As has now become obvious, the standard strategy of the GOP Christianist Cult of Trump is to its enemies of the very things it desires and intends itself. Back during the debate over universal health, a standard trope of the Cult was that people only advocated universal health care so that they could form “death panels” and exterminate the weak. Christianists shamefully defied the Church’s century old call for universal health care by joining in that lie with gusto. Now... Read more
…to the sexual abuse crisis. For a brief moment this past summer things began to come into focus for us concerning sexual abuse in the Church. When the PA report came out, the focus was where it should be: on victims. It didn’t matter whether the victim was male or female, or whether the abuser was gay or straight or his protecter and enabler conservative or liberal. What mattered was the victim and getting justice for the victim. Then, never... Read more
There is no crisis at the border and no need for wasting $5 billion on a wall to inflict sadistic punishment on refugees. There is no need for Trump’s sadistic and selfish shutdown of the government. None of this is necessary and everything Trump is saying to rationalize his stupid vanity project for the benefit of his base of bigots is a lie. No. Really: At a June 21, 2018, cabinet meeting, Donald Trump talked about “the illegal immigration crisis... Read more
The central flaw of the American conservative Christianist “prolife” movement is that it has managed to transmogrify its mission from “saving the unborn” to “saving the GOP and using the unborn as tools, props, and human shields while doing that.” Similarly, millions of those Christians involved in that endeavor have fallen prey to a little trick Uncle Screwtape described: About the general connection between Christianity and politics, our position is more delicate. Certainly we do not want men to allow... Read more
I offer a rousing toast and a deeply grateful word of thanks for your evangelization of my imagination when i was but a downy-faced youth starting out in life. Beyond this, Tolkien, more than any other man, helped to train my heart in a deep suspicion of the corrupting effects of power. I will be grateful to him till the day I die for innoculating me with the gospel against the antichrist Christianist Freak Show now careering around the world... Read more
Paul speaks of the “mystery of evil”. And Augustine remarks that when a creature sins (something only a rational creature such and humans and angels can do), it “asserts its nothingness”. I think this is why fascism is ultimately impossible to analyze and the evil that it does, while having a certain internal logic, ultimately makes no sense. So given the premisses of Nazism, which were fundamentally nonsense, the Holocaust played out “logically”. That is, having accepted the nonsense of... Read more
I like to meditate on the Presentation (when Mary and Joseph took the baby Jesus to the Temple in Jerusalem forty days after his birth to complete Mary’s purification after childbirth, and to perform the redemption of the firstborn according to the Law of Moses) in conjunction with another incident involving the first time Jesus shed sacrificial blood on our behalf: his circumcision on the eighth day (Luke 2:21). Both are Old Testament rites of purification and both point forward... Read more
Every Christmas there is a ritual kabuki that Catholics who take the New Testament seriously have to go through. First, is the response to the standard claim that Christmas is “really” just a warmed-over pagan feast. The short answer to that is to ask if the skeptic is “really” a worshipper of Saturn if he calls today “Saturday”. The longer answer is here. A newer addition to the canon of rebuttals that is now necessary, thanks to the rise of... Read more
Before Trump’s election, Republican Court Prophets like John Zmirak helped to stampede conservative Catholics with the fraud that Trump was Constantine and Clinton was Diocletian. Vote for Trump or face persecution! My point then, as now, is that Jesus told his disciples to fear seduction, not persecution. No. Really: Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. (Matthew 10:28) The one who can... Read more
by Yr. Obdt. Svt., over at the Catholic Weekly. Read more
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