Jesus never warned the Church to fear persecution. Indeed, he promises it. What he warns of is seduction:<\/p>\n
[D]o not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.\u00a0(Mt 10:28).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Steve Bannon is one of the major voices of seduction in the Church at this hour. \u00a0Like all seductive voices, he plays on fear and desire. \u00a0The fear, of course, is fear of liberalism. \u00a0The desire is the desire for power<\/em>.<\/p>\n
Bannon is about earthly power. \u00a0And he has made common cause with Alt Right racists in his lust for it. \u00a0His intellectual sources are racist cranks like Mencius Moldbug,<\/a> whose belief in the Big Lie for the Noble Cause is now gospel for the majority of \u201cprolife\u201d Christians, as I discovered the hard way when I dared to point out the Church says lying is a sin:<\/p>\n
Curtis Yarvin, the self-proclaimed \u201cneoreactionary\u201d who blogs under the name \u201cMencius Moldbug,\u201d attracted a following in 2008 when he published a wordy treatise asserting, among other things, that \u201cnonsense is a more effective organizing tool than the truth.\u201d When the organizer of a computer science conference canceled Yarvin\u2019s appearance following an outcry over his blogging under his nom de web, Bannon took note: Breitbart News decried the act of censorship in an article about the programmer-blogger\u2019s dismissal.<\/p>\n
Moldbug\u2019s dense, discursive musings on history\u2014\u201cWhat\u2019s so bad about the Nazis?\u201d he asks in one 2008 post<\/a> that condemns the Holocaust but questions the moral superiority of the Allies\u2014include a belief in the utility of spreading misinformation that now looks like a template for Trump\u2019s approach to truth. <\/b>\u201cTo believe in nonsense is an unforgeable [sic] demonstration of loyalty. It serves as a political uniform. And if you have a uniform, you have an army,\u201d he writes in a May 2008 post<\/a>.<\/p>\n
In one January 2008 post<\/a>, titled \u201cHow I stopped believing in democracy,\u201d he decries the \u201cGeorgetownist worldview\u201d of elites like the late diplomat George Kennan. Moldbug\u2019s writings, coming amid the failure of the U.S. state-building project in Iraq, are hard to parse clearly and are open to multiple interpretations, but the author seems aware that his views are provocative. \u201cIt\u2019s been a while since I posted anything really controversial and offensive here,\u201d he begins in a July 25, 2007, post<\/a> explaining why he associates democracy with \u201cwar, tyranny, destruction and poverty.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Bannon, the architect of Trump disastrous and unjust assault on refugees, is one of those guys who regards himself as a visionary and the vanguard of history. \u00a0He is the man in the grip of a Big Theory that matters more than the truth. \u00a0Trump, apparently with no clear idea of what he was doing<\/a>, demoted the Chair of the Joint Chiefs and the Director Nation Intelligence and, in an unprecedented move, put a bomb-throwing political hack who boasts of making his Breitbart site a \u201cplatform for the Alt-right\u201d in a top position on the National Security Council.<\/p>\n
Bannon\u2019s instant first move was to decree that there be no paper trail for the public to know what he is up to there.<\/a>\u00a0 So that\u2019s, you know, reassuring, especially since he has \u201cno doubt<\/a>\u201d we are going to war with a nuclear nation with 1\/5 of the world\u2019s population and soon.<\/p>\n
Bannon give every sign of subscribing to an elitist vision in which democracy weaken a nation in need of \u201cunity\u201d behind an authoritarian leader in a Grand Civilizational struggle for an ethno-nationalist supremacy.<\/p>\n
And most sinister (from a Catholic perspective) is that he gives every sign of pursing an Americanist Catholic heresy at war with the pope<\/a>.<\/p>\n
The amazing thing to me, is the fool-me-once-shame-on-you-fool-me-ten-thousand-times-and-I\u2019ll-just-keep-falling-for-it credulity of the suckers who buy all this stuff.<\/p>\n
\nDuring Mr. Bannon\u2019s April 2014 trip he courted Edward Pentin, a leading conservative Vatican reporter, as a potential correspondent in Rome for Breitbart, the website that is popular with the alt-right, a far-right movement that has attracted white supremacists.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe really seemed to get the battles the church needs to fight,\u201d said Mr. Pentin, the author of \u201cThe Rigging of a Vatican Synod?\u201d a book asserting that Pope Francis and his supporters railroaded opponents. Chief among those battles, Mr. Pentin said, was Mr. Bannon\u2019s focus on countering a \u201ccultural Marxism\u201d that had seeped into the church.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\u201cCultural Marxism\u201d is a beloved Alt Right code word for \u201canything the Church teaches that we hate\u201d.<\/p>\n
And here is an even more egregious example:<\/p>\n
\nMr. Bannon also reunited with old friends, including Breitbart\u2019s eventual Rome correspondent, Thomas Williams<\/a>.<\/p>\n
A former priest, Mr. Williams said that he used to have arguments with Mr. Bannon about whether the pope subscribed to a hard-left brand of liberation theology, with Mr. Bannon calling the pope a \u201csocialist\/communist.\u201d Mr. Williams said he usually defended the pope, but that recent statements by Francis convinced him \u201cSteve turned out to be right. That happens more often than not.\u201d<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\nSo Williams, a former Legionary priest who not only served one of the greatest monsters ever to disgrace a Roman collar, but also himself committed grave sexual sins, lied about it<\/a>, and is now serving a website devoted to legitimating Alt Right white supremacy filth a bowtie. (His \u201capology\u201d\u00a0was telling: \u201cI am truly sorry to everyone who is hurt by this revelation<\/em>\u201d. \u00a0Because the problem is not that he sinned, but that it was discovered.)<\/div>\n<\/div>\nThis<\/em> guy is who Breitbart taps to give Catholicky legitimacy to the swill they sell. \u00a0And this guy is who we are to listen to in legitimating Bannon\u2019s analysis of the Holy Father as a \u201csocialist\/communist\u201d.<\/div>\n<\/div>\nAnd the bulk of Trump\u2019s Catholic supporters are totally ready to buy this and do what they can to battle the Church and the Holy Father in favor of Trump.<\/div>\n<\/div>\nNor is Williams alone. Just today, Fr. Peter West, in a move perfectly reflective of the Trump Administration for which he does unpaid propaganda work, sent his flying monkeys to attack poor Mark Mueller for writing a piece that accurately quoted him. \u00a0Said he to his audience:<\/div>\n\n\u201cA newspaper in NJ is planning on running a hit piece on me that I expect will include half-truths, distortions, if not outright lies. I may be compelled to leave social media. Please pray that my enemies do not prevail over me!\u201d<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\nWhat Mueller, in fact, did was just let him speak for himself<\/a>:<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\nWest\u00a0has assailed millennials as \u201csnowflakes\u201d who attend \u201ccry-ins\u201d and described liberals as \u201csmug and arrogant\u201d people who find solace in puppies and Play-Doh.<\/p>\n
He has called Hillary Clinton an \u201cevil witch\u201d and former President Barack Obama a \u201cbum,\u201d at one point sharing a post that challenged Obama\u2019s authenticity as an African-American because he wasn\u2019t raised by a poor single mother in the inner city.<\/p>\n
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A minority of commenters on West\u2019s Facebook page<\/a>\u00a0have denounced him as a \u201chatemonger\u201d who promotes divisiveness, and at least one person complained about him to the archdiocese in December \u2014 a development announced by West himself on Facebook.<\/p>\n
His response? A harangue against \u201cleftist apparatchiks\u201d and \u201cComrade Obama.\u201d<\/p>\n
Directly addressing the complainant, whom he did not name, West added: \u201cYou should be ashamed of yourself for supporting pro-abortion, anti-family politicians. If I get in trouble for denouncing them, so be it! But I won\u2019t be scared off by a totalitarian jerk like yourself!\u201d<\/p>\n
****<\/p>\n
On Nov. 12, for instance, he shared a post that read:<\/a>\u00a0\u201cLiberals are acting like Trump is going to kill all the gays, make slavery legal again and take away women\u2019s rights. \u2026 Like he\u2019s a Muslim or something.\u201d<\/p>\n
While Cardinal Tobin and the Vatican have opposed the president\u2019s travel ban, West has repeatedly shared Facebook posts suggesting Muslim immigrants are a dire threat to the United States.<\/p>\n
He also differs with the pope \u2014 and has taken shots at the pontiff \u2014 on the legitimacy of climate change<\/a>, calling it a \u201choax pushed by pro-abortion population controllers and Leftists who want to destroy Western economies based on faulty computer models with no real data to support it.\u201d<\/p>\n
West doesn\u2019t apologize for his opinions, even if some find them offensive.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople ask me, \u2018Father, shouldn\u2019t we try to convert liberals instead of making fun of them?'\u201d he wrote on Facebook after the election. \u201cMy answer is that mocking is part of the conversion process.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n