Michael Moore’s Book: an update

I finished Here Comes Trouble: Stories from My Life, by Michael Moore. It was a thoroughly delightful read and I recommend it highly. The stories he share are absolutely mind bending and the impact this lad from Flint Michigan has had during his life from early on to the present is amazing.

I am especially pleased that the religious aspects of his thinking. Though he disagrees with many Roman Catholic principles, i.e. abortion, birth control, single clergy, lack of women priests, and the like, his faith is apparent in all his thinking. He really believes in the social gospel and has spent a lifetime putting it into practice. Though he is not a practicing Roman Catholic, his faith is apparent and his time in seminary, though they asked him not to return (he asked too many questions), his faith is strong and used.

There is an amazing story of a priest friend of his, perhaps from his seminary days, I forget, who asks Michael to hear his confession. Strange. But the story is this priest was an army chaplain and was the one who blessed the Enola Gay, its crew and the bomb that killed so many people. This priest has spent a lifetime trying to atone for that act by being a radically anti-war activist. Amazing story.

Another great story was a friend whose parents when through Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen. He talked Michael into going to Bitburg when then president Ronald Reagan visited the city to place a wreath of SS soldier’s graves. It is a wild story how they got through many road blocks and then unfurled a banner just as Ronald and Nancy’s limo passed by saying something like, “You’re honoring the soldiers who killed my parents.” He made sure Pierre Salinger who happened to be at hand and pictures taken of the event so they would be beaten up.

Again, I recommend it as a good read. Now I am on to The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion, a book on moral psychology. I’m liking it a lot.