Priest sees little wrong with gambling, plenty wrong with Calvin

Michael Kelly is a Jesuit priest and Catholic blogger, and as such, his views on gambling might come as a bit of a surprise. Kelly doesn’t much like casinos, but when it comes to placing a bet on a horse race or a World Cup match, Kelly believes that so long as it’s done within one’s financial means, wagering is “a way of being in the competition and sharing that most basic of human experiences with others: risk. The sharing of risk is one of the great bonding forces of human life. And the experience of sharing risk is not very far from the daily experience of a believer.” In case you missed it, I’ll say it again. He’s a priest.

However tolerant Kelly may be on the issue of gambling, he has no time for Calvin’s belief that humans are a “lump of sin”, fatally flawed and doomed to frustrate the Creator’s intention, predestined to eternal punishment because… Hold on… something’s not right here… Oh, Kelly’s talking about 16th century Protestant nutter John Calvin, not Calvin Ayre. I didn’t think that sounded like something like Calvin would say, largely because of the distinct absence of profanity… Read more.