May God forbid our (good and honorable) desire to show sympathy for temporal suffering lead us to say careless words that might lead to eternal suffering. The Coptics, by their confession, believe in salvation-by-works. They need to be evangelized, and they need to come to Christ.

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(Now, we mere Catholics are supposed to avoid the sin of presumption, but I”€™ve got a funny feeling those particular Copts have already made it there …)

The complete statement is emblematically Modern American Protestant: the masturbatory delight in jargon and semantics, even as human blood is being spilled; that prim, conspicuously castrated curse word (“€œblooming”€); the chilly tone deafness and lousy timing; the orientation toward a (pure and exclusive) heaven rather than our lowly, messy Earth.

So, in such a culture”€”albeit its drastically diluted (and fermented) German equivalent”€”what does it mean when a Lego Martin Luther breaks sales records?

For what would the man himself, and his legions of troglodyte statue-busters, make of the making of such a graven image, however tiny and plastic and droll?

Is it possible that, after 500 years, uptight, no-fun Protestants are finally outgrowing their allergy to whimsy and (dare we to hope) irony?

For that’s what the toy was created to celebrate: the upcoming 500th anniversary of the Reformation. Which is such a Protestant thing to throw a party about. But hey: it’s a start, right?

It’s almost as if the Germans are turning Japanese …

Oh, heck.