If this is correct, it should be the last possible line in the sand for American Catholics. For those for whom it isn't, there's clearly no outrage that Trump could do that would matter to them.
Showing posts with label Pope Leo XIV. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pope Leo XIV. Show all posts
Friday, April 24, 2026
Tuesday, April 21, 2026
The 25th Amendment Watch List. A Fourteenth and Special edition. Attacking the Catholic Church.
April 13, 2026.
The number of Catholics in the world: Over 1,422,000,000, with the number growing.
The number of Catholics in the United States: Between 50,000,000 and 70,000,000, with the number growing.
The number of Orthodox in the world 260,000,000
The number of Orthodox Christians in the United States: 2,600,000.
The number of Protestants in the world: 600,000,000 to 1,000,000,000.
The number of Protestants in the United States 140,000,000 to 150,000,000, of which 10 to 15% are mainline protestants, and of which the largest denomination is the American Baptist Conference, which includes 13,000,000 to 15,000,000 members.
The Catholic Church, all rites (the Roman Rite is the largest by far) is the largest single church in the world and the largest single church in the United States, in spite of the United States being a protestant nation.
The second largest church in the world are the Orthodox, meaning that the Apostolic Churches, those which go all the way back to the Apostles, far exceed the number of Protestants.
While all churches have their problems, the Catholic church is growing everywhere. Protestant churches are dying.
And then we get this:
Trump posted those back to back yesterday. There's been all sorts of rumors circulating that the administration has been upset with the Church.
No doubt it isn't a fan of the Church. The Church has God as its King. Maga has Donald as its.
Throughout Trump's presidency, the first legitimate one and the illegitimate second one, I've warned that support of Trump would likely kill off far right Evangelism in the US. I've also warned that those far right Evangelicals who support Trumpwould turn on Catholicism, which they don't understand and often don't even think to be a Christian religion, when in fact it's the original Christian religion. And I've failed to grasp how any thinking Catholic could really support Trump with any depth.
But some have. I know plenty.
Some are just shallow political thinkers, others not, and all are conservative. I'm conservative, but I've never supported Trump.
These people are opposed to abortion (so am I), and were horrified by transgenderism (so am I). That frankly is just about it. Some buy in to the other hardcore aspects of the far right as well, being opposed to immigration, for instance, which actually requires a more nuanced thought process than they are giving it. And the Democrats made it impossible for Catholics to really support them, becoming the party of death and weirdness.
None of which meant that anyone had to support a dim, narcissistic, serial polygamist.
For those of you who supported Trump on social issues, there were and are other parties. And how much do we know about Trump and any of the positions he supposedly supports. He own track record on moral issues is poor at least in so far as his treatment of women is concerned. And we're talking about adult women. This administration outright opposition to releasing the Epstein files certainly raises questions about it being willing to support child rapists, and there's enough smoke around Trump to at least raise questions about how far in the shallow end of the pool he may have been willing to go, although nothing's been proven. His family's financial dealings this term certainly raise questions of a moral nature. His launching of an illegal war and threatening mass civilian deaths is criminal.
We could go on. He's a horrible, demented, man. Christians who are supporting him need to rethink it immediately.
Catholics supporting him have helped bring us to this.
From here on out there's no excuse for a free pass by members of the Apostolic Faiths. None. And that includes the two members in the administration, Marco Rubio and J. D. Vance. Supporting Trump is supporting this mockery of the Faith and of all Christianity.
But for the voters too. In the midterms there are already candidates who note they are "endorsed by Donald Trump". One Catholic candidate here in the state hardcore embraces Trump and another runs, on all of her signs, "Endorsed by Donald Trump".
That needs to end right now.
The 25th Amendment needs to be applied, now. Catholics cozying up to Trump need to stop, now.
Cont:
Q: Did you post that picture of yourself depicted as Jesus?
Trump: I did post it and I thought it was me as a doctor. And had to do with red cross as a red cross worker
Donald Trump.
If that's what he's thought, it's because he's demented.
That being what he thought is rather difficult to believe. What's more believable is that he's worried American Catholics are now waking up, if they were not already awake, to what a terrible person he is.
April 16, 2026
We'll probably close this one out and start a new one, but this story is still playing out.
Something that should be really obvious, but MAGA just won't accept, is that Donald Trump is insane. Of course, accepting that a leader who they loved is nuts would mean that some of what they're supporting is nuts. Nobody wants to acknowledge that, but it needs to occur now.
We're in really dangerous territory.
Trump Rage at Pope Darkens as Ex-Allies Warn of Worsening Mental State
As Trump’s own ex-supporters start sounding the alarm about his mental state, a former top Trump official explains why the president’s madness is now badly messing with ordinary Americans’ everyday lives.
That's from The New Republic, which those with the real Trump Derangement Syndrome, the one that keeps a supporter from acknowledging that he's gone insane no matter what he does, will disregard. But these warnings aren't in isolation by any means.
Here's one from the National Catholic Reporter:
Trump is detached from reality. The 25th Amendment exists for this moment
For the reporter to call for the 25th Amendment to be invoked is pretty extraordinary, but again those with the real TDS will just say, well, that's because he insulted the Pope. Indeed, American Catholics in the political far right are already busy dissing Pope Leo XIV as some sort of flaming left winger, which is patently absurd.
Well, here's one from Jewish bonafide somewhat left winger Robert Reich:
He is Seriously, Frighteningly, Utterly, and Completely Losing His Mind
We are in great danger
The man is going insane. We're in some sort of a race now to see if his cabinet can screw up its courage or finally do something so patently nuts that it can't be denied. What that is, at this point, is almost too horrific to imagine.
What seems clear, for those who bother to observe, is that the U.S. is going to invade Cuba, unless the military puts a stop to it. Nobody in the Administration seems ready to stop it. We're basically starving the country to death, for no reason, right now, other than its a vengeful project supported by Cuban Americans. The chances that we revive Trump's lust for Greenland at some point, and committing forces to satiate it aren't beyond possibility. Maybe one of those two acts causes somebody to say "no".
Or maybe it'll be the war against Iran. We seem to have wondered into a war that has no way out and the stress it's causing Trump is rapidly wiping out what mental faculties he had left. The thought that Iran may win, and it may, is terrifying for him. It's also destroying the political chances of J. D. Vance, which Vance likely knows, and which gives Vance, who opposed the war, the chance to be Brutus to Trump's Caesar. Still, Trump launching an act of absolute barbarity to try to force Iran to surrender, which would fail, isn't beyond possibility either.
Or maybe it'll be something benign. He says something he can't retract about something abhorrent, or walks out in the paved rose garden sans clothes, or forgets who the first lady is.
Or maybe we wake up one day having deployed nuclear weapons with MAGA wondering, for the most part, how we got there, and with some supporting it as they must or must wakeup.
We're in dangerous territory.
I'd predicted when we started this series that Trump's second term would last 18 months, from January 2025 to June 2026. We're rolling right up on that. What is clear at this point is that in November the Democratic Party is going to resume control of the House and the Senate. At that point Trump's ability to reign like a dictator will end. Knowing that, if he is still in office, he'll do everything possible to disrupt the 2026 election and steal it.. People like Chuck Gray will help him in that attempt, and are already helping him. It probably won't work. If he goes too far, it'll result in mass violence.
The fact that he'll try it, and that it will become increasingly obvious that he's doing to try it as we move towards November, will mean that there will be a fair chance that if Trump is still in office after November, he'll face impeachment and be removed in 2027. Because of that, there's also an increased chance that if my original timeline was off, the 25th Amendment will be invoked then. An impeachment of Trump, at this point might very well be followed by an impeachment of Vance, who will not want to face that.
Hitler didn't resign rather than take Germany into defeat. Comparing Trump to Hitler is something even his opponents hate to have done, but he has a very similar mindset in certain ways. Hitler was democratically elected and co opted the state as well, and believed manically in himself. Trump is like that. Stress and drugs eroded Hitler's mind, as well as the burden of evil. Trump came into office in his first time an obviously mentally unstable person and it's grown worse. He's never been a person who is personally admirable.
The longer this goes on, the worse it will become.
April 21, 2026
Donald Trump is losing his mind
Last edition:
Downfall. The 25th Amendment Watch List, Thirteenth Edition. The MAGA Cannibal.
Tuesday, April 14, 2026
Giorgia Meloni is the leader of the National Conservatives now.
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Trump's words toward the Holy Father are unacceptable.
Giorgia Meloni.
She is the one who is unacceptable, She doesn’t care if Iran gets nuclear weapons and blows up Italy in two minutes.
I’m shocked by her. I thought she was brave, but I was wrong
She is no longer the same person, and Italy will not be the same country;
Donald Trump
As far as I know, nine nations hold nuclear weapons, yet only one has ever used them. That nation is the United States. Mr. Trump needs to de-escalate. Nobody throws around nuclear threats like Washington does, and he should mind his words.
Giorgia Meloni
Whatever you think of them, or her, Giogia Meloni is the leader of the world's National Conservatives now. Not Trump, who isn't one, nor Vance, who is but who is done for. Orban, of course, is gone.
She was always the most presentable, and most thoughtful, of the lot at that.
Trump has more than met his match here. He can't begin to debate her.
Saturday, April 11, 2026
CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 124th Edition. On the Road with J. D. Vance. Avignon Papacy in the news. The Slovenian woman speaks. Men behaving badly towards women. Teens not having babies not a good thing? Staying too long.
J. D. Vance's Roadtrip.
This past week we've seen the United States meddle in a foreign election.
Now, this is likely happened before, but not in this fashion. Chances are the CIA has funded various sides back during the Cold War. If we could go so far as to topple the Iranian government, which we helped do in the late 40s as it was socialist (the horror!), we could certainly meddle in elections in some fashion.
But that's not what I refer to.
Rather, Vice President J.D. Vance, the highest legitimate figure in the U.S. Government, was in Hungary stumping for Viktor Orbán, the long serving Prime Minister of the country who looks like he's going to go down in defeat tomorrow.
Now, this probably provokes a yawn from a lot of Americans in a day and age in which we have a demented hotelier starting wars and saying stupid stuff non stop. But it is really extraordinary. The US has been willing to use economics and clandestine efforts in some circumstances, but outright campaigning?
Nope.
Oh King Donny got involved in it too, with his limited world view:
In actuality the economy of Hungary under Orbán is in pretty bad shape.
What's going on here?
Frankly, a lot of the news analysis of this hasn't been very good.
Orbán represents something that Trump actually doesn't, although Trump probably doesn't realize that. Orbán is not only an authoritarian from the far right, and corrupt, he's a illiberal democrat that National Conservatives adore.
Vance probably does get that, as he's a National Conservatives.
Unlike Trump and his Protestant Christian Nationalist, Orbán's party stands for a different sort of quasi authoritarianism. Once that's still scary, but which is much more intellectual than anything Trump could grasp. Trump's MAGA is massively crude in comparison.
Fans of Orbán imagine every Western democracy working the way that Hungary does, and its very notable that Hungary's primary opponent in this election is also from the far right. This election is a contest between two National Conservatives with Péter Magyar, whose very last name means Hungarian basically, likely to come out on top.
Magyar formed a new party to run against Orbán's old party, which he came up in. Tisza, the new party, has moved back towards Europe, however, and therefore is headed in the direction of being more of a true conservative party.
To put this in context, if this were an American election, it would basically be between Conservative Republicans and the Heritage Foundation, which is downright scary.
And that should tell you J. D. Vance's weltanschauung.
At least, however, that should tell you that if Vance is elected in 2028, which there's little chance he will be, Paula White and Franklin Graham will be sent packing.
Vance is now in Pakistan, having been assigned the task of negotiating the end of the war by King Donny. Donny, who has no filter, has already noted that with J. D. at the helm, if it doesn't get done, well that's not Trump's fault.
Vance is a curious choice for this. Either Trump really has faith in him, perhaps because he opposed the war, or he's just tossing him to the wolves. Trump has no problem at all, as we've seen, axing those who were once his most loyal supporters. This could really boost Vance in some ways, which may be what he's trying to do, or it could wreck him.
The Pope is Catholic.
In something that's vaguely sort of related to this, the news this week was filled in some quarters with the story that the Catholic Church may, or may not have, been threatened, or not, by the Trump administration.
The story was broken by a blogger that we link into on this site. Supposedly some Administration officials were upset by some statements of Pope Leo's and told a Vatican official that the Church better get in line with Trump, and then reminded the figure of the Avignon Papacy.
Right away, some conservative Catholic bloggers were dubious about that, in part because we're all surprised that any American knowns anything about the Avignon Papacy. What was additionally surprising, however, for historically minded American Catholics is to realize how many American Catholics don't realize that the U.S. is a deeply Protestant country with a strong history of rampant anti Catholicism. Indeed, while Kennedy's betrayal of his faith got us all in the door of the culture, to our detriment, that's never really gone away. Bishop Barron, when he appears with Trump's faith leaders, may be standing on a floor with members of other denominations, but you can be relatively assured that some of the Protestant clergy appearing with him don't think he, and the Orthodox cleric who appears, are even Christians, in spite of the fact that they represent the actual original Christianity.
Anyhow, the Administration denied the story and now the Vatican has as well. The overall lesson however, probably should be that figures like Vance and Marco Rubio aside, the Evangelical arm of MAGA is a lot stronger than the National Conservative end, and they don't really view Catholics favorably in spite of what naive Catholics may think. Walking arm in arm with the Trump administration, which some have done, is going to come back to haunt American Catholics.
Pope Leo XIV, I'd note, is already getting accused of being a flaming liberal, including by some American Catholic clerics. What he seems to be is, well, a flaming Catholic. I.e., really, really, Catholic. American Catholics who are upset with him ought to reconsider what's upsetting them.
Melania on the tube
Melania Trump, the forth wife of King Donald, came on the tube to proclaim that she never served Epstein. She rarely speaks in public, and listening to her heavy accent really shows why.
People have said horrible things about her which she doesn't deserve, but it's easy in a way to see why. Her husband is a horrible person with a horrible history with women and they were friends with Epstein. This administration has sought to keep Epstein material from the public and to bury the topic, which is a big part of the reason that Pam Bondi was canned.
People have been wondering why Melania is choosing to speak now. It is an interesting question. It's also interesting that she demanded what her husband has been opposing, a real Congressional investigation.
I've often noted here that people inevitably revert to their original, and true, personalities. We might just be seeing that. She came up as a model and famously appeared in at least one photo that should be regarded as pornography. Modeling paid off as it turned into a career that caused her to be married to a rich man, if we regard being married to Donald Trump as a payoff. Frankly, it probably isn't. Maybe now she's returning to being the Slovenian woman that she originally likely was.
Men abusing women
Flag of the Hispanic people. By Banderas - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=44866151
Fairly distressing news in some quarters.
I'll be frank that even though I sympathize with unions in the current age, while conceding that they also had a negative impact on labor in the 70s-90s, and while I sympathize with migrant farm workers, something about Chavez always left me a bit uneasy. That might simply be because I first heard about him in the 70s, at which time I was a lot more conservative than I am now on a lot of things, as odd as that may seem.
But I don't think so.
Something just made me feel odd about him.
Which is a really easy thing to say retrospectively, isn't it?
Chavez was huge figure in the farm labor movement, which is to say the Hispanic farm labor movement as symbolized by his organization, the United Farm Workers. The flag used by the UFW is also used by the Hispanic movement, which was strong in the 70s and 80s.
I tend to associate it in my mind with La Raza, which apparently no longer calls itself that.
Well, so what?
So what indeed. I think in part that I just have a youthful recollection of how radical everything was getting in the 1970s, and associate LaRaza and UFW with that. Things have certainly moved along since then, and indeed the entire American Hispanic Immigrant situation has. Indeed, today the Hispanic population of the United States has really come into its own and is its own force in a way that it was not in the 1970s and 80s. And as that, as I long predicted, it's very conservative, but also sui generis. Not MAGA, although Trump briefly thought it was.
What's that have to do with Chavez, probably not much.
One of the things about the farm labor movement and Hispanic movements in general is that they reflected back on things in Central and South America in away, including the efforts of the Catholic Church, of which of course I'm part, to aid Hispanic people. Because Chavez was a practicing Catholic, he was lauded in some quarters by the Church, and not without reason. Now his reputation is ruined, as it should be.
He seems to be one of those guys who just couldn't keep his hands off of girls.
Regarding somebody who couldn't keep his hands of of women, even it it meant drugging them:
Bill Cosby found guilty: What the $59.25M verdict means for sexual assault survivors
The whole Bill Cosby story is just bizarre. It's hard to know what to make of it, other than it seems to be a massive example of the Jimmy Akin Rule that sin makes you stupid. It's also, however, an example of accommodation to sin brings on worse sins. Cosby was in Hugh Hefner's orbit. In some ways, therefore, it figures.
Hefner was a pioneer in what one Leonid Radvinsky exploited in the electronic age, the prostitution of the image of women. He was a billionaire.
OnlyFans owner Leonid Radvinsky dies of cancer at 43
He's now take the same trip that Hefner took, and in both instances, even knowing that death was approaching, they did not reform.
Americans apparently spent $2.64B on Only Fans last year, which is a lot, but actually in context not as much as it might seem. The girls whose lives are being wrecked by it didn't get much of that $2.64B from the men whose lives it is also wrecking.
And hence, once again, why the young are returning to real conservatism and the Faith.
I thought a drop in teen pregnancy was a good thing?
While a return to what is real and authentic is to be lauded, just like Paula White's bee dance, the groping for it brings about some really weird results.
The CDC announced last week that teen pregnancies were at an all time low.
When I was a kid and teenager society was hugely concerned about the teen birth rate. It was actually lower in the 1970s and 80s than it had been in the 50s, but people didn't seem to take that into account and there was a general fear, it seemed, that 100% of teenage girls were going to be pregnant in any give year.
Well that figure is really in the basement now. Added to that, there's lots of new stories that teenagers and young adults really aren't having much sex, which is also a good thing, assuming they aren't married.
Now, all of a sudden, some quarters of the far right are really freaked out about this. Consider:
The problem is teens and young adults. From ages 15-19 the fertility rate is down 7% and it's down 70% over the last two decades, meaning we're telling people that are young not to have babies.
Dr. Marc Siegel, Fox News.
Problem? What's going on here?
I'm not sure what they're aiming at, but it's interesting to note that the book "The Third Reich. A New History" includes a Nazi era German cartoon lamenting the decline in German birth rates down to age 14. It seems to be a far right populist thing.
Indeed, in some conservative quarters there's a real push to emphasize that young people need to get married, young, and have lots of babies.
I'm not saying that there isn't something to this, but it can really go to far. This is going too far.
In the category of going too far.
I don't believe in recovered memories.
I do believe that you can basically forget something and then remember it later, usually when somebody or something prompts the memory. While there are some very rare people with perfect recall, who can remember all the details of their lives with crystal clear accuracy, those people are few. Most people, however, have piles of information stored in their mental databanks that they have no particular reason to recall, but can if there's a prompt.
Recovered memories of trauma are another thing, however, and in my view, mostly complete bullshit People don't have some horrific memory of the time they were, fill in blank here, and have it capable of being restored. People remember when they were exposed to really significant trauma. About hit only "recovered" memory of trauma that's likely real is when somebody didn't regard something as traumatic, but later on somebody convinced them that it was. They never really forgot it however. They just didn't regard it as significant.
For this reason I'll note that this past week there's been news of a dramatic lawsuit being filed where the supposed victim of a trauma had it recovered after decades passing since it supposedly occurred.
Human memory is really peculiar. We don't really know how memory works that well, but we do know that some people have highly accurate memories. I fall into that camp. I can remember certain things back to age 3 or so, and I remember them. They don't vary or change, I can see them, in my minds eye, if I choose to, although I frankly will admit that I don't remember as much as I used to, and that concerns me greatly.
Other people have very malleable memories. The details of what they think they remember change over time. Some people recall nearly nothing at all and no prompting is going to recall their memories.
All of this is significant as in my view "recovered" memories are basically suggested. They aren't real.
Having worked in lawsuits involving recovered memories this is pretty clear to me. People will work with a subject until the subject has a memory. The memory is completely fictional, but they have it.
In the most recent instance of this, I happen to know one of the accused, or rather I should say I happened to have known the accused, although not personally and not well. The accused is deceased. I don't believe the accusations against him at all. What I do believe, however, is that the person had a peculiar personality and had, as a sort of cause, a certain then demised demographic. The demographic has become a cause celebre since then, which has caused the expressed public view to shift on the demographic, Frankly, that has completely suppressed any ability to look into the cause and origin of the condition, and up until a Supreme Court opinion last week, even caused states to basically ban looking into it. What was once regarded as hopelessly weird and disgusting is to now be celebrated. The person I knew backed the demographic when it was regarded as weird and disgusting, which is inevitably going to cause members of the general public to suppose that you are part of it, if they have any ability to do so.
Indeed, a lot of people still find the demographic weird and disgusting. So it still comes up in that fashion in back room discussions. That keeps some people who fairly reliably are rumored to be members of it to closet themselves. Truth be known, as the condition is fairly openly accepted now, if the people who have it simply admitted it, probably nobody would care, save for one instance I can think of where a decade long public personality would have been shown to be a lie.
Accusing people of things is really easy. Accusing the dead of things is easier yet. American law, based on English common law, holds that the accused are assumed innocent until proven guilty, but that's not how the public acts. If somebody is accused of certain things, people believe it instantly. For that reason, those things are libelous per se if untrue, save for lawsuits, which are subject to an accusatory privilege.
Anyhow, I'm really tired of accusations that come decades after a supposed event. It'll sound harsh, but there really ought to be a put up or shut up policy for adults. Forty years later? Too freakin' bad, you are too late.
Rampaging ageism
I posted earlier this week about Chris Christie taking a shot at the Baby Boomers.
Good for him.
I'm noting this as this past week, after that post, brought up too boomer related items. One is the matter immediately above, brought by a boomer lawyer. Another is dealing with an upset boomer.
The last instance of this was affirmatively an example of somebody upset because younger people are trying to move on. I won't detail it, but I got a direct personal comment about it from the upset person. They've been in a prolonged fight with a Gen Xer, who has gotten over the fight, and the Boomer now fears that people are moving on, and around, the Boomer. The Boomer is correct.
Work, for most people, isn't a hobby. For some elderly people it actually is, as pathetic as that is. It doesn't matter if you have the sort of work that doesn't put you in the way of others, which very few people do. People who work by themselves, for themselves, basically have that position. Even then, if they work in an area of public trust, there comes a time when they need to stop.
John Barrasso, age 73. King Donny, age 79. Lindsey Graham, age 70. None of these guys should be doing this job.
Last edition:
CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 123rd Edition, The Holy Thursday Massacre
Tuesday, March 31, 2026
Pope Leo XIV on Palm Sunday
Dear brothers and sisters,
As Jesus walks the Way of the Cross, we place ourselves behind him, following in his footsteps. As we walk with him, we contemplate his passion for the sake of humanity, his broken heart, and his life as a gift of love.
We turn our gaze to Jesus, who reveals himself as King of Peace, even as war looms around him. He remains steadfast in meekness, while others are stirring up violence. He offers himself to embrace humanity, even as others raise swords and clubs. He is the light of the world, though darkness is about to engulf the earth. He came to bring life, even as plans unfold to condemn him to death.
King of Peace. Jesus’ desire is to bring the world into the Father’s arms, tearing down every barrier that separates us from God and from our neighbor, for “He is our peace” (Eph 2:14).
King of Peace. Jesus enters into Jerusalem not upon a horse, but upon a donkey, fulfilling the ancient prophecy that calls for rejoicing at the arrival of the Messiah: “Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey. He will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the war-horse from Jerusalem; and the battle bow shall be cut off, and he shall command peace to the nations” (Zech 9:9–10).
King of Peace. When one of his disciples drew his sword to defend him and struck the high priest’s servant, Jesus immediately stopped him, saying: “Put your sword back into its place, for all who take the sword will perish by the sword” (Mt 26:52).
King of Peace. While he was burdened with our sufferings and pierced for our sins, Jesus “did not open his mouth, like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent” (Is 53:7). He did not arm himself, or defend himself, or fight any war. He revealed the gentle face of God, who always rejects violence. Rather than saving himself, he allowed himself to be nailed to the cross, embracing every cross borne in every time and place throughout human history.
Brothers and sisters, this is our God: Jesus, King of Peace, who rejects war, whom no one can use to justify war. He does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them, saying: “Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen: your hands are full of blood” (Is 1:15).
our gaze upon him who was crucified for us, we can see a crucified humanity. In his wounds, we see the hurts of so many women and men today. In his last cry to the Father, we hear the weeping of those who are crushed, who have no hope, who are sick and who are alone. Above all, we hear the painful groans of all those who are oppressed by violence and are victims of war.
Christ, King of Peace, cries out again from his cross: God is love! Have mercy! Lay down your weapons! Remember that you are brothers and sisters!
In the words of the Servant of God, Bishop Tonino Bello, I would like to entrust this cry to Mary Most Holy, who stands beneath the cross of her Son and weeps also at the feet of those who are crucified today:
“Holy Mary, woman of the third day, grant us the certainty that, in spite of all, death will no longer hold sway over us; that the injustices of peoples are numbered; that the flashes of war are fading into the twilight; that the sufferings of the poor are breathing their last. And grant, finally, that the tears of all the victims of violence and pain will soon be dried up like frost beneath the spring sun” (Maria, donna dei nostri giorni).
Pope Leo XIV, Palm Sunday homily.
Christians need to hear this. More than that, those who claim to be Christian, like Pete Hegseth, but belong to some diluted form of Christianity, need to hear it. Hegseth has tattooed himself with the symbols of a Faith that would have found him to be abhorrent at the time of their origin, which which recoil from them now.
Wars change everything.
Maybe one thing it will change in the human heart in people who listen to the likes of Franklin Graham and Paula White, when they should be listening to the full deposit of the Faith
Wednesday, October 15, 2025
Saturday, October 11, 2025
Blog Mirror: Fourth Rebuke in Eight Days: Pope Leo Intensifies Clash with Trump Over Migrants.
Friday, October 10, 2025
Pope Leo to MAGA Climate Skeptics: “Repent” The pope warned that ridiculing global warming is not courage — it’s contempt for the poor and for God’s world.
Wednesday, September 17, 2025
Saturday, June 14, 2025
An interesting day.
Lex Anteinternet: :
Donald Trump, who hasn't served a day in the military, will preside over the largest military parade in the United States since the end of the First Gulf War.
This should be an interesting day.
Donald Trump, who hasn't served a day in the military, will preside over the largest military parade in the United States since the end of the First Gulf War.
Trump, who has made disparaging comments about members of the military, didn't serve during the Vietnam War due to a medical exemption for shin splints.
The parade is ostensibly for the 250th anniversary of the establishment of the U.S. Army, which came into existence on June 14, 1775.
The Army is not as old as the National Guard, which dates its existence, due to colonial militia lineage, to December 13, 1636.
Also today,. Pope Leo XIV will make a virtual appearance at an event in Chicago.
Saturday, May 10, 2025
Friday, May 9, 2025
Pope Leo XIV
As I'd predicted, the new Pope, Pope Leo XIV, was a cardinal that wasn't in the pundit list.
A quote from an AP news article:
Vatican watchers said Prevost’s decision to name himself Leo was significant given the previous Leo’s legacy of social justice and reform, suggesting continuity with some of Francis’ chief concerns.
Not just the AP, I said this yesterday, and in spades. In fact, as a Distributist, Pope Leo XIII is one of my absolute favorite recent Popes. He was an ardent opponent of communism and capitalism.
Some headlines:
NEWLY ELECTED POPE
FIRST FROM US
From the Star Tribune.
MAGA Melts Down Over New Pope's Anti-Trump, Pro-Immigrant Social Media
Rolling Stone
This will be interesting. There was, yesterday, a flood of negative comments about Pope Leo from the mostly non Catholic populist far right. I suspect that a hidden anti Catholicism in that quarter will really start to surface.
Indeed, Pope Leo being an American poses a real challenge to the isolationist, nationalistic MAGA populist elements now in power, as well as the pretending to be isolationist, nationalistic and MAGA fellow travelers. Some have already wondered if that's part of the reason that he was chosen as Pope, but that will not be known for years, if ever. At any rate, right now, it's really interesting to note that the US is lead by a not very smart almost octogenarian who has shown aggressiveness and extreme nativism, while global Christianity will be lead by a highly educated catholic concerned for the poor, who as a Cardinal corrected J. D. Vance's odd comments about an order of mercy.
This leads, I suppose to noting that Pope Leo is, at this point, nearly as Peruvian as he is American. But as noted, the Catholic Church is catholic, i.e., universal. It's concerns are for humanity, not a narrow section of the American public. But Pope Leo might serve to remind Americans of what the United States has, in its better moments, stood for.
Thursday, May 8, 2025
Conclave
Conclave: late Middle English (denoting a private room): via French from Latin conclave ‘lockable room’, from con- ‘with’ + clavis ‘key’.
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May 7, 2025
Today is the start of the Conclave to choose the 267th Pope, the head of Apostolic Christianity.
Cont:
As a note, nobody has a clue who will be picked to be the next Pope, in spite of all the rampaging speculation and commentary.
Cont:
First vote, no Pope selected.
May 8, 2025
The vote this morning did not result in the election of a new Pope.
Cont:
White smoke. A new Pope has been chosen.
Cont:
Robert Cardinal Robert Prevost is now Pope Leo XIV.
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