RMJ Has A Good Post Up Talking About Some Of The "Christian" Theological Theories Influencing Trump's Diasterous Policy

BEFORE GOING ON,  I'll point out that when I wrote about this last week I consistently typed the Bible annotating con-man's name "Schofield" which is how the family I grew up with spelled it, he didn't use the "H."    Which I mention in passing and in case anyone used what I typed to look up the topic.  I usually look up the spelling of names, there being so much variation but I've been busy, it's planting season and I've got a sick 18-year-old-cat to nurse. 

RMJ knows a lot more about that than I do, it being about as foreign from Catholicism as it's possible for something deputed to be "Christian" to be.   But it is enormously influential with tens of millions of those "white evangelicals" who are white supremacist-fascists in the Republican Party.   There are, though, other evangelicals of all identities it's not true of.  Especially when it comes to anabaptists and others who split into new denominations over a verse here and there,  it gets really complicated really fast.   

RMJ's post starts out by the news that that noted theologian,  the gay, capitalist libertarian, at times reportedly fascist-trad catho-convert Peter Thiel* giving a series of lectures in Rome - which the Catholic Church is disassociating themselves from.   Trad-cath converts, whether those who are trying to repeal Vatican II and want the liturgy to be mumured in Latin or  the wave of supposedly ex-evangelicals who are also polluting the Orthodox church in America are the worst.  Or, at least, they are supplementing the worst that was there.   Though some have accused the Catholic Church of taking Thiel in along with such as Gingrich and a host of other shady Republican-fascists,  he would apparently be posing as some kind of informal "orthodox"  for the moment.   So I'll address that part of it here. 

Peter Thiel, the MAGA-friendly tech billionaire and devout Christian, began a run of religious meetings close to the Vatican on Sunday, raising concerns among Catholics.

Lets get one thing straight,  Thiel isn't any kind of a Christian, he clearly is a worshiper of Mammon,  that is wealth, he opposes every word Jesus ever said approaching the topics of economics, justice, equality, and pretty much everything else.  He's, of course, not alone in that, a very large percentage of those who profess "Christianity" are as little believing or professing The Gospel, the Epistles, the faithful Christian tradition in favor of some perversion of all of those.  Those of us who aspire to follow Jesus had better start denouncing these Mammonist worshipers of the world and its riches or we have no one to blame when those whose knowledge of Christianity is anything from lacking to totally tacit believe that evil is what Christianity is.   Every one of the right-wing converts who I complain of above, see the Catholic Church as a large, influential, perhaps even powerful and wealthy operation that they want to take control of just as they have the government of the United States,  that's all it is to them.  And I would include many members of the Catholic hierarchy as promoting that perversion of Christianity as well as, for example, the current Patriarch of Moscow. 

Thiel, 58, has brought his series of lectures on the Antichrist to Rome. He first held these talks in San Francisco last fall, pushing the idea that a figure opposing Christ would soon emerge to create a “totalitarian one-world government.”

In his speeches, Thiel has harped against the dangers of woke policy such as environmental protections and tech industry regulations. During his San Francisco run, he called Gen Z environmental activist Greta Thunberg one of the “legionnaires of the Antichrist” and slammed Pope Leo XIV as a “woke American pope,” according to The Guardian.

LET ME ALSO ANNOUNCE HERE THAT IF I AM NOT YET WOKE I HOPE I AM WOKE VERY SOON AND PLEDGE THE REST OF MY LIFE TO WAKING EVERYONE I ENCOUNTER UP.  If Leo is "woke" HURRAY!   "Woke" is an entirely admirable thing to aspire to being,  the opposite is what the Thiels and his fellow fascist tech-bro fascists want everyone to be, a semi-conscious object to use, exploit, mark as an object of hate to organize the haters and harness them (the old-line "Southern strategy" of the Republican right's use for them) as a means of taking power and lording it over us all. 

Now, the former evangelical and self-described “small-o orthodox Christian” has taken his teachings to the Catholic Church’s backyard. Thiel reportedly partnered with Catholic universities in Rome to bring his invite-only series to the city, although two institutions alleged to be involved have denied this.

“With reference to several articles that have appeared in the press in recent days regarding an alleged event with Peter Thiel at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas (Angelicum), we would like to clarify that this event is not organized by the University, will not take place at the Angelicum, and is not part of any of our institutional initiatives,” shared the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas in a statement on its website.

The Associated Press reported that Thiel’s event was “jointly organized” by the Vincenzo Gioberti Cultural Association, an Italian Christian political organization, and the Cluny Institute at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. While cultural association confirmed its involvement, the Catholic University of America told the outlet it was “not sponsoring or hosting an event featuring Peter Thiel this month in Rome.”

As the U.S.T.A. happens to be one of the institutions which produced Pope Leo, (1984 Licentiate of Canon Law and 1987 Doctor of Canon Law)  I would think they would be unlikely to want to sponsor or be associated with a set of screeds from Thiel, who clearly hates Leo as much as he hated Francis.  So, as Buffy might put it,  survey says, LIAR.    

I would be interested to know just who made that claim to start with and if anyone at the university was in contact with Thiel and his fellow fascists.  

It’s unclear where the lectures, which will take place between March 15 and 18, are being held.

What is clear is that Catholics and Orthodox churches should be very, very careful about taking in right-wing, "ex-evangelicals" without a serious process of formation because, at the very least, they can give rise to a great deal of confusion and, at most, they are quite capable especially the billionaires and millionaires, of trying to mount a hostile takeover of it.   None of which is bound to produce anything good. 

I hope someone smuggles out recordings of what Thiel has to say,  I would expect that any Q&A wouldn't confront him about that thing which such "trads" seem to care about most these days, his sex life.  But I wouldn't count on any of that.   I wouldn't trust a "transcript" that was issued because, as can be seen above, they are liars and followers of the prince of liars.  

* Capitalist libertarianism being far more incompatible with the Gospel and Epistles than being gay, though I'm sure his fellow "christians" wouldn't see it that way.   I will say I would expect Thiel would give up gay libertarianism a lot faster than he'd give up the capitalism.  He knows that billionaires can always buy themselves liberties that governments, even theocratic ones, won't allow to the plebs.