Religion, Nations, and Geopolitical Review: Saturday March 2

by A. Joseph Lynch and Dr. David Pence

I. POPE FRANCIS & THE CATHOLIC CHURCH 

FIVE MORE MCCARRICKS WHO SHOULD  BE LAICIZED: Bishop Accountability has wisely limited their accusations to five bishops who should be defrocked. Two of them are still desecrating the Mass because of authority failures by Archbishop Vigano and Cardinal Ray Burke. Clerics who have committed sodomy as priests should never approach the altar as priests again. Christ told Judas," Go quickly, and do what you have to do." He never acted as an Apostle of the Eucharist.

POPE FRANCIS ENDS SUMMIT AGAINST CHILD ABUSE: This work of the Devil will no longer be tolerated. It calls down the wrath of God. The Pope began the summit by putting the crime of child abuse and sex trafficking in a larger context. As the priesthood reforms itself from the interlocking cabals and closets of careerism, clericalism and  the lavender "parish", expect the fraternity of fathers to aim a blow at the commercialization of everything under global capitalism - especially our children.

CARDINAL BRANDMULLER - WHY HIS LETTER TO ABUSE SUMMIT: Homosexuality in priesthood is a sacrilege against the sacraments - against God. This is at the root of the abuse crisis. Men with this behavior who administer the sacraments are dragging sacraments through the mud.
An interview. We should note that Cardinal Brandmuller is a very different man than Cardinal Burke who sent the same letter. We consider Burke deeply embedded in the psychology of the effete and as a judge he is scandalously culpable for Guam's Apuron (a homosexual rapist) still wearing clerics. Burke's willingness to discuss homosexuality within the priesthood as the fundamental cultural problem in the fraternity of fathers is a very new found courage. There is a reason he was truly demoted by Pope Francis and it wasn't simply his rigid form of doctrinal orthodoxy.

THE PRESS SHOULD EXPOSE THREE CLERICS CLOSELY AFFILIATED WITH POPE FRANCIS: They are doing a good job on Argentina Bishop Zanchetti. They need  more factual dossiers on Cardinals Maradiaga and Cupich. Pope Francis has the wrong generals around him to lead the reform. It took Lincoln several tries to find his Grant.

CARDINAL PELL - SOMETHING DOESN'T SMELL RIGHT ON THIS CONVICTION:
Australia bags the cardinal. The Vatican should not agree and their disagreement should be loud and clear.

THE OMERTA OF THE CLOSET: Excellent review of In the Closet of the Vatican by homosexual Catholic Andrew Sullivan. There is no gay conspiracy - just "a honeycomb of closets".
We have two choices - Sullivan's: Let us open the priesthood to women and gays while acknowledging homosexuality as one form of human love,  or AOA: Laicize all priests who have committed sodomy as a cleric and define in canon law that the act of sodomy is such a sacrilege against the Father-Son relationship of the priesthood & Eucharist that by the act the clerical offender is defrocked. Sexual abuse of a minor and familial incest should be treated as similar crimes against the sacred office - the spiritual paternity of the priest.

POPE FRANCIS AS ANTI-CHRIST: Here is the case by Julia Meloni writing at Crisis.  Michael Matt at the Remnant, Tim Gordon and Marshall Taylor at TnT, John Henry Weston at Life Site News and Michael Voris at Church Militant are all coming to accept some version of this view. Robert Royal, Raymond Arroyo, and Fr. Gerald Murray at EWTN are also deeply enmeshed in this thinking.

Let this be stated first. This article by Ms. Meloni is based on a hundred true facts. She is right that most of the Pope's allies are very much for the kind of Church she is painting. That Church would no longer be Marian or Apostolic.

Apostolic synodality, which is widespread patriarchal fraternity, is not the feminist fruit of "the Parish" that author Martel and Cardinal Kaspar desire and Ms. Meloni fears. The conversation is getting better. Ms Meloni's piece is pure parrhesia. We like that straight talk. The Catholic journalists do a great service to the Church and to Francis by exposing the many corrupt clergymen (too many of whom are close to the Pope). But the hysteria of Catholic American conservatives against Pope Francis makes them relatives of the Accuser. They blame Francis who is mounting an exorcism to be acting in league with Beelzebub. They seek to divide us by making us headless at this critical turning point. No Protestant or atheist could do the Church more harm than these apostles turned Judas. They are doing just what Pope Francis feared in his 2013 interview - they are weaponizing the Old Mass as an ideological weapon against Vatican II - not just against Pope Francis but against Vatican II.

When you ride a high speed motorcycle and you want to avoid a hazard you do not focus your eyes on the hazard but the free road ahead. Sodomy is the obstacle. Synodality among men is the free road ahead. For an individual walker focusing on the hazard may be the best strategy. But the Pope is driving a bigger social organism than the bloggers. He is building a process that will act out in time instead of seizing a certain corrupted space. He explains this in the interview below.  

A 2013 INTERVIEW WITH POPE FRANCIS AND FR. ANTONIO SPADARO: Very worthwhile reading slowly. Ask yourself, "Is this the anti-Christ"? The fact that Antonio Spadaro did the interview does not mean he is the Pope's spokesman. He let the Pope speak and did it very well. He served a function like George Weigel introducing Pope John Paul II to the English speakers. But by now we all know that George Weigel is not JPII.  The longer JPII is dead the more apparent is the discrepancy between the pinched Western conservatism of Weigel and the capacious two lung thinking of the Slavic giant. Ted Sorenson never became John F. Kennedy and Tony Spadaro is no Pope Francis.

II. PRESIDENT TRUMP AND AMERICA

PRESIDENT TRUMP PROGRESS NOT JUST WITH NORTH KOREAN LEADER BUT REAL TALKS WITH NATIONALIST VIETNAM IN HANOI: President Trump is meeting the nationalist leaders of Asia - many govern through wide based Communist parties. In  his initial talks with the Vietnamese there was no  crowing about socialism's failure. Neither Communism nor global Capitalism are adequate ideologies for  nations to flourish economically and culturally  at home or abroad. President Trump is a nationalist in a Christian country. He ran against globalism before he set his sights on domestic socialism. The leaders of the Communist parties in China and Vietnam have waged their own deep reforms against the productivity crushing aspects of Marxism - (which is by the way a most western ideology). President Trump and Steve Bannon are for economic nationalism. Let's wake up and deepen the conversation. We must remember the lesson of the 20th century for the Asian countries was to build strong nation states while  encouraging free enterprise within certain national parameters. The lesson for Europe was to integrate Germany into a non nation state bureaucracy to recover as a new entity - the liberal West.
President Trump is meeting and identifying with Asian nation men much more than Euro-female bureaucrats like Theresa May and Angela Merkel. The scenes of the last week leave us much to ponder. His meeting with Kim Jong-un will be followed by meeting another nation-man Xi Jinping of China. Walking away at his moment from the Korean talks is part of a larger later coming together.

THE SECULAR DRIVE TO UNCOVER WOMEN - DRAFTING OUR DAUGHTERS: A Bush Judge says male military duty isn't fair.

THE MAGA WE BELIEVE IN

Above: The black and white cross represents the nationalist path to American Greatness-interracial brotherhood in Christian America

INTERRACIAL MARRIAGE - LIKE CIVIC BROTHERHOOD, A BOND WE HAD TO FIGHT FOR! This riveting tale of the Loving case in Virginia reminds us what a sacrilege it is to compare what they did in 1958 with the "sacralize sodomy" movement of today.

FORGET THE 25TH AMENDMENT.  SPYGATE AND THE DOSSIER ARE THE SCANDAL: From the Federalist 

SEED COMPANIES, MONOPOLIES, AND US FARMING: An extensive article on three companies controlling 60% of US seeds. Anti-trust in Agriculture. Anti-trust laws once meant to protect other producers. Later influenced by Robert Bork, it became consumer driven.

 III. THE NATIONS

MUHAMMAD BIN SALMAN - A TILT TOWARD ASIA: Practical trading partners don't ask questions of the Saudi Crown Prince.

IRAN FOREIGN MINISTER RESIGNS: There are moderates and hard liners in Iran too and US bellicosity does not help the moderates.

INDIA AND PAKISTAN - TWO OF THE MOST DANGEROUS NATIONS IN WORLD: The present crisis. A good documentary on The Partition from whence they came. If you don't know this 1947 story, let this be a time to learn. A million dead; 14 million displaced; Communal hatred unleashed. Another Asian lesson about the need for order and authority. Discussion of dangers between Pakistan and India: To Armageddon and Back by Bruce Reidel. It would be a good idea to call Mr. Reidel the foremost exert in the foreign policy establishment on South Asia .

VENEZUELA LIMA GROUP IN COLUMBIA: The weight of time and the disintegration of authority favors "interim President" Juan Guaido but the many allies do not want US military intervention. Pence, Bolton, Abrams as US spokesmen - they're having trouble proclaiming the new paradigm that is necessary. All three are good at veiled threats of US force. President Trump's bench for diplomats is unfortunately fossilized and weak for a situation ripe for significant progress. More about the Columbia-Venezuela border town where the human avalanche did not happen. (The Second Battle of Cucuta writer is anti-Guaido, but a good teacher of history). In Venezuela, the key will be when some major military institution or leader turns against Maduro. China may play a role in offering him safe passage. Political power still comes out of the barrel of a gun and Guaido needs some guns on his side.

CHINA IN AMERICA: CONFUCIAN INSTITUTES: A government report - where what why.

SAUDI ARABIA AND THE US - A SHORT PRIMER: From Claremont Review.

IV. CULTURE OF LIFE, CULTURE OF PROTECTION

HUGE VICTORY FOR ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN TEACHING ON SEXUAL ORDER: Methodist general meeting - the Africans in the Methodist global meeting take the lead in protecting the sacredness of heterosexual marriage. They say do not treat us as children who need to mature to become like enlightened white people on the problem of homosexuality. A spectacular moment for the triumph of global Christianity over the individualism of the West.

MANHOOD AND CATHOLIC TRADITION: YouTube interview Patrick Coffin, Taylor Marshall, Tim Gordon. Excellent discussion. All three of these men are badly informed on Vigano, Burke, and Pope Francis but they are honest well-read Catholics and this discussion is bracing.

MALENESS, BIOLOGY, AND TRANSGENDER SPORTS INSANITY: The first testosterone splash for a boy is intrauterine. Cardiac output and lung volume as well as muscle mass distribution are gender-normed. It ain't fair.

WHAT A FATHER OWES HIS SON. THE CHOSEN BY CHAIM POTOK: Don Mornes is a Minnesota man in a men's reading group called the Misfits. They recently read The Chosen by Chaim Potok. It is the story of an orthodox Jewish father who raised his son in silence to help teach him the deepest lessons of God, life, and the human soul. If there is any book other than Scripture that attests to the sacred bond of father and son in communicating the Reality of God our Father, this is it. From the Mornes review:

During the discussion at our meeting, there was a question of whether it was right for Reb Saunders to raise Danny Saunders in silence.  I don't think there is a question about it.  I think Chaim Potok is shouting the answer at us.  I think it is the whole point of the book.  It begins with:

"A man is born into this world with only a tiny spark of goodness in him. The spark is God, it is the soul; the rest is ugliness and evil, a shell. The spark must be guarded like a treasure, it must be nurtured, it must be fanned into a flame. It must learn to seek out other sparks, it must dominate the shell. Anything can be a shell, Reuven. Anything. Indifference, laziness, brutality, and genius. Yes. even a great mind can be a shell and choke the spark."

Reb Saunders saw what happened to his brother, who had a mind like Danny.  About his own father's silence to him, he says:

"When his people would ask him why he was so silent with his son, he would say to them that he did not like to talk, words are cruel, words play tricks, they distort what is in the heart, they conceal the heart, the heart speaks through silence. One learns of the pain of others by suffering one's own pain, he would say, by turning inside oneself, by finding one's own soul. And it is important to know of pain, he said. It destroys our self-pride, our arrogance, our indifference toward others. It makes us aware of how frail and tiny we are and of how much we must depend on the Master of the Universe."

Rev Saunders made a great sacrifice for his son.  He suffered perhaps more than Danny with his silence. But he knew what was most important was to preserve the soul of his son.  Later, Rev Saunders says to Danny: 
"Daniel, forgive me . . . for everything . . . I have done. A--a wiser father . . . may have done differently. I am not . . . wise."
When Reuven's father asks:
"Danny, when you have a son of your own, you will raise him in silence?"
"Yes, If I can't find another way." says Danny.
Danny understands what his father has done for him.

AOA comment This book is also about the difference between a mother's love and a father's.  A mother must teach her son that he is loved in a uniquely particular way as he is. A father must teach his son that the ultimate reality is God; that the son has a soul and his soul can be destroyed if he does not stay centered on God.