Religion and Geopolitics Review: Saturday, July 14

By Dr. David Pence and A. Joseph Lynch

WEEKLY BRIEF

JONATHAN HAIDT ON THE ATOMISM OF MODERNS VS. THE LATTICE OF TRADITION: REFLECTIONS ON THE SACRED AND THE PROFANE

Three good videos from Jonathan Haidt. The first video describes how "cosmopolitan liberals live in Atom World" where morality is reduced to avoidance of bodily harm (derived from philosophers like Mill) or being fair (derived from philosophers like Kant). In contrast, traditional society  built as a "Lattice World" of hierarchies that emphasize in-group loyalty, respect, authority, purity, and sanctity. The video also includes a defense of religion as a community's primary source of social capital. Well worth the watch. The second video is longer but a real addition. It includes a helpful "moral electromagnet" analogy (see 48:00) that is tied very closely to religion. Just as a wire moving through a magnetic field generates electricity, so when we circle a sacred object - be it the Eucharist or the flag - we generate a polarity similar to electric current. Circling the sacred unifies the group and while also creating what are akin to positive and negative charges: good and evil, the sacred and the abomination. Finally, in the third, more recent video, Haidt's research helps us better understand the chaos at many universities. Haidt again approaches the problem with religion in mind, seeing the radical left as promoting a new kind of religion with its own dogmas, speech codes, and sacred classifications. It also features both an insightful narrative of how we arrived at today's victimhood culture and also a good explanation of correlation versus causation in statistics as applied to social justice issues.

I. POPE FRANCIS AND THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

ST BENEDICT AND THE MONKS - REPUBLICS OF PRAYER AND LABOR: The great saint, Father of Europe, and the fraternities that formed the public life of the European nations.

CITIZENSHIP, STATUS, AND INTEGRATING IMMIGRANTS: St. Thomas Aquinas should be consulted on the nature of political citizenship.

ITALIAN CLERGY ONCE AGAIN DOES NOT UNDERSTAND ITALIAN NATIONALISM: The nation needs borders or it is not a nation. Italy must be a nation. Italian clerics have a major problem with the ordered civic public of the nation.

IS HOMOSEXUALITY IN THE PRIESTHOOD THAT BIG A DEAL? Tasmanian bishop against the Jesuit head of all Australian Social Services. Phil Lawler lists a host of homosexual bishops outed by civil suits and ignored by fellow bishops. Wyoming bishops - one a homosexual predator, another a failed father. Cardinal Weinstein by Rod Dreher. To protect children, stop priests who degrade men. McCarrick - details, details. From Vesting in Lavender by Anthony Esolen:

Unlike those brothers the apostles, who went forth into the world to lay down their lives for Christ and the Church, these bands in our day have used the Church as a cover, and a means of procurement. They have turned the Church inward upon themselves and their essentially narcissistic and childish desires and deeds.

We should not then be surprised that the Church, in their hands, becomes contentedly anti-apostolic and anti-evangelistic. The leaders make common cause with ambitious women against their enemies: ordinary, healthy, self-assured, masculine men and the women who love and esteem them.

The Mass itself is made soft and effeminate – neither masculine nor feminine. I have often noted that every single hymn in vast repertory of Christian hymnody that has anything to do with fighting for Christ, hymns going back all the way to Prudentius and Venantius Fortunatus, has been banished from the hymnals, except for For All the Saints. 

That one exception we may attribute to the need to have something or other for All Saints’ Day, and even then, in many hymnals I have seen, the lyrics are made squishy, or the stanzas with the most fight in them are simply dropped.
 These leaders are simply not interested in taking on the world.

But that is the raison d’être of the brotherhood. Men who are friends, soldiers in the field, do not gaze into each other’s eyes, melting. Your drill sergeant does not call himself Uncle Ted. He does not write lovey letters to you, after he has snuggled you into a compromise. He does not engage in spiritual bribery and blackmail.

Men who stand shoulder to shoulder – you can picture them in your mind’s eye, leaning against a fence or a car or a tank – look out in the same direction, towards the world to conquer. That has been the orientation, the direction to take, of every true leader of men the Church has known, from Peter and Paul to Benedict, from Francis and Dominic to Ignatius, from John Bosco to Jose Maria Escriva.

We have the Lord’s own choice to follow, ordaining men to form that band of brothers. Men, not just anatomical males. They might get something done.

II. ISLAM AND THE MIDDLE EAST 

SAUDI ARABIA - BEST SUMMARY ARTICLE ON PRECARIOUS HOLD OF CROWN PRINCE MUHAMMED BIN SALMAN: By Bruce Reidel.

SAUDI ARABIA, ROBERT MUELLER, GEORGE BUSH, AND THE SAUDIS: The real story of foreign collision affecting American policy may be exposed through the lawsuit of victims of 9/11 against the Saudi government.

III. AMERICAN POLITICS

THE NEVER TRUMPERS MISSED NATIONALISM AS THE DRIVING FORCE IN THE POST WWII/COLD WAR ERA: From Pat Buchanan.

A BLACK DEMOCRATIC LEADER REJECTED BY DEMOCRATS FOR HIS CHRISTIANITY: Black Christians are welcome if they leave their Christianity at the door.

HOWARD ZINN'S AMERICA: His narrative has been dominate for twenty years. When will Christian patriots tell our nation's story?

NAME ME A NATION: Jimmy Kimmel's own lackluster conception of geopolitics aside, his quiz of average Americans' knowledge of world geography is unsurprising - but the winner of the challenge is exactly who we'd hope to expect.

IV. CULTURE OF LIFE, CULTURE OF PROTECTION

THE COACH AND BOYS FROM THAILAND ARE SAFE - NOW ABOUT THE MEN WHO SAVED THEM AND THE ART OF CAVE DIVING: Why cave diving is so dangerous - a remarkable interview about the realities of caves vs. open water diving.

HABITS - THE GARB OF WOMEN: The feminine uniform of piety, purity, and interiority.

ABORTION - SACRAMENT OF THE LEFT. ABOMINATION TO THE CULTURE OF PROTECTION: Making Abortion the highest good - Shapiro. A culture of life is a culture of protection.