Some Bishops and the President.

I started this post yesterday, early in the morning.  I didn't finish it, however, as I was mostly waiting for it to get a little later so that I could pack up and go deer hunting.  By today, the following day, the story has already significantly moved on, showing I guess how quickly the news cycle moves.

Anyhow, let's start here:

57. Building a world of respect for human life and dignity, where justice and peace prevail, requires more than just political commitment. Individuals, families, businesses, community organizations, and governments all have a role to play. Participation in political life in light of fundamental moral principles is an essential duty for every Catholic and all people of good will.

58. The Church is involved in the political process but is not partisan. The Church cannot champion any candidate or party. Our cause is the defense of human life and dignity and the protection of the weak and vulnerable.

59. The Church is engaged in the political process but should not be used.We welcome dialogue with political leaders and candidates; we seek to engage and persuade public officials. Events and photo ops cannot substitute for serious dialogue

60. The Church is principled but not ideological. As St. John Paul II wrote in his encyclical,Sollicitudo Rei Socialis,The Church’s social doctrine is not . . . an ideology, but rather the accurate formulation of the results of a careful reflection on the complex realities of human existence, in society and in the international order, in the light of faith and of the Church’s tradition. Its main aim is to interpret these realities, determining their conformity with or divergence from the lines of the Gospel teaching on man and his vocation, a vocation which is at once earthly and transcendent; its aim is thus to guide Christian behavior. It therefore belongs to the field, not of ideology, but of theology and particularly of moral theology. (Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, no. 41)We cannot compromise basic principles or moral teaching. We are committed to clarity about our moral teaching and to civility. In public life, it is important to practice the virtues of charity and justice that are at the core of our Tradition. We should work with others in a variety of ways to advance our moral principles.

61. In light of these principles and the blessings we share as part of a free and democratic nation, we bishops vigorously repeat our call for a renewed kind of politics: 

•Focused more on moral principles than on the latest poll 

•Focused more on the needs of the weak than on benefits for the strong 

•Focused more on the pursuit of the common good than on the demands of narrow interests

62. This kind of political participation reflects the social teaching of our Church and the best traditions of our nation.

FormingConsciencesFaithfulCitizenshipforA Call to Political Responsibility from the Catholic Bishops of the United State

My heart just sank when I check my computer the other morning and saw this:

I have traditionally been extremely careful about criticizing Bishops on this site, and not just Catholic bishops.  I don't know if I've ever criticized any bishops at all.  Perhaps those of the English Church at the time of Henry VIII, sort of. That's about it, and I don't think I really even did that.  Catholics owe deference to their Bishops, and for the most part we probably owe deference to Orthodox Bishops on most things as well. So, suffice it to say, this is unusual.

The Church does not  hold, however, that we can never do so.  Respect to the Bishop and the Bishop's office is owed when we do, however.  

Recently I've seen a lot of criticism aimed at one particular Bishop, the Bishop of Rome, which has been made by right wing Catholics which is simply shocking in nature.  Probably sinful as well.  Pope Francis received that sort of criticism all the time from the Catholic right.  I never openly criticized either and certainly have not Pope Leo.  I was not a huge fan of Pope Francis, but I'm also not in his shoes in any fashion so my criticism, when it was made, was fairly muted.  There was a little, however.

Here I fear I must offer some criticism.  I'm not the only one who  is doing so.  I'd note the reaction to his photo and event, which was organized reportedly by somebody from The Heritage Foundation, has been pretty severe. The White House itself issued a statement saying from its Faith Director stating that the meeting was:

 [N]ot politics. This is policy in action ending with meaningful Prayer with & for the President. He welcomes prayer in the Oval Office regularly- on and off camera.  People of faith have a VOICE @potus @whitehouse Faith Office.  This is not just a ‘photo op’ These are Catholic Archbishops and Bishops who spent time talking with us about important issues on religious freedom, school choice, family tax credits, religious visas, and life. They are leaders within their communities and have a seat at the table

It's surprising, really, to see the White House try to say something isn't political, which shows how much upset there must be.

The furor caused Archbishop Golka, who delivered the prayer at the meeting, to issue a statement, which said:

Archbishop Golka and other bishops meet with President Trump

Archbishop James R. Golka joined fellow Roman Catholic bishops in meeting with President Trump and led a prayer in the Oval Office, asking God’s blessing upon the president and our nation. His prayer expressed gratitude for “our beautiful nation” and asked the Holy Spirit “to surround our country to protect us against any influence of evil.” With respect for the office of the president, the Archdiocese of Denver welcomes continued conversation on the sanctity of life, from conception to natural death, and the God-given dignity of every person. We invite the faithful to pray for our nation and its leaders, trusting in Christ’s mercy and guidance.

Praying for those in public office is a longstanding Catholic practice, rooted in St. Paul’s instruction to pray for all who hold authority (1 Tim 2:1-2). It is not an endorsement of any specific candidate or party.

The Bishop's statement is completely correct in what it says.  The problem is that every single thing that the White House does is political, and is designed to serve the politics of Donald Trump.

The Church is engaged in the political process but should not be used.

FormingConsciencesFaithfulCitizenshipforA Call to Political Responsibility from the Catholic Bishops of the United States.

I think the Archbishop's appearance at the White House was sincere and not intended to be political.  I also think it was naive.

Certain Catholic and Orthodox Bishops have been seen regularly in the presnece of Donald Trump during this administration.  I've held back any commentary on it, but it bothers me enormously.  There is no evidence whatsoever that Donald Trump is a Christian of any kind.  The evidnece is that Trump will use Christians in order to advance his cause, which is principally Donald Trump.  As we've noted here there are two Christian camps in hte Trump orbit, one being far right Evangelicalism and the other being the very conservative more traditional, and indeed at least somewhat Apostolic Church influenced, National Conservatism/Christian Nationalism.  

The Catholic mainstream is not really part of any of this.

People of faith have in many instances voted for Trump because of their deeply held views, which again differ enormously in the case of Apostolic Christians and Evangelicals.  A lot of the Evangelicals see Trump as a Divinely appointed figure, a latter day Cyrus the Great, who will lead the United States into a position as a new Israel.  

Catholics think nothing of the sort.

What a lot of Catholics think is that Trump has been uniquely effective on a selection of moral issues that are of deep concern to Catholics, abortion being one, but the fable of transgenderism being another.  And frankly he has, although the role of Southern Baptist Mitch McConnell in creating a Supreme Court that eliminated Roe is seemingly underappreciated.  Trump has taken on transgenderism this go around.

At the same time, he's interestingly pretty much lost interest in the other moral issues that are in the air.  Homosexual marriage is something the Church condemns, but Trump's been silent on it and indeed one of the principal cabinet members, Scott Bessent, is in such a purported union.  Trump's administration from time to time embraces the weirdness of pronatalism and as part of that even Catholic J.D. Vance came out for IVF, which the Church condemns.

And this two years has been a parade of horrors on other moral fronts.  The administration clearly favors the death penalty, which is immoral.  It's launched wars without a declaration which cannot possibly square with the Just War Theory.  It's murdered people on the high seas under suspicion that they're drug runners without giving them the benefit of a trial.  And it's been abusive to immigrants no matter what you think of their legal status.

And even at this late date, it seems to escape a lot of people that Trump's administration is not just odd, as Trump is odd, but that backing Trump have their own, very radical, agendas.  The Evangelical far right, in quite a few instances, wants a Calvinist nation and see Trump as a vehicle to get there.  National Conservatives see liberal democracy as a failure and are quasi Francoist in their outlook.

Catholics really haven't seen anything like this since the 1930s.  When they last did, the Church ultimately acted against it. Pope Pius XI condemned Action française in 1926.  The Church condemned the Belgian Rexist movement as a danger to the Church and the nation in 1937.  Fr. Coughlin was famously silenced in 1942.  It's no wonder, therefore, that a lot of people, including a lot of Bishops, are not aware of the back currents in this administration.

And they may also simply not be aware that everything Trump does is political, or perhaps more accurately, self promotional.  They likely sincerely believed that this wouldn't turn into an odd photo op, but somebody should have informed them. There was no way that a gathering like this wasn't going to be used by the Trump Administration to try to suggest that Catholic Bishops are in his corner, with the suggestion being that Catholics should keep that in mind as they head to the polls.

At any rate, this seems to have already passed.

Which is a good thing.

When the Trump era ends, and it's drawing to an end now, Evangelical Protestantism is going to be very badly damaged, even perhaps beyond the point of recovery.  The ignorant and scrivener lazy like to claim that Trump has "Christian" support, which is far too broad of claim and very inaccurate.  Those Christians not part of the Evangelical far right do not want to be tarred with the Trump brush.   The Apostolic Faiths, which have been growing as they are catholic (small c) in nature, particularly do not wish to be.

Sunday Morning Scene. Back to the Coliseum.

 

I've been expecting it all along.  It just came in a surprising fashion.

Deep hatred of Catholics is the last acceptable form of outright bigotry in the United States, although there's been a general rise of bigotry and racism during the illegitimate Trump interregnum.  Trump's a populist, and populist tends to boost ignorance, with bigotry feeding on that.  Most of the major populist movements a person can recall, the Nazis, the Communists, the Know Nothings, featured a lot of really ignorant people who were willing to be lead around by a others, sometimes a charismatic, to them, other.¹ MAGA is a populist movement, masquerading as a conservative one, as Nazism was a populist movement that claimed conservatives within it.  It's not too surprising, therefore, that we're seeing more of this sort of thing than we have at any point since the 1960s.

Quite a few of the more ignorant members of MAGA claim they support Trump as he's Godly, which is patently absurd, but there's no denying that far right wing Evangelicalism is a major component of MAGA.  The Press, which isn't very well educated on religion anymore, just keeps calling them "Christians",  which is really misleading.  Some, but not all, far right Evangelicals supporting Trump hold religious beliefs that are very recent and very novel and well outside the mainstream of Apostolic Christianity and also out of the mainstream of most Protestant beliefs.  Almost all MAGA Evangelicals fit into the ignorant of theology and Church history camp that's strong in the United States of being "Bible Believing Christians" who are pretty ignorant of a rule on the history of the books of the Bible.

Around the periphery of MAGA, however, there's been some Apostolic Christians, both Catholic and Orthodox, who have been, if not fully in the Trump camp, at least allowed to pitch a tent on its edges.  Some of this is just flat out opportunistic on their part, and it looked like it would have a major impact on the Trump administration due to Trump's flat out ignorance and laziness.  Inside the administration you have the example of J. D. Vance and Marco Rubio, and outside of it you have people like Kevin Roberts.  You even have Peter Thiel, who claims not to be a Catholic but who keeps popping up in certain Catholic circles, as does Jordan Peterson and the Orthodox pundit Rod Dreher.²  National Conservatism has a strong right wing Catholic element to it, which is interesting in that it's sort of the intellectual heir of Fr. Charles Coughlin whose movement was shut down and who remains not widely admired in mainstream Catholic circles.

Most CAtholics that have supported Trump, however, have done so for one of two other reasons.  The thinking ones have done so as it seemed like he was probably the only candidate who would address long held Catholic concerns, like abortion.  People know that Trump himself was a louse, but they were willing to "hold their nose and vote".  Others were Protestantized Catholics, of which there are a lot in the United States in the Boomer and Gen. Jones generations.   These people are victims of the bad Catechization of the 1970s and as the US is a Protestant country, they've picked up a lot of Protestant beliefs.

Throughout Trump's second claim to power I've worried that the "Christian", i.e., far right Evangelical support of Trump would result in two things for Catholics.  The first, which we will not address here, is that the association of "Christian" with Trump would result in Christianity taking a major hit.  Evangelicalism definitely will. The second is that getting on the bus with Evangelicals would result in them beating us up as soon as we weren't of use to them.

And that's starting to happen.

The reason it started is because Pete Hegseth, who is festooned with Crusader themed tattoos announced that the U.S. Army is going to livestream the execution of former US Army Major Nidal Hasan who killed thirteen unarmed U.S. soldiers in 2009. ^3 4

The Catholic Church is opposed to killing people.  It's opposed to killing people in pretty absolutist terms and always has been, claims of Catholic haters aside.  It's always been opposed to infanticide, including abortion.  Early on in Church history there were serious debates if Christians, which were all Catholic, were required to be pacifists, and there are some saints who were.  St. Martin of Tours, who had been a Roman soldier, famously told his commander "I am a soldier of Christ; it is not lawful for me to fight."  Franz Jägerstätter, an Austrian farmer, went to his death in Nazi Germany rather than fight for the Nazi state.  Ben Salmon, an American Catholic layman who has not been beatified went to prison as a conscientious objector during World War One as he held the view that all war was immoral. ⁵   And starting with Pope John Paul II, the Church has opposed the death penalty.

Catholic Bishops immediately responded to Hegseth's live stream the killing announcement by condemning it.  Quiet a few individual priests with  a net presence did as well.  And then almost immediately after that Pope Leo XIV did, stating:

This caused an immediate reaction by some Evangelical Christians on the far right, and it did from a few very far right Catholics who are probably in the Rad Trad camp.  Predictably, a notable number of the Evangelicals threw of pretending they approved of Catholics in any fashion.  Laughable comments that the Pope doesn't know theology were out there, but more radical ones by the Invincibly Ignorant immediately arose as well.

Los of hte comments immediately cited the Old Testament, which is a bit ironic as frankly the CAtholic Church uses the Old Testament much more than any Protestant group does.  There's a number of quotes from the Old Testament that address the death penalty, for example:

Whoever sheds human blood, by humans shall their blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made mankind.

Genesis 9:6 

Anyone who strikes a person with a fatal blow is to be put to death.

Exodus 21:12

So there you go. . .but wait:

Anyone who attacks their father or mother is to be put to death.

 Exodus 21:15 & 21:17

Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death.

Exodus 21:15 & 21:17

Anyone who kidnaps someone is to be put to death, whether the victim has been sold or is still in the kidnapper’s possession.

Exodus 21:16

If a man commits adultery with another man’s wife—with the wife of his neighbor—both the adulterer and the adulteress are to be put to death."

Leviticus 20:10 (Adultery)

If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.

Leviticus 20:13

Anyone who blasphemes the name of the Lord is to be put to death. The entire assembly must stone them."

Leviticus 24:16

Okay then, if we apply to the Old Testament, we need to be killing anyone cursing their parents, kidnappers, adulterers and adulteresses, homosexuals and blasphemeres.

Indeed, if this was fully applied, Donald Trump, Pete Hegseth, Paula White, and Scott Bessant wouldn't be in Washington D.C. as they're either adulturers or, in Bessant's case, a homosexual.  Shoot, probably about 1/3d of the congregation of Protestant congregation would have to be offed, based on my observation that they don't take divorce or pre marital sex as a sin.

Well, what the heck?  Why aren't we imposing the death penalty with sweeping abandon?

Well, that's because the Apostolic Churches and the Mainline Protestant Churches hold the view that Christ fulfilled the law and the Mosaic law does not apply to Christians.  There are a pile of laws in the Mosaic Law that nobody seeks to apply to Christians due to the Catholic Church having alway taken this view.  That's why Christians can eat shellfish and pork.  Protestants who are running around declaring that the death penalty is Biblically mandated are apparently ignorant of the Bible and is laws, or they'd be killing adulterers, blasphemers, parent disrespecters, homosexuals and not eating shrimp.

Indeed, this was the case from day one.  One of the very first debates in the Church was whether converts had to be circumcised.  Nope,  no longer applied.  The dietary laws no longer did either.

It's also odd to see how all of these people aren't citing the New Testament.  While the law was fulfilled by Christ, Christ did set down some pretty strict behavioral requirements.  We are, for example supposed to love our enemies. That's a tough one.  

Some have tried to drag out Church history, of which they're largely ignorant.  "Well, the Church has always killed people. . ."

Nope.  Indeed, from antiquity it's tried to stop it.

As Christ led you from death to life, so you should try to save not only the innocent, but also the guilty from death.

Pope St Nicholas the Great.

Now, I suppose you could argue that Pope St. Nicholas was talking about eternal life, but you sure are't going to save a guy by killing him.

And of course, there's the customary ignorant citation to the Black Legends were demonstrably untrue, but which lots of people still believe.

The Church as been against killing of all types right from the onset.  But people, deep in their hearts, like killing.  Lots of people make compromises with their Faith to justify their own acts and desires.  Today, for example, is the anniversary of the murder of Hymie Weiss, the gangster who sanctioned hits, but who also carried a rosary in his pocket.  As noted, plenty of very conservative Catholics have tried to say "well, I know that the Popes have said no death penalty, but it's still okay . . "⁶

It isn't.

And the real surprise to those not paying attention will be how prolife Catholics really are.  Indeed, I've seen surprising statements in support of the Pope from completely secular sources.

And there's utterly no support for making this execution a public spectacle.  We really are in the last days of the Roman Empire if we've reached that state.  "War, inflation, . . . don't worry, look at my shiny baubles, come watch somebody die."  Panem et circenses.

A danger of politics is that, for people who have a religion, even slightly, that it becomes easy to confuse your politics or your personal beliefs with your religion. The various flavors of the American Civil Religion are packed with that.  Divorce is okay, and even extramarital sex, unless it's homosexual. . . Trump must be a Godly man as he's doing what I want him to, even if he's a liar and a serial polygamist.

There was always going to be a day when the Evangelical far right discovered that the Catholic Church is the Universal Church, it's everywhere, and that local politics are secondary to it.  We're not right, not left, we're Catholic, the original Christians.

Make every effort to enter through the narrow door, because many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able to.  Once the owner of the house gets up and closes the door, you will stand outside knocking and pleading, ‘Sir, open the door for us.’

But he will answer, "I don’t know you or where you come from."

Luke 13:22-30.

This warning applies to us as well.  "For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall much be required; and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more."  Luke 12:48.  We really can't ignore the barbarism of the Trump administration any more.  We've invaded a foreign nation without cause, we're killing Iranians in an undeclared war, and we're murdering people on the high seas.  The Nuremberg Defense or just ignoring it all doesn't work.

Well, we were always going to be hated.  Frankly, as Catholics, when everything is going well for us, it's not going well.

Footnotes:

1.  Hitler was reportedly very charismatic, although watching him from the outside, it's hard to see why.  To his followers, Trump is charismatic, while to most other people he certainly is not.

2.  I'm not claiming that Peterson is influential in the administration, but rather he's in the Catholic end of the National Conservatives even though he is not Catholic.  His wife is.  Dreher was Catholic at one time and converted to Orthodoxy, where he remains with one foot in the Catholic door and nearly, for that matter, in the back pews. Dreher is partially responsible for the intellectual atmosphere that made Trump possible even though he now outright holds Trump in contempt.

3.  Hegseth is some sort of Evangelical on the far right.  Actual Crusaders would have regarded him as a weird heretic.  

4.  The fact that the killings occurred in 2009 is a really good argument against the death penalty in and of itself as it takes so long and is so expensive that the punishment aspect of it is nearly lost by the time the sentence is carried out.

5. St. Augustine famously developed the Just War Theory, which people sort of naively regard as a Catholic free pass to war.  It isn't.  The theory has always been fairly restrictive and even though Catholics have waged and been in a lot of wars, a lot of wars don't fit the category of being "just".  

Even when they are, finding a war that's justly waged is difficult. World War Two probably stands out as a war which, for the Allies, was just, but the Allies clearly took deeply immoral actions in it, the nighttime bombing raids of the RAF, and the USAF nuclear bombings, being the two primary examples for the Western Allies.

Recently Pope Leo has further clarified the doctrine and while I do not think that his statements actually develop it in any fashion, they caused shock waves and they probably should as Catholics really need to consider if they can morally serve in the U.S. military at this point.

6.  No Pope has declared the death penalty invalid ex cathedra, so a slim ability to argue it's still okay exists.  But it's very slim.

Thursday, October 7, 1926. Choral Evensong.

The fusionist religion Caodaism was established in Saigon by Ngo Van Chieu with the signing of the "Declaration of the Founding of the Cao Đài Religion".

The still running Choral Evensong was broadcast for the first time, on the BBC, featuring a 15-minute airing of the Evensong, the Anglican church afternoon prayer, at 3:00 pm. 

The Yankees beat the Cardinals 3 to 2 in Game 5 of the World Series, giving them a three to two edge.

Last edition:

Wednesday, October 6, 1926. World Series Record.

Labels: 1790s, 1794, 1920s, 1926, 1926 World Series, 1970s, 1977, 2010s, 2011, American Puritanism, baseball, Blue Laws, Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania (Pittsburg), Protestant, Puritans, religion, Sports

Wednesday, October 6, 1926. World Series Record.

Pennsylvania''s blue laws from 1794 were invoked in Pittsburgh, banning all Sunday sports in the city.

This is interesting in a variety of ways, particularly in that it takes a very Puritan view of the topic.  In Catholic England sports on Sunday had been a huge deal, part of the Catholic view of life that Sunday, the Lord's Day, was a sort of feast.  Puritans, however, held a dour view on everything, and during the Cromwellian period, banned sports.  

All in all, for what it's worth, I think blue laws are a good idea.  I wouldn't ban sports, however.  I would, if I could, shut down Sunday commerce however, even electronic commerce.

Babe Ruth hit his third home run in the 1926 World Series.  The Yankees beat the St. Louis Cardinals 10 to 5.  This has only been repeated twice, once in 1977, by Reggie Jackson, and once in 2011, by Albert Pujols.

Last edition:

Monday, October 4, 1926. Cristero War in Guanajuato, Phar Lap, Radio recipes.

Labels: 1920s, 1926, A Mystery, Cristero War, Food, Great Depression, Horse Racing, Islam, Mexico, Mexico (Guanajuato), New Zealand, Radio, Turkey

CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist 158th Edition. How the Internet Emphases the Absurd and Marginal and Make it seem Significant. Pastor Brian Sauvé

Holy Women at Christ's Tomb, Annibale Carracci.

One Brian Sauvé, senior pastor at Refuge Church in Ogden, Utah, has been much on the net recently due to some comments he made on vlog or some sort of web based video show providing for all to see how the net has served to emphasize the absurd and marginal, serving to make it seem like a big deal.

Refuge Church is a "Reformed Protestant" Church and Sauvé  describes himself as "Reformed and Protestant, Paedobaptist, Postmillennial, and Patriarchal".  The church describes itself as basically a solo scriptura group holding to 66 books of the Bible, rather than 73, which means that the don't believe in the 66 books of the Bible as the New Testament itself describes how sola scriptura is invalid and the omitted books that a German monk, who should never have been that, took out were done so based on his prejudice and a misunderstanding on what books of the Old Testament the Apostles were referring to.

Patriarchal Sauvé certainly is.  And extremely so.

Sauvé in a September 18 podcast stated the following:

Women either shouldn't be on social media or any social media they have should be kind of a walled garden situation where some competent man is curating and blocking and directing and taking a look at what's going on.  I have access to my wife's social media accounts and I have blocked—this is not an exaggeration—thousands of accounts. Thousands of them. She generally has very little idea of what is going on in the real social media because I've created a walled garden of cute goat videos.

We have normalcy bias in a certain direction.  We consider normal what is actually insane. We consider normal women having unsupervised access to one another all the time. That's not normal.

We consider normal women having political rule. We consider normal women living unattached from a male—like a father, then a husband—for lengthy periods of time. You could fill in the blank with all of these modern feminist outworkings of the original feminist vision and what they've done is they've made women anxious, psychotic, depressed, miserable, and genocidally evil. And we just go, "Oh, that's normal.'"

People are going to hear me talking about, as my wife's head, monitoring her social media, and they're going to be like, "Brian is such a tyrant." You have normalcy bias for insane world. You're living in an insane asylum and you think it's the normal world and I'm saying, "No, we don't live in the insane asylum. We do what people did for thousands of years before today."

The interview went on and discussed how "crazy" it was to allow women to vote, something Hegseth fan boy has said of Doug Wilson in Idaho.

Unlike Wyoming, the least religious state in the country, Utah is the most religious state in the Union, and its religious landscape is dominated by the Latter Day Saints.  It's not as Mormon as it once was, however, with about 55% of the residents of the state being in that faith.  Culturally, however, they dominate it.  Catholics are about 5%.  About 25% claim no particular faith.The rest are mostly some sort of Protestant but there are, of course, Jews, Muslims, etc.

About 63% of the residents of Ogden are LDS.  Catholics make up almost 9% of the population there.  The rest would mostly be some sort of Protestant.

We'd note that Mormons, which Sauvé is not, are extremely socially conservative generally.  That's important to note as while, at least in my experience, Mormons and some conservative Protestant religions do not get along, the overall cultural conservatism of Mormonism heavily impacts the Jello Belt.  I'm not saying that to be mean or critical.  Utah has some of the most well kept towns, including small towns, in the country and as a rule Mormons don't go in for the weird cultural silliness that is part of the current zeitgeist.  Without condoning the tenants of their faith, their faith also causes them to have what some folks refer to as "nice families", as other conservative religious groups sometimes to.  You'd probably have to get into Traditional Catholics in order to find a similarly family oriented well kept group of people.

The Culture of a People reflects upon the place they live.  The views that Sauvé are not all that radical in the locality in which he is speaking them, as they reflect sort of broadly on the LDS, and specifically on some of the LDS, although most LDS would not hold them to the extreme that he does.

Now, as should be obvious, Pastor Sauvé is extremely socially conservative.  Why should we care?

We shouldn't.

The church is indicated as having a "mid sized" congregation.  His congregation ought to care what he thinks, and chances are they believe exactly what he does.  This sort of extreme patriarchal view is quite limited and goes way beyond what even very conservative members of various other Christian faiths typically believe.  It's also ironic in that women more than men were the foundation of the early Faith.  Women brought men to it. There's a reason that Mary Magdalene is the "Apostle to the Apostles".  And there's a reason that St. Brigid is so closely associated with St. Patrick.

But then, I'm an Apostolic Christian where strong women are the norm.  Protestants can keep John Calvin, we'll take Joan d'Arc.

And Protestants can keep telling us that we shouldn't ask Mary for help, we're going to keep doing so.

Virgin Mary at Zetum

Such a diminished view of women is odd, and sad.

It's also cultural and malformed.

But here's the thing.  It's the Internet that has given voice to stuff like this. But for that, Sauve would be an unknown Protestant Pastor in the Jello Belt.  Probably a lot of people in his own city wouldn't be able to tell you anything about him.  I couldn't tell you anything about the two large warehouse type churches' pastors here.  I'm sure that there are Protestants around here who hold the same beliefs.  I just don't know who they are, and there aren't many of them.

The Internet is really giving voice to a lot of things, ideas and people who shouldn't have one.  I don't know if Sauve was known before, but there's a whole host of like minded Protestants who show up on blogs all the time and spark Internet outrage. That outrage then circulates their message.

It's the same with people like Nick Fuentes, whose message is political and not religious, although there is some of that mixed in.  But for the Internet, he'd just be a barely employed oddball.  

It's one of the real challenges of our time.  We need to ignore these people.  They don't deserve a national audience.

Last edition:

CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist 157th Edition. Press Revolt and other matters.

Labels: 1780s, 1789, 2020s, 2026, Abolitio nominis, Dancing, Donald Trump, Food, John Barrasso, Lies, Petroleum, The Press, The Second Trump Administration, Trump, Trump War Inflation, Washington DC Vandalization

Tuesday, September 19, 1876. The start of Ben Hur.

A nocturnal train ride with former Civil War subordinate Capt. Robert Ingersol caused Gen. Lew Wallace to begin his intense study for a book that would end up being Ben Hur, which in turn would make the Civil War general and New Mexico Territorial Governor a wealthy man.

Ingersol was an atheist and Wallace was more or less an indifferent agnostic at the time.  About the train ride, he's later state:

It is possible to fix the hour and place of the first thought of a book precisely enough; that was a night in 1876. I had been listening to discussion which involved such elemental points as God, heaven, life hereafter, Jesus Christ, and His divinity. Trudging on in the dark, alone except as one’s thoughts may be company, good or bad, a sense of the importance of the theme struck me for the first time with a force both singular and persistent. “My ignorance of it was painfully a spot of deeper darkness in the darkness. I was ashamed of myself, and make haste now to declare that the mortification of pride I then endured, or if it be preferred, the punishment of spirit, ended in a resolution to study the whole matter, if only for the gratification there might be in having convictions of one kind or another.

Research for the book caused Wallace to deepen a Christian faith he'd been indifferent to, although he never joined any one Protestant sect.

Wallace is an interesting figure.  He first entered military service during the Mexican War.  He met and married his wife, the daughter of his Mexican War commander, shortly after the war.  Like Wallace, she was a writer and was published before he was.  Between the Mexican War and Civil War he practiced law.  He only briefly practiced law after the war.

He and his wife Susan only had one child, which was unusual for the time.

Last edition:

Monday, September 18, 1876. Frank and Jesse James escape Minnesota.

Labels: 1870s, 1876, Crime, Minnesota, Northfield Minnesota Raid, The James Gang, Weather

Thursday, September 16, 1976. Noche de los Lápices.

Teenage members of the Unión de Estudiantes Secundarios were rounded up by masked agents of the Argentine government and would continue for the next several days.   The victims would be tortured, raped, and in most instances, murdered.

The victims were:

• María Claudia Falcone, age 16. She is missing and presumed murdered. According to her brother Jorge Falcone, she was a Montoneros militant.
• Claudio de Acha, age 17.  Missing and presumed murdered.
• Gustavo Calotti "Francés" age 18 He was a police cadet.  He survived.
• María Clara Ciocchini, age 18.  A Catholic school student, she was murdered.
• Pablo Díaz, age 18.  He survived.
• Francisco López Muntaner "Panchito", age 16.  Missing and presumed murdered.
• Patricia Miranda, age 17.  He did not belong to any militant organization and was ultimately released.
• Emilce Moler, age 17.  She survived.
• Daniel A. Racero, age 18.  Missing and presumed murdered.
• Horacio Ungaro, age 17 Missing and presumed murdered.

Quite frankly, with the US on the very eve of an upcoming attempt by populist extremist to steal the 2026 election, things like this are now quite imaginable here in the US.

The first angioplasty on a human being was performed by West German surgeon Andreas Gruentzig.

Mao's widow Jiang Qing altered the Chairman's final directive with the help of three others giving rise to the Gang of Four which would briefly rule Communist China.

The House of Deputies of the Episcopal Church of the United States voted to permit the ordination of women into the Episcopal priesthood. 

1976 was at the height of the first wave feminist movement and the Episcopal Church, traditionally the richest and most powerful Church in the United States, had taken a definitely liberal bent.  Nearly all American Christian churches were going through a left wing wave at the time.  In the case of the Episcopal Church, this was effectively the beginning of its downfall.

Last edition:

Tuesday, September 14, 1976. Last foreigners out of Vietnam.

Labels: 1970s, 1976, Australopithecus africanus, Federal Emergencies, Geology, Gerald Ford, It was because of the Vietnam War, law, Prehistory, Red Cross, Tanzania, The Fall of Saigon, Vietnam War

King Donald's War, Part 12. The "Economic D-Day" edition. CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist 152nd Edition, the irony edition.

The fearsome Scott Bessent.

August 26, 2026

King Donny sent the fearsome Scott Bessent out to cause the Iranians to quiver in their boots, announcing that the US would inflict an "Economic D-Day" on Iran.

Except the US is going to exempt China, meaning that Operation Economic Outcast was stillborn from the very beginning.

Midweek Update#25: Sanctions Without China Are A Sign Of Defeat

So, It Turns Out That The US Is Winning!; A Story Illustrating Why This Pentagon Cannot Be Trusted

The US is moving its ambassadors back to the Middle East, however, which suggests it either naively thinks this will work, or that it's just going to give up.

Meanwhile:

Pentagon reveals hundreds of new Iran war casualties

More than 600 troops have been wounded in the Iran war, officials disclosed Saturday, almost 200 more than previously known.

This post, by the way, is the first one that I've ever had Bessent's name as a label, which surprises me.  He's been mentioned before, but I've never put in a label.

One thing I've thought about doing is posting how he's sort of uniquely a symbol of hypocrisy in the Trump Administration, or maybe in MAGA.  MAGA proclaims loudly that it's for "Christian" values by which it means far right Evangelical values.

Christianity pretty clearly holds that homosexual sex is a mortal sin.  St. Paul was blunt about it.  And yet Bessent is a homosexual in a homosexual union in which two children are being raised.  Most actual Christians of any type would question this, and if Evangelical Christians are to be believed, they find it completely abhorrent.

But then, by the same token, having an alleged president who is a serial polygamist, a special envoy for the Shield of the Americas, whatever that is, who seemed to be having an affair while in her earlier role and whose husband was wearing giant fake boobs in internet photos, etc. etc., is pretty odd too.

Indeed, it's impossible to reconcile.

Mind you, I'm not saying that a homosexual, including one who is in a homosexual union, cannot be an effective Secretary of the Treasury.  I'm saying you can't have an implied policy that everyone who isn't, white, straight, and sympathetic to far right Evangelicalism isn't a real American and still have a homosexual as one of your primary cabinet members and really mean any of that.

Making it all the more odd, Bessent is one of those cabinet members who has in recent months been dragged out to try to explain away whatever brain fart the Trump has uttered.  

That feature of this administration has been there all along.  Whereas for a transportation issue you might, in normal times, get a Transportation official, in this administration you might very well end up getting the Chief Chef of the White House to address it. And people appear and then disappear in that role pretty rapidly.  Chris Wright, the Secretary of Energy, regularly was being hauled out to address the Press on all sorts of things for awhile, right up until he said that Biden was validly elected to the Oval Office.

Goodbye Chris.

Anyhow, there's something extra weird about Bessent, who always seems extremely nervous, being hauled out to address the Press on the war while we have Pete "High T" Hegseth in charge of the "War Department".  Hegseth definitely fits into the far right Evangelical mold and is loud about it, while also being loud about the services being for manly men.  

Well, anyhow.  So much for Operation Economic Outcast.

August 31, 2026

Trump just shot some missiles at Iran and nobody cared

September 1, 2026

Iran, which you will recall supposedly lost the war, numerous times, hit Jordan with missiles within the last couple of days.

Only somewhat related, Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, who is close to J. D. Vance, submitted his resignation.  It is well known that he does not get along with Hegseth.

September 8, 2026

Iran, which we are repeatedly assured is on the edge of complete collapse, is imposing a restricted zone in the Strati of Hormuz.

September 9, 2026

Houthis attacked four Saudi Arabian cities and their oil installations yesterday opening a new theater in the war.

The US hit Iranian tankers.

September 11, 2026

Iranian allied Houthis seized control of Yemen’s port city of Mocha on Thursday and advanced down the Red Sea coast to strategic islands giving them extended control over the Bab el-Mandeb Strait.  The movies are likely Iranian backed themselves and squeeze Saudi Arabia and the world further.

Meanwhile Donald Trump stated that he expected  the Iran war to end after the U.S.  midterm elections.  D'uh.

If the Houthi advance isn't arrested, it will draw Saudi Arabia back into the Yemeni civil war which will be an expansion of King Donald's War.  

September 12, 2026

It's being reported that Saudi Arabia asked for Trump to intervene against the Houthis.  Trump declined.

What an absolute irony.  Trump illegally engaged in war against Iran where Israel undoubtedly had an influence, if in fact it didn't convince Trump to do it.  That war has caused the Houthis to advance in the Yemeni Civil War, which was always a risk given that they're an Iranian client and have been active previously.  They've struck Saudi Arabia, probably at Iran's request.  Saudi Arabia has legitimately asked the US for assistance as a result, and we've said no.

If only we'd said no to start with.

The Houthis have taken islands in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait.

Saudi Arabia has halted transfers on its East-West Pipeline.

September 15, 2026

When the Japanese succeeded in launching a surprise attack on Army air installations in Hawaii and on the Navy's base at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 it resulted in a Congressional investigation that ended the careers of the Admiral and General in command.

All that and frankly the Japanese attack wasn't all that predictable.

The Iranian strike on U.S. installations in Bahrain were.

New photos show widespread damage at U.S. positions caused by Iranian missile, drone attacks

Donald Trump and his collection little girls are the most outrageous liars to have ever been in the senior leadership of a democratic nation, and perhaps in the leadership of any nation.  You'd have to look at Nazi Germany to find any comparison, so they are going to excuse this away, but the Iranian counterstrike's success shows a lack of planning and understanding by the Trump Administration that is simply unforgivable.

Related to the outrageous failures of the administration, Thomas Massie introduced Articles of Impeachment on Peter Hegseth including contravention of the War Powers Act, but also including ignoring the laws of war and extrajudicial killings, the latter including the illegal attack on Venezuela.  

With this, we will conclude this addition.

Last edition:

King Donald's War, Part 11. The worst defeat in American History. Sic transit Gloria Mundi.

Labels: 2020s, 2026, 2026 Election, Chris Christie, Donald Trump, Iran, Israel, King Donald's War, Operation Eagle Claw, Sic transit Gloria Mundi, Suez Crisis, The Second Trump Administration, United States and Israel v. Iran

CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist 151st Edition. Дональд Трамп. Нелегалы? Donald Trump, Moscow's man in the White House or just really stupid (probably really stupid)?

Labels: China, Donald Trump, Espionage, Iran, North Korea, Predictions, Russia, Russo Ukrainian War, South Korea, Stupidity, United States and Israel v. Iran, Weird, Zeitgeist, Дональд Трамп — агент России