Still Optimistic Going Into The Second Day

WHILE POPE LEO has said things in the past that LGBTQ+ People like me wouldn't much like - and who knows how much he may have grown since he said them - the indications from his social media activity are really encouraging.   Here's from a piece about that from the National Catholic Reporter:  

There is only so much we can learn about Pope Leo XIV from his X account, an account in which he mostly retweeted others. But if we read between the lines, we can see a common thread of deep concern for the marginalized and the poor, and an emphasis on the role of government in ensuring the welfare of its citizens. For those who hoped for continuity with Francis' pontificate, Prevost's X feed is a reassuring, and downright hopeful, scroll.

Whether it's posting a Spanish language video interview condemning the death penalty with compassion and nuance, or resharing a stern rebuke of those who offer "thoughts and prayers" without policy changes in the face of mass shootings, our new pontiff has not minced words about the sweeping implications of nonviolence.

During the tumultuous year of 2020, he posted multiple calls for racial justice and promoted COVID-19 vaccinations as a means of caring for the vulnerable. (He was also seen wearing a face mask as late as 2022.)

It only takes one brief glance at Prevost's X profile to see that immigrants are particularly close to his heart. His last post before becoming pope, shared on April 14, was a retweet drawing attention to the suffering of the deported — and calling out President Donald Trump specifically for a lack of compassion. But this wasn't new for Prevost; he's been challenging Trump's position on immigration since before Trump even won the 2016 election.

But immigration isn't the only issue that compelled Prevost to speak out against Trump. In 2017 he shared a post by the Laudato Si' Movement pushing for the president to read Francis' climate justice encyclical, Laudato Si', and another by Catholic News Service Rome expressing concern about the environmental impact of Trump's policies.

Perhaps the biggest difference between our current American political leaders and our new American-born pope can best be summed up by a 2021 post that appears to bear an original caption from Prevost himself. Linking to a commentary on a homily on the Beatitudes delivered by Francis, Prevost wrote: "These beatitudes also highlight the temptations faced by bishops, like that of seeking power and a comfortable lifestyle."

I was kind of hoping he'd adopt the immediate shock-effect of Francis coming out in a plain white cassock as a means of reinforcing a rejection of "power and a comfortable lifestyle" but maybe he figures that point has already been made and he is saving his action for more serious fights. 

People have been commenting on the widespread non-Catholic enthusiasm for the idea that WE have a Pope,  some have said that even a lot of atheists and non-Christians have been enthusiastic about this choice as they soon became encouraged by Good Pope Francis.   I don't think the a "trad-Catholic" choice would have had that effect, especially from the hard-core legalists - a canon lawyer would have been even more of a disaster than another academic theologian.   I think the reason for that is that modern secular culture, modernism (in that sense) is as unfulfilling and unhelpful as reactionary "traditionalism."   Reactionary traditionalism, as voiced by the like of J.D. Vance, other recent right-wing converts and the wealth-generated "trad-catholics" is ultimately as useless.  Like the 18th century style of "liberalism" that sought to free the rich to enjoy their wealth as they rode roughshod over workers and others, as opposed to the original American form of liberalism that was based in the egalitarian economics of the scripture,  the sterile, would-be scientific "modernism" that is what most people concentrate on is more a matter of wealth hoarding with permissiveness to those with that wealth than anything else.  The long list of the icons of modernism who were enthusiasts for dictators, both of the right and the would-be left should make everyone's use of that term more careful about what they mean.  

I hope that Pope Leo turns out to be another pastoral Pope who has the same orientation as Francis for the hunger, homing and material as well as spiritual welfare for least among us, for the environment, for those who are marginalized, for those who are in the worst parts of their lives.   As I said, I hope he makes a radical decision to change the priesthood that will admit that the Holy Ghost hasn't seen eye-to-eye with Church tradition on an exclusively unmarried-male priesthood, turning back the Benedict-era policy of shrinking the church so as to make it more to the liking of those who yearn for a return to before Vatican II.    I will say that noting that if you read even the reactionaries among past Popes after Leo XIII,  pretty much all of them supported and reinforced the Catholic social teaching of that Leo, at least in their official documents.   If you want to put their economic policy in terms of secular politics, it tends to radical equality BECAUSE IT FOLLOWS THE GOSPEL AND THE LAW.   There are no egalitarian economics and, so, politics more radical  than the Gospel of Jesus.  It is an expansion of the already radical economics and politics of The Law of Moses.   That might not be what the billionaire-millonaire astro-turf-high-visibility "trad-Catholic" cult wants but it is the heart of Christianity and the best of the Catholic tradition.  The real one, not the one that lends itself to live-action-role-playing as seen in the movies and on TV.  

"Pope Leo XIV" Is A Good Sign

POPE LEO XIII is universally acknowledged to be the initiator of modern Catholic Social Teaching.  In one of the articles I read anticipating what names the new Pope might choose the author speculated that if "Leo" was the name of choice it would be a way for him to indicate that was what he intended to focus on. 

In other articles, most of which said that it was a very long shot that an American might be chosen,  Robert Provost was said to be someone known to be dedicated to continuing the process of reform and change that Good Pope Francis, now Saint Francis Bergoglio began. 

I said something of what I hoped the new Pope would do, including complete equality for Women in the Catholic Church.   I also said that I didn't expect that to happen.   I'm hoping that he will open up ordination to married Catholic men,  John Paul II opened the door by allowing disaffected Anglican priests who are married to become Catholic priests.   Who knows if even that partial reform will happen? 

But that's only some of the less important change that needs to be made.    His many years working in Peru will give him a lot better idea of that than I'll ever have.  

I'm provisionally optimistic but that makes me nervous.    I'd been afraid of them electing someone who I knew would be mediocre to bad, though I was pretty sure the real disasters put forward as likely candidates would never be elected by two thirds.    I expect that the integralist-fascist nutters are going to be splitting.   After this I think it's pretty unlikely that things will go back to JPII-Benedict XVI.  

Someone Wants Me To Comment On Jordan Peterson On The Bible

I DON'T FOLLOW THAT FRAUD and, no, I wasn't aware he'd written a book allegedly about the Bible.   I don't look at his stuff much because no matter what he's allegedly writing about, it turns out that it's really about his pathological view of sex.   And even for a psych-guy, his is pathological.  From what I gather, that's what his view of the Bible (really two books and a quarter of one from the Old Testament) is about. 

Looking around and reading the reviews by some of those who are not a fraud in any way, such as the estimable Rowan Williams, it appears those who did the reading of it so I don't have to are not favorably impressed.   I'll lean heavily on his review from the Guardian: 

Two points to begin with. One is that Peterson remains ambiguous about what many would consider a fairly crucial issue: when we talk about God, do we mean that there actually is a source of agency and of love independent of the universe we can map and measure? Faith is “identity with a certain spirit of conceptualization, apprehension, and forward movement”, he writes in relation to Noah; it amounts to “a willingness to act when called on by the deepest inclinations of his soul”. Echoes here not only of Jung, who figures as a key source of inspiration, but of the radical 20th-century Protestant theologian Paul Tillich, who proposed redefining God as whatever is the focus of our “ultimate concern”. Some passages imply that God is identical to the highest human aspirations – which is not quite what traditional language about the “image of God” in humanity means. Peterson seems to haver [never read anyone use that verb before, I'm impressed] as to whether we are actually encountering a real “Other” in the religious journey.

The second point is connected. Peterson’s readings are curiously like a medieval exegesis of the text, with every story really being about the same thing: an austere call to individual heroic integrity. This is a style of interpretation with a respectable pedigree. Early Jewish and Christian commentators treated the lives of Abraham and Moses as symbols for the growth of the spirit, paradigms for how a person is transformed by the contemplation of eternal truth. But, as with these venerable examples, there is a risk of losing the specificity of the narratives, of ironing out aspects that don’t fit the template. Every story gets pushed towards a set of Petersonian morals – single-minded individual rectitude, tough love, clear demarcations between the different kinds of moral excellence that men and women are called to embody, and so on.

The effect is somewhat one-note; the actual way in which the stories develop, speak to one another, correct one another, handle internal tensions and debates is muted at best. This is the sort of thing that classical rabbinical exegesis in fact relishes, and that some more modern Jewish discussion – by Emil Fackenheim, Jonathan Sacks, Nathan Lopes Cardozo and others – models very powerfully. Peterson is rightly hostile to antisemitism, and this might have led him to engage a bit more with the rich world of Jewish interpretation. Instead, he relies a lot on rather dated Christian commentaries (and seems to have a limited acquaintance with Hebrew, a drawback for a project like this).

My guess is that Peterson knows crap all about Hebrew or Biblical Greek or about much of any Biblical commentary. 

In fairness, he does pick out some distinct trajectories within the stories, for example, in the narratives about Moses. But the expositions constantly shade into meandering polemic about a range of modern issues, especially gender, on which Peterson has made his position pretty clear elsewhere. Eve’s yielding to the serpent’s temptation, for instance, is viewed as the characteristically female error of sentimental, pseudo-compassionate acceptance of the unacceptable that you see in bad parents, especially mothers, who “cripple their children so that they can make a public show of their martyrdom and compassionate virtue”.

This does tempt me to go to a library to look at the book to see if he works in the natural history of lobsters somewhere,  something which has figured heavily in his prescriptions for the behavior of men and Women in the past.  

Well, there is certainly a discussion to be had about toxicity in parenting, but finding it in the second chapter of Genesis requires impressive single-mindedness (and it is worth noting that Jewish exegetical tradition, unlike Christian, has never been that interested in Eve). Peterson claims that analysis of the patriarchal subtext of the biblical stories is a ridiculous distraction, observing that Genesis depicts both men and women negatively. What he does not seem to acknowledge is that discussing patriarchy is about recognising patterns of social power embedded in the stories, rather than whether specific men are painted in favourable or unfavourable lights. This makes it impossible for him to grant that such discussions can help us avoid some of the spectacularly destructive exploitation of biblical material that has reinforced the demeaning of women throughout Christian history.

Predictably (for those familiar with his online battles), he sees any qualification of the simple binary of gender identity as equivalent to denying the difference between good and evil, a refusal of the basic polarities of reality. But most serious discussions of gender fluidity do not deny evolutionary biology or sexual differentiation as such; they are asking for a more painstaking attention both to the social construction of roles and to the specifics of dysphoria. They deserve a better level of engagement.

I will break in here to say that I think everything Jordan Peterson does is to try to regain his place in bro-kulcha, the manosphere that he held in the 2010s,  with his adoring online incel-boy followers and the wealth that having written a bogus best seller got for him.   I will stipulate that Rowan Williams is a nicer guy than I am.   Peterson is to Women as Jerry Falwell was to Black People, using misogyny the same way that Falwell used white supremacy to build an empire, though, clearly, Falwell was better at that than the Psych prof from the U. of Toronto has been.   Maybe he realizes the potential to have a pseudo-religious movement behind such an effort, which would explain why, in his senescence, he is trying to take that marketing opportunity. 

I do think the possibility of a Jordan Peterson holding down an alleged scientific professorship at a major English language university, albeit in an alleged science,  should count as much in the discrediting of his field as the presence of such as Kevin MacDonald in an allied pseudo-science, "evolutionary psychology" should have served to discredit the scientific status of that ocean of bilge.  

And so on, with other issues as well (most bizarrely, the conclusion of the Book of Jonah is made the occasion for a tirade about valuing the “natural” world over human life, which seems to have something to do with Peterson’s hostility to some kinds of environmental ethics; not really what the text is about). These rabbit holes do no great service to the broader challenges Peterson wants to draw attention to. There really are corrosive manifestations of hedonism, relativism and infantilism in our culture; there really is a mentality that deludes us into thinking that we can be whatever we want to be, and that any notion of short-term sacrifice for a more durable and fully shareable good is unimaginable.

I suspect that Peterson has put a lot of his money into the extraction industries - he is from the Texas of Canada,  Alberta.   I'd like to know just where his investments lie because I think that's where we will find the whole of his treasure does. 

But the insistent contempt for nuance and disagreement (“idiotic”, “addled”, “egregious”), and the reduction of any alternative perspective to its most shallow or trivial form, does not encourage the serious engagement Peterson presumably wants. This is an odd book, whose effect is to make the resonant stories it discusses curiously abstract. “Matter and impertinency mixed”, in Shakespeare’s phrase.

I'll note that Peterson apparently wants his book to be taken seriously as a scholarly work by a university professor,  I don't have such a purpose, all I am is a political blogger though when I do get more serious I use different language.  That's my excuse.   I don't think it would have occurred to me to make this last criticism that Williams does, though I think it's a fair one for him to make.  

I looked at several things and listened to one.  I'll leave you with this highly entertaining Youtube review which contains what I think is one of the most salient of uninvestigated questions about Peterson and his cult of manhood,  WHY THOSE WHO WANT TO BE MANLY MEN HAVE INVESTED SO MUCH IN THE TOTAL, WHINY-WIMP THAT JORDAN PETERSON IS?   

I think it's a good question?   Why isn't the squeaky (one of the higher tenor voices before the public, these days)  whoosie, psych-prof, dangerous-fad-diet endorsing (has he got money in his daughter's scam, too?),  clothes-horse getting into fist fights?   It reminds me of Bertrand Russell's comment on Nietzsche's advocacy of beating Women in Zarathustra,  Nietzsche knew that if he ever tried to whip a woman, she'd get it from him and whip him with it.    I understand Peterson is big on Jung. Probably a safe bet for a fraudster and scammer.   As if anyone knows what he was talking about. 

One of the comments puts it well, "Jordan Peterson is to religion what Jordan Peterson is to philosophy."  

The Eternal Annoyance Of Media Predicting Soon To Be Made Decisions

CONSIDERING HOW SOON we will likely have the answer to who the next Pope will be, it is really stupid how many stories making or pretending to be making predictions of that have been in the media.   If there is one thing that isn't known, it is what the inclinations of most of the 133 or so Cardinal Electors going into the conclave is and even less so what happens within that closed system might change any minds from what they are today.   Even some of the more level-headed people who know something about some of the Cardinal Electors and have some idea of the process are making predictions, such as that this is likely to be a short conclave lasting at most four days.   Well, that may well be the case but given the inability of anyone to make predictions like that in the past, who could possibly know that well enough to make a confident prediction?  

I would like it to be a law that media outlets that issue predictions have to follow up to see if those predictions came true or not.   But that's not going to happen. 

It's interesting how many non-Catholics seem to be getting into the act.  It reminds me of one of my favorite examples of this kind of thing,  Americans who go four years without ever watching a figure-skating spectacle immediately becoming self-appointed experts of the Winter Olympics figure-skating finals and having a totally convinced and righteous opinion as to who should win.  Though in that case the silly phenomenon is harmless. 

I won't make a prediction about the conclave but I will predict that if the new Pope doesn't open up ordination to married People, rather fast, it will be ever more a moot question because Catholicism is a sacramental religion and for those sacraments that ordination is required for,  the most basic actions of being a Catholic will grow ever rarer for ever more of those who were baptized into the Church.  I wouldn't expect the next Pope to do the right thing and open ordination to Women, and married People but if they don't do something rather dramatic to get more priests into the parishes,  the Church will shrink very fast.   It was one of the worst things about Benedict XVI that he was more than OK with that, he wanted to drive those who didn't agree with him out of the church - it should be a law that an academic theologian isn't electable as the pastor of the Church.   JPII didn't do much to improve things, either.  His scandal filled papacy during which the child abuse scandal broke drove a number of those Catholics I knew away from the church even before Benedict made that his policy.   

I sometimes watch the mass from the Cathedral in Montreal.   I wasn't surprised to see how few there were at weekday masses but seeing how few there were at mass at the Cathedral there yesterday really shocked me.   It's not in the Bible Belt or some college town in the North East of the US, it's a major church in a province which was once synonymous with Catholicism.   I don't know if having a larger number of priests, some of whom are married and, perhaps, often are more in touch with real life than so many of the unmarried me of the Church are but they've been praying for those vocations that have been drying up for decades,  this month is dedicated to praying for that.   While the Cardinal Electors are trying to discern what the Holy Ghost is telling them about a Pope they should understand the message of those prayers having been unanswered so definitively.   Maybe they will,  I was hoping Good Pope Francis would but he left that problem unsettled.   I wouldn't begin to predict what's going to happen on that question. 

Someone Mentioned To Me That Mamet Made A Movie

THAT INTERESTS me about as much as someone bringing out an LP of Anita Bryant's greatest hits.   I have no interest in what that LGBTQ+ slandering racist and misogynist would be poet laureate of the bro-kulcha manosphere has to say about anything.   

Actually, I might be more interested in an Anita Bryant Greatest Hits album and I'm not interested in that at all.  At least hers comes in at generally less than four minutes instead of wasting about two hours.   

Open Question To The "AI' Producers of "Historic" You Tube Videos

What the hell is a famous  Walker Evans picture of an impoverished American mother and her children doing at this point in this video about Nazi sadists?    

AI is so so stupid.    Don't you guys ever fact check this junk?  Artificial "intelligence" is going to be the total death of a sense of reality being reliably attached to reality.   Unless law and deputedly democratic governments take serious action to stop it, democracy won't just be endangered, it will be impossible. 

The is the most amazing and hopeful thing I've seen in months. Moving a BRICK! 1909 library building to higher ground

 

Built in 1909, the Johnson Public Library is a Carnegie-style brick building that sat between Railroad Street and the Gihon River. Johnson is a former mill town where two rivers meet. Over the years, countless floods have devastated the library and town, most notably in 1927, 1996 and 2023. The library lost 1,500 books in the recent flood and has been operating out of the basement of the nearby Masonic Temple. When they heard about a grant opportunity, library staff and town leaders worked together to apply, in the hopes that they could create a new future for the library and their town.

On April 25 and 26, the library was transported from its home of more than 100 years and carried half a mile away to higher ground to Legion Field on School Street, below the elementary school. The Herculean effort took all night and included dozens of community volunteers, utility and construction workers, road and moving crews, first responders and 28 bucket trucks. Route 15 was shut down for three hours, and the power lines had to be removed to make way for the formidable 40-by-45-foot library on wheels. 

New England Building Movers used diesel-powered hydraulics and a series of six dollies to maneuver the library forward on 48 wheels. It moved slowly and got stuck turning tight corners — a few trees had to be cut down, and three inches were shaved from its eaves to make it fit. Despite the late hour, townsfolk lined the streets to see the slow parade of utility trucks and the glowing brick structure, which took up the entire road and was lit up with lights. 

The library’s new location is outside the floodplain; it will be expanded with an addition that will include more space for community activities. This project is funded by a $1.68 million grant from the Vermont Department of Libraries through the U.S. Department of the Treasury Capital Projects Fund grant program. Community members applied for the grant, coordinated the all-night move and celebrated the library’s new home.

In the latest episode of “Stuck in Vermont,” Seven Days senior multimedia producer Eva Sollberger saw the library crossing the Pearl Street bridge in the twilight hours — it had to be lifted above the guardrails — and attended the community celebration in the afternoon on April 26. It rained all day, but no one had to worry about water in the basement at the library’s new home. Staff hope to reopen the new and improved library by the end of the year.

I Don't See Any Reason To Give Them The Benefit Of The Doubt

My sister and others I've talked to never had junk calls on their cell-phones until after Musk and his incel-boy army started stealing files in the federal government.   I am going to assume they're selling the data they've stolen, including things like contact information.   And I have no doubt that they are going to use it for far worse than to financially profit from it.  The Constitution and the law has done nothing to prevent this when both should have prevented the executive branch irregulars stealing it to start with.   This is a prelude to Communist China style control of the population, that's so obvious that mainstream journalists are noticing it. 

I Wouldn't Be Surprised

 if Trump and the Republican-fascists say that parents should replace the toys that won't be under the Christmas tree  with guns.    I mean, look how many of them have posed with guns on their family Christmas cards in previous years.   That he might, and only a very remote might that is, be taken down by the disappointment his policies will cause during the Christmas season is something I might take but it is one of the most terrible of truths about the American public under our Constitution and the culture and legal regime it gave rise to.  It should have happened far faster and over the intentional immorality and consequent amorality of Trump and his supporters and the media, the sacralized "free press,"  which did so much to impose Trump on us in the beginning and reimpose him on us after they sandbagged and forced out Biden, one of the most rarely moral and competent presidents in the history of the country.   

Trump is the worst president in history, our Constitution is doing nothing to remove him as he brings on an economic catastrophe because he is too stupid to learn what a tariff is and how they operate as a consumer tax on the citizens of a country that imposes them - no doubt he learned everything he knows about tariffs from his corrupt fascist dad saying they should replace the income tax, something his idiot economic advisors,  Navarro (his LARP name: Ron Vara),  the idiot Howard Lutnick, the smiling idiot Kevin Hassett . . . tell him because they are whores of Trump and the billionaires who own him.  I'll point out two out of just that three are, like Trump,  products of Ivy League schools.  Just to point out the role that our alleged educational elite played in this. 

Whenever you hear one of the As Seen On TV lawyers talk about the Constitution saving us  you should now start to believe they have gone from being naive to being liars because if the Constitution were going to save us from what the Constitution should never, ever have permitted to start with, letting an insurrectionist, a known asset of Vladimir Putin and whatever corrupt billionaire, despot or not who says they'll build a building he can put his name on, a criminal who stole and very likely sold some of our most important security secrets, . . . . . . . . .  be nominated and elected as president after the most corrupt and criminal first go round, that would have happened long ago. 

Our Constitution had corrupt features installed in it from the beginning, many obvious ones, many less obvious ones and some enhanced or installed later by, for example, Supreme Court rulings - never installed by Constitutional means, the absence of a provision forbidding the Court to do that one of those most dangerous of features - it will not save us.   Republicans, their theorists and, most importantly of all LAWYERS AND LEGAL SCHOLARS have identified and weaponized every defect in that document, intended by the framer-slaver holder-financiers and the more subtle and Court invented ones to install corrupt politicians and TV stars to serve anti-democratic ends.   It is a document and a political system AND A LEGAL SYSTEM which has been so weaponized and once that has been done, the thing cannot be turned back to something less bad that ran on the tolerance of a margin of corruptible voters of sometimes good will and the sense of "honor" among politicians and "justices" of that dangerous court. 

If I sound like a broken record on that it is because you have to repeat the hard truth more times than even a flimsy lie constructed for easy sale in order for that truth to overcome even temporarily told lies.   The lies of our Constitutional lore and civic religion are far more deeply embedded than that and getting that corrupt document changed AND REMOVING THE POWER TO OF THE SUPREME COURT TO AMEND IT AT WILL is going to be a huge job, one which I will almost certainly not live to see happen, short of a disastrous and bloody and catastrophically failed revolution that will teach that lesson faster.   I doubt that will happen, a bigger miracle of a revolution coming up with something better is less likely than a divine miracle doing that.   The putrid and lying civic piety that has been installed in the American public about the Constitution is, itself, a barrier to peaceful change.   One of the reasons I had the reaction to the lying history of "Hamilton" was because it added a huge lie about one of the worst of the framers, one who at least one historian said was one of the three most dangerous men in the United States at the time of his death - his killer being one of the other two.  But he was hardly alone in those who early on tried to game the Constitution they had constructed for evil ends, that is the real history of that document in the hands of the framers, themselves.  

Update:   I can't recall who the third one of the three named by the historian as being the most dangerous men in the United States in 1804 was but I'd put John Marshall, the author of Marbury v Madison the year before in that position. 

Another Busy Week

IF I WASN'T AFRAID THAT I'D JINX HIM I'd announce that I am 100% all in on Pritzker for president.   

Of those being often mentioned, he seems to be the best to me, so far.   He seems to know what is needed whereas Gavin Newsome doesn't.  He has Washington experience which I consider an absolute requirement for anyone who wants to be president.   But I won't jinx him by supporting him until after the convention.   

No, I Have Not Seen "Conclave" I Have Every Intention To Not See It

I DON'T WATCH movies about the Catholic Church because they're either nauseatingly and dishonestly pious or sensationally and dishonestly anti-Catholic.    I never watch movies about real People because they are so unreliable and, so, inevitably bear false witness.  That didn't bother me until I found out in conversations online that many PhD holding teachers at accredited universities and prep-schools mistake movies for history or biography.  If they're so duped by Hollywood why should anyone expect those with lesser educations to make the distinction between reality and make-believe?   Make-believe is dangerous when it's mistaken as reality. 

In the many things I read and heard about the upcoming conclave and about the events leading to it, I was horrified to hear someone say how many People on their plane trip to go to Rome for the funeral of Good Pope Francis were watching the movie INCLUDING A BISHOP.    I mentioned how I suspected the putrid and pious and grotesquely unrealistic  "The Shoes of the Fisherman" led to the election of Karol Wojtyla as John Paul II -  a really bad papacy - so hearing that bishops were watching that movie put me on my guard. 

So far as I know, very little about what has gone on in any modern conclave has been leaked by a reliable source and what has leaked is often tainted by ulterior motives so I doubt much about it is accurate.  Much of the lore surrounding the elections of Popes is sensational and even more obviously ideological and polemic so it's mostly useless if you want to really know.   That is what happens when such a choice is made in secrecy by a small group of insiders - like the legendary smoke-filled rooms where presidential candidates of the major parties were said to have been chosen.   Of course, back then we got a few good ones whereas today good presidents are even rarer than they once were,  The well meaning democratic reforms of the primary system were more than swamped by the Courts opening up the airwaves to millionaires and billionaires flooding the American political system with lies so as to influence voters.   I don't think opening up the choice of the head of the Catholic Church to that would be likely to make things better. Imagine if the likes of Tim Busch and the media operations like EWTN and The National Catholic Register (NOT TO BE MISTAKEN WITH THE GENERALLY EXCELLENT NATIONAL CATHOLIC REPORTER!) and their like around the world flooded the airwaves with American style lying.   

For some ideas of what might be an alternative to that but which is almost certainly not likely to ever happen, you might look at this piece at Religion Dispatches.   Much as I favor democracy as the only potentially valid means of selecting a legitimate secular government,  without major protections against the influence of lie campaigns and prejudice ruling, its capacity for producing better results drastically erodes.  There is no world-authority who could do that for the Catholic Church.  Hell, we can't even protect American democracy at home from it under our Constitution. 

As I said, we'll have to see what the Cardinal Electors give us.  If they give us someone at least as good as Francis was - and while I think he was a great Pope, he was hardly perfect - all well and good.   If they give us someone as timid as Paul VI,  as power-hungry and controlling as JPII or as incompetent as Benedict XVI (dear God, not another academic theologian!) that will be typical.   There have been remarkably few great presidents of the United States, even though we get a new chance to get a new one every four years.   There have been remarkably few great Popes though I think there have actually been a higher percentage of good ones than we've had good presidents.   Some of them like Benedict XV have been far better than they have been accorded by history (the late Richard McBrien convinced me of that) some have been downright awful.   Just like leaders in putative democracies are, it's a mixed bag.   

It's a lot safer and easier for movie makers to make a sensational and false movie about the Catholic Church than it is about secular politics,  the old idea that a Catholic audience is going to refuse to watch a movie if the bishop tells them not to was likely always exaggerated and is certainly not true today.   I don't care to watch fiction when I can read about reality.   I like fiction to be fictitious and not something that tries to risk rational people mistaking it for reality.  I've heard at least two people who believed "Conclave" informed about the truth when it is reported to contain nonsense - an unknown Cardinal presenting himself to the Conclave  as a Cardinal Elector when those qualified to participate have to be publicly declared by the Pope before hand and a Cardinal breaking the seal of confession - which would mean automatic and immediate excommunication if they did it and every other person in the Conclave would know that.   Lord knows what's in it that I haven't read about, yet. 

Here are words to live by,  which come from my favorite comedy series,  Corner Gas "MOVIES AREN'T REAL."  

Saturday Night Radio Drama - Jennifer Johnston - Old Men Are Jealous

Old Men Are Jealous 

We continue to celebrate the memory of writer Jennifer Johnston who died on the 25th of February 2025. Best known for her novels including The Captains and the Kings, How Many Miles to Babylon?, Shadows On Our Skin (which was Booker shortlisted in 1977) and The Old Jest (which took the Whitbread Book Award in 1979), Jennifer was also a prodigious playwright.

Tonight Drama on One presents, Old Men Are Jealous by Jennifer Johnston - A reimagining of WB Yates's, Deirdre of the Sorrows

Eileen Colgan played the old woman

King was played by Ger Carey

Dee was Roxanna Níc Liam

Laurence Kinlan played Nick

The Dramaturg was Jesper Bergman

Sound Supervision was by Damien Chanel, and

the broadcast coordinator was Margaret Hayes.

Old men are jealous by Jennifer Johnston was produced by Kevin Reynolds

Old men are jealous was a commissioned response to WB Yates's, Deirdre of the Sorrows

The late Jennifer Johnston, gave the announcements to her play.

More Pullum On The Passive

THE ADMIRABLE RMJ who is more qualified than I am to have an opinion on the topic has a critique of Jeffrey Pullum's video on the passive.   It's certainly worth reading.

I still agree with the fuller arguments that Pullum made.   Here's a post to what will play as a play list if you follow it up.   It takes a few of the short videos to get to the heart of his argument.  

I Don't Have Any Idea

 who will be elected to replace Good Pope Francis but I doubt it will be the candidate I'm seeing pushed all over the trad-cath web,  Robert Sarah, who has been rumored to aspire to be Pope Pius XIII.  For one thing he's almost eighty, for another he was clearly an enemy of Francis and, indeed, of the entire last sixty years of modern Catholicism.   I can't think of anything the Cardinal Electors could do that would more damage not only what Francis has accomplished but, in fact, every Pope since Pius XII.   As I mentioned here the other day the real hard-core trad-caths think Pius' changes such as having the Epistle and Gospel read in a language the congregation could understand,  who knows if someone as wacky as Sarah would try to go back even farther than that.  

As I said the largely multi-millionaire-billionaire financed "trad-catholic" LARPing cult* will almost certainly either mount or force a schism between those who believe the Catholic Church is a Christian Church and those who don't have much need for Jesus other than the name and title and holy pictures and statues.   If someone like Sarah became Pope those who take Jesus seriously would have no home in the Church.

I've read that the millionaire-billionaires have had hired hacks digging up dirt and rumors on alternative candidates and there are at least several of those who will be in the Conclave who would carry that into the meetings.  They dug it up on Francis even as he was Pope, even some of those who he either appointed or kept in offices,  Sarah's infamous book which he lied about Benedict XVI co-authoring was part of that kind of stuff.  The late and scandal tainted George Pell anonymously during his life and explicitly after his death was another such prominent vilifier of Francis.  He was often named as an alternative to Sarah in the dreams of the trad-caths,  he definitely wanted to turn back to some of the worst of the pre-Vatican II church.

I would guess that by this time next week we will know who they've given us and within six months we'll have a pretty good idea of what they've given us.  Till then, it's going to be a bumpy ride no matter who comes out a Pope and not a Cardinal. 

* Every time I see a young Woman or Girl wearing a mantilla at mass (a good sign of someone trad-cath LARPing) I remember when, before they relaxed the rule about Women having their head covered in the 1960s the ones who wore the longest mantillas often had the shortest mini-skirts on.   I'd forgotten that but it must have made an impression on me at the time.  I should talk to some of them because I'd really like to know what they imagine they're getting out of it.  Especially those whose families aren't affluent,  I know what the affluent hope to get out of it.  

Update:  I forgot, they changed the rules so it will be a couple of weeks before we have a new Pope.   The Conclave won't even have begun by a week from now, at least I think that's true. 

The Law Is An Ass

HERE I AGREE WITH attorney Dave Aronberg in my extreme dislike of Sarah Palin and everything she stands for - or rather sinks to - while I think he, like the conventional lawyer's POV, entirely misses the real significance of her second loss in her lawsuit against the New York Times.

First I'll give him his say:

 

I analyze this differently,   it's Sarah Palin getting bitten by a Supreme Court ruling and media practice that no side has benefited more from than her Republican-fascism and, especially Trumpism.    If the Sullivan decision had been a loss for the NYT and the instruction was that they pay a nominal fine and court costs and issue a retraction the entire sixty years of Republican-fascist ascendancy through media lies about Democrats would never have happened.  She and Trump and a series of the worst politicians in the subsequent decades would never have had political careers and the subsequent Rehnquist and Roberts Courts would likely never have been appointed to the Court.   In no area is the legal profession as this one exposed as being supremely superficial and wrong.

Most consequential to our situation today, if the Sullivan Decision had never been issued, the New York Times would not have so freely slandered Hillary Clinton, they would not have issued lies about her immediately before the 2016 election,  piling on with the Republican-fascist enabling and grotesquely sanctimonious James Comey to sway the election to objectively the worst president in American history, appointing the worst Supreme Court since at least the Taney Court of the 1850s.   

If the Sullivan Decision and the line of those decisions building on it,  Donald Trump would probably never have had a political career, he may have ended up sued into the flames of hell by those he slandered and libeled, including in a paid opinion piece published by the NYT as it published the original factually deficient ad that led to that decision. 

Lawyers are not, it turns out, deep thinkers.   Their ability to miss the ultimate consequences of their own profession's actions for the immediate benefits strikes me as more and more important.   It extends to the senior ranks of the profession in the judges and, especially the "justices."  

I Prefer To Take Advice From Someone Who Knows What They're Talking About - Pullum On Passives

I'D RECOMMEND LISTENING to all six as a bare minimum.  Then maybe we can have a brawl over it.   I'd say easily 9 out of 10 times when someone pulls the old "passive" on someone they don't even know what passive mood is. 

Update:   I'm surprised you didn't catch my mistake, I meant "voice" not "mood".   I guess I should have taken more than a minute to respond to the criticism.   Actually, that's a lie, I'm not surprised. 

On Listening to Jake Sullivan On A Youtube of Rachel's Show Last Night

Our "unique constitutional system" produced Trump and permitted him to not only misrule once THEN MOUNT AN INSURRECTION TO KEEP POWER ILLEGALLY, it let him off and permitted him to do it again .  The American "free press" invented the monster and promoted him politically TWICE as it sandbagged the most competent president of my lifetime,  Joe Biden.   Without addressing that and, frankly, the disaster of allowing the Supreme Court to re-write the Constitution (such as the 14h Amendment) without any means of recourse,  we're assuring that the world will be right if they judge the United States to be unreliable and that they have to treat us more like Putin's Russia than a reliable democracy.

Everything he's done, including crimes of the most serious potential and likely factual consequence that he has gotten away with only to gain power again HAS BEEN, IN FACT, PERMITTED UNDER OUR DANGEROUS CONSTITUTION AND THE "RULE OF LAW" AS IT IS DEFINED BY THE COURTS AND, ESPECIALLY THE CORRUPT ROBERTS COURT.   To merely want to go back to 2014 and do the typical American thing of refusing to learn the lessons of the most dangerous experience, relying on the failed 18th century theories embedded in the U.S. Constitution only means that our recurring though ever worsening history will continue to spiral.  

Jerome Richardson - Alpha

 

Jerome Richerdson(flute)

Hank Jones (piano)

Wendell Marshall (bass)

Shadow Wilson (drums)

Betty Carter - Can't We Be Friends

Betty Carter - vocals

Ray Bryant - piano

Jerome Richardson - flute

Wendell Marshall - double bass

Philly Joe Jones - drums

I needed some Betty Carter just now. 

Taking This One Hard

SEVEN POPES have died during my lifetime and this is the only one whose death has really shaken me.  I hardly remember Pius XII, so his death had no impact on me. I was too young to really take the death of Good Pope John the way it should have struck me.    

Paul VI's death didn't leave me feeling much, I was far from the Church at the time and saw it mostly as a political event.  His papacy seemed to diminish in importance as it continued. 

At the death of John Paul I did have deep feelings only because I had some real hopes that he would renew things after the increasingly timid unwillingness of Paul VI to build on the great work of Vatican II and because I found the circumstances of his sudden death a month after his election to be disturbing,  something I still feel.  

I felt revulsion at the disgusting show biz elaborateness and obvious right wing political spectacle surrounding the death of JPII and admit that I thought and still think he was the worst Pope of my lifetime, reactionary, power hungry, dictatorial, vindictive, appointing some of the worst bishops and cardinals in modern Catholic history (who still dominate the US Catholic Conference of Bishops) and someone who often seemed to me to be a lot more of a CIA asset than the representative of Christ.   His early betrayal of the peasants and clergy of Central America and Archbishop Romero (St Oscar Romero) fixed my opinion of him and his cult. 

Benedict did one and only one wise and pastorally responsible thing in his entire Vatican career, retiring from the papacy.    He was, if anything, even more of a pastoral disaster than JPII or Pius XII though in some ways he was a better Pope than either of them.   His clear desire to take back in some of the worst of the schismatic far right, the likes of the fascist-loving antisemite members of the cult of Marcel Lefebvre (whose excommunication was one of the highlights of JPII's reign) proved to be a disaster.   That along with his revolting attempt to revive the pre-Vatican II Latin Mass was even more of one, something which will eventually lead to a major schism backed by fascist Catholic millionaires and billionaires whose motive is to use that cult to further their enrichment and undermining democracy.   The fascist-right-wing Catholic movement here and in many other countries is building into being one of the most serious problems that the Catholic Church and democracies everywhere where there is a significant Catholic population will face   I will remind skeptics of the role that such "Catholics" have among prominent Republican-fascist politicians (especially those recent "converts" such as Vance, Gingrich and Brownback) and among sitting members of the Supreme Court.  

Of course I knew that Francis couldn't go on forever,  he was 88 and doing one of the more demanding jobs in the world.   It is remarkable how active he was up till the end, even from the hospital and even during Holy Week and Easter, though it was clear that he was not doing well on Sunday, the pictures that showed his one last day of pastoral activity show that it took a lot out of him.    

I think the first appearance of his successor my well tell us if he will be another Francis or if he will be a return to the unfortunate tradition of the "traditionalists."   Scarlet, gold and ermine and a gold cross instead of one made of more modest materials will be a bad sign.  A pope who takes the style of Francis as a much needed reform, in itself, will be a good one but it will be what the new Pope does and very fast which will tell us what we're getting.   I hope it is someone who upsets the "trads" for having the odd idea that the Catholic Church should follow the teachings of Jesus.  I hope they're not influenced by Hollywood as I'm convinced was the case with JPII.   If that damned Anthony Quinn movie hadn't been made, that wouldn't have ever happened.  

St. Francis Bergoglio, pray for us, all of us, even us Catholics. 

I've put the two posts I was writing off for now. 

St Francis Bergoglilo

WHEN AND NOT if Pope Francis is canonized as a saint, I hope that will be what he's called instead of the dreadful style of "St. Pope xxx whatever name and number."   Actually,  I hope they don't canonize him at all and The People of the Churches canonize him in the old-fashioned way, by popular acclamation.   "Pope" is an earthly title,  "Saint" is a higher title, the saint whose name Pope Francis chose had no such earthly title, unlike most recent Popes' choices.   And there has been no less popely Pope than Francis Bergoglio.   At least none who I'm aware of.   His refusal of the scarlet and gold at his first appearance of Pope in favor of the white cassock I mentioned here a few days ago was only the beginning of that, his choice to live in an apartment in an apartment building instead of the papal apartmet as well.   

Pope Francis joins John XXIII in the significance of their papacies in asserting the Gospel of Jesus above medieval traditions and feudalism.    I'd say that Francis was even far less attached to the medieval detritus attached to the papacy than Good Pope John was.  

I think Francis' encyclicals will become even more  continually cited classics of theology when much of the academic theology of the theologians, including that of his immediate predecessor, the lauded academic theologian Joseph Ratzinger is mostly of interest to academic theologians.   I think that is the case because Laudato Si, Fratelli tutti and Dilexit nos are about real life more than about theology.   Much as I find reading theology interesting,  when it becomes about theology instead of real life its importance sinks often quite rapidly. 

The world needs that his successor as Pope is good, though I wouldn't hold my breath on that,  it's unusual to have one great Pope followed by another.   Elector Cardinals seldom have the courage to do that, though one can hope.  Francis did disappoint my wishes such as opening up ordination to married People and Women, though modest in numbers and in power, his opening up of offices of actual power in the Vatican to some Women and others who were not ordained as priests was significant.   I say that even as I'm aware that no Pope is going to knowingly risk a major schism and knowing that the conservatives among the bishops and cardinals have proven to be among the most schismatic forces in the church - the most lunatic of current ones think Pius XII was too progressive - and I mean that literally.   They will know that millionaires and billionaires are a force even as medieval, baroque monarchs and emperors and even princes exercised power in the Church in the past.   We need a good if not great Pope now and perhaps the conclave will surprise the like of me and give us another one.   I certainly was't expecting a Francis a dozen years ago.   St. Francis Bergoglio,  help us.   

The Good News stayed dead until, fed by the power of Bread [with a capital "B"] broken

 The Women of Mark 16:8

"He is risen!  He is not here!"

we heard - and fled

from the empty tomb,

our lips sealed by fear,

to cower in the upper room.

The Good News stayed dead

until, fed by the power 

of Bread

broken, 

we arose from our dread

and the Good News was spoken. 

Sr. Irene Zimmermann OSF

One of the interesting things about the Resurrection narratives is the place that bread plays in it, the staple of the daily diet.  And the most interesting thing about that is that it is BROKEN bread, bread broken to share it.   I don't think that that is merely incidental,  I think that to hold a sacramental view of the breaking of the bread and sharing the cup of wine you can't leave out that it is food that is broken, shared from that view of it.  That the narratives  of the sacramental institution of the Eucharist has Jesus specifically stating that the broken and shared bread, the shared wine are his body and his blood, which I think more than just implies that the action of sharing and eating and drinking is as central to the sacramentalism of the act as the so-called elements of it. 

Mark's ambiguous ending which has the Women at the tomb told by a mysterious young man dressed in white that Jesus is risen and that they are to tell his disciples that he has gone on before them and will see them in Galilee.   But, as the poem notes, they are presented as having been terrified and that the fled, not telling what they'd seen.  Which you have to ask, how did Mark know about it, in that case.   The several extensions of that ending which scholars don't believe was the original ending of it provides accounts of post-Resurrection appearance.   Some think Mark ended at 16:8 with the Women not telling anyone, some theorize that the original ending was lost early in the manuscript tradition of Mark, though there isn't any way to know which is the case.   It's clear that Mark did teach the Resurrection of Jesus, though he may not have chosen to go into much detail about it.   It's clear from even earlier in the canonical texts, especially in Paul that the earliest known tradition is that Jesus died, was buried and on the third day he rose from the dead into a state of glory.  

I generally prefer the Luke tradition with Matthew's coming in second.   I don't know to what extent those might be elaborations of the account in Mark - truncated or extended - or how much variation there was in the manuscript tradition.   I do think that all of the New Testament is a product of the early followers of Jesus and the earliest converts expressing their experience of the Living Jesus after his death and Resurrection.   I don't think it was just spinning tales.  I know that some evangelicals like to use Mark's "bare bones" account of the suffering, execution, burial and Resurrection of Jesus in their line of evidence to "prove" the factual historicity of all of that, which seems to me to be alien to the tradition I was raised in.   It is in that large category of mystery for which historicity in a valid sense is not possible.  I think real belief in it requires that it be on the basis of experience and choice to believe.  Just as every single thing in human life which is believed or taken to be known is a matter of choice based on experience.  If you don't like that, it's just the way that human life is, in everything up to and including valid science and rigorous mathematics as well as things without that kind of evidentiary basis.   Bread broken seems to me to be as good a basis of belief as the general cargo-cult or ideological belief in science.  And it's a lot more nourishing than mathematical proof.  

The Harrowing Of Hell

CATHOLICS TRADITIONALLY say the Apostles' Creed at mass though apparently the choice to say that or the Nicene Creed is a choice left to the celebrant, something I never knew until very recently.   I never remember hearing the Nicene Creed said at mass.   I don't remember ever hearing it set to music in a mass setting by a western composer, either, though I'd have to check if my memory is right about that.  

The thing in the Creed which I never felt very good with saying was the statement that after his death Jesus "descended into hell,"  something I never heard discussed in any Catholic context.  I was in college when I first came across literary mentions of "the harrowing of hell" in which Jesus went there to preach salvation to the souls of those who died before his death so that they could be rescued from what western Christians call "hell" but which must have been to the Apostles, the Jewish version of that, sheol.   I had assumed it was from the extra-canonical writings, maybe those unofficial "gospels and epistles" that are so much peddled by ahistorical "scholars" and other such anti-Christian hucksters these days.  Only I, as well as so many other too casual readers, didn't notice the subtle references to that idea contained in the canonical books of the New Testament.   I won't comment on this passage from Luke Timothy Johnson's book,  The Creed: What Christians believe and why it matters.   It's a good Holy Saturday meditation, better than anything I could offer you. 

The final moment of Jesus' earthly existence noted by the creed is that he was buried.  Once more, we find the tradition of Jesus'  burial both in Paul and in the Gospels.

Writing to the Corinthians around the year 54, Paul provides the summary of the good news that he had himself received and had handed on to them, and "by which you are being saved if you hold firmly to the message: (1 Cor. 15:1-2).  It begins, "that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried."  Note that Paul reports that in an unadorned fashion.  It is simply one of the facts" about Jesus that he received from the first believers,  therefore within some few years of Jesus' death.   He does not suggest that, like the death for sins and like the resurrection on the third day,  these are matters predicted by the scriptures.

The same matter of factness about the burial is found in the Gospel narratives, which several small variations (see Mark 15:42-47;  Matt 27:55-66; Luke 25:50-55; John 19:38-42).  More striking is the strong agreement on the basic characters and actions, and above all on the fact of the burial itself.  That Jesus was buried and remained in the tomb for some length of time certainly serves to confirm the reality of his death.  Compare Martha's comment concerning her brother Lazarus, "Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days."  (John 11:32), and the resurrection of a body so thoroughly dead must also be regarded as an act of God. 

But another dimension of the burial is equally ancient and important.  The burial symbolizes Jesus' descent into the realm that in ancient cosmology was most removed from "heaven" or the place of God's dwelling.  He goes "under the earth," which in the Psalms is called sheol, and in the Greek translation, hades  In Peter's speech at Pentecost, he quotes Psalm 16 in connection with Jesus' death; "You will not abandon my soul to hades, or let your Holy One see corruption: (Acts 2:27).

This connection may help account for the conviction that Jesus, after his death, entered into the dungeons of the lower depths in order to free those most distant from the divine presence,  a motif that was subsequently termed "the harrowing of hell" or, in the Apostles' Creed, "the descent into hell."  In Ephesians 4:5; Paul asks cryptically,  "when it says 'he ascended,' what does it mean that he had also descended into the lower parts of the earth?"  The conviction is stated more clearly by I Peter 5:18-20:

He was put to death in the flesh,  but made alive in the spirit, in which also he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison, who in former times did not obey, when God waited patiently in the days of Noah 

Peter continues, "For this is the reason the gospel was proclaimed even to the dead, so that, even though they had been judged in the flesh as everyone is judged, they might live in the sprit and God does: (1 Pet. 4-6).  

The descent of Jesus into hell is, in this view, an expression of God's universal will for salvation and a part of his cosmic victory, so that every tongue, even those "under the earth," should proclaim that Jesus is Lord (Phil 2:10).  In terms of the movement of the creed, the burial represents the nadir of downward descent,  the ultimate expression of Jesus' sharing the human condition,  even to the depositing of the flesh in the soil like a seed (John 12:24; see 1 Cor 15:35-41). 

The Choice We Will Make Whether We Like It Or Not

The extreme dangers of the presidential system of government which has devolved into dictatorship in so many places who modeled their governments on ours have reached maturity here.    Since the Republican-fascists and the lawyers and law scholars who favor imposing fascism here under the Ivy League invented "unitary executive" theory of the presidency have made this try,   and a lot of those sit on the Roberts Court which made Trump a monarch with impunity for his law breaking (and by extension and with the idiotic blanket pardon power in the badly written Constitution, his henchmen)  we can never, ever have any confidence that our presidential system will not become the dictatorship which Trump has, to date, had a remarkable success in imposing on an unwilling country.  IT IS THAT OUR COURTS HAVE YET TO STOP HIM WHICH IS THE NEWS, NOT THESE TEMPORARY ACTIONS BY LOWER COURTS.     

We will either change our system, at its foundation or we will watch democracy implode into fascism.   That's the choice.

We sat embarassed, listening to the water splash . . . Our hopes of glory gone, we sat in silence

LAST LESSON

(John 13:3-16)

The festive table glowed with candles,
warding off the darkness lurking
in the corners of the upper room.

As soon as we had found a place,
for once not quarreling over who
sat next to Jesus, he removed
his outer robe, wrapped a towel
around himself, poured a basin
full of water, and knelt at Peter's feet!

"Lord," he blurted, "you shall never
wash my feet!" Jesus warned him:
"If you do not let me wash you,
you can have no share with me."
Poor Peter begged, "Then wash my hands
and head as well."  But Jesus answered:

"Those who bathe need only have
their feet washed."  We sat embarrassed,
listening to the water splash.
Still on his knees, the Master looked
at us then.  "You are clean,"
he added, "though not all of you."

And so we let him wash our feet!
Afterwards, he questioned, "Do you
understand what I have done?"

Our hopes of glory gone, we sat
in silence.  He went on: "You call me
Lord and Teacher.  You are right.
Tonight I, your Lord and Teacher,
have set you an example:  Do
for one another as I have done."

The supper table glowed with candles
warding off the crouching darkness
as we - his chosen servant leaders -
listened to our Master Teacher
nailing down his final lesson
on the night before he died. 

Sr Irene Zimmerman OSF

Christianity as Whitewash Over Trump's Antichristianity

"Trump is the perfect vessel to carry the acid that destroys the soft tissue binding democratic governance."

IF YOU DON'T FOLLOW Catholic issues you may not know who one of the more dangerous multi-millionaire  influencers in the United States these days,  Tim Busch.   He is really very dangerous, one of the foremost backers and pushers of the especially wacky but very influential "trad catholic" cult and a major influence in many in what I think is only honestly considered the Antichrist in our time.  

There is an extremely important article by Tom Roberts about him and his influence, his relationship with the Antichrist if anyone is,  Trump and his regime in the National Catholic Reporter.  I'm going to give you a big chunk in case you don't follow the link to read the whole thing.   I would encourage you to do that and while there you might want to read Thomas Reese's Holy Week column about how Trump as well as other manifestations of Antichrist are crucifying The Lord today. 

The recent column penned by Tim Busch and headlined by the National Catholic Register, "The Trump Administration: More Catholic Than You Know," may be stunning as a political endorsement, but it is far more important as a statement that twists Catholic thought into unrecognizable shapes. It is the most recent of Busch's pronouncements that raise serious questions about Catholicism's engagement in the wider culture and who represents the voice of church authority in this era.

Given the prominence of Busch on the Catholic landscape as the founder of the conservative Catholic Napa Institute, two assertions in this piece should be taken seriously. The first, which even he labels "surprising," is his belief that the Trump administration "is the most Christian I've ever seen." The second: "Crucially, from what I've seen, the president's team is earnestly striving to apply the precepts of our faith to the policies that govern America." Let that sink in.

Donald Trump's presidency may be term limited, and politics can shift without warning, but there is no term limit to Busch's influence, and it doesn't appear his resources will run out anytime soon. Apparently, no existing structure, not even hierarchical authority, dares to challenge his public assertions.

Busch has long been an unabashed advocate for a brand of American religion that seeks respectability for the unbounded economic ambitions of its practitioners by wrapping itself in a veneer of piety. In his case, it is Catholic piety placed in service of an extreme libertarian agenda and what is turning out to be a politics of retribution, division and cruelty.

If that seems a harsh assessment, an extensive public record bears it out. Busch's wealth has gained him a significant share of the ecclesial attention economy as well as a name on the business school at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., and a considerable influence over the EWTN publishing and broadcasting empires.

It is critical to both church and state which version of Catholicism shows up now in the public square.

Knowing what led to Busch's ascendency is an unnerving parallel to realizing that how Trump came to sit in the Oval Office is far more instructive in understanding who we are as a people than is the fact that he's president.

Trump is the perfect vessel to carry the acid that destroys the soft tissue binding democratic governance. Devoid of moral compass and oblivious to any purpose beyond himself and other rich and powerful elite, he is able to say and do what would have been political suicide for anyone in the past. His destruction of norms cleared the way for the real libertarian, Elon Musk, an unelected, unconfirmed, antigovernment billionaire whose fortunes depend on billions in government contracts. Musk was given the keys to the kingdom — and permission to destroy it. 

A self-centered individualist in the extreme, Trump was a perfect match for the American ideology of individualism that had been honed, through trial and error, over decades. The ideology is antithetical to the Christian Gospel.

I will break in here to say that this is one of the best assessments of how the corruption of America by turning self-centeredness into a virtue (fiction and the movies carried it so persuasively).   "Individualism" is only a virtue when the individual in question is focused on the common good, the good of the least among us, the others that we are to do unto what we'd have done to us.   As it is practiced by the many who practice it and as it is understood by the likes of Trump and Busch and, I'm sorry to tell you, just about everyone else who practices it,  it turns the individual, the self, into the real god of their worship.   "Individualism" as it is commonly understood and held to be a virtue in 2025 America is the worship of the self and is nothing more than selfishness.  Libertarianism is its political ethics. 

Likewise, the ideas advanced by Busch, who finds not only political commonality but sanctity in the Trump administration, did not materialize overnight or with the founding of his Napa Institute in 2010.

The libertarian/religious ideology he often places on prominent display has been under construction by others for decades. Busch, a successful lawyer who owns luxury resorts, is the perfect vehicle for carrying forward the work of those who have attempted to Catholicize ideas and rationale from the furthest extremes of secular economics and the politics of disruption.

You may also want to hear Ed Trevors on Franklin Graham's tongue bathing of Trump over some Easter message that someone else in the Whitehouse issued as Trump's ideas on Easter.   Coming from someone pretending they're Trump, from inside his Antichrist of a regime,  it's too nauseating for me to go into in depth. 

Open Letter To The White Supremacist Who Trolls Me

I HAVE NEVER commented on the recent case you are obsessed with and have no intention of doing so unless something about it strikes me as going along with the theme of my blog.   The fat little murderer has become a paid celebrity among your fellow fascists, so he's made a killing off of the murders he committed. 

I have commented twice before on the little killer-boy who brought a gun TO A DEMONSTRATION in a state he didn't live in WITH A GROUP OF LIKEWISE OUT OF STATERS WHO WERE ARMED and killed two People.   Then he was let off by a judge who obviously bent over backward for the little murderer and a jury as ready to exonerate him as the ones who customarily let off Klansmen and the like who murdered People of Color and, by the way,  Catholics among others targeted by your kind.   Your brat got off for murder, what are you whining about?    Here's what I had to say about it at the time. 

Wednesday, November 10, 2021

 judge Bruce Schroeder should be removed from the Rittenhouse trial because it's been clear from the start he's trying to let the little murderer off because he thinks his victims deserved to be murdered.  This is a good example of just what a lie it was when John Roberts declared the era of Jim Crow dead and so the Voting Rights Act was overturned.  

The American judiciary is well marbled with white supremacy from bottom to top. 

Posted by The Thought Criminal at 4:26 PM No comments:  

Friday, November 19, 2021

The Pantomime of Justice Let The Maga Murderer Off

MAGA JUDGE WITH MAGA JURY LETS OFF MAGA MURDERER.  

That's what was bound to happen in this trial the way it was allowed to be conducted in Wisconsin with an elected judge who made racist jokes from the bench, bent over backwards to get his boy off for murder and who conducted himself in a way that if he had an Alabama accent and Rittenhouse were accused of the lynch murder of a Black Person would fit right into a black and white movie about the Jim Crow era.  But Bruce Schroeder is an elected judge in one of the states that sent soldiers to fight against the Confederacy, at one time but that was a long, long time ago.  There are many such states in the North where Jim Crow is about as alive as it is in any of the states of the old Confederacy and those are any of the states with large Republican-fascist populations. 

As Elie Mystal said, there isn't any great surprise in this if you're a Person of Color, it's just one of the things that White People who are not Republican-fascists are beginning to understand, those rules have always been in place when it's Black victims of crimes committed by White criminals.  Black defendants who survive a possible summary execution can not count on having a Bruce Schroeder bending everything getting them off even when they are obviously innocent.  

White People, like me, should get used to this because under the Trumpzi Republican-fascist regime which is in place wherever Republican-fascists have power, legislative, executive, judicial, their political identity might serve to put them in the unaccustomed class that Black People and other People of Color are in now.  

As Elie Mystal said, there is no justice, there will be no peace, there will be emboldened and armed fascists killing more and more people.   I'm damned if I'm going to pretend that that fat little fascist is innocent as determined by the jury in this case.  The sanctity of trial by jury is just one of those sacred myths that deserves a thorough laundering because it also stinks like the rest of the "justice" system does.   Especially when it is so obviously rigged as in this case.

The U.S. Constitution Has Failed Catastrophically We Won't Fix It Until We Admit That

IT ISN'T ONLY the Trump regime declaring it will not obey the court order on its illegal abduction and rendition to a notorious torture prison of a man who had the courts' protection against that,  it is the courts' and, especially the Supreme Court setting us up for this to have been an inevitable denouement.   And I believe, at least in the case of the Supreme Court* it was done primarily for baldly partisan purposes by the Republican-fascist appointees to the court.   Though that purpose is to serve the patrons of that party, the billionaires and millionaires,  those who the legal profession serve above and all others because they can pay the best.   It really starts in nothing more complex than that.   That practice, which becomes a habit during the course of a professional life in the law, has thoroughly saturated not only the practice of lawyers but through rulings of courts and Supreme Courts and in the consequent legal thinking of the lawyers who so overwhelmingly have dominated the legislatures and executives of our country.

The fatal flaws of America's 18th century liberal democratic Constitution were baked into it at the start. It is a Constitution which was explicitly, from the start, radically anti-egalitarian in its service to the original corrupt deal between the blackmailing slave-holders and the northern financiers and speculators and because the aristocrats who framed it didn't really want the common People to directly determine the country's government.  They had bamboozled the poor, the landless, the recently freed from slavery into fighting their revolutionary war and when, under the Articles of Confederation, the common People realized they had been bamboozled revolted over the reneged promises that were broken by the Congress.   That is what is behind the Electoral College which the Rehnquist Court used to install the Republican loser of the 2000 election and which installed the loser of he 2016 election, Trump.    It is what is behind the Republican dominated Senate to install the most corrupt Courts in our history, the Rehnquist and Roberts Courts.   The power given to small population states has always, since the founding of the country, given more power to first the slave-states and then even more so the de-facto slave states and those which have had policies of preventing Black People, other People of Color and those who are more likely to vote for Democrats than Republicans all on the basis of "equal representation" of states in both the Senate and, so Electoral College which further enhances the power of those who trend to favor white supremacy and other forms of injustice.

The notorious 3/5ths provision of the original Constitution becomes WORSE BY TWO-FIFTHS when Republican-fascists prevent People from casting a vote and prevent those votes from being counted and so determining the government.   Under America apartheid many of the defects of the original Constitution became worse than it was under slavery.   Under the laws made laws by the Rehnquist and Roberts Courts - another very dangerous and serious defect in the U.S. Constitution - the Court made laws overturning the Voting Rights Act - we are rapidly returning to the status quo of American apartheid, only this time they are extending it well past People of Color to apply it to anyone who isn't in the minority who support Republican-fascism.   They are trying to pass a law that will disenfranchise huge numbers of Americans who have voted for their entire adult lives,  I am hoping that they may shoot themselves in the foot by disenfranchising many Repubican-fascist rural voters who will find it hard or impossible to get the documents they insist Americans present to register to vote or re-register to vote or to, in fact, vote.   Making such People appear at an office to obtain such documents and to document their lives may, in fact, give an advantage to those who live in cities where such offices are.  But I wouldn't count on that.   Such laws are never applied on an equal basis.  

I was glad to hear that finally a prominent lawyer,  Adam Senator Adam Schiff, has finally admitted that we are in that Constitutional Crisis that has, in fact, been going on for a year and, I would argue, has been going on since Bush v. Gore.   Finally, one prominent lawyer was forced by Trump's presser with the dictator of El Salvador to admit that.   I hope it is the opening of the flood gate to the admission that we are well past being on the cusp of dictatorship.   Though I will believe that when I see it.  We have to admit the truth even as we understand how hard it will be to change it.**

Those who are hoping the Roberts Court is going do anything but facilitate the fall into Republican-fascism are living in a fantasy,  they are all-in on it.   Even a Court which was not all-in on it would be impotent to reign in a criminal president, as Trump certainly is, due to our dangerous presidential system.   The fact is that the Republican-fascists in the Congress will block his impeachment and, even when the House voted articles of impeachment, the Republican-fascists in the Senate, either in the majority or the minority will block his conviction under our idiotic Constitution.    Impeachment of a president or a Supreme court "justice" is a dangerous myth that has kept us from doing that one thing that is most essential to establishing and protecting egalitarian democracy - the only legitimate form of government - changing our Constitution from the dangerous presidential system to a dangerous but far less dangerous parliamentary system.  ONE WHICH, UNLIKE THE BRITISH SYSTEM, IS BASED IN REAL, NUMERICALLY DETERMINED EQUALITY,  ONE PERSON ONE VOTE AND EQUAL REPRESENTATION IN THE GOVERNMENT.  

* Other courts such as the ones under Trump's and McConnell's scumbags , Ailene Cannon Matthew Kacsmaryk, are even more overtly Republican-fascist

** Hearing Lawrence O'Donnell talking last night about how the Trump lawyer-liars use terms which carry positive, even virtuous connotative meaning to name the exact opposite of them may lead to a post on that.   The failure of even the college-credentialed Americans to notice that is another specialty of lawyers, judges and "justices."   That practice may have started there but it has become widespread, especially among those with a little learning and lots of media exposure.