1968, the Guthrie Theater performed a Brecht play that is as timely now as it was in 1941, when Brecht wrote it in exile in Finland after fleeing Germany. Its English title is "The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui." It is about the rise to power of a Chicago gangster, and it is a very thinly veiled satire on Hitler.

When the play is over, the actor playing Ui takes off his mustache and delivers this epilogue:

If we could learn to look, instead of gawking,

We'd see the horror in the heart of farce.

If only we could act, instead of talking!

We wouldn't always end up on our arse.

This was the thing that nearly had us mastered,

Don't yet rejoice in his defeat, you men!

Although the world stood up and stopped the bastard,

The bitch that bore him is in heat again.

The original German of the last line is:

Der Schoß ist fruchtbar noch, aus dem das kroch.
meaning
The womb is fertile still, from which he crawled.

(Hat tip to another blog for the picture, which I modified a bit.)