Headline: "Jesus Can't Swim!"

There's an old joke that says that when news got out that Jesus walked across the surface of the Sea of Galilee in a storm, met his disciples who were struggling in a boat and then even rescued one of them from drowning, the headlines the next day read in large type "Jesus Can't Swim!"

I thought of that this morning when my Google News aggregator vacuumed up this story from the voice of global orthodox smug disinformation. Here is David Virtue's big scoop:

Well placed advertising cost money...

...and the Episcopal Church paid it!

He reports that the ad placed by the Episcopal Church's Communications Office on the New York Times Op-Ed page last Saturday, May 12th cost "a cool $51,897 for a one-time quarter page block."

Now remember it's not the news, it's how you spin it that counts. Virtue knows this better than anyone. So he goes on to talk about how this astronomical sum is paid to offset and hide the imminent death of the Episcopal Church that Virtue and his kind are working so hard to project, er, produce.

Here's my spin on the news that the ad cost $51,897.

Is that all? If this is a scandal, let's have more of it!

Don't ask me how I know this, but a three-times-a-year mass mailing postcard campaign to every household with children in three Pennsylvania and two New Jersey zip-codes costs about one-tenth of that. So I'd say the NYTimes ad was a pretty smart buy.

When those who are working against the Church use every media lever at their disposal to trash and disrupt the Church to general public for their own ends, they call it "evangelism" or "protecting the souls of the faithful" or delicate-cycle, extra-heat.

But when these guys hear that the Episcopal Church does some actual good, or some actual evangelism, or even flips one light-switch of intentional media exposure, it is, as the joke says, "Jesus Can't Swim!"