Ouled Nail woman, Algeria, c. 1905. What's the significance of the cross tattoos?

CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 135th Edition. Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus

I've been saying for awhile, and statements like this really demonstrate it:

It looks like President Trump has a better understanding of what the Bible teaches than the Pope.

Robert Jeffress, senior pastor of the 14,000-member First Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas on Fox News.

That comment was stupid.  But then, he's called Catholicism a cult.

The Catholic Church is an Apostolic Church.  It was founded by Christ.  John Smyth, an Englishman, founded the Baptists in 1609.  

Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus is a Catholic doctrine. There is no salvation outside the Church.  None the less, the Church holds that those who did not come to Christ innocently, or those who did not come to the Church innocently, can be saved, which operates again through the Church.  You can't be held responsible for what you innocently didn't know.

But what about here?

We're in the death throws of the reformation.  Things Smyth could get away with believing in 1609 there's no excuse to believe now, other than invincible ignorance.

Being a pastor of a 14,000 member church puts a pretty heavy burden on you and your soul for remaining ignorant.

Smyth is also a Fox News contributor, which really figures.  

As an irony here, although one he will not be capable, right now, of appreciating, Smyth has gone after Mormons, Jews, and Muslims as well.  In normal times, he would not have a national television audience.  He would have a local Dallas one as Texas is part of the former Confederacy and the Baptist rose in the wake of the Southern defeat in 1865, replacing the Episcopal Church in the South as the dominant religion culturally.  Nationally, however, picking on Jews, Muslims, Catholics and Mormons would get you booted off of television.

Religious aspects of this aside, this brings up a political one I've warned about here repeatedly.

Catholics voting for MAGA candidates are voting for a group that not only doesn't regard the Church highly, they don't believe it's a Christian religion at all.  People like Lyin' Chuck Gray, Reid Rasner and Megan Degenfelder, who are Catholics who run as MAGA are making a political bargain that will cause them, as it seems to have already for Lyin' Chuck to decide between their faiths, and their political fortunes.  Degenfelder has signs up all over which say "Endorsed by President Trump".

They should say "Endorsed by Blasphemous Donald Trump".

And this isn't merely esoteric.  We're in the same position now that Catholic Germans were in the 1932 German election (and the Catholics in fact went for Hitler much less than German protestants did).  There's really going to be no good "um, well, the other guy . . . " excuse here.  The far right Evangelical edge of the Trump coalition isn't even pretending not to hate Catholics much anymore.

And what about Mormons?  

Mormons include a heavy MAGA contingent, although the only really devout Mormons I know here locally right now are heavy duty Never Trumpers, and openly so.  But then you have guys like Deseret Mike Lee who come pretty close to viewing Trump positively in some sort of creepy religious terms.  Deep in the Jello Belt it's always been the case that there was a sort of ignorant conservatism in some quarters, and in the last 16 years, in spite of guys like Mitt Romney, it's really come out.

Trump and Islam is simply laughable as a joke.  In the last election Trump drew a fair amount of Islamic support because Muslims were so mad about Joe Biden's support of Israel.  Well, they got what the should have expected. The only person Trump loves more than Putin (and of course Trump) is Benjamin  Netanyahu and as a result we've supported genocide in Gaza, a war in Lebanon and we helped Israel attack Iran and we can't get out of it.  I suspect that most Muslims are voting for the Democrats next go around, just like most Hispanics will be (and in both instances, this really gives the Democrats a chance to evolve away from their sea of blood positions).

And this sort of thing should even be a revelation for Jews of all stripes, although I think they're more awake to what MAGA is than most.  The strong Trump support for Netanyahu comes in part because Netanyahu is good at playing Trump, much like Putin is.  But it also comes from people like Hegseth or Huckabee, who have a radical Protestant view of Israel and want to bring about the Second Coming of Christ basically by force, which they see current events as an opportunity in which to do so.  Put another way, do you really want to get in the car with somebody who wants to drive you to a giant gun fight?

Donald Trump, of course, is sort of beyond all of this.  Trump isn't any sort of serious Christian and we don't really know if he has any religious beliefs at all.  Most of his life has been spent chasing cash through real estate development and his hobbies have been golf and chasing tail.  Christians are just a convenient vehicle for him.  If the Sultan of Oman offered him a bigger better airplane tomorrow if he'd convert to Islam, and remind him that Muslims can have more than one wife, it wouldn't surprise me a bit if he signed on.  His personal conduct actually squares better with Islam than Christianity, which is after all a religion focused on the poor and duty.

In the end, all of this is going to fall apart.

Christians who aligned with Trump, just like Muslims and Mormons who did, are going to have to pay the cost.  It'll be different for each.  For Muslims, well their fellows are playing through blood right now.  Jews will pay by the backlash that's already started.  

For Christians, it'll be different, depending upon where their allegiance lay.  For the ignorant members of the American Civil Religion, and for the hardcore Evangelical right, this will be the beginning of an end of an era that started in April 1865, when the South fell and the Evangelical far right stepped into its own.  For the Protestant world in general, this will accelerate the death of the Reformation.

For the Catholic and Orthodox Christians who supported Trump, how could you be so blind?

Nonetheless, this will be a good thing for the Catholic and Orthodox.  A delusion that started in 1960 that you could be fully American and fully Catholic, or Orthodox, has ended.  National Conservatism will end with it.  

And that will be a good thing.

Last edition:

CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 134th Edition. Paying the cost of failed Reconstruction.

Labels: 1860s, 1960s, 2020s, It was because of the Civil War, Politics, Racism, Reconstruction, Slavery, The Lost Cause, The Second Trump Administration, You heard it here first, Zeitgeist

Churches of the West: What happened to St. Anthony's Alter Rail (and others) and where is it (and they) today?

Churches of the West: What happened to St. Anthony's Alter Rail (and oth...: I want the alter rail from St. Anthony's Church in Casper Wyoming put back in. I'm not part of any movement, or organization, or any...

What happened to St. Anthony's Alter Rail (and others) and where is it (and they) today?

I want the alter rail from St. Anthony's Church in Casper Wyoming put back in.

I'm not part of any movement, or organization, or anything.  I'm just a parishioner, albeit one who normally goes to Our Lady of Fatima, who remembers it.

And, frankly, the fact that the beautiful marble alter rail came out for no real reason angers me.

I have an older post on this topic here:

Churches of the West: Stop! Don't change that Church!: A theme, if not always an obvious one, of this blog is architecture. And  nothing does more violence to traditional, serviceable, and b...

Here's part of it:

Stop! Don't change that Church!

A theme, if not always an obvious one, of this blog is architecture.

And  nothing does more violence to traditional, serviceable, and beautiful architecture, than "updating" it for any reason.

Just don't.

A case in point.

The photograph above, unfortunately not entirely in focus and in black and white, dates from November 1958.  It depicts St. Anthony's of Padua Church in Casper Wyoming on the occasion of my parents wedding.

Now, St. Anthony's remains a beautiful church today, but if we had a picture of the interior (which I don't from this angle) and if we had this picture in sharper focus (which it isn't) and in color (which it is not), we'd notice some changes right away.

And they aren't good ones.

The altarpiece and the altar are all still there.  The cross painted on the wall behind the altarpiece is also still there.  But many other things have changed.

Most obvious, the beautiful marble altar rail in this photograph, a gift of the Schulte family when the church was built, is gone.  I was told that a part of it can be found now in a local restaurant, which I hope is not true.  If it is true, I've never seen it, so it must be some place I don't go to.  It's not clear here, but the gate for the altar rail was marble with heavy brass hinges.  A true work of art in every sense.

The heavy brass lanterns hanging from the ceiling are also gone.

What appears to be a marble ambo is gone as well, replaced by a very nice wooden (walnut?) one.

The statute of St. Patrick moved across town to St. Patrick's, which sort of makes sense. The funds to build St. Patrick's came from St. Anthony's donors, many of whom were Irish, to that we'd ultimately send the statute of the Patron Saint of Ireland over there, which we did only fairly recently, does square with the general them there.. The statute of St. Anthony has been moved to a different spot, but it looks good where it is.

I'm not certain what sort of floor covering we're looking at here, probably carpet, and of course we have new carpet.  But what would strike anyone looking at this photo about what is next to the carpet, the pews, is that the pews are now cantered to face towards the center of the alter.

Okay, what's up with all of that, and was it an improvement?

Well, I suppose that's in the eye of the beholder, as all such things are, but in my view, the answer is a very distinct "no".

It's funny how these things work.  I can remember all of the features depicted here, including the altar rail, even though I was very young when at least that feature came out.  But, at the time, I don't think I thought much about it, if I thought about it all.  I don't remember the Mass being in Latin at all, although when I was very, very young, it must have been.  Anyhow, while these things didn't bother me at the time, or the one change that I recall from when I was a bit older, the cantering of the pews, didn't bother me much, now they do.

That may be because I now have a greater appreciation for history and tradition than I did when I was just a boy, although I had a sense of that at the time.

The cocked angle of the pews, remnants of a decision made by a Priest in the 1970s or perhaps early 80s,  has been something I've never liked, even if I understand the intent behind it.  Not visible in this photograph, a row of pews that were in the middle of the church were taken out to facilitate twice as many Communion servers.  It's awkward and always has been and should not have been done.  Indeed, as this was the only Catholic Church in town with it was built, it was probably jam packed nearly every Mass and they seemed to manage to get by just fine. For that matter, I've been in plenty of packed Catholic churches where everyone came up to the front of the church and it always worked just fine as well.  Having said that, changing the angle of the pews didn't do a great disservice to the church even if it didn't really help it any.

Another matter, however, is the altar rail.

Now altar rails turn out to be a surprisingly hot button item to people not familiar with them.

All Latin Rite Catholic Churches and Anglican Churches had altar rails. Chances are very high that other churches close in form to the Catholic Church also had them, I just don't know. Their purposes was to provide a place for communicants to kneel when receiving communion.  Prior to Vatican II (1962 to 1965) all Latin Catholic in modern times received communion on the tongue.  Communicants would kneel at the altar rail and receive communion.

You'd think that finding a public domain photograph of communicants receiving communion at an altar rail would b easy, but it isn't.  This almost illustrates it in a better fashion, however.  British solders lined up, as if there is an altar rail, and receiving communion in teh field in North Africa.  Off hand, I suspect that this is an Anglican service.

Now, before we get too far down this road it should be noted that people can get really up in arms about this in all sorts of ways and some traditionalist will insist that communion can only properly be received kneeling and on the tongue.  This doesn't seem to be true and certainly wasn't universally the case.  Indeed, originally, the very first Christians, received communion in the hand and you can find very early writings that effect.  However, traditionalist will hotly dispute what those writings and the other evidence actually means. Given as I'm not getting into that debate, I'm not going there and that isn't the point of this entry.

What is the point is that altar rails were an integral part of the design of churches for an extremely long time. Take anything out of a well designed building and you risk subtracting from its design. That's exactly what I think occurred here.

Which isn't to say that I feel that St. Anthony's is a bad looking Church now, far from it. It's still a beautiful church. But it was more beautiful before the marble altar rail was taken out.

Indeed, the problem with making alterations to these well designed structures is that any time that this is done it risks giving into a temporary view in favor of a more traditional element that was integral in the design of the structure while doing damage to its appearance.  All Catholic churches up until the id 1960s were designed to have altar rails.  Taking them out may have served what was, and perhaps is, the view of the day in regards to worship, but it also means that a major feature of the interior of the building, to which careful consideration had been given, was now missing.

And it turns out that, contrary to widely held belief, they did not have to be removed.

Most people believe that the altar rails were taken out as it was somehow required post Vatican II.  It wasn't.  Rather, for whatever reason changes in the Mass now allowed them to be.  They didn't have to be.  Theoretically it was apparently up to individual Pastors on whether they thought an altar rail should be removed, but given as in Wyoming they are nearly all missing, it might have been the case that the decision to remove them was made at the Diocesan level.  The motivating thought here was that the altar rail served to act as a sort of barrier to connection between the people and the Offering of the Mass, and those who supported altar rail removal often felt fairly strongly about that (as we'll see below).  This was, I think, part of an overall change in the Mass at that time, when it went from Latin to the local vernacular, as the Celebrant had faced Ad Oreintum while offering the Mass.  That is, the Priest faced his altar, as a rule, with his back to the Congregation.  

Now all of this gets into some fairly complicated symbolic matters.  There's some truth to the view held by those who argued for the new position and removing the altar rails, in at he "we're all one together sense". There a counter point, however, that maybe the Ad Oreintum orientation actually served that better, as the Priest was facing the same direction for significant portions of the Mass that the parishioners were.   That is, by way of a poor example, if somebody faced you in a large group they're more likely to have some elevated authority over you than if somebody has their back to you, in which case they can be argued to be working with you.  Interestingly in recent years there's been a slow return in some areas to the Ad Oreintum orientation, particularly following Cardinal Sarah's suggestion that this was a better form. The Cardinal occupies a high position at the Vatican and therefore his views cannot be easily discounted.  As has been noted in regards to this there's actually never been an official position on which orientation is better, and in some ancient and modern churches the Ad Orientum position is actually impossible.

In any event, what that did was in part to remove an item that was closely connected to the church and hence the parish and the parishioners.  In this case, the altar rail itself had been a gift from a family early in the parish's history.  In Catholic parishes the pastor is usually there for about seven years and bishops can be in office for long or short periods. However, as the parishioners are often there for decades, that means the traditional in which they participated was removed by individuals who were there on a more temporary basis.  It was certainly "legal", if you will, but it might not have been well advised.

The same is true of most, but not all, of the interior changes to the church. A person can debate the aesthetics of the heavy brass lighting, but the church was built with it in mind and the features that once decorated where it attached to the building remain there to this day.  The removal of one confessional, the relocation, in an awkward fashion, of a place for "music ministers" to stand that resulted, and all of that, were done in a heartfelt fashion, but often to the ascetic detriment of the church which was not built with remodels in mind.

This touches, moreover, on the larger topic of church architecture itself, which as been addressed in another one of our rare commentary threads here.  These older churches are better looking as the architecture and design that came in during the 1970s was not as good as earlier architecture, and according to some focused more on the congregation than on the Divine.  This blog was at one time going to avoid all such churches in general, but as time has gone on its put up posts of quite a few.  Many of these churches are just not good looking. By the same token, many alterations to older churches are not good looking either.

As I noted when I started off, a lot of this stuff did not bother me when I was a child and experiencing it, but it does now.  Indeed, the removal of the altar rail in this church frankly makes me mad when I think of it.  I wish it could go back in.  It won't, of course, but the whole thing upsets me.  I'm not alone, I think, on this sort of thinking and I think it reflects a generational befuddlement with the generations immediately preceding us which seems to have had, in many instances, low respect for tradition in general.  In civil society, in terms of structures, this is probably why we now see all sorts of effort to restore the appearance of old buildings whose owners in the 50s, 60s, and 70s didn't give a second thought about making them ugly through renovation. A prime example of that is the Wyoming National Bank building in Casper Wyoming which was made to look hideous by the additional of a weird steel grating in the 1950s to its exterior which was supposed to make it look modern.  It mostly served to house pigeons and was removed in the 2000s when the building was redone and converted to apartments.

Now, not every one feels this way, I should note.  Particularly in regards to churches.  When I posted this same photograph on Facebook, a friend of mine with a few years on me posted this reply (I hadn't commented on the altar rails in my original post):

So happy that the railings have come down and the hats came off! The church is still so beautiful.

I agree that the church remains beautiful, and I agree that the women wearing head coverings is a tradition that I don't miss, but I don't feel that way about the altar rail at all.

I suspect my friends comment goes to a "spirit of Vatican II" feeling that she's old enough to have experienced and which I not only am not, but which I don't really share enthusiasm for.  It's important to note that Vatican II and "the spirit of Vatican II" are not the same thing.  "The spirit" thing was a zeitgeist of the times which took a decidedly more liberal and less traditional view of things, no doubt an "open the windows and doors and let some fresh air in". Some of that was likely needed but as is often the case with people who are in a "let in the fresh air" movement the realization that cold winds high winds can come in through the same windows and doors and do damage is rarely appreciated. 

And its all too easy when traditions which are simply traditions are tossed to begin to toss out with them things that are more than tradition.  I'm not saying that occurred here with altar rails but I will be frankly that the 1970s saw a lot of innovations, some of them very local poorly thought out that were, in some cases, quite problematic. The generation that thought removing the altar rails was a good idea proved willing to entertain a lot of things in this area that turned out to be big problems for everyone else.

Part of that is because traditions are anchors in a way; moorings to the the past.  People of a "fresh air" bent will claim that a person shouldn't be bound by the past. That's true, but tradition is also in some cases the vote, or the expression of experience, of the dead and should not be lightly discounted.  Not only does casting out traditions tend to sever anchors, but all too often the severing simply puts people adrift in seas that they're not well prepared to handle. At its worst, the severing of traditions is a rejection of the long and carefully thought out in favor of the temporarily current and the poorly thought out.

Which is why, for many people of the post Vatican II generation the "Spirit of Vatican II" generation, when moored in their own changes, can seem now old fashioned.  Ironically younger generations have been busy for some time "reforming the reform", which means in the mainstream keeping the reforms that proved worthwhile and reversing those that did not.  Tradition has, in some instances, come back in the opened door after having been swept out it, but with a younger generation.

All of which is well off point on what this thread started out being about.  And I'm not going to start a "restore the altar rail" movement, locally or on the internet.  But I feel it was a shame that it was taken out, and to the extent that alterations that should not have taken place for ascetic reasons in regards to older structures can be repaired, they ought to be.

Okay, why am I reviving that post?

It's because I want the alter rail back.

Contrary to widespread popular belief, there were never any Vatican II directive that alter rails be removed.  It was a "spirit of Vatican II" type of thing.

Alter rails weren't in the very first churches, as they were houses.  They evolved over a period of time.  They came to demarcate three distinct worship spaces, the nave, the sanctuary and the altar.  Vatican II emphasized the laity coming into the celebration of the Mass and from there Church officials determined that the rails separated the Priest from the people, as did the ad orientum worship of the Mass.

I'll try to be gentle in my criticism here, but I'd suggest that the directive of laity participation wsa somewhat misunderstood in the US in general.  Indeed, Fr. Joseph Krupp maintains that much of Vatican II was as translation of the official documents was not a priority for the Church, as most Catholics do not use English as their primary language.

Be that as it may, the Church of the 1970s in the US really went to town with such changes.  Parishioners, who had grown up in an era when they largely did not question their Priests, simply endured it.  The clergy thought it was doing something that would really make everyone come closer together, but for the most part, their parishioners simply silently endured it, and the flood of other changes that came in at the same time.

Many of the changes were good one, most particularly the new form of the Mass in the vernacular.  But changes simply went to far.  Architectural changes were really a bad thing in structures that were built before Vatican II.  And frankly, the Baby Boom generation aside, most people actually like some formal distinctions in society, something pretty clear when you see the post Baby Boom generations at Mass.

The alter rail at St. Anthony's was made of marble, with brass hinges, and beautiful.  Even now, the church looks like it is missing something.  

This is less the case with the other two Catholic churches in Casper, Our Lady of Fatima and St. Patrick's.  St. Patrick's is the newest of the three, having been built in the 1960s.  It's an expansive church and the absence of an alter rail does not seem to hinder its appearance.  Our Lady of Fatima was  built as an Air Base chapel during World War Two and no doubt was built without an alter rail originally.  Having said that, perhaps because of reconstruction, which has happened more than once, it looks like it should have one.

St. Anthony's has been substantially restored in recent years.  Not 100%, but substantially.  Restoring the alter rail would go a long ways towards restoring the full original beauty of the church.

When it was taken out, something happened to it. But what?  Is it stored somewhere on the grounds?  If it was, I've never seen it.  I've heard rumors that part of it is in a Casper restaurant.

And what about the alter rails from the other churches?

Much of what was in St. Anthony's before the post Vatican II changes was provided for by way of donations from parishioners.  I've thought that the alter rail was, but I don't really know that.  Donations are a funny thing in that sometimes they bind the recipient, and other times they do not.  This probably did not.

Well, at any rate, taking the alter rail(s) out was a mistake.  The alter rail, indeed the alter rails, should be put back in.  Somebody has the St. Anthony's one, perhaps more than one somebody. They should give it back.

Put the alter rail back in.

Fr Joe homily: War on Lust, War on Gluttony | March 15, 2026

 

Fr Joe homily: The war on wrath, the war on sloth | March 8, 2026

 

It's Hell all the way to Hell.

 

Supporting Immorality in War is Immoral.

Gun camera footage from a P-51 strafing Japanese civilian fishermen during World War Two, a gravely immoral act.  We've conveniently forgotten how much of this sort of thing happened during World War Two, but a lot did.  Allied fighters routinely strafed German farmers during  the war, and I have heard of one account of an Italian farmer being killed by being strafed.  This isn't warfare, it's flat out murder.*

 

III. SAFEGUARDING PEACE

Avoiding war

2309 The strict conditions for legitimate defense by military force require rigorous consideration. The gravity of such a decision makes it subject to rigorous conditions of moral legitimacy. At one and the same time:

• the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain;
• all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective;
• there must be serious prospects of success;
• the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. The power of modem means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition.

These are the traditional elements enumerated in what is called the "just war" doctrine.

The evaluation of these conditions for moral legitimacy belongs to the prudential judgment of those who have responsibility for the common good.

Section 2309, Catechism of the Catholic Church. 

Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 of the United States Constitution:

[The Congress shall have Power . . . ] To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water; . . . 

The American war against Iran is not a just war.  It's not a legal one, either.

Iran is a world sponsor of terrorism that has sponsored terroristic acts for decades.  Most of those acts of terror were against other sovereign states, not the US, but some can logically be argued to be directed at the us.  That's almost certainly not what the war is about.

Much more likely, Trump is a pathetic doddering senile fool who has spent a life of utter pointlessness.  His wealth is inherited and founded originally on a grandfather who engaged in providing prostitutes to Alaska miners, a gravely evil act.  His father did nothing like that, but the family wealth was used to build more wealth, and Trump in his adult years, after not serving his country (a family tradition to some extent) went on to make and lose fortunes doing that.

Real estate development is, from an agrarian and distributism prospective like that I maintain, a fairly dubious occupation in and of itself.  Not clearly immoral, but frankly I have real trouble with some of it.  Be that as it may, I particularly have trouble with the sort of behavior that Trump exhibited in that questionable occupation.  I wouldn't admire the Wharton graduate for that reason alone.  But the way he has spent his wealth is abominable.  He's a serial polygamist and its getting very difficult to say "there's no evidence" that he didn't sexually fish in the shallow end of the pond.

There's more credible evidence that he's a kiddy diddler, which I'm not affirmatively saying there is, than that he's a Christian.  There's not one single outwardly Christian act that I can think of that he's committed.  What he is, is a shallow opportunist, and he's used desperate Christians to advance his career.  

Knowing that the grave is looming up on him, and with his mind slipping away from him at a rapid rate, Trump has spent much of his second, illegitimate, occupation of the White House trying to build monuments to himself.  He wants a ball room as he's a rich product of the 60s and 70s when things like that mattered to somebody.  They don't anymore, and it'll either never be built, or ripped down.  He wants a triumphal arch, which is simply absurd.

And he wants to be remembered as a great hero, adding to the US landmass, or at least defeating a supposed major enemy.

Benjamin Netanyahu, who is a scary man in his own right, but not a demented fool, saw that he could play the demented fool in the White House.  Netanyahu, like Michael Corleone in The Godfather, sees the Trump dotage as a time to "address all family business".  Seeing a dolt he could play, like Putin has, he's coaxed Trump into a war for Israel's own purposes.  This is, the way Netanyahu sees it, Israel's last best hope to destroy the radical Islamist regime in Tehran.  Israel can't do it on its own, and no future US administration will support doing it.  Israel is not held in that high of regard in much of the world for a variety of reasons, and never has been.  Nobody else is going to play the willing muscled fool for Netanyahu.  If Netanyahu is Corleone, Trump is Luca Brasi, a brutish dolt who is willing to act as an enforcer.

Trump entered this war thinking it would be a two or three day exercise.  He'd bomb Iran and the Iranian people would give up.  Or, maybe, Iranians theocrats would act like American property owners and cut him a deal.  Well, say what you like about Shiite theocrats, but they're a lot less shallow than American businessmen.  They hold to an existential, and unlike Trump it's not all about money and women.  

Oh oh.

So they didn't give up and they aren't going to give up.  They've fought back by striking economic targets and U.S. military installations around the Middle East (and now as far away as Diego Garcia).  And they've closed the Straits of Hormuz.

By closing the Straits, they've also demonstrated that the US is, in fact, not as powerful as it pretends it is.  We can't open them and we've been begging for help.  Nobody else is willing to get into an endless war for Israel, and therefore that help isn't coming.  In order to open them we will have to engage in a ground invasion.

Trump is trying desperately to avoid that, for a variety of reasons.  One thing is that he's probably been told it will be a bloody mess.  Body bags will be coming home to "Red" cities all around the country.  People already don't support the war and they definitely will not when Johnny or Mary come home to be buried in Riverton Wyoming, or Billings Montana, having died for Bibi Netanyahu.  

And then there's this:

There's not going to be a draft, but the satiric suggestions that he serve are not wholly ingenuine.  Right now, the US is getting into one war after another.  Franklin Roosevelt's children served, so did TR's. Why not Trump's?

Because Trumps don't serve the country, they take from it. That's why.

In his desperation to end the war, Trump is now threatening to bomb Iranian power facilities if they do not open the Straits of Hormuz.  He broadcast this on social media, which is idiotic  It also won't work.  The Allied bombing campaigns against Germany did not work in World War Two.  They didn't work, save for the Atomic bomb, against Japan, either.  Nor did they work against North Vietnam.  They won't work here.  Instead, civilians will be killed and whatever support for a new regime replacing this one in Iran exists, will evaporate.

What Trump is doing is criminal. The US is killing people for. . . what?

The whole war is criminal from the first place, from a US prospective.  We're using military force to kill people with no declaration of war.  And now we propose to engage in a tit for tat campaign of economic retribution against them as we can't beat them.  We haven't been able to articulate a single reason for the war, other than Iran cannot be allowed to have the same thing that Israel, the United States, France, Russia, North Korea, the United Kingdom, Indian, Pakistan, and South Africa have. . . an atomic bomb.

There is some logic to that, of course.  An Iran with an atomic bomb would be scary, just like North Korea with an atomic bomb is scary.  But given our ill thought out military adventure here, we are actually making this situation worse.  North Korea, it might be noted, is improving missile capabilities, and why wouldn't they.  If North Korea has not determined an absolute need to be able to hit the continental United States due to Donald Trump, it'd be amazing.  And if Iran, which has its nuclear material yet, has not concluded that it has an absolute need to complete a nuclear project, that would be amazing.

But it's clear that Trump never thought this out.  He went, we're told, with his gut, which is nearly always wrong.

So, here we are in this long winded thread.

And here's to the point.  Supporting immorality, is immoral.  Everyone engages in "remote cooperation with evil", which you can not do much about.  Using illegal drugs is illegal, but paying the pizza guy when you know he's going to use some of that cash for illegal drugs isn't.

Here, we now have an interesting situation.

We are in an illegal war and doing immoral acts.  The Republicans in Washington are mostly sitting around on their ass doing nothing about it. They're afraid.  They're not paid nor elected to be afriad.

And all over the country the MAGA element of the GOP just lies down like the 13 year old girls at Epstein Island and gives into whatever Trump wants.

It's immoral.

For years and years Christians, particularly those of my faith, voted for Republicans in spite of reluctance because we opposed abortion and the Democratic Party supported it.  Even as late as the last election I heard Catholics with severe doubts about Trump say they were voting for him for that reason.

Abortion is a grave moral evil.  Engaging in an illegal war and targeting civilian targets is a grave moral evil.

I'm not saying vote for the Democrats without thinking, but I am saying that supporting this Administration and the Republican Party at this point is supporting moral evil.  When John Barrasso and Harriet Hageman come around backing the war, they're backing a moral evil.  When Chuck Gray declares his undying love for Trump and promises to be the most loyal of his political concubines, he's expressing a love of a moral evil.

Most Germans during the Nazi era did nothing.  Most Republicans aren't going to either.  In future years, they'll be looked at with utter disgust.

Christians believe that they'll have to account for their sins in the next world.  I very much doubt that bothers Donald  Trump as he's stupid and ignorant, which is sort of a defense, and I very much question if he has any belief in God at all.  For that matter, while I have only the incidents to raise the question, I doubt the beliefs of many in Congress who claim they have one.  For those of us who do believe, and frankly a person who doesn't has simply blinded themselves to reality, it's all too easy to believe that our self interest must be moral.  Protestant churches have, for instance, by and large completely given up on being concerned about sexual morality for the most part.

God will not be mocked.  Christians who declare Trump to be a "Godly Man" are willfully blinding themselves or outright lying.  None of us are around here all that long.  The "why did you support the murder of my children" question is coming up, and the "well, I supported Trump", or "well, the Iranians were baddies", or "well, the Iranians were Muslims" line is not likely to be a sufficient excuse for being complicit in murder.

Footnotes

*This may seem like a strange point to start in this thread, but wars routinely devolve, even when they fit the just war criteria, into flat out murder and the US has not been exempt from this.  Arguably the cleanest war the US ever fought was World War One, with the Korean War being relatively clean.  World War Two may be recalled as a uniformly just war, but the bombing campaigns against urban Japan and the use of nuclear weapons was outright not.  And the tolerance of what is depicted above, which was very widespread, was not.

An Evening Meditation on St. Joseph's Day a reminder of the significance we fathers have in shaping those around us

 

An Evening Meditation on St. Joseph's Day

a reminder of the significance we fathers have in shaping those around us

Doug Wilson, the Calvinist preacher who appeared in Pete Hegseth's weekly Pentagon prayer meeting, says that in his preferred Christian nation, anything that Protestants consider to be a "public displays of idolatry" would be banned, including Catholic parades.

This is the mindset of people who have put us into a war in the Middle East.

I'm sure I know a lot of Catholics, particularly locally, who voted for Trump.  Most of them were in the category of people who oppose abortion, as I do, and who oppose the gender bizarreness that the Democratic Party seemed to embrace.

I'm not at all certain that a lot of those people would vote for Trump again.  Particularly Hispanics, who nationwide have dumped Trump like a hot rock, and for good reason.

But I know a very few, and I do mean very few, coreligious who are MAGA.  I can think of one, anyhow.  Indeed, as we are coreligious, I think he just assumes I must hold the same views he does, or he did have that view, and is occasionally surprised to his distress.  When the war in Gaza drug on he was surprised that I didn't have unyielding support for it.  He later came to me a bit distressed as his sons weren't for it either, and I again noted, I agreed with them.

He's been pretty silent on the current war.  My guess would be, although I don't know, that he's all for it.

Since before Trump was elected this go around I've sounded the alarm bells that Catholics would come to regret supporting Trump, as there's a strong Calvinist element that basically hates us.

Calvinism is pretty much dead everywhere, save for the United States, which reflects the unique religious history of the United States.  Americans indeed are often amazingly ignorant on the topic of religion, including American Catholics.  A lot of American protestants don suit and tie, or nice dresses, and "go to church" every Sunday sincerely believing that their assemblies resemble those of the Apostolic Age, not realizing that those gathering for Mass or Divine Liturgy are actually reflective of that.  They largely can't be blamed, as they don't know what they don't know, although some protestant ministers should quite frankly know better.  Having said that, many protestant ministers have in fact "swam the Tiber" in recent years.

Then you have guys like Doug Wilson. . . and Pete Hegseth . . . and Mike Huckabee.

After John F. Kennedy sold us out in order to win the Oval Office, most Protestant denominations got used to us and we got used to them.  For that matter, the turmoil of the 60s and 70s, caused a lot of Catholics to become pretty weak in the observance and knowledge of their faith.  Protestant denominations began to go along with the culture to a large degree, even in some of the hardcore fundamentalist branches of Protestantism.  Big debates have happened, for example over the extent to which various Protestant denominations tolerate homosexuality at ever level, while almost all of them have completely given up paying any attention to what Christianity actually holds regarding sex in general.  Unmarried couples, for example, will "go to church" every Sunday, completely comfortable that God is okay with whatever they're doing.

A tiny, and it is tiny, group of really fundamentalist Protestants, however, holds really radical views on a whole set of topics that would surprise Catholics, including on Catholicism itself.  Some of them really hate us.

That element has the ear of the White House.  A group of American Protestants who believe that the United States has a special divinely ordained role actually has a degree of power right now, and amongst the things they believe is that they can force the Hand of God and bring about the Second Coming soon.  A war with Iran is part of that in their view.

Catholics, Orthodox, Anglicans, Lutherans and most other Christians believe nothing of the sort.  But then you don't find any of the group I've named acting like Paula White and declaring that Donald Trump has a divine mission, and you don't find any of them claiming to be playing the role of Moses in modern times, like Mike Johnson.

To weak Christians nor non Christians, what's going on with Paul White, Doug Wilson and Pete Hegseth reflects Christianity.  It doesn't.  The Apostolic Christians whose symbols and phrases Pete Hegseth has had tattooed on his body would have regarded him as a heretic.

These are dangerous times for Apostolic Christians.  It's time to let people know that this isn't us.  Associating with the radical New Apostolic Reformation people in this administration is a serious error, and will hurt us in the end.  Indeed, they'll hurt us when they can.

The Making of the Christian Man By Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap.

 

The Making of the Christian Man

By Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap.

Churches of the West: Claiming the mantle of Christ in politics. Addressing politicians in desperate times, part 3.

Churches of the West: Claiming the mantle of Christ in politics. Address...: Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum. Benedicta tu in mulieribus, et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Iesus. Sancta Maria, Mater Dei, ora p...

Claiming the mantle of Christ in politics. Addressing politicians in desperate times, part 2.

Ave Maria, gratia plena,

Dominus tecum.

Benedicta tu in mulieribus,

et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Iesus.

Sancta Maria, Mater Dei,

ora pro nobis peccatoribus,

nunc et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen.

This series was kicked off on a companion blog, and followed up upon in another one that has a more limited focus.  That's why we're posting this one here.  I.e., we acknowledge that questions that are important to hunters, fishermen, campers, etc., may not be to the sincerely religious.*

I fear, gentle reader, that this will have a rather long winded introduction, but there's no real way to avoid that.

More than any other era in my lifetime, religion is in the public sphere.  In Wyoming, the least religious state in the country, decades went by in which politicians never openly stated anything about their faith.  I knew very sincere Catholic politicians who never mentioned that in a race, or while in office.¹ The same is true of two deeply Mormon politicians I know.  If you knew them, you knew that they were Mormons, but they never mentioned it even once in their campaigns.

The same was true of Congressional candidates.  There were longserving Congressmen from Wyoming whom I could not tell you anything about their religions.  I assume that they were Christians, but it's just an assumption. I'm sure I could look it up, but it's not something you automatically knew.

Well, those days are over, and they're over because radical Calvinists of the New Apostolic Reformation are waging a holy war on American culture, and by extension, effectively on other faiths, including the main of the  Christian faith.  They're franky fairly open about it.  

As part of this, a lot of politicians now wrap themselves in the mantle or religion, claiming Christ and Christianity, and directly interjecting questions of faith and morals into their politics.  Prime examples today are people like Mike Johnson, who is some sort of Evangelical Christian and who has the Christian Nationalist Pinetree Flag outside of his office.² The election of Donald Trump brought to the forefront Christian Nationalist and National Conservatives, movements that were around before Trump but who see Trump as their once in a millenium opportunity.  

In that group, moreover, there are two distinct camps.  One one hand, you have National Conservatives, a movement defined by people like Patrick Dineen and Rod Dreher and who are often Apostolic Christians looking back basically to the 19th Century.  They distrust democracy entirely, and therefore espouse a sort of democracy that can only exist within cultural guiderails.  Adherents to their views who are in the Administration or who have close influences on it are J. D. Vance and Kevin Roberts.³ 

These people are influential, but not as much as the second group.

The second group are radical Evangelicals who are often part of the New Apostolic Reformation.  They really only barely tolerate Apostolic Christians and some of them, who are pretty ignorant as a rule on Church history and the early history of the Church, do not regard Apostolic Christians, particularly Catholics, as Christians at all.  The standard bearer for people of this mindset was Charlie Kirk, although he seemed to have been evolving steadily towards Apostolic Christianity.  Paula White, whom most Apostolic Christians and Mainline Protestants would fine to be a little weird, is the "faith advisor" from this camp who is very close to the Trump Administration.  Franklin Graham seems to be in this circle as well.⁴

The NAR people believe in a theology in which the United States sort of has a status roughly analogous to Israel in the Old Testament.  That is, they believe the US has a Devine mission.  They're serious about it, and they see the country as a Calvinist country, which is distinctly different from seeing it as a Christian country.  The U.S. is definitely a Protestant Country, even though many Americans don't' realize that, and Puritanism still influences it heavily.  Teh NAR people would bring Puritanism roaring back.

Christianity has had splits and different views right from the onset.  There were early heracies, of course, but there were also local expressions of Catholicism that gave rise to different rights.  World events separated the churches from each other, and some of the divisions meant that distant branches of the Church spent long periods in isolation from other Christians.  I note that to counter what is so often generally supposed, that being that Christianity was completely uniform at first.  That was never true.  Christians could certainly recognize each other, and even when long separated Churches came back into exposure with the main they often instantly recognized that they were in contact with other Apostolic Christians, but there were local different.  Such differences gave rise to the Great Schism and then, more radically, to the Reformation.

I don't note all of this to try to set out a history of the Church, but to further note here a set of additional divides.

The Catholic Church has divides between orthodox, traditional, radically traditional, and liberal, with the latter camp really falling rapidly away.  We won't deal much with the liberal here, as its basically a Baby Boom thing and a product of a misunderstanding of Vatican II.  Over time, orthodox thinking has really returned to the Church, to the relief of almost all, and presently orthodoxy is the mainstream of the Catholic demographic, with liberalism sort of an old Priest and old Bishop hold out sort of thing.  Orthodox Catholics take their Faith seriously, and look inward at the Church, rather than expect all that much of society as rule.  Trads take that one step further, reincorporating some of the things that disappeared with the "spirt of Vatican II".  Rad Trads go even further than that, with hostility towards the modern Church.

Politically, sincere Catholics are hard to peg down.  Even the Trump administration gives us a glimpse of that.  I doubt that Rubio joins Vance for Mass, even though they both go each Sunday and Holy Days.  Anyhow, Catholics that aren't protestantized, and many are protestantized, tend towards the middle of things politically, being very conservative on most social issues involving life or gender, but potentially all over the map on other issues, save for one thing. They can't be "America First" or any nation first on anything.  They hold Christ first and everything else second, some things a distant second.  There's no such thing, for educated Catholics, as an "American church".  In that, they hold the same view as St. Thomas More as expressed in his last words before his martyrdom:

I die the king's good servant, but God's first.

St. Thomas More before his execution on July 6, 1535.

The Orthodox are much the same, save for the fact that there really aren't "liberal" Orthodox, although there certainly are unobservant ones due to a loose understanding of mortal sin in Orthodoxy. The interesting thing here is that the Orthodox, who are very traditional on things, have been experiencing an unanticipated influx into their ranks which is changing the Orthodox Churches.  

For decades, Orthodox Churches were ethnic in a way that Catholic Churches could not be.  Now, many people will note that somebody was "Polish Catholic" or "Irish Catholic", and indeed that meant and means something.  But at the time at which such phrases meant the most, it was also the case that the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church said its Masses in Latin, and that meant that the Church was always very much International in nature.  Any Catholic Church anywhere, no matter how ethnic its parishioners may have been, always had members who were converts or members of other ethnicities, in the United States as well as elsewhere, and CAtholics were always conscience of that.  Orthodox Churches, however, were often extremely ethnic.

The Eastern Rites of the Catholic Church and the Orthodox have, however, seen quite the influx of others in recent decades.  In the case of the Eastern Rites of the Catholic Church, the influx started off with Trad Catholics who were seeking a traditional service. That may have continued on, but frankly at the present time the entire Latin Rite is much more traditional than it was even fifteen years ago.  Put another way, if you are seeking the traditional in the Latin Rite, it's not very hard to find it.⁵. 

But some Protestants who are fleeing their mainline Protestant Churches as those churches decline, and moreover as they've embraced liberalism, can't bring themselves to go all the way across the Tiber.  Many, many do, but some do not.  Some of those swim the metaphorical Bosphorus instead.

As they've done that they've brought a much needed widening to the Orthodox Churches, although not always in a way that ethnic parishioners have always welcomed.  Churches that were Greek Orthodox or Russian Orthodox have started to become American Orthodox, both figurately and early literally.

Holy Apostles Orthodox Christian Church, Cheyenne Wyoming.

In Protestantism, we see some similar things going on.

In the Mainline Protestant Churches we've seen some that have gravitated towards liberalism, and empty pews.  Usually in the same denomination there's a pull away back toward their Catholic origin.  One of the most Catholic wedding homilies I've ever heard, for example, was delivered by a Lutheran pastor.  It was blisteringly orthodox. Entire groups of the Anglican Communion had waded into the middle of the Tiber and waded there.

As that has happened, liberal branches of Mainline Protestant Churches have simply started to die.  Indeed, the entire Protestant Reformation is pretty clearly in its death throes.  The Catholic Church in much of the ground captured by rebels of the Reformation is gaining ground, including in the United States and United Kingdom.  In the same territory, the churches of the Reformation are dying away.

As that happens, however, the radical Reformation churches, those that were the reformation of the Reformation, have held on in their own unique ways.  In some instances, they've done so through having a very lightweight adherence to Christ's message.  Entire branches of Protestantism don't take seriously much of Christ's message on multiple things, the sanctity of marriage, and its enduring nature, in particular.  Most Protestant churches have come around to being completely comfortable with divorce and remarriage, and even multiple mirages, as well as birth control and living together outside of marriage.  

While that's happened, on the far political right we now have a revival of hardcore Calvinism, the sort of Calvinism that's really intolerant of anything else.  And that's the branch of Protestantism that has the most influence on the Second Trump administration.  It's basically at war with American culture.

A Pastor's Warning: We're Not in a Civil War, But a Christian Nationalist Holy War—And They Must Not Win.

What those who are religious, or who take religion seriously must do, or even those who simply take the topic seriously must do, is to ask candidates a series of questions, or ask yourself a series.  We'll start off, after this very long introduction, with those.

1.  Does a candidate who clothes himself in the mantle of religion, in any fashion, live according to the tenants of the religion?

We are seeing a lot of claims by politicians now days that they are religious, or that perhaps some other candidate is.  But what's the evidence for this?

The prime example is frankly Donald Trump. Claims that he is a Godly man are simply absurd.  The claims that he's some sort of Cyrus the Great are less absurd, but still absurd.  He's a genuinely bad man.

You really can't practice serial polygamy and claim that you are some kind of adherent Christian. And while all things are possible with God, having extreme wealth and being focused on it likewise make a person quite unlikely to be any sort of sincere Christian.

I'd start in part with Trump here, not because Trump claims to be a sincere Christian, although he comes pretty close, but because of those who seek to wrap him in the mantle of Christianity.  It's simply not credible, and people who assert that seriously shouldn't be taken seriously.  In contrast, thsoe who take a more cynical view, that they're advancing some kind of Christianity through an irreligious man, are more credible.

This question is a very sincere one.  We have, right now, J. D. Vance, a Catholic, on record supporting IFV, which is condemned by the Church.  How can he do that?  And  he's certainly not the only Catholic politicians who has strayed massively from the tenants of the Faith.

But its not just Catholic politicians.  Plenty of Protestant politicians right now claim to be deeply religious, but are they?  If they are opently not living according to the tenants of their Faith, what is the reason?

2. What religion are they?

This may sound like an odd one, but right now there's a lot of politicians who cite "faith", or claim a relationship with God, or who broadly claim to be Christian, without saying what they really are.  If they make the open claim they need to be asked this question.

The reason is that there are significant differences in the world outlook of various Christian religions.  The Wyoming Freedom Caucus, for example, seems to be heavily influenced by NAR type views, which most Christians are not, and which most do not support.

What about Trump, again.  He was raised a Presbyterian but has disavowed that, interestingly, as an adult.  What is he?

On this, the answer "Christian" doesn't cut it except in the case of the non observant member of the American Civil Religion, who are just sort of vaguely aware that most people in the US are Christians and they are too.

3. Do they actually attend a Church?

There are politicians who might never attend a church. We don't know, for example, if Tammy Duckworth does.⁶ But we also know that Duckworth does not make her religion an issue.  Likewise, we mentioned the other day that one of conservative members of the legislature is Episcopalians, but he doesn't mention religion at all on his legislative biography.

It is not, we'd note, that we're encouraging people to be irreligious. Quite the contrary. But if a person makes being a "Christian" a banner in their campaign, what kind of Christianity do they espouse? The same would be true for any other religions. The new mayor of New York, for example, is a Muslim, but clearly of the branch of Islam, now rare in the Middle East, that was of the progressive tolerant variety.⁷

The long and the short of this is ,that if politician claim to be a devout member of "Fill In Church" here, but doesn't go, well, that says all you need to know about him.⁸

4. Do they adhere to the tenants of their religion?

This is a big one, and you are entitled to ask.

It's one thing for a person to say "I'm a ____________". But all religions  have the concept of a greater entity.  If a person claims, for example, to be a Muslim but slams down a fifth of Jim Beam every night, well. . . 

That is, of course, a bad example. But to give more concrete ones Joe Biden was often cited as a Catholic, but supported the seas of blood that abortion results in, as well as the biological abomination of transgenderism.  This might make more sense (well actually it wouldn't) if you did not claim to be part of a religion that condemns them, but if you do, it shows that you have weak moral character that you may betray for convenience.

Lest it seems like we are endorsing Republicans by default, Donald Trump, who claims sorme loose association with Christianity, is a moral sewer.

Vance has claimed Catholicism, but backs IVF, which the Church condemns.

But what about your local politician?  They may be ramrod straight claiming that they are a member of _______________, but do they live their lives that way? If they claim a faith, you have the right to ask, and demand that they do.  Indeed, part of the problem with modern politics is that politicians are allowed to claim a religion on a tribal, but not practice basis.

5. Have they changed religions?

Religious conversions can be sincere or insincere.  In contemporary American conversions for convenience are less common than they once were, but they still exist.

Something to consider here is that conversion from no religion into a religion, and then practicing it, indicates sincerity.  Also, conversion into a religion that carries they byproduct of contempt for conversion does as well.

For this reason, while I have lots of problems with J. D. Vance, I sincerely credit his conversion into Catholicism.  This isn't something that you do lightly, and it isn't like just showing up at a service.    To be a Catholic is to endure contempt.

I'll also note that as a Catholic, while I feel that joining a Protestant faith if you are a baptized Catholic endangers your soul, I'll credit sincerity with some who have done so.  Mike Pence, who was a baptized Catholic is sich an example. While I feel that his faith journey has been deluded, and I hoep for his return, I believe he's sincere.

On the other hand, a conversion that was one of convenience shows a defect in moral character.  Without naming names, I can cite one local politicians who had a Catholic education and marriage, and then became a Presbyterian when a marriage situation suited that.  He's probably about as sincere Presbyterian as he was a Catholic, but that's the point.  A person whose attachment to the existential is so thin has no attachment to anything that matters at all, as is exemplified by the person I mentioned, who went from middle of the road conservative, to conservative, to MAGA, all with a stern look as if he was paying any attention at all.

5.  Why are they citing their religion?

If they are, why?

There's only two possibilities. Either they think it really matters, or they think it matters to you. 

That's it.

If they think it matters to you, they're claiming a tribal affiliation, not a moral one, and that should be problematic.

6. Do they think that: 1) this is a Christian nation and 2) it should be a theocracy?

The answer matters.

This is a Christian nation.  People who say otherwise are fooling themselves.  More than that, this ia a Puritan nation, although that's dying before our eyes.⁹   Accepting one, without the other, is significant.

Truth be known, this country stopped being 100% Puritan about a week after the Plymouth Rock landing, but it's been a long haul.  It wasn't until the Kennedy election that Catholic's really became part of the country.  Things continue to evolve.

This being the case, the weltanchaung of the NAR is fundamentally adverse to American culture and, oddly enough, the American Civil Religion.  We're not going back, and we're not going back as the NAR is fundamentally wrong.  

We're headed in a new direction. That direction can be conservative, but the NAR doesn't reflectd Christian reality, or the message of Christ. 

7. Does the candidate advocate or excuse bad things?

It's one thing to be irreligious and advocate a bad thing.  It's another to be a Christian.

Invading countries and killing people outside of self dense if deeply immoral. 

Killing people, including the unborn, is gravely wrong.

I'd argue avoiding the natural result of human intercourse is as well.

Theft, including of lands, is immoral

Avaracie is immoral.

Right makes might has been a proven failure since day one. Our current President seems to have adopted it. Does your candidate"

8. Does their embrace of religion make you 100% comfortable?

This would depend upon the faith, of course, but basically if you are sitting behind the candidate at Mass and wondering, 'how can he?", well, ask him?

Footnotes

*Although we would argue that if you are not out enjoying and experiencing God's creation in nature, in some fashion, you should be.

1.  Highly successful sheep rancher and politician Patrick J. Sullivan, who was Irish born, and a Catholic in Natrona County, supposedly tried to keep his distance from being too publicly Catholic, although that would have been due to the outright hostility to Catholicism in the first half of the 20th Century.  He served one year, more or less, as Wyoming's U.S. Senator upon the death of Francis E. Warren.

The unrelated Gov. Mike Sullivan is a devout Catholic who was ambassador to Ireland under Bill Clinton.  While his Irish heritage was very well known, pretty much nothing was every said about it while he was in office.

2.  Johnson provides an interesting example of what we're discussing here, in that he's from Louisiana.  Louisianans will often sort of wrap themselves around a faux Cajun personality to outsiders, but there are really five cultures that are basically naive to the state, Cajun, Creole, Black Creole and Southern White.  Johnson is Southern White.  This is quite significant in that Cajuns are descendants of Acadians transported there and have a strong French culture, including within it Catholicism.  Creole's and Black Creole's are  a"mixed" ethnicity in Louisiana, descendants of Cajuns, Spanish colonist, and African slaves.  They too have a culture that's heavily impacted by the French, through the Cajuns, but they are not Cajuns.  They are also often Catholic.  The third group, Deep South Whites, are descendants of English and Scottish colonist in the Southeast, and they're uniformly Protestant, and reflect the post Civil War shift from the Episcopal Church toward the Baptist Church and related Evangelical Christian faiths.

I've only known three Louisianans, and of them, only two fairly well.  Two of them were Creole, and one of them was a native French speaker.  One was a Cajun and could speak French, and interestingly was a Catholic with a French Jewish background.

As a total aside, these culture are really distinct and have distinct music and even distinct style of dancing.  

3. Vance wrote the forward to Robert's book  Dawn's Early Light: Taking Back Washington to Save America. Vance and Roberts are both Catholic.

So, of course, is Marco Rubio, who is a fairly devout Catholic  But he's not a National Conservative.

4.  I find White to be a little weird, and I have questions about how Christian she really is, given her personal life.  I can't stand Graham, and couldn't stand his father either, for reasons I really can't define.

I've been this way, I'll note, since I was a child.  One are where I really differ from my father, who grew up without television of course, is that I, who did, basically will never turn a television on until the evening and I never watch TV during the day.  Never.  My father pretty much turned the TV on as soon as he was in the house.  It was just sort of background noise, really.  As there were only three television channels locally when I was a kid, that means he'd sometimes turn hte TV on and there'd be some Billy Graham revival, and he'd just leave it on.  I couldn't stand Billy Graham and I didn't like him being on, even though I probably was only ten years old or younger at the time.

5.  Thirty years ago I probably could have counted the women I'd see at Mass wearing a mantilla with one hand and have fingers to spare.  Now it's becoming common, and even with preteen girls.  There have been restrictions on the Traditional Latin Mass, but most typical Catholic Masses now would rival any High Church service that Episcopalians might choose to hold.

6. She was raised a Baptist, but is intensely private about her religious beliefs.

7. The world's most oppressed religion, Judaism, seems uniquely exempt from this in some ways.  Secular Jews get tarred with the same brush as highly religious ones, while on the flip side, at least in contemporary America, opposing somebody simply because they are Jewish remains intolerable. Having said that, the prejudices that have resurfaced under the Trump Administration now make this statement suspect, as openly hating Jews because heya re Jews has returned (openly hating Catholics because they are Catholic will not be far behind).  

I'll also note that I've heard open contempt for the Mayor of New York, simply because he's Muslim. But then, at the same time, at least two members of Congress have received open contempt for the same thing, with one receiving contempt from Donald Trump seemingly because she's a black African.

8. I'll note that Mike Johnson, who at one time compared himself to a Biblical Patriarch, is on record as being too busy to alway attend church.

This is baloney. I've, to my regret, often worked seven days a week, but I make Mass.  I'd gladly exchange my role with Mike's.

9. Wihtin a generation, for multiple reasons, this will be a Catholic country.

Prior editions:

Questions hunters, fishermen, and public lands users need to ask political candidates. Addressing politicians in desperate times, part 2.

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Addressing politicians in desperate times. A series.

Labels: 2026 Election, 2028 Election, Commentary, Democratic Party, Politics, Questions for politicians, Republican Party, Trailing thread