It is said that only Nixon could go to China. That is, nobody but an ardent anti-Communist could talk peace with Communists. There is some truth to this. Not that talking with China worked out all that well, but the basic concept is correct. For there to be peace there has to be reality – we can’t live in a world of illusions. Anyone else trying to break the ice with the Chi-coms would have been immediately tagged as a sell out. That Nixon did it gave us some assurance that there was reality behind the move. So, too, with Islam – only a Crusader can befriend the Saracen.
I put up a comment on X pointing out that part of the reason for the Church’s soft touch with Islam is the plain fact that anything provocative would lead to bloodshed. Specifically, the blood of innocent and defenseless Christians in the Muslim world. This touched off a firestorm of criticism. I was torched for a whole day! In fact, there are still people dropping by to call me a coward, an Islamist stooge, a traitor, an apostate and so on. I do note, though, with great care that all of those calling for a Crusade against Islam are very unlikely to actually join the effort…that those who want bloodcurdling Papal statements about Islam won’t actually pay the price for same.
Now, to be sure, I do believe the Church should take a far stronger stance against Islamist oppression of Christians. A lot stronger. But what I was trying to do there is put myself in Papal shoes…and in Papal ears. I’ll bet big money that the Christian leaders of the Muslim world are always urging a soft stance. Great issues of the day aside, these people are trying to shepherd very small flocks through very large wolf packs. They don’t want a very difficult task made even harder. People are almost incapable of nuance here in 2026 and so I was flamed on it.
I want the stronger stance not to provoke violence, but to get the Muslims to the table – to be the Crusader who earns the respect of the Saracen, and so can make peace with him. Sorta like Trump is doing. Part of the reason the Muslim world was diddling over Iran was lack of trust in our determination. Why provoke Iran at the behest of the Yanks if they’re going to cut out on you when it gets rough? Trump has shown he has the will to get the job done regardless how much people whine about it. And, so, now we’re seeing real efforts at peace with Israel among Muslim nations and a growing determination to see an end to the Mullah regime. They know they can trust Trump. The President has shown he has the courage of Richard the Lionheart. So, too, I think the Church should become – a bit of Urban II is called for.
I think the Church leaders should issue a firm statement – not just calling for more dialogue, but calling for Christian emancipation in the Muslim world. No more second class citizenship. No more routine denial of Christian rights. No more death penalties based on Sharia law that Christians are not in any way bound to obey. Certainly the statement must also say that Christians in Muslim countries must show deep respect for their Muslim neighbors and not needlessly provoke them…but it must be a two way street, and it must be the foundation of a true dialogue between Islam and the West. We can’t talk sensibly if we’re not talking as equals in all things. We can do this. And we must do this. War and death might seem the easy way out – and getting a pound of flesh after decades of outrages might seem satisfying. But it isn’t the way. A peace between equals who respect each other is what we must have.
And we can see signs of its possibility. The King of Jordan is a decent man. So, too, the King of Morocco. The UAE is a land of decent, honest people. Perfect? Not by a long shot. But people we can work with. And signposts to a better relationship between Islam and the West. I’m not saying we’re going to love each other. I’m not saying we won’t find conflict. But I am saying that we can live in peace. In this, what Trump is doing is crucial – because the Mullah regime is the cancer in the Muslim world. The entity which inflames all hatreds and makes peace impossible. If he can destroy it – or even just degrade it significantly – we will have a window of opportunity. A chance to build so much peace and reconciliation that the purveyors of hatred and death will become a small minority, shoved into a corner, shouting at itself.
Blogs For Victory 
Defeating radical Islam is equally as important as defeating radical Democrats. They are both of the same oppressive, violent cloth, and both are hell bent on destroying western civilization. My concern here is that I think there are some moderate, peaceful, and intelligent Muslims we can negotiate with … I can’t say the same about Democrats. These people are dangerously unhinged and irrational. Their worldviews are all built on lies and their political positions are completely nonsensical. For example; we are told we live on stolen land (even though many of our ancestors were here for over 200 years), yet the anchor baby who just crossed the border yesterday is a rightful owner. How does that make sense?? And now we see Democrats doing everything they can to take votes away from people, after so many years of chanting every vote counts.
On Tuesday, far-left Governor Abigail Spanberger officially signed legislation that would enter Virginia into the controversial National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC). This dangerous move effectively strikes a match to the U.S. Constitution.
This “popular vote compact” will turn America into a third world where dear leader gets 98% of the vote … and this must be destroyed. While Trump eliminates Mullahs, I pray Todd Blanch starts eliminating Democrats. Why is Adam Schiff not in handcuffs??? This must happen. We must pass the Save America Act, and we must protect the electoral college. We are being tested … do we step up? Or fold?
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2026/04/radical-democrat-virginia-governor-signs-away-commonwealths-electoral/
They can sign all the “compacts” they want, but as long as we have a Supreme Court with even a vestige of commitment to the Constitution it is all just posturing and playing to the ignorant, because the existence and function of the Electoral College are in the Constitution. That means, for all those Liberals out there, that the only way to eliminate it or bypass it is to amend the Constitution.
They have been working tirelessly to convince their dumbed-down base that if they just flout laws, just ignore them and violate them, the laws will just somehow disappear, and the same for the mandates of our Constitution.
It’s like the howling to make DC another state. But the existence of a federal district separate from any state is a Constitutional construct. So yes, make DC another state—-once we have created another federal district to replace it. The Constitution requires a site in which to locate the capital of the nation, completely removed from the control of any state, and the states of Maryland and Virginia both agreed to give up land to create this independent district. So which states would now agree to do the same, and where would this new district be located, and what about the national identity of the current District of Columbia with its memorials and federal buildings?
I might go along with this if the new District of Columbia were to be located in land donated by Wyoming, for example. But the logistics of setting up a new and different federal enclave prove its impossibility. Even the problem of naming it would be a speed bump as hysterics would start repeating the libels of Columbus they love so much. The wrangling over location, naming and development of infrastructure would occupy the radicals for decades. But I would go along with replacing every federal building in today’s District of Columbia and moving what could be moved, regarding monuments, in eastern Wyoming along the North Platte River—a better version of the old CCC and resulting in modernized construction. Leave the swamp of the current DC to the Left, stripped of its trappings of wealth and status and power, and leave the existing buildings and mansions for housing for the homeless. It’s not as if commerce would move in, given the inevitable Leftist government of the new state. Move the center of government close to the center of the country—if not as far west as Wyoming then maybe somewhere close to Topeka, Kansas, though siting in tornado country might not be wise. Break up the stranglehold of power and status now vested in the NYC/DC corridor and move it out to where it is more representative of the nation.
But no, the demagogues count on the ignorance of their base and the carefully developed dependence on Magical Thinking, that delusion that temper tantrums can change laws and that the Constitution can just be altered by some complaining. So the DC/State people think, if we can apply that word to their fantasies, that the entire infrastructure of the current District of Columbia would remain, along with its authority and status, and just deliver two more Democrat Senators to Congress, carefully ignoring the Constitutional requirement that the seat of federal power be completely separate from any state.
Under the compact, once the 270 threshold is reached:
Participating states would award ALL their electoral votes to the national popular vote winner
This would apply regardless of how voters in their own state actually voted
In effect, state election results could be rendered meaningless
Yet, regarding the role of electors, “the Court said in 1890: “The sole function of the presidential electors is to cast, certify and transmit the vote of the State for President and Vice President of the nation.”
There are a lot of arguments around the whole “elector” topic, but they tend to be about who can be an elector, and/or the ability of electors to vote for their own choices in spite of the votes cast for any candidate. But it seems that the core issue—that of the responsibility of any elector to “transmit the vote of the State” might have to be adjudicated. So far it seems that every now and then a rogue elector decides to cast a vote for someone who did not win the election in his or her state: “In 1968, for example, a Republican elector in North Carolina chose to cast his vote not for Richard M. Nixon, who had won a plurality in the state, but for George Wallace, the independent candidate who had won the second greatest number of votes.” But even here the elector was basing a decision on the state election, not the popular vote of the entire nation. I am not aware of any case revolving around an elector casting a vote for someone who won the national popular vote, based on that vote, ignoring the votes of his or her state. I think the key here will be whether or not STATE electors can then cast STATE votes for a candidate who did not win IN THAT STATE, but merely assign the vote of that state to people who did not vote in, or live in, that state but who then assume the ability to speak for that state in the national election.
The Compact Clause (Article I, Section 10, Clause 3) of the U.S. Constitution prohibits states from entering into agreements, compacts, or alliances with other states or foreign powers without the consent of Congress. It ensures federal supremacy and prevents states from forming coalitions that undermine the federal structure.
I don’t think the forces behind the National Popular Vote movement will ever get to 270, but, on the outside chance that they do, it just begs for a SCOTUS decision.
Thanks for that reference, Spook. I completely missed it.
It’s just another glaring example of the Left trying to do something that they KNOW is blatantly unconstitutional, but figuring, if no one challenges it it’ll become defacto law, kind of like what they did with the 14th Amendment.
And the base doesn’t even have enough knowledge to understand that they are basing their hopes on a violation of the Constitution. Remember back in the Old Days of the blog when casper claimed to believe in the Constitution and then kept coming up with wackadoo “interpretations” that supported his actual disdain for it?
These lemmings have been fed a few sound bites, like “due process”, that make them feel smart when they howl them, but they are utterly clueless, as well as impervious to fact.
As for “de facto law” they fall back on another of the platitudes they think make them look smart, and bleat about “precedent”. It’s part ignorance and part Magical Thinking—if we just ignore it long enough it will go away, and then demand that it continue to be ignored because precedent
Re: the Pope, I am not a fan. I do not like hypocrites and Leo is a first class hypocrite. He chides America for turning away immigrants while he lives securely behind gilded golden gates. He chides America for attacking Islam, while staying silent on the Christian massacre in Nigeria. He lectures Trump for attacking Iran while staying silent about the Mullahs who slaughtered tens of thousands of their own people. Mark says the Popes, and church leaders mission is to lead small flocks of sheep through large swaths of wolves, and I say that’s the wrong mission. I believe their mission is to teach the sheep how to stand up to the wolf. And how to defeat the wolf. We are not victims of our environment, we are victors in Christ. “If God is for us, who can be against us” Romans 8:31. Let’s go boldly into the night and WIN.
Sure – but if you’re the priest of a Maronite village in Lebanon with 397 parishoners surrounded by 10,000 Hezbollah members, you’d view the matter differently.
That’s why I said the Church should call for Christian emancipation – make it an appeal to justice. To make more of the Muslim world like the UAE…where there is openly St Joseph’s Cathedral, and many other Catholic churches. As I noted in the post, it isn’t perfect…but its better than elsewhere. And what we’re going for is better. Incremental steps. If every Muslim land allows open Christian churches, that is a first step. And a step worth taking.
Leo was able to pass as a modern and moderate political thinker, as long as he was a small cog in a big machine. But once he got to the top seat, his ego took over and he succumbed to the allure of being idolized by the global Left. Sadly, he is contributing to the decline of respect for the Catholic Church as its dogma attracts more people every day but its politics demand rejection of its authority. A 30,000-meter view of the papacy shows a bureaucracy dedicated to the erosion of the Church by co-opting it and making it an arm of Leftist politics, and that might easily be seen as the agenda of the devil. There have been missteps and side trips into irrelevance or corruption, but the Church has always been able to return to its true path. The new global information age might make that impossible and it looks like this pope has become an agent of the decline of the Church.
100% spot on
Re: the Trump Christ like picture he posted the other day. Here’s another example of conservatives defensively reacting to a Democrat narrative. Why are we being apologetic to people who voted for “The One They Have All Been Waiting For”?? To people who celebrated “Christ in Urine” art work? I heard Trump yesterday claim the depiction was one of a healer, or Red Cross worker, as he is healing the world. There’s nothing wrong with that. Let’s not treat Democrats like people. They are insidious cockroaches who will eliminate us if we don’t eliminate them first.
When I saw the post I saw a massive ego but nothing Christlike. The clothing was nothing like anything I have seen in religious depictions of Christ, there was no halo, and the only thing that struck a sour note for me (other than the eye roll Trump often elicits) was the glowing light around his hand, which is an image usually seen related to the message of divine healing.
I used to say Trump needed mittens attached to his hands, to keep him off Twitter. I still think he needs a minder, someone to screen his impulses and point out how they might not translate the way he thinks they will. But that is only for his personal quirks. As for his work as President, I have no complaints.
(Speaking of which, for some reason I am now getting constant Facebook notifications, and many of them include reels of short statements from a site called Altas World News (https://www.youtube.com/@AltasWorldNews). No one who sees any of these short opinion pieces can claim they are unbiased, yet they provide interesting perspectives of things usually presented to us from a completely different, and Trump/hostile, point of view.
Here is another excellent opinion on the current Pope I found on X
“So the Pope met with David Axelrod last week. David Axelrod. Obama’s campaign architect. A man who is not Catholic, has never met a pope before, and whose entire career has been engineering political narratives for the American left. And then, by pure coincidence, the Pope immediately started lobbing shots at the Trump administration, and three US Cardinals popped up on 60 Minutes doing the same thing. All organically, I’m sure.
I’m a practicing Catholic. I need you to understand that part. But in my opinion, Trump has all the right to lash out at him. Maybe you’ll disagree, but in the end, Trump talks like Trump. Water is wet. I’m talking about MY Church being run like a DNC satellite office but with a golden throne. This is the same Vatican that watched governments padlock churches during COVID and said nothing. That let Biden take communion while funding abortion and said nothing. That fired Bishop Strickland for defending actual Church doctrine. That removed Bishop Fernández in Puerto Rico for defending religious exemptions THE CATECHISM ITSELF supports. But somehow Trump is the threat to human dignity. Pope Francis was bad. Leo has turned out to be worse. Francis at least was vague about his politics. Leo went and hired the consulting firm.
The man has ignored the slaughter of Christians across Nigeria, the Sahel, India, Syria, Bangladesh, Pakistan. Hundreds of believers murdered, churches burned, pastors kidnapped. His response? Platitudes about dialogue. OF COURSE he won’t even name who’s doing the killing. But he’ll fly across continents to make interfaith gestures the week after his people coordinated a media hit on a sitting US president. The weaponization of belief is obvious. You get the Pope to pick a fight with Trump, and suddenly millions of conservative Catholics have to choose between their faith and their vote.”
“suddenly millions of conservative Catholics have to choose between their faith and their vote.”
I am sure this is the calculation of those working so hard to politicize the Church. Yet I am not seeing the blind allegiance to every utterance of a Pope that used to define Catholics. I think there is a growing sentiment of “stay in your own lane” which we can, and should, emphasize by pointing out that in Catholic doctrine the Pope is infallible only in the arena of Catholic doctrine. In every other aspect of life, he is just a man. A man with a microphone, perhaps, but just a guy with an opinion that is not necessarily that of the Church.
I’d like to see a big PR campaign pointing out that any Pope who defies the Catholic dogma against abortion by publicly honoring people whose political careers have led to the killing of hundreds of thousands if not millions of babies has abandoned any pretense of speaking for the Church.
In my parish, as the congregation offers its prayers for various causes and people, there is only a brief passing ask for prayers for “Leo, our Pope, and Frank, our archbishop” and that’s it. It’s like “yeah, he’s the Pope and we have to acknowledge that, but…” and the other prayers are for things like protecting the lives of the unborn and protection for Christians around the world. That is, for things Leo seems to find inconsequential, not important like global warming, etc.
If America keeps electing Muslim and brown socialist representatives … America is over. They are intellectually incapable of keeping the grand experiment of self governance alive, and will always retreat to the “warmth embrace of collectivism”
If America keeps electing Muslim and brown socialist representatives … America is over.
Well, not Over over. There might end of being a tad bit of a fight.
I saw this headline this morning and immediately thought of the doom and gloom post from one of our trolls a couple of days ago:
There’s really no sense in ever responding to the trolls. All you have to do is wait a 24-hour news cycle and whatever they posted is either refuted or made irrelevant.
Stocks didn’t just RALLY, they the S&P and the NASDAQ hit all-time highs.
Key phrase here, which is exactly what we have all been saying: INVESTORS SHRUG OFF IRAN WAR OIL PRICE SPIKE.
More and more it looks like reality, to a Lib, simply changes from minute to minute and is reflected in a fleeting snapshot of what is happening in a short, discrete, period of time. (“Discrete” not “discreet”.)
So there is little if any continuity. Time does not flow, it hopscotches from one tidbit of ‘news” to another. If gas prices go up under Trump, well, gas prices are up. Period.
Look at the small print below the reluctant headline: “The rebound over the past two weeks has been faster than the one following the Covid market crash in 2020 or when tariffs roiled markets last year”. Wow, it must have really hurt to have to acknowledge a historical fluctuation in oil prices, based on events of the time, and a pattern of recovery, instead of just following the narrative of NOW THAT TRUMP IS PRESIDENT GAS COSTS MORE. You know that had to sting.
The funny thing about the article posting this headline was its observation that “no reporter wanted their (sic) byline on this optimistic story”.
But when what passes for commitment to an objective ideology requires flips of 180 degrees within hours (NO KINGS to TRUMP SHOULD HAVE ACTED LIKE A KING (controlling gas and food prices and health care), “advocating for the very thing they claim to despise” such as Greta now demanding that oil be sent to Cuba, etc.) it must be hard to get “journalists” who have filed angst-ridden screeds of the inevitable crash of the stock market and the country’s also-inevitable plunge into a depression, to, within a day or so, sign onto an admission that they were wrong.
Not just “wrong” but spectacularly, incandescently wrong—and, worse, wrong based solely on tribal allegiance to the demonization of a man by claiming he has led the country off an economic cliff.
That is, on how they FEEL.
And the good news just keeps coming (Sorry Leftrists)
I would note that last year (reflecting Biden’s last year in office), I owed more in taxes than I have owed in over a decade. I was fortunate that I didn’t have to pay a penalty for under-withholding, and I adjusted my withholding so it wouldn’t happen again. This year I got the biggest refund I’ve gotten in even longer than that, nearly ALL of the additional withholding. No difference in income. If the majority still votes Democrat in November, then, well, words fail me.
The “majority” might not vote Dem, but we know that millions will. Why? Because Dems aren’t Trump. That’s all it takes.
For a certain malignant and intellectually limited person, the pivot point is simply the emotion directed at one man. Trump = no. Not Trump = yes.
To vote for any candidate associated with Trump in any way would mean turning loose of that odd visceral twinge of satisfaction that comes from posting about the “Cheeto president” and the smug belief that this silliness is really an example of political acumen.
So yes, a lot of people will vote Dem. And if questioned they will undoubtedly explain, for example, that this is pushback against the Right-wing demand that no woman can vote if the name on her driver’s license is different from the name on her birth certificate. (Yes, reading comments sections on social media sites do contain many shrill squeals about this effort to “disenfranchise women”. And many if not most of these strident posts come from credentialed women.)
More and more, our elections are proving to be de facto intelligence tests, with a frighteningly large number of Americans failing.
The “majority” might not vote Dem, but we know that millions will.
I understand the visceral hatred of Trump by the Left and even some RINOs trumps everything else, even reason, but surely the majority WILL NOT vote against their own self interest.
“surely the majority WILL NOT vote against their own self interest.”
You must be sensing a change in Leftist voting attitudes. I hope you are right but it it would be a big step away from their historical suicidal ideology
We hope! And, in fact, I’m pretty confident they won’t. But, hey, people are weird, right?
But with peace being secured, oil prices tumbling, manufacturing and transportation indexes surging…and Democrats still fully committed to illegals, trans and crime…I like our chances in November.
Now we just need to take Thune to the woodshed so we have a better shot at a legitimate election for a change.
Yep – the 2018 midterms were deliberately lost by GOP Congressional leadership. We need the Save Act and a Congressional GOP committed to winning.
Side note: I mentioned Morocco in the post and I just found out something I didn’t know – Jews are still in Morocco! I had assumed like all Muslim States they had been expelled in the aftermath of 1948. To be sure, a large number were forced out…but some remained and the current Moroccan government is fostering them and cooperating with Israel in restoring Jewish cultural heritage in Morocco. Yet another sign that we can get to decent relations with Islam. Of course, it takes a population willing to do the deeds – like in Morocco and the UAE. If you take a look at the trajectory of both countries, they simply gave up the Jew-hatred. It just gets you nowhere and limits your ability to do things. The hope now is that a destroyed or at least seriously degraded Iranian regime will give those in the Muslim world who want to get on with life their chance to become dominant.
Supreme Court Justice Thomas took the stage at the University of Texas at Austin Law School and
We see this ugly “spirit of “cynicism, rejection, hostility and animus” toward America — from Americans themselves” in the snarling posts of our blog trolls, or the smarmy sniveling of casper who at least makes a token effort to disguise his animus toward America and our Constitution by posturing as a patriot and then trying to weave his lies and distortions through transparent protestations of support for the nation and its rule of law.
Gotta get me some more of that delicious Socialism – fer sure!
As usual, Jeff Childers spells it out in layman’s terms:
Childers’ final paragraph today says it all:
And it all stems from the fact that Trump just refuses to play their games. The complete useless nature of the Ruling Class has been exposed in real time and I don’t think anyone but fanatic Democrats believe it any longer.
re: the Ruling Class:
I think one aspect of Trump that might be starting to settle in is that he is not a politician. He is finally, in his seventh decade, starting to learn to think more like a politician, but he is a businessman, and people are starting to see the difference between a nation run by a politician and one run by a businessman whose entire career has been based on identifying problems and solving them.
From 1945 util 1953 we had two presidents who were not politicians. Truman was a businessman, Eisenhower was a general, both occupations being focused on identifying problems and solving them. Then we hit a long stretch of being governed by the basic philosophy of how to gain votes and how to keep them, with dealing with problems seeming to be just ways to accomplish those goals.
Then Trump came along and viewed the management of the United States government as just a version of managing a big, complicated company—one that has suffered from mismanagement. And he brought to the job the same attitude he would have had to the takeover of any massive but dysfunctional company with great but mismanaged assets and potential and a poor management team in place. He started treating unfriendly nations as hostile competitors for the same market, understanding that although they were run by politicians the same human nature governed those politicians that governed every business competitor he had ever dealt with. So he took what he knew—how to set up deals—-and stripped down political maneuvering into the same kind of thing he had always been dealing with and approached it in the same way, finding or creating leverage and then using it.
And it freaked people out. Some of us saw what was happening and cheered, thinking “it’s about damned time!”, some were just bewildered, and some were threatened because their entire existence was based on the old political model and it was terrifying to see it overturned. These were/are that Ruling Class, and they decided to manipulate the bewildered, who were so easy to control, to turn them into a mindless robotic army of blind hate, and that has been their game plan—-use politics to block, obfuscate and sabotage the efforts of the new administration while using the stupidity and gullibility of the bewildered to generate as much conflict and chaos as possible.
What I have seen is the effect of the misjudgment by the Ruling Class, because it turns out that conflict energizes Trump. He sees it as a challenge, and he does love a challenge. So instead of folding under the onslaught he leans into it, with a “bring it on!” attitude, relishing the many opportunities given to him to prove how wrong they are.
We talk about him playing multi-level chess, but in a way I think he does see this as a giant game board, where, when a move is made, it opens up a different avenue of attack or defense or opportunity. Just as the great home-run hitters of all time had an almost preternatural ability to see the ball coming in slow motion, able to actually see the stitching on the ball as it approached at almost 100 mph, able to see its subtle changes in trajectory and know just where it would finally cross the plate, Trump seems to have the ability to do much the same thing in viewing the hundreds of moving parts in global conflict—-something that would only be corrupted if driven by political agendas instead of simple problem-solving. And the man understands something the politicians don’t seem to grasp—-the importance of leverage.
And this is starting to sink in to more people. It still has the uphill battle of overcoming the pathology of so many, whose internal emotional and mental needs are fed by hate and resentment and negativity and who have found a rich feeding ground in the carefully generated and nurtured hatred of Trump. But it is harder and harder for normal people to ignore or deny the results of Trump leadership, especially as one aspect of it has been the disintegration of what used to be seen as Democrat leadership.
He enjoys the heat – perhaps in the past just for the fun of it, but after Butler – when he probably first fully realized that this is for keeps – because it is worth the fight. Butler not only adjusted Trump’s attitude in the right way, but also made him a fully happy warrior…once you’ve been shot at without result, everything else seems easy.
and people are starting to see the difference between a nation run by a politician and one run by a businessman whose entire career has been based on identifying problems and solving them.
Versus identifying and exploiting problems for political gain, often creating new problems in the process.
When I read this post, Spook, I immediately flashed on a graphic in which there is a view from above, of earth and its people.
In one graphic, the view is of individual human beings, with all our foibles and quirks and human attributes both positive and negative, and the reaction is one of how best to improve their lives by identifying and helping solve their problems, or helping them find ways to solve their own problems. It is a benign perspective, respectful and desiring to be of service and recognizing the individuality of all.
In the other perspective, these are not seen as individuals, individually valuable, but as categories. People are seen as game pieces, to be moved around into various clumps or demographics and treated as collectives, with the choices of how to manipulate them being driven by agendas of power and control.
I saw this statement on another news site I read regularly:
I’d wager that a significant portion of those 1.4 billion Catholics are more disappointed in this Pope than they are in Donald Trump.
To me, it isn’t being disappointed with the Pope – who is theologically rock solid – but in the overall Church leadership. Clearly captured by the Globalists…they are committed to the global warming scam for fear of being tagged as “anti-science” and in favor of “the peace process” as some sort of bizarre (and totally unnecessary) atonement for the Crusades. On and on it goes like that – and, it must be remembered, that a lot of the senior Church leadership passes through the same sort of Establishment boot camps as the morons at the UN and EU. That is, they have been taught to think like a Starmer.
One Diocese put up a pic of the Just War Doctrine taken from the Catechism as a means of somehow indicting Trump but we all read it and then put up comments varying on “looks like Trump is on solid moral ground here”. It is like the people who organize Catholic public statements haven’t even read the Catechism (which, I’ll bet, is for a lot of them exactly the case) but have instead absorbed what the editorial board of the New York Times says is in the Catechism.
To be fair, the comments that the Pope hasn’t spoken out about anti-Catholic violence by Islamists is false – and we’re getting a warped view of Papal statements on that because the Pope’s clear condemnation of Islamist violence doesn’t get reported…only things that can be presented as being anti-Trump. The Pope is not an actual fool! But the whole Church – Pope on down – just can’t bring itself to concede that in order to get to the “disarmed peace” desired, those who are committed to death must be curbed…that we can’t actually dialogue with “death to America/Israel”.
” theologically rock solid”? How about being able to partake of the sacraments after committing mortal sins?
I wrote the post about receiving the sacraments while in a state of mortal sin yesterday, and this morning I read this post on Substack, about a visiting priest delivering, as the author says, not a homily but a sermon, ending with a reference to my own recent comment about receiving the sacraments after committing mortal sins. (I did not get specific in my comment about which mortal sins, but the one I most relate to theological squishiness is the promotion of abortion, of actively advocating, supporting and enabling abortion, and then being allowed to take Communion, among other sacraments.) I don’t remember if Leo has given his public stamp of approval on abortion activists Pelosi and Biden, but the former Pope did, and parish priests are not allowed to deny the sacraments to people known to be involved in abortion.
“Here’s why I say this. Many of you, maybe most of you adults, are regularly falling into mortal sins, some more serious sins than others.”
Then he calmly went through a list of about a dozen common sins: pornography, masturbation, drunkenness, gluttony, gossip and slander, theft. Stealing from your employer by surfing the internet all day when you should be working. Cheating on your taxes. Lying. He mentioned contraception, abortion, divorce and civil remarriage, and so on.
He spoke each sin deliberately in a calm, measured tone, letting each one hang unpleasantly in the air for a moment before moving to the next one.
I was reminded in an odd but oddly fitting way of war movies I’d seen in which anti-submarine naval ships deploy a pattern of depth charges to flush out the submarine lurking below.
Each sin the priest mentioned so matter-of-factly seemed to find its target among the stupefied members of the congregation. They had no idea what had hit them. Neither did I. We sat there spellbound. For some, it must have been deeply uncomfortable, deeply unsettling.
………………….
His mention of the pattern of routinely falling into serious sin and either never repenting or never struggling against them, living a life of persistent unchastity, impurity, drunkenness, greed, gossip, and other sins hit home. So did the part about receiving Holy Communion in the state of serious sin and never going to confession.
The priest was speaking the truth in love—tough love—in the spirit of the Lord Jesus (see Matthew 23:13-33 and Luke 13:1-5) and St. Paul, both of whom warned about sin with harshness at times and when needed (see 1 Corinthians 5:1-2, 5-6; and Galatians 5:19-21).
And [Jesus] answered them, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered thus? I tell you, No; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish.
Or those eighteen upon whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them, do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who dwelt in Jerusalem? I tell you, No; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish” (Luke 13:2-5).
With a final flourish of firmness, the priest added,
“And don’t forget. Each time you receive Communion while in the state of unconfessed mortal sin, you’ve stacked yet another sin on top of the rest: the sin of sacrilege, by receiving Jesus in Holy Communion unworthily.”
“I’d wager that a significant portion of those 1.4 billion Catholics are more disappointed in this Pope than they are in Donald Trump.”
And I’d wager that there is hope that many of these Catholics will still turn against Trump if the Left can pump up enough resentment against him related to some claim of a feud between him and the Pope. Sadly, I am not sure the Pope has the integrity to stand up and speak out against this and Trump isn’t the most adept at avoiding these kinds of pitfalls so it might have some effect.