IN A RECENT COMMENT I used the term "real Christians" as opposed to the hoard of what the media has been training Americans to mean when they say "Christians," the Republican-fascist, white-supremacist, "white evangelicals" and the exotica allied with them, the "traditional Catholics." As far as the "trad-caths" go, I agree with what the theological writer, classicist, Orthodox writer David Bentley Hart said about them, they don't like Pope Francis because Pope Francis is trying to be a Christian. There is little to nothing of Jesus and, in fact, the entire New Testament in "traditional Catholicism." There isn't even a lot of Catholicism in them apart from their disapproval of a few sexual issues WHEN IT'S OTHER PEOPLE WHO ARE DOING IT, decidedly not themselves doing it, keeping Women from ownership of their own bodies and a few other of the more regressive feature that have indisputably figured into the history of Catholicism, though not necessarily in its future*.
First and foremost in the program of the pseud-Christians is breaking the commandments given by Jesus, to treat others as they would like to be treated, to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, attend the sick and those imprisoned, to treat aliens among them as themselves and those they count as among themselves. They certainly don't take the message of the parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man seriously - frankly, I'm not aware of any of the "Christian" churches who take that path to perdition seriously as compared to things that Jesus didn't mention in that context, same-sex sex the top of the current hit parade of the pseudo-Christians.
Anyone who claims that the United States is founded on Christianity is either entirely ignorant of the New Testament or they are lying RAT bastards (That's as in Roberts Alito Thomas, etc.) because it is obviously not based on the Gospel of Jesus the Epistles of Paul, James et al or, in fact, on The Law and the Prophets except as those are lied about by pseudo-Christians and others who lie about what those say. If the United States were founded on the morality of the Bible the infamous Fugitive Slave Laws and other features of the Constitution and the early years of the country could never have been law here because many if not all of those are forbidden in The Law and against the explicit commandments of Jesus.
I think the old rule of etiquette to not talk about politics and religion in polite society has deprived us of something we need very badly and that's to have a huge and continual brawl over Christianity, STARTING WITH EXPLICITLY STATING THE TRUTH THAT VERY LARGE NUMBERS OF CHURCHES AND INDIVIDUALS ARE THE EXACT OPPOSITE OF CHRISTIANS. That's true of anyone who is supporting Trump and Republican-fascism, including a very large number if not the majority of the U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops, the leadership of a number of pseudo-churches and virtually every member of Congress who most often spout the word "Christian." When the "freedom caucus" are the ones saying it the loudest, you know they are lying because lying is the first and most often prohibition in the Bible they violate constantly. That is if it's not the Commandment against taking the Lord's Name in vain. Or the first, all of them have put Mammon above the God of Moses and Jesus.
So, no, I have no regrets about having used the term "real Christians" meaning those who try, sometimes fail, and try again to live by the teachings of Jesus as handed down in the Epistles and Gospels and Acts, arguably in Revelations, too. I think we need to have an aggressive reassertion of that within Christianity and throughout the culture because, frankly, I don't think anything but divine guidance is going to save us.
* Trad-Catholics are largely idiots who have watched some movies and TV shows that show Latin mass era Catholicism as seen by Hollywood and fall for it. Being of the fading generation who actually remembers pre-Vatican II Catholicism, it was pretty awful in a lot of ways. Good Pope John XXIII is among the greatest of the Popes for calling the Second Vatican Council, there is nothing more important in its documents than the reform of the liturgy and Nostra Aetate. That jerk football kicker who shot off his ignorant mouth last month attacked the reform that finally said that Jews were not responsible for the execution of Jesus, apparently he and his ilk want to go back to the worst of medieval and pre-Hitler antisemitism. That is something that I heard almost no one comment on until last weekend, it should have been one of the first things noticed about him.
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