So, for instance, 17th century New England Calvinism, so passionate about the glory of God the Father, mutated into Boston Unitarianism, which is skeptical about the very existence of God and horrified at the patriarchy of calling God \u201cFather\u201d.<\/p>\n
Similarly, Arianism (likewise so obsessed with the glory of God that Father that it denied the deity of the Son and the Spirit in its monomania) mutated into semi-Arianism and finally ended with Julian the Apostate trying to return to polytheism.<\/p>\n
Communism started with the exaltation of the Little Guy and ended with the mass murder of the little guy.<\/p>\n
Libertarianism promises individual freedom and ends with Rand Paul siding with an authoritarian Mob Boss.<\/p>\n
And now, the \u201cprolife\u201d heresy has led to the spectacle of \u201cprolife\u201d Catholics cheering wildly as a white guy chops into the womb of a brown woman to kill the child there and maim the woman.\u00a0 It\u2019s a fitting image to illustrate how the \u201cprolife\u201d Republican Rite heresy at war with the Church, one\u00a0peculiarly revealing of the actual priorities of the amalgam of fake \u201cTradition\u201d and white ethnonationalism that is the real religion of MAGA\/Bolsonaro \u201cprolife\u201d Reactionaries.![\"Image\"](\"https:\/\/pbs.twimg.com\/media\/EHlxfpwW4AIyCRo?format=png&name=900x900\")
I know.\u00a0 I know. This is valiant Cristeros standing up to idolatry!\u00a0 Heroic Maccabees defying the Bergoglian Antichrist!\u00a0 St. Boniface Redivivus fighting to save the Church from the insidious pagans!<\/p>\n
Except none of that is true.\u00a0 What is true, as we saw in this series here<\/a>, here<\/a>, here<\/a>, here<\/a>, and here<\/a> is that Amazonian Catholics who reverence Our Lady of the Amazon and who are being shot and burnt off their land and seeking pastoral care and sacraments were viciously insulted by bigots who refuse to distinguish between European aesthetics and the gospel and who baselessly declared them to be pagan idolators.\u00a0 These Reactionary bigots, blind to everything but their own precious posing in the mirror, malignantly spat in the face of Our Lady and the least of these while, as ever, telling themselves they are the real martyrs and victims.<\/p>\n The way these bullies consistently work, whether it is to defend insulting Amazonian Catholics, or cheering for child separation and denial of vaccines to refugee children in concentration camps, or hailing the poisoning of water out of mindless spite, or applauding a white supremacist bigot like Stephen Miller, or claiming that the pope is the antichrist, or lying to defend the Racist in Chief, or any of the other lies, crimes and sin they avidly back, is to shout \u201cBut abortion!\u201d as the universal solvent for all the evils they love.\u00a0 That\u2019s why they were adding insult to injury with the stupid insinuation that Francis is somehow trying to make child sacrifice acceptable.<\/a>\u00a0 The logic of the monomaniac \u201cprolife\u201d sectarian is that anybody they hate\u2013including the pope\u2013is somehow guilty of supporting abortion or even ritual child sacrifice while, conversely, opposition to abortion absolves themselves of all sin.<\/p>\n That is why I said<\/a> (picking my words very carefully) that, \u201cThe animating monomaniac idea driving the MAGA\/Bolsonaro Catholics is the sanctity of unborn human life. And it has led them to become the biggest the enemies of the Church\u2013and of human life\u2013in the Church.\u201d<\/p>\n And it is why a spectacularly un-self-aware reader who has spent many hours in my comboxes defending every filthy slander leveled against Amazonian Catholics immediately retorted<\/a> (as if to illustrate precisely my point):<\/p>\n LOL! The pro-lifers, who selflessly sacrifice, and fight to prevent the murder of millions of unborn babies who God willed into life, and who they find precious and filled with dignity, are heretics? You told them recently to stick to prolife activities, now you lambaste them for following that as a large part of their life\u2019s mission? Which they fit in while working, raising families, volunteering at their kids\u2019 schools, working at Church fundraisers, giving to the Church, attending all the other events of life? It\u2019s not the ones who villify pro-lifers who are the heretics? Hmm, I see\u2013NOT. Wowee!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Note that I never said \u201call pro-lifers\u201d (which I would not do since I am pro-life).\u00a0 I said \u201cMAGA\/Bolsonaro Catholics\u201d.\u00a0 But my reader was deaf to that because he has turned his mon0maniac obsession with \u201cprolife\u201d rhetoric into an a cancerous ideology at war with the rest of the Tradition and with all human life standing in the way of MAGA\/Bolsonaro Right Wingery.<\/p>\n And that is the mark of heresy, as we discussed yesterday.\u00a0 It is one thing to call the life of the unborn precious and related<\/em> to the sanctity of all other forms of human life.\u00a0 It is even perfectly acceptable to prioritize<\/em> defense of the unborn and focus your energies there.\u00a0 Catholic life has all sorts of room for specialization.\u00a0 So Dominicans focus on preaching while Carthusians focus on the contemplative life.\u00a0 They don\u2019t fight.\u00a0 They complement each other.\u00a0 The eye and the hand are both necessary to the body.<\/p>\n But MAGA\/Bolsonaro \u201cprolife\u201d ideologues are at war with the body.\u00a0 That is why my reader pretends that being \u201cprolife\u201d excuses his defamation of Amazonian Catholics and his insults to \u201cBad Pope Francis.\u201d\u00a0 It is why Reactionaries routinely lie that a Whole Life Ethic really means this (falsely attributed, for the umpteenth time, to me by some very charming people on Facebook):<\/p>\n The KKKult of Trump needs to care about REAL PEOPLE. Fuck the unborn. We\u2019ve got migrants to worry about.<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n But in fact, the only people indulging the despicable lie that the unborn are the opposite <\/em>of all the other forms of human life the Cult of Trump wants to imprison, rob, harm, sexually assault and kill is the MAGA \u201cprolifer\u201d himself\u2013whose constant habit is to use accusation as a form of confession.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s reality: Actual Catholic teaching relates<\/em> the sanctity of unborn human life to the sanctity of all other human life while the heresy opposes the sanctity of human life to all forms of human life inconvenient to the heretic.\u00a0 What the author of that invented quote really means is not \u201cThe Whole Life Ethic says \u2018F*ck the unborn'\u201d but that he himself says, \u201cF*ck the migrants.\u201d<\/p>\n That\u2019s the core distinction between a sane Catholic ethic of life and the Freak Show so much of the \u201cprolife\u201d movement has become in its war on the Holy Father and the Magisterium and its insane attachment to the Cult of Trump.<\/p>\n A healthy Catholic Whole Life Ethic relates<\/em> the unborn to all other forms of endangered human life.\u00a0 The Freak Show opposes<\/em> the unborn to all forms of human life the MAGA Cult wants to rob, degrade, harm, insult, and kill.<\/p>\n A healthy whole life ethic saves the unborn and the born from conception to natural death.\u00a0 The Freak Show lies that \u201cwe need to focus on the unborn\u201d but in actual fact devotes its energies and time to defending every disgusting thing Trump and his Cult do, whether it\u2019s kidnapping children, deporting vets, destroying DACA, murdering refugees, betraying Kurds, helping Yemeni genocide by the Saudis, or committing treason.\u00a0 That\u2019s where the real energy goes, not \u201cfocusing on abortion.\u201d That\u2019s why my reader spent countless hours, not defending the unborn in my comboxes, but pouring out lies and insults at Amazon Catholics. His real energy is not going to saving babies, but to insulting the pope and the least of these.<\/p>\n And it has been the sleight of hand used for decades by the Republican Rite \u201cprolife\u201d movement.<\/p>\n The result is that the \u201cprolife\u201d movement, like all heresies, has largely mutated into its opposite: a cult of death that would literally defend its Cult Leader if he stood in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shot people, a cult that passionately defends genocide of Yemeni, shooting and burning Amazonian Catholics off their land, and kidnapping over 5000 children from their families.<\/p>\n For the forseeable future, a heretical sect that was once devoted to the unborn as their id\u00e9e fixe<\/em> will not be devoting its energy to saving the unborn, but to promoting wack QANON conspiracy theories about the Deep State war on God\u2019s Anointed Sex Predator and Traitor. The words \u201cWitch Hunt!\u201d will be on their lips, not \u201cPro-life\u201d.<\/p>\n It will devote itself to declaring 69 bishops \u201cnot Catholic\u201d for wanting some nuance<\/a>.<\/p>\n It will devote itself to the defense of Armenian Genocide because the leaders of the Cult of Trump require it:<\/p>\n Everyone who got mad at Ilhan Omar: Graham blocks resolution recognizing Armenian genocide after Erdo\u011fan meeting https:\/\/t.co\/KJG6qLQb6r<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Joe Bernstein (@Bernstein) November 14, 2019<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n