A reader this morning e-mailed The Raving Atheist the following “Top Ten” list under the subject line “Funny Christian Humor”:

Atheists are a very noble group of people. Here are some reasons.

10) To sum up, Atheists are everything that Christians, Jews, Moslems and Hindus are not! What a bunch of great people!

A Google search revealed that the author of this thought-provoking work is a Catholic Priest, Father Matthew Kowalski of the Blue Cloud Abbey Benedictine Monastery in South Dakota. I must admit I was shocked to discover the source. For after five or six close readings of the list, I realized — as you may too, if you read carefully between the lines — that what appears at first blush to be praise of atheists could also be interpreted as constructive criticism. It thus comes uncomfortably close to something that to Pope Himself recently condemned: a form of ironic literary expression known as “sarcasm.”

I was tempted to issue a violation but I am most certain that Father Kowalski would never knowingly disobey the Pope. His respect for the Holy Father is too great. As he explains in his essay What’s the Pope got in common with Modems?, “when you hear someone talk about the Pope’s teaching authority, or the teaching of papal infallibility, think of this error-correction process . . . [t]he Pope is here to keep you and me from error.” I am sure if Father Kowalski believed that his atheist link violated a Papal edict — especially one that applies even inside a fiery furnace — it would have been torn down before you could say “Hail Mary.”

As to the substance of Kowalski’s ten-count indictment, I would issue a point-by-point refutation but for the fear that I myself would be tempted into sarcasm (those not so constrained, however, are invited to submit their thoughts for publication). Suffice it to say that I am grateful than an eleventh count of pedophilia was not handed down, although I suppose I could have then turned to the Father’s helpful tips on how to avoid legal liability when one’s “enemies” level such charges. I also applaud the ecumenical spirit of item No. 9, secure in the knowledge that the United Christian-Jewish-Moslems-Hindu Alliance joins Father Kowalski in opposing what he sees as the civil rights movement’s Toxic Pseudo-Gospel of “Moral Relativism, Socialism, Feminism, Animal Rights, Homosexual Rights and Affirmative Action (Reverse Discrimination).” They probably also oppose the use of gender-neutral language, which inspired Kowalski to express his outrage in a letter to America, the “oh-so-liberal journal published by Jesuits” — a letter which prompted an angry anonymous phone call from a woman who called him an “evil person,” although “at first [he] thought [she] was an old friend, because [he] do[es] know some saucy women who talk like that in a mischievous way.”

And I personally will join the Father in his crusade against copyright infringement. Having removed the footnotes from his pedophilia piece “to make plagiarism at least a little harder,” I am sure that Father Kowalski would be appalled to know that the reader who sent the atheism list did so without any credit to the source. Unfortunately, the reader’s return e-mail address, ebonics@webnet.com, appears to have been altered to render it untraceable. Perhaps the Father, who has an engineering degree and appears to be a computer buff (and who despite his vows of poverty is in a position to write a review of a digital video disk recorder, which in turn reveals that he owns two DVD players) could use his obvious technological talents to track down the offender.