Religion and Geopolitics Review: Saturday, November 25

by Dr. David Pence and A. Joseph Lynch 

THE WEEKLY BRIEF

"...with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience...we fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility and union."  
Abraham Lincoln establishing Thanksgiving as a national day of repentance and prayer.

I. POPE FRANCIS AND THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

PRIEST, JESUIT, LATIN AMERICAN: Understanding Pope Francis. It helps to read Spanish.

THE PERSON - WHERE THE WORD CAME FROM: Christians recruited the word "person" to describe the interpersonal nature of a Father, Son and Holy Spirit. That made the word much richer describing a much richer reality.  This divine vocabulary now helps us describe the phenomenon of man. Human persons are like the eukaryotic cells that make up multicellular organisms. We are like the three persons in the Trinitarian God. We are meant to live in a deep web of interlocking relations. At the deepest is the Mystical Body of Christ. The Nation and Marriage are two other sacred interpersonal covenants which demonstrate the communal nature of the person.

Roger Scruton is severely limited as a thinker because he cannot humble his mighty intellect to worship and submit to God. But he is intellectually honest enough to always lead his readers very close to the truth. From Roger Scruton's book On Human Nature:

The term persona comes to us from the Roman and Etruscan theater, where it denoted the mask worn by the actor and therefore the character whom the actor portrayed. The term was borrowed by Roman law to describe any entity that has judiciable rights and duties, including corporate entities and other more abstract constructions. It was borrowed again by early Christian theologians in order to explain the doctrine of the Trinity, by distinguishing the three persons of God. Discussions of the Trinity led to the view that personhood belongs to the essence of whatever possesses it, and the sixth-century philosopher Boethius took this as his cue in defining the essential nature of the human being.

CATHOLIC INTELLECTUALS AS NEOCONS: There is a certain kind of Catholic intellectual well tenured at secular universities who portrays himself as the "prophet" but does not really contend with the atheistic anti sexual anti culture of the Academy. A brutal takedown and rigorous analysis by Bruce Frohnen of the intellectual paucity of Princeton's Robert George.

THE REFORMATION 500 YEARS AGO: Luther split apart Christendom. He desacralized the Mass, the Monasteries and Mary.  The sacred liturgy, the priesthood and human nature were all deformed after the rebellion. Five Books reviewed by Frederick Blonigen tell this tale.

ON THE OTHER HAND: The translations of the Bible into German and English were followed centuries later by missionary movements translating the word of God for multiple cultures in their own tongue. How many men were brought closer to Christ because of these encounters with the Word? The great republican nations of the Netherlands and the United States are fruits of the preaching of the Reformation. So was much of the antislavery movement in the 19th century and the interracial Christian civil rights movement of the 20th century. The two great worldwide Christian movements of the 20th century are the very Catholic Second Vatican Council and the very Protestant Pentecostal outpouring. The price of the Reformation was paid most dearly in Germany. May a reformed Catholic Church and a repentant German nation find a way to redeem all the blood spilled in this ongoing conflict.

A SIGN OF THE SACRED: The black cassock of the priest.

LIVING AS A ZOMBIE: Why some men kill.

NOT LIVING AS A ZOMBIE: Fr. James Schall on sad songs.

II. ISLAM AND THE MIDDLE EAST

YEMEN: The different interests in the war - good background and analysis.

IS THE SUNNI LEBANESE PRIME MINISTER: A hostage of the Saudis?  He is back in Lebanon but what really happened to the Sunni leader who was in a coalition with the Shiites of Hezbollah and the Maronite Christians of Lebanon.

ISRAEL DEFENSE CHIEF INTERVIEWED IN SAUDI PRESS: We will share info in battling Iran.
 The Israelis are trusting a foreign prince and his wealth not the Lord. That has never worked out before.

ISRAELI DEFENSE MINISTER: We will not let Syria become a territory of Iran. The Palestinians are yesterday's sideshow. Today's question is: "Will the US join the Saudi war against Shiites and  Israel's war against Iran?

KILLING SUFIS AND SHIITES: MORE VICTIMS OF THE SALAFIST PURIFICATION 
The murder of 250 Sufi Muslims at prayer in the Sinai (Nov 24, 2017) is a bloody reminder of the religious nature of the war in the Mideast. We continue to argue for a major reformulation of our allies and foes against the Salafist Wahhabi movement that treats Shiites and the more mystical Sufi Sunnis as apostates. This branding of fellow Muslims as apostates (and therefore deserving of death) is called takfir.  This purification movement within Islam is advocated by the Wahhabi clergy whose control of Mecca and Medina is protected by the Saudi royal family. There is no-one who knows anything about religion and the Mideast that believed this bombing was orchestrated by the Shiites of Iran. The "greatest worldwide state sponsors of terrorism" are those states that foster the Hanbali legal tradition of the salafists.

III. R&G ROUND UP

A SHORT HISTORY OF UNITARIANS AND: The desacralizing of the American elite. This story is the backdrop of the ideology that fed the American public education system from its East Coast progenitors. Then as now the religious progressivism of Men who were fleeing orthodox Christianity was taught to America's children as the American way.

NO ONE LIKE REGIME CHANGE BUT IF IT MEANS GOODBYE TO GRACE MUGABE - BRING ON THE MILITARY COUP: Mao's actress wife was part of the gang of four which afflicted China with the cultural revolution. Grace Mugabe was plucked from the steno typing pool and made President Mugabe's Royal Queen. She is no Evita. The Clintonian tactic of getting the Presidential office into the hands of the ambitious wife is not going to work in Zimbwabe.  

IS CHINA MEANT TO BE OUR CIVILIZATIONAL ENEMY? Pat Buchanan is not ready to sign on for that long cold war. Steve Bannon doesn't want war with Russia but he sounds like a China hawk.

HOW TO THINK ABOUT PUTIN: By Christopher Caldwell. The best single essay on understanding Putin and the fate of Russia after the Cold War.