From Fox News:
The tirade posted Thursday on a Web site registered in Stack’s name began: “If you’re reading this, you’re no doubt asking yourself, `Why did this have to happen?”‘ He recounted his financial reverses, his difficulty finding work in Austin, and at least two clashes with the IRS, one of them after he filed no return because, he said, he had no income, the other after he failed to report his wife Sheryl’s income. He railed against politicians, the Catholic Church, the “unthinkable atrocities” committed by big business, and the government bailouts that followed. He said he slowly came to the conclusion that “violence not only is the answer, it is the only answer.” According to California state records, Stack had a troubled business history, twice starting software companies in California that ultimately were suspended by the state’s tax board, one in 2000, the other in 2004. Also, his first wife filed for bankruptcy in 1999, listing a debt to the IRS of nearly $126,000. The blaze at Stack’s home, a red-brick house on a tree-lined street in a middle-class neighborhood six miles from the crash site, caved in the roof and blew out the windows. Elbert Hutchins, who lives one house away, said the house caught fire about 9:15 a.m. He said a woman and her daughter drove up to the house before firefighters arrived. “They both were very, very distraught,” said Hutchins, a retiree who said he didn’t know the family well. “‘That’s our house!’ they cried. `That’s our house!”‘
Yesterday Joseph Stack flew a small plane into a Texas office building, killing himself and at least two others. Apparently his final manifesto was rich with irony and hypocrisy as he railed against government and the Catholic Church. His solution? Murder. Here is another sad example of human pride and hubris manifesting itself in deadly ways. We cannot help but notice a haughty self-righteousness in Stack’s manifesto, a self-righteousness that apparently gave him license to kill, at least in his own mind.
It never ceases to amaze me how evil invariably seeks to rationalize its actions by blaming the Christian faith or the Church. Is the Church catholic (not the Catholic Church) perfect? Heavens no! It is comprised of broken and fallible humans who will continue to make mistakes until Christ returns to finish his saving work. But this is no excuse to blame God or rail against him. It’s a cop-out for those who do. Neither does it justify acts of violence and murder. Never. Under any circumstances. May God have mercy on Stack’s sin-sick soul. May he have mercy on his victims and their families.