Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller for February 21, 2012

You don’t have to go to church, but you can’t stay here…so…pretzels are the bread and body of Christ? Cool. That would get me to church more. The more I think about it, behind the bar, it does look a little like an alter dedicated to booze….

Bishop to nights pawn one.

THE BISHOP!!!

The end of false religion is near! What a grand day that will be.

Nice metaphor Wiley. Religion is drunk on it’s self-assumed power and the people are beginning to make the rules.

Just like the Taliban except the Taliban don’t drink.

Possibly true; but this isn’t the place to discuss that, please.

So where are the vines???

Yup, cut them off!

Y’all are going to hell! What a bunch of idiots!

Wait… what’s Santorum doing in a bar?

R_Noonan: LOL! They love to mock Christianity though!

… bartender’s making a sly comment about circumcision?

I can imagine Wiley chortling and clapping his ink stained paws as he waits for today’s comments. Well done, Sir.

Awesome!

Surely that’s only sacramental wine. No harm in that. Surely!

drinking blood. eating bodies. christians are nasty critters.

R-noon, Brian, just shows you how much more tolerant Christion philosophy is…You should be proud…..

Were he to do a strip with a mullah, would you get the joke, or even recognize him?

Round about Halloween, Wiley did a cartoon including kids dressed as a bishop, a rabbi, and an imam, but half the audience insisted that the imam was supposed to be a Catholic monk.

You make the jokes about the culture around you. Bears make jokes about the forest, armadillos make jokes about the desert.

I enjoy this strip every day, but this time is DESGUSTING ! ! !

What’s sad is that by the time everybody really understands this joke, it won’t be funny. Sounds like just another secular version of “Crucify Him”!

the philosophies of men… mingled with scripture.

In all honesty, I’m not sure what Wiley’s intention was with this strip — a simple joke, a metaphor, or an ideological statement. (Or all three.) Only he knows, and I doubt he’ll tell us…I think he enjoys seeing how much dust we kick up while over-analyzing every ink stroke..But it certainly brought the anti-Catholic, anti-Christian, anti-religion folks out of the woodwork, didn’t it? I’ll say only this to them: you’re mocking what you’ve never even bothered to try to understand, and in the process you’re blindly flinging out half-truths and outright lies about countless good and blameless people. I harbor no illusions about convincing you to do anything else — but I do feel sorry for you. Not because you’re “going to Hell”; that’s way above my pay grade to say…but because you’re closed-minded, angry, bitter people.

I thought it was Chesterton who said that it was not possible to state something so simply that another couldn’t come along and find another meaning to it, but I’m not finding the quote..

You guys realize that he has a coffee carafe in the hat for the hangover, right?!

gatocat: More accurately, to show how it can be done. An armadillo is slightly faster than a chicken, but has a defensive tactic that works great against coyotes – they wait until the last second and jump straight up. They coyote runs under them and they disappear before the coyote can turn around. Unfortunately, jumping straight up puts them at bumper height.

Took the ‘toon as intended. Couldn’t the bartender have been Andy Devine? (old westerns never die) Of course nothing defines “religious zealot” of ANY persuasion like a mixed drink of paranoia and hypocrisy with a twist of distortion.

Wiley gets it right on again.

Good thing this has nothing to do with the faith of Islam or their would be Jihad to pay!

“What !! You are going to Dis Bar me !?”

That’s OK. You can still go to Dat Bar, and get THEM to serve you.

(Actually, lawyers are disbarred, clergy are defrocked. He might be drunk enough to do that himself, but Wiley couldn’t run it in family newspapers.)

“Drink his blood, eat his flesh . . . vampirism and cannibalism!”

++++

That accusation has only been around about 1950 years.

I look forward to your series on Islam, you courageous cartoonist, you !

this strip has received enough complaints that the editors of the Hudson Valley Journal News printed an apology on the front e page. What is it with people? This is a thinking person’s comic, don’t read it if it offends. Read the damn Bill of Rights. I just sent Mr. Wiley a letter of support, wileyink@earthlink.net.

Looks to me like a simple illustrated pun. And a great one it is.

philly archdiocese…jury selection starts today for child sex abuse.

Mr. Wiley Miller: In answer to your own question about your strip today, I see a man wearing a Catholic Bishop’s vestments with staff sitting at a bar. On the bar are five chalices, two of which are knocked over. The bartender is in the process of cutting this man off from further drinking. The scene indicates this Bishop/Cardinal/Pope(?) is drunk. Exactly what commentary do YOU see? Are you being deliberately obtuse? Please explain the innocent pun here which some of us dimwits aren’t getting.If you want to poke fun at the Catholic Church, go for it. If you have no use for Christianity, that’s your prerogative. But, at least own up to it. Just what message are you trying to convey in this strip. Please enlighten.As per your statement, “As for doing cartoons hitting Isalm, I have done those, many times, and hitting them a lot harder and more directly than I have ever done on the hypoicrisy of the Catholic church or Christianity.” I’ve been reading your strip every day for years, and frequently enjoying it. You’re a talented artist. But, I’m having a real hard time recollecting ANY “hard hitting” cartoons about Islam. Because if I had seen any, I would have gone immediately to the comments to read all the death threats. So, I challenge you: for one week, reprint six of your hardest-hitting cartoons on Islam so we can compare them to the ones on Christianity.Of course, you may have to grow some stones to do that.Thanks, and God Bless!

Hey TrustedMechanic,

Thank’s four the defence but I reely dont nead much ofit. wwh85cp just likes two pretence he/she is smartr then the rist ofus. Talk about snotty.

It’s still a great metaphor the way I see it.

Methinks,

There are two different questions: Mocking the faith, and mocking the trappings of the faith. If you can’t differentiate between the two, I’m sorry for you. (If you cannot differentiate between the faith and the trappings of the faith, I question your understanding of the faith to begin with.)

Stupid! The pun is backwards! Divine Intervention places the bartender in the role of God and the bishop in the place of the sinner. It’s not funny when the joke is completely backwards!

De-wine intervention…

@BrianBishop = divineBartender = interveningJoke = funny