The 19th-century historian John Seeley famously observed that “the British Empire was acquired in a fit of absence of mind.” Other, less beneficent empires are acquired thus as well. Pause to consider how the hierarchy of the Catholic Church has eagerly embraced every “progressive” initiative from the New Deal to Obamacare, heedless of its implications for individual liberty, or indeed, religious liberty. Mr. Rahe tells the melancholy truth:
The leaders of the American Catholic Church fell prey to a conceit that had long before ensnared a great many mainstream Protestants in the United States — the notion that public provision is somehow akin to charity — and so they fostered state paternalism and undermined what they professed to teach: that charity is an individual responsibility and that it is appropriate that the laity join together under the leadership of the Church to alleviate the suffering of the poor. In its place, they helped establish the Machiavellian principle that underpins modern liberalism — the notion that it is our Christian duty to confiscate other people’s money and redistribute it.
Jesus Christ admonished the rich young man to “distribute unto the poor.” He did not, as Bertrand de Jouvenal points out in his classic The Ethics of Redistribution, tell the poor to expropriate the young man’s property by taxation and redistribute it to others.
It will be interesting to see how the Catholic establishment reacts to the HHS’s mandate. The history that Paul Rahe sketches is not encouraging. But there some signs that the instinct of self-preservation has not been entirely bred out of the Church. There were, alas, reliable stooges like Sister Carol Keehan, president of the Catholic Health Association, who instantly applauded the Obama’s administration’s “compromise” which said that the insurance companies, not Catholic institutions directly, would be forced to provide contraceptive and abortion services. For this relief, much thanks! But the bishops seem to have seen the handwriting on the wall. Even the liberal Cardinal Mahoney from Los Angeles said: “I cannot imagine a more direct and frontal attack on the freedom of conscience than this ruling today. This decision must be fought against with all the energies the Catholic Community can muster.” What the compromise really means, observed Cardinal-elect Dolan of New York, is that: “In effect, the president is saying we have a year to figure out how to violate our consciences.”
I wonder whether Joe Biden will be bringing along his rosary when he next visits Cardinal-to-be Dolan. The vice president once said that he would “shove my rosary beads down the throat of anyone who suggested that the Obama administration was hostile to the Church.” Forewarned is forearmed, Bish, though between us I suspect it would take Joe Biden quite a while to find his rosary. It’s nice to know, however, that Joe Biden represents an administration committed to restoring “civil discourse” to political debate. What might he have promised to shove down our throats otherwise?
– seeks his rosary beads, he would do well to look about his neck where Obama bridled him.
“In the 1930s, the majority of the bishops, priests, and nuns sold their souls to the devil, and they did so with the best of intentions. In their concern for the suffering of those out of work and destitute, they wholeheartedly embraced the New Deal.”
Ah, if only they’d followed the example of Father Coughlin.
You’re kidding, right? Father Coughlin the anti-semite and Hitler supporter?
The confusion between the individual’s Christian duty to be charitable towards his neighbor and the transference of that duty to the government has been part of the Church since the 19th century. The term and modern concept of “social justice” was coined by the Italian Jesuit Luigi Taparelli in 1840.
The main thing to understand about the Obama administration’s actions regarding birth control and abortion is that it’s not really about the Catholic church. That’s why O is refusing to back down; he looks at polls that tell him that most Catholics don’t follow the church’s teaching, so he can win this fight by framing it as “bishops against women.” But that’s just “divide and conquer” all over again. This issue is really about the left’s disregard for (even contempt for) the our constitution. To the extent that people don’t get this, limited government is doomed.
Contempt for the Constitution and religious institutions-especially the RCC.
[...this is a paste of my comment a few minutes ago at the end of Spengler's {Goldman} article..."Memo to the Jews".....but I think it is applicale here also...]
Even people who think they have no interest whatsoever in Biology or Religion should take out [...and read...] a Public Library copy of any standard textbook on Embryology.
It is not by any means a leap to say that these posts taken together emphasize the absolute need for everyone to understand the concise Orwellian threat represented by Obama and the liberals who want to take “government” to the absolute summit of the control over humans…..even though “government” must of needs be made up of some of those very same humans.
The extension of this horror is then…..who among us humans controls the “government”? This is the circular problem which we’ve been facing for centuries…..but we thought we had solved that with the concept of “Democracy”.
Hence, I can draw a parallel between Obama – who is using our Democracy to infiltrate his aims into America in exactly the same manner that Islam is using our institutions to infiltrate their concepts inch by inch under the American tent flaps.
Obama and his automatons right along with Islam are twin evils facing our country today.
I thought Rahe’s criticism was a bit unfair. First of all, when we talk about the Catholic hierarchy we are talking about clergymen here – the mind of a clergyman is not generally oriented towards politics and they tend to get taken in by politicians with good intentions. Secondly, the bishops ‘you’ve heard of’ in major cities particularly NY and Boston were Irish and the Democratic party in the mid 20th century were Irish and the politicians and Bishops knew and supported each other. This started to change in the 1980′s when it became clear that the ethnic Catholic politicians loved abortion and used it for their own gain (they would express personal dislike while demanding the herd be culled).
In other words, the support of Catholic Bishops in general for ‘big government’ programs does not flow from some sort of ‘big government’ agenda, it flows from the general worldly decisions that well meaning if mistaken people might make.
By the way I am Catholic and I think that some of the Bishop’s conference stuff on politics is misguided to say the least (example: illegal immigration) but to suggest that the Bishops have been hoist in the petard of big government that they otherwise uncritically support goes too far. The Bishops are not in thrall to some overall political ideology, they are betrayed by poorly placed trust.
Ben a simple equation should do it! The more of the poor the church can foist on to government the greater church profits!!! Follow the money!!
Robert@ Your unsubstantiated drivel adds nothing except a reminder of the knee jerk anti-Catholicism rampant on this site. Supply some facts to back up your psudo-history.
Ah-h,my,my. So easily we forget or do not observe the lessons of history. The R.C.C. retains in its name and memory the grandeur and glory of its birth in league with the emporers of Rome. The incredible wealth and power acquired in its alignment with the power that ruled the then known (controlled) world was huge beyond compare. The Reformation sundered that unholy tryst and ended the Dark Ages. However, the popes and cardinals never forgot the lessons learned about getting, holding, using and increasing such W&P.
Subsequently, they continually endeavor to adjust doctrines and goals to obtain favor with secular leaders in hopes of regaining their former position with other worldly political groups, kings, and wealthy people.
Jesus, who founded the Church, was no friend of Caesar. Peter, who was the first bishop of Rome and brought planted the seeds of the Church in the capital city, was no friend of Caesar. Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, who gave us our name, Catholic, was no friend of Caesar. Indeed, Peter and Ignatius both died as martyrs because Caesar was no friend of the Church, and they refused to compromise the Faith. May we all have the courage they displayed!
“So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.”
Indeed, for a people who have memorized only John 3:16, Revelation 3:16 is a serious wake-up call.
Pretty good summary of how the Church lost her way in the 20th century. I’d certainly add the lack of adequate teaching and the rejection of Paul VI Human Vitae by the Bishops and Priests. A generation has gone by and we see the fruits of this rejection. Accelerated divorce rates, increased unwanted pregnancy, increase in STD’s, declining birthrates, increased abortions. The list goes on and on… I hope and pray that we as a people of Faith see the need for a return to oethodoxy. Read Pius X on “Modernism” Very prescient as well.
If VP Biden quote is accurate, I am appalled. The Rosary is a gift of our Lady.
It has many wonderful uses for prayer and devotion. I suppose I am a bit of a prig. But, none the less. VP Biden should be ashamed for this statement. It’s clear to me that he has lost his way and is in need of our prayers and charity.
The Catholic Church’s embrace of “progressive” regimes is nothing new in history. It was, after all, the Church’s idea to create “Holy Roman” emperors and endow kings with some aspects of a deity. It is a recurring theme down the centuries.
Well, they had this problem of the kings having significantly more divisions than the popes.
Not quite, or rather: You have it the other way round. Church assumed supremacy over those worldly rulers, and made them subject to divine powers – not only as private individuals. (Henry VIII caused a schism just to enforce his personal will and exercise some loose morals.)
An emperor was supposed to be aware of his responsibility to the Lord in all he did in his public position. I do not think it was a bad idea at all.
The Catholic Church has long been a proponent of paternalism. You can see it all through Latin America.
But, but . . . Dems just want to help people!
Maybe we can finally understand that, without taking care of the survival things first — the economy! — and making sure it is vibrant, you can kiss all the feel-good welfare and entitlement programs goodbye.
This should have been Job #1 when Barry took office. But the “Dems” (see communists, socialists) had super-majority power. And their wet dream of national healthcare was finally possible. So what did they do? They spun Obamacare as the solution to our economic problems. And it was just the opposite.
This is incompetence and deceit at its highest level. What else does it take for impeachment? Lying under oath about an affair with an intern?
The Dem’s only want to help people with OUR money – not their own!
Impeachment is not an option, Demorats control the Senate!
Seems a lot of them are also up for re-election and they ain’t looking too good for that in 2012, impeachment might be a good way to show some real principal to their constituents at home (to get re-elected, then go back to their old ways) and if they go back to the same old same old then at least Obama and possibly Holder and Biden (The Stupido) as well!
Even the liberal Cardinal Mahoney from Los Angeles said: “I cannot imagine a more direct and frontal attack on the freedom of conscience than this ruling today. This decision must be fought against with all the energies the Catholic Community can muster.”
I’m glad to hear Cardinal Mahoney is blasting the contraception mandate. Too bad he didn’t effectively blast the pedophilia brouhaha while serving as Archbishop in the LA diocese, for which failure he was removed in 2011.
Catholic churches are also into providing sanctuary for illegals as, you know, God’s law necessarily trumps that silly secular law.
Everybody gets to make it up as they go along.
As I’ve written ad nauseam by now, Obama and Kathleen’s move is far more about forcing an institution to do something (“ok if we can’t force Catholic institutions we’ll force insurance companies”) than it is religious freedom.
While I usually enjoy reading your observations, I have to take issue with the opinion that this is primarily about forcing “institutions” to do obama’s bidding through obamacare.
Here is what I see on the very near horizon: obamacare, while I agree that it definately attempts to upsurp constitutional autonomy and freedom of conscience/religion from institutions, both moral and secular, poses a grave threat to each and every one of us INDIVIDUALLY.
obama is coming straight at YOU, at all of us, INDIVIDUALLY, like a heat seeking nuclear-armed missile. To wit: YOU, as an individual, will be sifted through obamacare’s fine, sharp IRS claws and if an you as an individual resist, the full force of Federal Law resulting in loss of property and liberty will be brought to bear on you, individually.
Under obamacare, it is ultimately Individuals who must subsidize contraception, sterilization AND abortion, (it will not be only abortifacients)in one of three ways: 1.) either through an Individual’s contribution to their employee insurance coverage (yes, obama has to get to the insurance carriers first here, but many carriers already offer the coverage that is objectionble. And under obamacare, insurance companies who refuse objectionable coverage will be prosecuted and driven out of business, at best. There will be NO private sector insurance carriers allowed to operate who will not be required by obamacare to pay for abortions).
2.)Through purchasing insurance independantly if self-employed (again, not being able to find a carrier that doesn’t subsidize abortion, what to do?)
3.) Through buying government coverage through one of obamacare’s state run “insurance exchanges”. The government exchanges will guarantee with glee that your dollars will subsidize child-murder.
And, if you, the individual, will do none of the above, because all of the above makes you complicit and an accessory to the most heinous and soul killing abominiations, then you will be fined and that money will go to subsidize these same soul killing abominations. Ditto for money paid into the government through your income taxes. And, if you object to paying the insurance on moral grounds, you, the individual will have the same issue with paying the fine and income taxes because all monies will, fungible as monies are, be in part or whole, used to continue the soul killing abominations.
So for you, the Individual, Joe Doakes, if you have concern for the unborn, and for your immortal soul, you can 1.) comply with the feral-toothed monster in the WH and risk your immortal soul by doing so, or 2.) you can rot in prison as an enemy of the state. It’s all the same to good king barack. And they said it could never happen here.
INDIVIDUAL Americans: Unite. Resist. Pay not One Red Cent.
Go Galt. Nullify Obamacare.
Or prepare to open fire. That’s what comes next.
If the worldwide crisis of pedophile priests involved young girls instead of young boys, the church would no doubt be more tolerant of contraception.
Too many Catholics simply ignore Church teachings in everyday life. Pre-marital sex, abortion, contraceptives (“how can anyone be opposed to contraceptives!”, I often hear). The problem with the Church and it’s body is the same problem that infects the body politic at large: selfishness. It’s the ultimate act of selfishness to take the position that someone appointed by us is empowered to take from some of us to give to others. Guys, this country lost it’s way 40 years ago. We have allowed 40+ million children to be killed in the womb. It’s the ultimate act against God, the ultimate act of man’s rejection of God. What more of a rejection of God is there than to make it national policy to terminate His greatest creation before it actually leaves the womb and breathes air? That is the goal of the Left: to elevate man to the position of God. Where it has succeeded (Soviet Union, North Korea), you see the consequences. I believe there is a Satan working overtime to steal away as many souls as possible, only to harm God. What better way than to convince men that they don’t need God. The Soviet Union and Nazi Germany were Satan’s greatest accomplishments toward that end. Ultimately, we sad humans allow it…..embrace it with open arms. To people like Bill Ayers, George Soros, and Obama (who is NOT a Christian, but an atheist) it is their life’s work.
I altogether agree. I’m reading Eric Metaxas’s fine biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy”. The parallels between the take over of the German state, a democracy, by the Nazis, who accomplished their coup ruthlessly and quickly, and what Obama and his progressive henchpeople are doing are arresting and frightening.
Bonhoeffer understood the proper role of the state and of the leader, who, as Metaxas writes, “must know the limits of his authority”. In fact, Bonhoeffer’s description of a true leader (p.141) is the exact opposite of any reasonable description of Obama.
In 1933, Bonhoeffer defined the duty of the church: “to question the state, to help the state’s victims and work against the state, if necessary”. The Roman Catholic Church (I’m a recent convert) needs to take heed. “First they came for . . .” Obama’s just starting.
Kyrie eleison.
LovelyEarth I totally agree with you. Once our Government began allowing abortion,our country started going down hill very fast. What do we expect if we reject God. God created man and woman and gave them free choice to obey Him or to sin. The choices we make are ours. It is not the Church that instituted the commandments. It was God who gave them to His people. Thou Shalt Not Kill. He doesn’t stop anyone from killing another human, but he lets us know what the consequences will be. Only man’s distortion of the facts can say that a fertilized egg within a woman’s womb is not human. My wife gave birth to 5 children, not dogs, cats, birds or horses.
Luke 16:19-31 tells of a rich man who did not invite a beggar with oozing sores to come and live in his mansion. The rich man therefore is burning in Hell–forever and ever.
It wasn’t that he was being punished for not inviting the beggar to live in his mansion, but that he refused to show even the slightest bit of mercy on him at all. The beggar was willing to eat his garbage, for crying out loud, but he did not so much as throw some scraps his way.
So he deserved eternal damnation for not showing the slightest bit of mercy or throwing scraps of garbage at him?
Has there ever been a time you didn’t show mercy to a beggar?
“Blessed are the merciful, for they shall be shown mercy.” The man did not once show the slightest bit of mercy on his neighbor. Why then, should God show mercy on him?
Yes, he failed to PERSONALLY act to relieve suffering.
He was NOT damned because he failed to vote for a paternalistic government so that it could tax someone else to help the beggar.
So who is more immoral (if we are to take seriously such tales), a man who would not expose his household to a likely carrier of disease, or a god who would hideously torturer the man for millions and millions of years?
Let us not forget that in spite of blather from the Left, the issues are not birth control or women’s rights but the intrusion of Obamacare into our private lives and health choices.
With all the Dorothy Days and Andrew Greeleys and Charles Coughlins running around the Church in the 20th century (and worse in South America), it’s incredible it didn’t go full commie. We were cautioned to be gentle as lambs and wise as serpents — not the other way around. I’m proud of my church for standing up now, but as long as it uses terms like “economic justice” or “social justice” (without realizing that justice = punishment) it will never be a champion of what we consider conservative governing values.
Now there also is “racial justice”, a veritable beast to tackle:
http://blog.adw.org/2012/02/thoughts-on-science-and-faith-from-an-unexpected-source/
But there is another meaning for the word “justice.” Justice can also mean righteousness.
The salt that loses it’s flavor is thrown out, and trampled underfoot by men
Feb. 12, 2012: The DAY Obama LOST the ELECTION.Yesterday after masses across the country, Bishops’ letters condemning Obama’s “accommodation. Our Bishop’s letter (posted in the link) was so strongly worded, I suspect excommunication, exorcism, or a combination of both will be the next step. And several of the parishioners didn’t think the letter went far enough!!!
The sissies will cave, just like they always do. The men in power have too much to throw it away on mere principle.
I wish them luck explaining about what they let happen to their sheep.
We’ve learned two things:
First, the Catholic Church is against contraception but heartily embraces theft.
Second, the Catholic Church needs a refresher on the First Commandment because when “they wholeheartedly embraced the New Deal” they committed idolatry.
The only thing worse than committing evil is committing evil for the common good. And no, the Catholic Church is not the only Church that has more in common with evil than with good.
Rahe’s article was perhaps a bit harsh to Cardinal Bernardin who was a complex and somewhat enigmatic figure (accused of sexual abuse himslf before his accuser recanted). Otherwise it was depressingly accurate.
I had a friend who is a Notre Dame alum who took me to a Navy/Notre Dame game a few years back. I’d never been in the stadium before and wondered why I couldn’t see “Touchdown Jesus”. My friend told me he was no longer visible from the stadium because the new television contract had required a taller scoreboard which obscured the view. I guess the network money was more important. Speaks volumes as a metaphor for (previously) comfortable cultural Catholicism.
The Church of course has been through worse than Obama and will survive. Not to say that it will be pleasant.
I disagree that Rahe’s piece is a brilliant historical reflection. For it to be truly brilliant, and relevant, it would have had to include a discussion of John Paul II’s three economic Encyclicals. It would have had to include at least a whiff of John Paul’s renunciation of the liberation theology, and the priests that promoted it. But Rahe just provides a criticism out of 1982, and fails to make any mention of the counter developments that occured regarding economics. Perfect? No. But relevant? Very very much.
Thank you for that very thoughtful, perceptive and frankly, indispensible insight, Mr. Adams. Pope John Paul II has set the Church on a trajectory that equips Her to fight and win in this decisive battle to overturn, as he so aptly and presciently described, “the culture of death”. On another tack though, if you could, please read down thread. There are extremely disturbing, truly vile, hate-filled and blood libelous comments in regards to Roman Catholics and the Irish. They are pornographic in their level of malice and accusations of unspeakable savagery. These horrors are claimed by the poster, one “david levavi” to have been perpetrated by the Irish Roman Catholics in some cases and Roman Catholics in general in others.
According to his posts, “david levavi” fancies himself an historian, and has ambitions of writing “historical” novels. His posts are some of the most disgusting, foul and nauseating bigotry, shabbily wrapped in an attempt to present as historical fact, as I have ever seen here, or on any conservative blog anywhere. They are more like fancified KKK talking points.
I have answered him in the comments section and also written to the PJ Media editors, but would please like your attention in this matter as I am an admirer of your work, intellect, courage and excellent judgement. Thank you.
Philomena:
Keep complaining Philomena. Maybe someone with real clout in the Church will hear you and recommend my writing for inclusion in the Index Librorum Prohibitorum. Then I could take my place beside the some of the greatest minds in Western Civilization who, inevitably, are detested by the Church.
The Hebrew Bible which comprises the bulk of the Roman Catholic Canon isn’t in the index. Nonetheless the Church suppressed it for a thousand years until it was “discovered” by martin Luther.
Now why would the Church keep Catholics–laymen and priests alike–from reading the Church’s own Holy Text? What is contained in the Bible that the Church fears? Why did the church violently oppose an objective, historical, approach to studying the life of Jesus when German Protestant Bible scholars began to take an interest in it during the late Nineteenth Century?
Why is it, Philomena, that a graduate of twelve years or fourteen years of Catholic school can’t quote three consecutive verses from the bible? Not from the Hebrew Bible; not from the Christian Gospels. Kids educated in Christian sunday school one day a week are better versed in the Bible than full time Catholic school students. Just what is it the Jesuits teach in Catholic School? Catechism? The Mariology? Why are Catholic school kids so Bible-ignorant?
Because, Philomena, the church has always been hostile to the Bible it claims to represent. Every Jewish and Evangelical Christian schoolboy is more familiar with Christ’s teaching than his Catholic school counterpart.
The honesty, character and morals of Catholic priests and Catholic policemen exactly reflect a religious education and a religious culture that treats the Bible like a lifeless and dumb religious icon instead of a living work of Holy Literature that speaks Holy Truth.
The simple fact is that the Roman Catholic Church neither follows nor promotes the teaching of the Bible.
The issue is not only about freedom of religion (or the history of a church), it is about the secular progressive entity in the White House who mandates insurance company coverages. It is about the government mandating (dictating) what we have to buy. Companies are told that they have to include contraception and abortion pills in their policies. We are told to buy health-care insurance, electric cars, and are forced to buy ethanol in our gasoline.
Freedom of choice is sacrificed for the whims of some trendy cause. One may as well sacrifice one’s entire paycheck to the govt. and receive stipends of govt. approved products.
You will notice that using the ethanol enhanced fuels actually reduces the mileage, and does not increase it as well as that there is little cost reduction by having this mandated fuel.
The only thing it does right now is give corn growers a subsidy from the taxpayer to produce food that goes to fuel instead of feeding people or livestock, it was a stupid and still is a bad policy and should be stopped by the next president and congress.
I am not the smartest man in the world but this policy of ethanol fuel additives is a boondoggle from the word GO and so are Wind Farms and Solar arrays…as some one who deal with electricity and electrical power everyday I can attest to the fact the WIND or SOLAR are not only not efficient but nonsense, not that some take advantage of the subsidies, they will die out until we make them so, which I do not see in the next 15 years!
Very good input. The point is, that we are being forced to buy a product which we don’t want, which will harm engines large and small, forced to buy products from the government with our own money.
2. Patriot493
I’m with you, P493. Both comments. Times change. The political center shifts. The Southern Democrats of yesteryear are Republicans. The East Coast Democrats, like their President, are mushmind socialist radicals. Formerly liberal neocons fulminate on PJ Media.
Consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds. The only consistently conservative conservatives are the Paleo-Catholic Paleo-Conservatives like Pat Buchanan.
Unfortunately, what the long-in-the-tooth, former Young (Catholic) Americans for Freedom paleo-conservatives want to conserve is not the Constitution and founding principles of these United States of America.
Consider their true place in American history:
In New york City, during the Civil War, Irish Catholics rose 70,000 strong against the union. Raised Confederate flags over the most important city in the industrial north and perpetrated the worst racist outrage in the history of this blessed democratic republic.
Drunken Irish Catholic mobs beat and lynched scores of Negroes. Their drunken Catholic women sexually mutilated the lynched negroes, slashed open dozens of pockets in their hanging corpses, filled the pockets with lamp oil and turned the hanging black corpses into human candelabras around which the Irish Catholic harpies madly reeled. When union soldiers, fresh from bloody fighting at Gettysburg, arrived to quell the rioting, the rioters shot and clubbed them down and grotesquely mutilated their corpses as well.
Patriots? Loyal to what? Loyal to whom?
During WWI, German Catholics not so secretly sided with the kaiser. Irish Catholics detested the British and they, too, supported German war aims. In unholy combination, they sanctimoniously declared themselves “Isolationists.” “Pacifists,”
Patriots? Loyal to what? Loyal to whom?
During WWII German American Catholics joined in Bunds supported by Irish Catholic fellow travelers. At mass rallies on Long Island they paraded in brown uniforms under a deliberately confusing mixture of Nazi and American patriotic symbols to a deliberate mixture of patriotic Nazi and American Music. Protestant Church groups and Boy Scout groups took down the license numbers of the Nazi-American revelers and turned them over to the FBI. After Pearl Harbor, the leadership of the German-American and overwhelmingly Catholic Bunds were arrested on charges of treason.
Patriotic? To what? To whom?
It is a sad irony that thousands of innocent Japanese Americans were interred during WWII while large numbers of treasonous Hitler sympathizers went free. Had treasonous German and Irish Paleo-Catholic, Paleo-Conservatives like Pat Buchanan and his family been interred, the United States would be healthier nation today. Had Nazi-sympathiser and Holocaust-denier Pat Buchanan spent his formative years looking out at the world through barbed wire he would be singing a different tune today.
All in all, it reminds true American patriots that the Know Nothings of yesteryear may have known something after all. This nation was founded by English Deists, Freemasons and Congregational Christians, none of them popular with the Catholic Church.
Words like “Popery” and Papism” have no place in polite American discourse anymore. But if the Catholic Bishops continue to intervene aggressively in national and state politics, such terms may come back into fashion.
Father Coughlin, indeed!
“This nation was founded by English Deists, Freemasons and Congregational Christians.”
This is not quite true. The country was founded by WASPs. The British called the American Revolution, the Presbyterian Rebellion. The American brigade most hated by the British was the Black Robed Regiment. Alice M. Baldwin says in The New England Clergy and the American Revolution, “There is not a right asserted in the Declaration of Independence which had not been discussed by the New England clergy before 1763.” The only founder who ever claimed to be a Deist was Benjamin Franklin.
“I shall need, too, the favor of that Being in whose hands we are, who led our forefathers, as Israel of old, from their native land, and planted them in a country flowing with all the necessaries and comforts of life; who has covered our infancy with his providence, and our riper years with his wisdom and power; and to whose goodness I ask you to join with me in supplications, that he will so enlighten the minds of your servants, guide their councils, and prosper their measures, that whatsoever they do, shall result in your good, and shall secure to you the peace, friendship, and approbation of all nations.” Thomas Jefferson’s Second Inaugural Address, March 4, 1805.
If Jefferson was a deist, he never would have included those lines in his second inaugural address. A Deist would never ask for the favor of that Being, or believed that He led our forefathers, or who covered the nation’s infancy with His providence, or would go to Him with supplications.
As for the matter of Freemasonry, some the Founders, while being Christians, were involved in some very low level of the Freemasons. None of them were like Franklin Roosevelt, a thirty-third degree Freemason, or anything approaching that level of non-Christian belief.
rance:
I think I said “Deists, Freemasons and Congrgational Christians.” I just googled “black robed regiment” and ran down the list of ministers who comprise that noble (doubly so for their anti-royalism) Christian group. None of them were Catholics obedient to the Pope in Rome which is my core point.
How many of the blessed founders of this blessed nation were Deists, I can’t say for certain. I’m not a scholar of early American history. But my general impression after years of reading about a subject which interests me, my sense is that the Deists were considerably larger in number than you suggest, rance. If I’m wrong, I stand corrected.
As for the antipathy of the British Crown to Congregational Ministers of any stripe, that was a sentiment of long standing. Opposition to the sectarian congregations by the Anglican Crown and the Anglican Church is what drove our Pilgrims Fathers to cross an ocean and found a new life in a new land.
The Church of England, King Henry’s Church, the Church ruled by the Archbishop of Cantebury at the pleasure of his Royal Highness, King of England and Ireland and Britain, had set men at arms on the breakaway Christians–burned their churches and their houses and piled up some number of their corpses.
The brilliantly enlightened Christian Ministers who lit the spark of freedom in the breasts of good Christian men and woman in Colonial America preached individual freedom and freedom of religion because the had tasted of the King and the Archbishop’s vengeful hatred in the name of one singular and supreme Church of Christ.
Neither the Anglican nor the Catholic church had a place in Colonial America. Anglicans were called Tories, tarred and feathered and run over the Canadian border. The Catholics kept their heads down and prayed that no one would pay them any attention.
You stated:
“This nation was founded by English Deists,..”
Then said:
“How many of the blessed founders of this blessed nation were Deists, I can’t say for certain.”
Franklin is within the realm of possibility, but the rest I wouldn’t guess any.
Quick question to you. You’re not a fiction writer per chance?
I am indeed, Buckeye. Writing a novel about the history of the New York police from Dutch colonial times to the present . Major concentration on Catholic-Jewish relations the The Force. Thanks for asking.
@david levavi
Ah. It shows. Good luck to you.
Catholics were no more welcome in post-schism England than Puritans. Many presbyters died as martyrs for refusing to assent to the legitimacy of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the theological claims of the King of England.
Oh david, your clumsy anti-Catholicism made me smile.
The “civil unrest” you describe in New York was called “The Draft Riots.” Irish immigrants were protesting the unfair draft that allowed rich WASPS to dodge the Civil War and send poor Irishmen in their place. About a dozen black people were killed, along with about 200+ other people.
Regarding WWII, Germany was 55% Protestant. German antisemitism was often fueled by the writings of Martin Luther himself, with lovely titles such as “Von den Juden und Ihren Lügen,” (“On the Jews and their Lies,” look it up). Bonhoeffer aside, it appears German Lutherans were big time fans of the Reich.
And your modern day representative of Catholicism appears to be… Pat Buchanan. Really, Pat Buchanan? The old fat guy with the comb-over on MSNBC? You can do better than that.
Thanks for threatening to resurrect terms like “Popery” and “Papism,” but the Catholic push back against this sick administration is long overdue.
The Vatican had a concordat with Germany. What Protestant group had a treaty with Germany? After the war, the Vatican established the ratlines to take Nazis to Latin America, most often. The Nazis usually wore priests garments supplied by the Catholic Church. What Protestant group aided and abetted the enemy that way?
The Lutheran Church had an agreement similar to the Concordant before the Catholic Church did. Other churches also worked out deals.
Before we leap to judgement it is important to recognize that after the Nazis took over in Germany, no church had any legal status. There were simply no laws in place to protect them from the government. The Nazis still went after the churches, but thanks to those agreements they could not do a direct assault.
You did not address the ratlines. No other religious group so assisted the Nazis. I never heard of a Lutheran Concordat. I’ve read a lot of history and all that is mentioned is the Vatican Concordat. I realize that various types of churches put a swaztika next to the cross to keep their doors open. Any church that did such a thing would be, in my opinion, not truly Christian. Shame on any denomination that did not oppose the Nazis from the get go. Any group that assisted the Nazis during or after their reign of terror is not Christian, in my opinion.
This book is a very good history which deals with the ratlines:
http://www.amazon.com/Nazis-Run-Hitlers-Henchmen-Justice/dp/0199576866/ref=sr_1_31?ie=UTF8&qid=1329292543&sr=8-31
Only airheads resort to airy dismissal, Bishop Foley. I am not a fly. Please don’t shoo me.
I am a Jewish father of three daughters unhappy with the rude and crude intervention into national politics in America by the American Catholic Bishops.
I have no stomach for politics from the pulpit in American synagogues and I profoundly resent any priest or Bishop of the Roman Catholic Church attempting to limit the right of any one of my three daughters to aborting her own pregnancy, if, on deep reflection, in sober fear of Heaven, my daughter is resolved in her own sound mind and good conscience to see it done.
Each one of my Jewish daughters occupies a moral plain higher than any Bishop or Pope of the Catholic Church can possibly achieve.
I forthrightly and robustly defend the right of any American Catholic to take any position on the abortion or the contraception issue he or she chooses and to voice his or her opinion and to vote his or her conscience.
What I resent, and I resent it profoundly, is Catholic Bishops weighing in on the issue. Catholic Bishops throwing their weight around in the public square give me the heebie-jeebies. Mainly the Heebies.
Regarding the American Civil War Draft Riots:
All military drafts are unfair. My generation lived under continual threat of being sent to fight in Southeast Asia for some ten years. Why should students like me have been deferred?
I wasn’t in college because I wanted to be. I was the worst student on the planet. Hated school. Hated my rabbis. Hated my secular teachers. Got expelled from three schools before graduating high-school. Flunked out of two colleges.
But no way was my young life ending in a ditch in a rice paddy in some God-forsaken jungle in Indo-china. The vietnam War was a life and death struggle against Communism palmed off on the United States by France who had illegitimately and illegally clung to her colonial posessions long after the Second World War. I wasn’t paying with my life for for Catholic France’s imperial greed.
Reading about it in the papers and trying to make out what we were doing there, I couldn’t figure out what the internal politics were separating south from north in Viet-Nam.
What stuck in my craw all those years, dodging the Vietnam draft in classrooms I hated, with professors I hated was that, after the United States forgetting all about Vichy and Catholic France’s shameless collaboration with the Nazis and showering the bastards with dollars, the French handed us a hot potato. Somehow, the French son-of=bitches had talked our State Department into defending the puppet Vietnamese Catholic ruling minority they installed to lord it over an overwhelmingly Buddhist population.
No Buddhist never launched an Inquisition against the Jews. Buddhists didn’t burn whole Jewish families alive at festive religious Carnivals called Auto de-Fes. Roman Catholics did that.
While we were cleaning up France’s imperial mess in Indo-china, De Gaulle, the pathetic Allied fig leaf to conceal the craven ten-year collaboration of the French Catholic people with Hitler, was visiting Canada. Causing our British Allies across the pond and our Canadian good neighbors on the other side of the forty-ninth parallel, major headache.
The ludicrously proud leader of the hollow wartime force called the “Free French” was touring Montreal and Quebec and arousing the French Catholics to secessionist fantasies. If you weren’t a library-addicted draft-dodger like me, you might not have known that it was the Communist French Freedom Fighters, most of them Jewish, not popinjay De Gaulle and his Free French martinettes who courageously harassed, assassinated and sabotaged the Nazis throughout their Occupation of France.
I recalled that the Spanish American War drew more Jewish volunteers than any American war since the War Between the States. When Teddy Roosevelt, a Judeophile wildly popular with the Jews, called for volunteers to drive the Spanish Crown and the Spanish Catholic Church from their last stronghold in the Americas, and forever put the stench of the Inquisition behind, Jewish boys responded in droves–all told, in considerably larger proportion than the Jewish population in the United States. There are reasons and there are reasons why Cuba and Batista were so popular with Jewish tourists and Jewish gangsters until Castro’s Communists descended from the Sierra Maestra.
After De Gaulle’s Canadian visit, even a draft-dodging shirker like me was ready to volunteer for the Canadian Armed Forces to help crush the French Catholics. I was disappointed the CIA and its British and Canadian counterparts didn’t arrange a fatal accident for De Gaulle.
But I digress. Back to the Civil War Draft Riots and the ancient sins of the treasonous Irish Catholics and their seditious rebellion against the United States of America.
The Irish were mercenary soldiers for many centuries before they arrived in New York. For a newly arrived Irish immigrant, the only difference between service in the union Army and service in any one of dozens of mercenary militias in degenerate Europe was that in the Union Army, each Irish mercenary personally received his full wage. In Europe, the Irish were slave-soldiers—young Irish villagers rounded up by their kings and sold to any gangster wearing a crown or miter who could afford the price of uniforms, boots, muskets and the per-dumb-Irish-head-fee to the Irish King.
I will not pain readers with the full catalog of what was done by roving mobs of 70,000 drunk and savage Irish men and women in three days of rioting in New York.
Suffice it that, “…about a dozen black people were killed along with about 200+ other people…” insults truth, decency, American history, and the American people, foremost African Americans.
Catholic apologists like you are obscene, Bishop Foley. Any reader who is interested in learning about one of the darkest events in American history owes it to himself or herself to read what was done by Irish Catholics during The Civil War Draft Riots.
(Note especially that the only person who had the political and moral authority to calm the seditious Irish mob—a criminal Catholic Bishop named Hughes—made himself scarce and couldn’t be found for three days. Note too, that every hospital in the city—Catholic and Protestant alike–closed its doors to injured blacks. There was only one Jewish hospital in the city and it was the only hospital in the city whose doors remained open to terrified and injured Negroes throughout the rioting.)
Glad you recognize Pat Buchanan for what he is, Bishop Foley. It speaks well of you. Reminds me that no one is beyond redemption.
If Roman Catholics see nothing wrong with accepting advice on marriage and procreation from gay men, it is perfectly fine with this Jew. But I won’t have Catholic Bishops dictating sexual morality to my Jewish daughters. The Catholic Bishops are manifestly unfit.
The Rabbi said, “Blessed are you when wicked tongues insult and hate you and utter every manner of evil accusation against you falsely for the sake of righteousness, for great is your reward.” Since He told us to return good for evil, may you hear Him say, “David, David, why are you persecuting Me?”
So the Rosenbergs were catholic? Who knew!
And Lee Harvey Oswald was a fanatical rightwing Catholic.
He fled the book depository in priestly garments provided by the Vatican.
In 1963 eye witnesses saw david levavi lingering around a grassy knoll in Dallas one November afternoon.
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, Buckeye? How many Other Jewish spys against the united States can you name? Jonathan Pollard? That’s three since 1776.
How many Roman Catholic spies against the united states can you name? Forget going all the way back to 1776. Count only the Catholic spies who spied on the United States for foriegn enemies since the turn of the Twentieth Century.
When you get done listing the Roman Catholic spies, add ordinary Roman Catholic traitors to the mix. How many known Jewish traitors, how many known Roman Catholic traitors? You don’t need to do the math, Buckeye. Just look at the size of one list and then look at the other.
I have a question for you, Buckeye. Why is it that only Catholics accuse Jews of dual loyalty? Father Coughlin, Father Freeeny, Pat Buchanan, Andrew Sullivan, Zbigniew Brzezinski, John Mearsheimer, Stephen Walt–staunch Soldiers of the Holy Roman Catholic Church one and all.
Do you think that American Jewish love of Israel makes our American patriotism suspect? “Popery,” “Papist,” and “Papism,” were locutions commonly used by American patriots in the Nineteenth and early Twentieth Century to malign Roman Catholics, their Church and their Pope. Have you ever heard these terms mouthed or seen them written by a Jew before this comment in PJ Media?
So why do Catholics like you reflexively insult and cast doubt on the patriotism of American Jewish citizens? Are you and your fellow Catholics projecting your own self-doubt and self-consciousness about your own Catholic loyalties to a democratic, religiously free, culturally Judeo-Christian United States, hostile to foreign Papal interference?
The problem for Catholic apologists who circle their wagons at the slightest criticism of their Holy Mother Church is that they talk only to themselves and each other. Catholics forget that there are Protestants and Jews and others looking on and scratching their heads in amazement at how profoundly the Roman Church has narrowed the Catholic mind and stunted the Catholic intellect and spirit. I’m sorry to have to tell you that you are a crippled dwarf, Buckeye. Spend some time in a public library, read history and enlighten yourself.
There is a reason why The United States and Canada are the only countries in the Americas that are not failed states. Look at a map of the Americas, Buckeye. Count the number of countries. Why are the tiny few countries founded and governed by English Protestants prosperous, while scores of Catholic founded and dominated countries are impoverished, clapped out, slums? Is it politically incorrect Catholic bashing to observe that where goes the Roman Catholic Church, human misery follows?
The Catholics–Spanish, Portuguese and French–came to this continent for loot. For gold, silver and furs. The Protestants and the Jews and their families came to America to settle and plant and build a new life in a new world.
Protestants and Jews came to the American Colonies and the United States for religious freedom. The Congregational Protestant were fleeing the Anglican Church. The Jews and the were fleeing the Roman Catholic Inquisition. Catholics came to the United states to fill their bellies.
Treasure looted and plundered from the Jews of Spain and Portugal by the Catholic Inquisition paid for the Spanish and Portuguese explorations and their rapine seaboard expansion. Savaging and looting Native Americans was made possible by first savaging and looting European Jews. The cruel imposition of enslaving Catholicism on millions of Native Americans was a sinful enterprise at its foundation.
Spend some time in the library, Buckeye.
This is the part of the discussion where I ask david about Palestine and Palestinians and the terrible things being done to hapless Arabs in the name of his religion…
I also reserve the right to airily dismiss anything. Again, I find your assertions entertaining and amusing.
And sincerely, your daughters are probably lovely young women who wouldn’t think of aborting your grandchildren.
Wow. I wish I could say I never have seen such a pile of hate filled fallicies on stilts like your above post, but unfortunately I have. Yours is mediocre at best.
As you mentioned in twice, I did spend alot of time in libraries and used book stores in my youth. It beats a public school education everytime, but I digress.
May G-d bless and forgive you. Although I personally hope you daughters marry catholic goy so their children will be staring back at you on those rare family get togethers. It would help temper that hate in your heart.
Again, good luck to you.
– hate tonight.
Meh. Over time you get used to it.
Freedom died long ago, when we became regulation nation. NDAA was the final nail in coffin, this does not even register in comparison. There is nothing in your life the government thinks is off limits. When selling raw milk results in SWAT team raid by armed stormtroopers in black wearing masks. If this keeps up breast feeding will be a capital offense due to high fat content.
Our loss of freedom has fueled organized crime selling Marlboro in NYC, and is now more profitable then narcotics. We are bankrupt and we just cant find anything better to do, than pay for birth control. The last year has been really painful and I don’t see a light at the end of this tunnel.
Since when has the Roman Church been interested in freedom? They lost absolute power, they didn’t give it up on principle!
All of these laws saying we must do this or that or not do this or that in order to have the “privelege” of running a business or having a job are violations of freedom. It isn’t freedom of religion per se that the first amendment enshrines but freedom of conscience, speech, action and association generally. I’m not a Christian only on Sundays and at my church. I’m a Christian in my job, my associations – in every aspect of my life. I should be able to live it the way I chose, as should everyone else, so long as no one else is hurt. All of these “rights” like contraception are based on the so-called “civil” rights. And “civil” are completely bogus. Only individual rights exist. Everything else – feel-good names aside – take away individual rights and put more power in the hands of the government.
The Roman Church is not the least bit upset that the federal government is forcing people to violate their consciences: they did that for centuries and would do so again if they could. They’re upset that, at long last, the same tyranny is coming down on their own heads.
Beyond question, the Church’s clergy has been led astray by political power and the possibilities of making Catholic doctrine (especially the teachings on charity) into positive law. Worse, a hefty fraction of clerics in America strive to pull their congregations in that pernicious direction. But the laity, at long last, has begun to resist.
The business about contraception being quite popular among Catholics is a distractor the Obamunists are using in the attempt to divide us from our clergy. We understand the issues, and they have nothing whatsoever to do with whether we choose to disregard a badly reasoned, non-theological encyclical on a topic arguably outside the pope’s region of authority. They have to do with the subsumption of conscience into the domain of law. Once the State can compel individuals and their voluntary institutions, under threat of punishment, to violate the dictates of their consciences, there is no longer any freedom.
Yes, that point was reached long ago. The contretemps over forcing Catholic institutions to provide contraceptive insurance is merely the cherry atop Leviathan’s slag heap.
One final off-topic comment: I exhort Catholics generally to resist the use of the term “American Catholic Church.” There is no such thing. There is only the Catholic Church. (Note: not the “Roman Catholic Church,” either; “Roman” pertains to a particular rite, one of several recognized within the Church.) We don’t want to encourage a schism, and as long as the “individual conscience clause” remains respected:
…we won’t need one.
I’d go even farther, Francis. Though I certainly have no beef with Christians referring to themselves as Protestant or Catholic, being I’m Protestant married to a Catholic with two daughters raised Catholic, there aren’t Catholic Christians and Protestant Christians.
We’re simply Christians. Hopefully, all parties understand that because we’re all in this fight together.
The correct name is the Church of Rome. It doesn’t refer to the rite but to the claim of supremacy for the bishop of Rome; the Roman church claiming “first among equals” means, in effect, that he is the ruler of all Christians. They further claim that he is Christ’s vicar on earth, which is heretical. Christ’s vicar on earth is the Holy Spirit. The name “Catholic Church” is a further pretentious claim that it includes all Christians. In doesn’t. In fact it includes no Christians. It is entirely heretical.
The name Catholic dates back to Ignatius of Antioch, a student of the Apostle John and one who predeceased him at that (Ignatius died a martyr five years before John died of natural causes). That means that we have been known as the Catholic Church since the Apostolic Age. And if we should be proud to bear the name Christian, which was coined by our enemies as a slur, why should we not bear the name Catholic, which was coined by one of our own?
The word “catholic” simply means universal, all inclusive, etc., and you have every right to call yourself that (Constitution of the Untited States of America, Ammendment 1). It’s just factually incorrect and pretentious to do so. Ignatius lived long before the Great Schism. He was NOT a member of the Church of Rome as we know it now. The Eastern Orthodox Church also refers to themselves as “catholic”, and with them it is correct because their doctrines are correct (i.e. “orthodox”) and predate the great and absurd heresies of Rome which caused the Great Schism.
Call yourself what you will. But if you read the Bible for yourself (you can do that now without being burned alive (slowly) or having molten lead poured down your throat) and if you are honest you will see the numerous and heinous heresies of the Papacy. Christ prophesied that wolves would come into the flock, make war in His Name, and murder the faithful. Pray tell (historically speaking) who has done that?
You can smell the hatred suppurating from the secular progressives.
No, this is something the Roman Catholic Church never knew.
The RCC has never been interested in limited government – quite the opposite. It has always been interested in ABSOLUTE POWER – their own. A marriage of church and state is quite to their liking, just as long as they are in charge. That they aren’t in charge as they once were is due to forces outside their control, NOT because they realized they should NOT be. Since they find themselves in this unpleasant position of NOT being in charge, they do what they can to achieve their ends via whatever government is in power. They hold NO principles which would cause them to question the scope and reach of any government. Their ONLY complaint with any government is that it does not do their bidding.
It’s backfiring now, but they won’t learn the lesson.
This is why Rick Santorum, even though (I believe) he has the right instincts, often strays from the fold of proper conservatism.
(He’s still a far better choice than Romney.)
I remember Mr. Biden’s attack on Judge Bork, which the judge later called
“world class in the category of scurrility.”
This is what happens when you don’t think things through and buy into something that seems to good to be true. Catholics and Jews are suckers for the “social justice” grift.
“Catholics and Jews are suckers for the “social justice” grift.”
Not all of us, I would say a slight majority, but you are right.. it’s apart of the whole “guilt” thing attached to our theology.
According to a report in the Daily Rash, after mocking Ash Wednesday during a press conference, Joe Biden pulled out his rosary beads and joked about them, too. http://www.thedailyrash.com/vice-president-biden-mocks-ash-wednesday-at-press-conference
“Drunken Irish Catholic mobs beat and lynched scores of Negroes. Their drunken Catholic women sexually mutilated the lynched negroes, slashed open dozens of pockets in their hanging corpses, filled the pockets with lamp oil and turned the hanging black corpses into human candelabras around which the Irish Catholic harpies madly reeled. When union soldiers, fresh from bloody fighting at Gettysburg, arrived to quell the rioting, the rioters shot and clubbed them down and grotesquely mutilated their corpses as well.”
posted today by “david levavi”
You sir, are demonic. I have never in my life heard a lie more foul.
You manage to list all the bigoted stereotypes as you hang atrocities around the neck of New York Irish men and women the like of which make the massacres of Rwanda look like a Sunday brunch.
Did you find inspiration for your horrific fraud in the writings of Henry VII’s loyal and virulently anti-Catholic henchman, Oliver Cromwell, whose troops savagely murdered over one million Irish men, women and children? But, as Oliver wrote, “the Irish Catholic is barely a human being, more akin to a monkey, as in fact they do have tails”. So it was all good, right davey?
Not in the annals of any reputable history or from the records of any reputable historian will such a savage blood libel as the one you have just perpetrated here be found.
Your “historical writings” are fueled and warped by black-hearted hatred, you are a degenerate, crack-addled pornographer.
You should be forever banned for spreading the kind of cursed, filthy evil that you have splattered all over this site today.
I am of Irish descent. I am Roman Catholic. I know my history, and I will not allow you to lie about it. And don’t bother listing any “sources” for your filth. We don’t need any more porn on this site. And do not under any circumstances answer me on this site, as I will not answer you back. I am becoming nauseous just reading what you have already written and having to reply to it. There are no words adequate to describe what level of dark hate must squirm in your wicked heart and tiny mind.
Your post is the most hair-raisingly evil hatejob I have ever seen anywhere. As I was looking for your name to reference, I came across a post you wrote subsequent to your Irish Catholic blood libel. In that post you were all in for your daughter aborting your grandchild if such was her wish, and let no “Roman Catholic Bishop” try to defend the life of your own grandbaby that you would help send to death. You are a ghoul, sir.
Your civility/I’m a pretend historian schtick is all in tatters now; mask ripped off and on the floor; you stand naked for all here to see as a harlequin; a clown, a self-aggrandaized dandified troll. Buh bye. If you aren’t banned, may all here of good will shun you.
I will be contacting PJ Media. A piece of work like you needs to depart from the company of all decent persons.
33. philomena:
Ah, Master Cromwell. Depicted one way by the English Christians and another way by the English and Irish Catholics. Hero to one group, villain to the other. Does a Jew have a dog in this little misunderstanding between two Christian groups sharing the same Holy Canon, save in language and tendency?
He does indeed. Cromwell and the Roundheads treated the Jews with kindness and respect. Catholics embittered and shortened the lives of Jews in their martyred millions since the Council of Nicaea. May good Lord Cromwell rest in peace with the martyrs and sages of Israel We Jews owe him much.
I am not one to “…hang atrocities around the neck of New York Irish men and women…” I am not a slanderer. Irish Catholic men and women did everything I describe and worse.
In any event, atrocities are ancillary to my point. Catholic sedition against the Constitution, the Flag, and the people of the United States of America is the core issue I address. A history of disloyalty to the nation and the democratic national will.
“Isolationism” and “pacifism,” promoted by the Catholic Amen corner in two world wars, are seditious isms at a time of war when innocents are being slaughtered and just men are called to righteous battle in their defense. Taking your anger over an unjust Civil War draft out on defenseless black men, women and children (yes, alas, the Irish Catholics tried hard to get at a group of terrified black children in a charity orphanage; had the mob succeeded in its homicidal intention, no white American could hold his head up today for stain left on our national conscience) is the behavior of besotted thugs and bullies.
I am happy that you don’t know my daughters’ names and can’t sully them on your tongue. My eldest is a distinguished Bible scholar married to a biophysicist. My middle girl is a fine mathematician and computer scientist affianced to brilliant Computer scientist in the process of converting to Judaism. My youngest is a graduate student in Biblical archaeology living in Israel and seriously involved with an Israeli farmer.
In the unlikely eventuality that any one of them feels in good conscience that she must abort her pregnancy, no porcine Bishop of the Roman Catholic Church will stand in her way.
Before you call me a “ghoul,” take a moment to reflect. There are no relics in my home or synagogue. No images of a murdered and bloody Jew hanging from crosses.
I practice Communion but my Communion is called Kiddush and harks back to the Biblical narrative telling of the breaking of bread and sharing of wine in celebration of peace between Abraham and the Jebusite King of (Jeru) Salem after the defeat by Abraham of the Five Kings of Canaan. The bread honored the pre-Abrahamic, Lord Dagon, God of Grain. The wine honored Tirash, Our Lady of the Vine.
The ceremonial bread of that first Communion in celebration of peace (Salem; Shalem; Shalom) was simple flour and water. The wine was fermented grape juice. Nothing like the Catholic Mass in which the wine is the true blood of the crucified “Messiah” and the bread is his true flesh.
I have never heard a rabbi or Christian minister called a necromancer. I have heard it said of Catholic priests. Ghoul, indeed!
And the pagans of old accused us of murder, incest and cannibalism, along with all manner of wickedness. You merely repeat blood libels that pagans uttered against us since the first century. And how could we conceivably be necromancers? Christ is risen from the dead! We do not worship a dead man but rather the Living God who conquered death! You are of your father, the Devil, who was a liar, a thief and a murderer from the beginning.
Way back in the thread: “Luke 16:19-31 tells of a rich man who did not invite a beggar with oozing sores to come and live in his mansion. The rich man therefore is burning in Hell–forever and ever.” and various comments followed.
The paradoxical view that conservatives have to sell is that it is tyranny for government to force the guy, whom God is sending to hell anyway, to share his wealth. A majority of the people don’t see it quite that way and are willing to let the government, messy as it is, do some of God’s work. All the rest is a question of degree.
“Thou shalt not steal!…Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s goods!” He may be destroying himself with his money, but that does not give you the right to take it from him. Let him destroy himself with it! Why should you participate in his destruction by accepting blood money? Can a greedy man be moved with compassion for the poor by taking from him? Would he not instead hate them for taking away his god? To overcome the idolatry of his greed, he must be moved with sincere compassion of his own free will. Plundering the greedy rich will not save them, but it will destroy the poor. Do not be deceived, had Lazarus thought himself justified to steal from the rich man, he’d have wound up in Hell beside him!
May I just say, as a Jew and an ex-Anglican how unconvincing this all is? Supposedly, any link to contraception is an intolerable burden on Catholics’ religious freedom. Yet, Quakers and other pacificist sects still have to send their tax money to the American military, Mormons have to adapt their views on polygamy to the American majority, and not the other way around, and what about Moslems? What kind of respect do their opinions get? Oh wait, Kimball already answered that question in 2010. The right of Moslems to build their religious institutions wherever they please, the sort of right one would think definitely comes under the first Amendment, is absolutely trumped by any Republican demagoguery. Rahe, in the article linked, complains that American clergy has done a poor job of defending Humane Vitae. Maybe that is because the case for it is weak: http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2012/feb/15/contraception-con-men/ Let’s see, virtually no scriptural or credal support, overwhelming lack of support from the laity, and a pathetic natural law logic: truly, what’s not to like? The best argument against Wills is that Jesus and Paul almost certainly despised sex as at best a necessary evil. But since both men based this belief on the proposition that the world would come to an imminent end, and since this proposition has been decisively falsified, why should non-Christians respect it? Why indeed respect a religion that condemns condoms with a moral absolutism it never directed against Heinrich Himmler? For conservatives like Kimball and Rahe it’s useful to support an institution where conservatives can win debates with liberals by simply ordering the latter to shut up. Oh, and can I also mention the surprisingly divorce rates of unsocialdemocratic Evangelical Christianity? The case that Jesus opposed divorce absolutely is certainly stronger than many conservative invocations of scriputure, yet the conservative movement’s attitude towards divorce noticeably changed once the focus shifted from Nelson Rockefeller to Ronald Reagan. There is a nasty conservative hypocrisy involved. Illegalizing abortions won’t prevent them from happening. How does one opposed to sex outside from marriage try to convince women to make the right choices? Well the examples of Saudi Arabia or Ceascescu’s Romania show that the best way to do is to make sure women cannot choose at all. Either one chooses this, or one evades the issue in denouncing Obama’s “despotic” behavior.
Partisan:
All honor. Thoughtful comments. If it wasn’t the eve of the Sabbath, I would have time for some thoughts in response.
I’m a lifelong backslider. Keeping kosher and keeping the Sabbath Day Holy is like dieting for me. I’m currently off the Kosher wagon but I’m hopeful of climbing back on. As for Sabbath, I’m trying.
Only Jews appreciate that Judaism isn’t a religion but a way of life. It’s what you do and how you behave rather than what you believe or feel compelled to claim you believe. I’ve never understood the Christian and Muslim obsession with belief.
Anyway, gotta go out to Zabar’s to pick up challah and a few odds and ends before sundown.
Peaceful Sabbath.
“Woe to you Pharisees you hypocrites! You cross the sea to win a convert and when he is won, you make him twice the child of Gehenna as yourselves!” Neither Jesus nor St. Paul ever said anything against the marriage bed, except that celibacy was a higher calling than matrimony. To wit, Jesus abolished the provisions of the Torah for polygamy and divorce, declaring that taking a new spouse while the first still lives is adultery! Did Jesus not turn water into wine so that people could continue celebrating the wedding at Cana? Did Paul not warn that it was fraud to deny sex to your spouse? Are not all these things recorded in the New Testament plain as day?
The main point is, where have these Bishops been for the last three years. This administration has been in the attack mode against all Christians from the get go. I think that the Bishops thought that if Obama maintained his attack on the Christians, he would leave the Catholics alone. Surprise, surprise the worm has turned.