Religion and Geopolitics Review: Saturday, July 2

by Dr. David Pence and A. Joseph Lynch

I. THE POPE, THE MARXIST CARDINAL, APOLOGIES, MISDIRECTION, AND GENOCIDE

Another plane interview with the Pope. Read the full interview to see how out of context the reporting is, and to see how fascinating is the conversation on returning from Armenia (6/26/2016).

The headlines say 'the Pope says Church must apologize to gays,' but the heart of the interview is about Armenia and genocide, Brexit and community, and the insights of women. He defended his use of the word genocide about Armenia, and said the 20th century is marked by the three genocides:  Armenia, Hitler, and Stalin. During all three the great powers looked away for a time. His position on homosexuals was very unlike Cardinal Marx. He even talks about CONDEMNING some of the more outlandish acts of the political gay movement. No headlines on that line. He also corrected the notion that "the Church" must apologize. No, "CHRISTIANS must apologize, the CHURCH IS HOLY." This is a critical distinction lost by liberals and conservatives alike. The Pope goes forward to Poland and Azerbaijan, but the US press has only time for "apologizing to gays." It is as if the communal life of religions and nations does not exist - only gender ideology.

ON WOMEN:  "The women think differently from us, and one cannot make a good decision without listening to women. Sometimes in Buenos Aires, I consulted with my advisers, and then I asked women to come and they saw things in another light, which departed greatly . . . But, then, the solutions (were) very fruitful, very lovely. . . But this, I would like to emphasize, is more important: the way of understanding, of thinking, of seeing of women and the capabilities of women. The Church is a woman. It is 'la Chiesa', who is not a spinster; she is a woman married to the son of God, she is the spouse of Jesus Christ."

ON USING GENOCIDE TO DESCRIBE ARMENIAN EVENT:  "I didn’t know another word. I come from this word. When I arrived in Rome, I heard another word: 'The Great Evil' or the 'terrible tragedy,' but in Armenian, I don’t know how to say it… and they tell me that no, that that is offensive, that of 'genocide,' and that you must say this. I’ve always spoke of three genocides in the last century… always three! The first was the Armenian, then that of Hitler, and the last is that of Stalin… there are small ones, there is another in Africa, but as in the orbit of the two great wars there are these three… I’ve asked why… 'but some feel like it’s not true, that there wasn’t a genocide'... another said to me… a lawyer told me this that really interested me: the word 'genocide' is a technical word. It’s a word that has a technicity that it is not a synonym of 'extermination.' You can say extermination, but declaring a 'genocide' brings with it actions of reparation… this is what the lawyer said to me. Last year, when I was preparing the speech, I saw that St. John Paul II had used the word, that he used both: Great Evil and genocide. And I cited that one in quotation marks… and it wasn’t received well."

ON HOMOSEXUALS - NOT MARX AT ALL:  "I will repeat what I said on my first trip. I repeat what the Catechism of the Catholic Church says: that they must not be discriminated against, that they must be respected and accompanied pastorally. One can condemn, but not for theological reasons, but for reasons of political behavior... Certain manifestations are a bit too offensive for others, no? ... But these are things that have nothing to do with the problem. The problem is a person that has a condition, that has good will and who seeks God, who are we to judge? And we must accompany them well...this is what the catechism says, a clear catechism. Then there are traditions in some countries, in some cultures that have a different mentality on this problem. I think that the Church must not only ask forgiveness – like that “Marxist Cardinal” said [laughs] – must not only ask forgiveness to the gay person who is offended. But she must ask forgiveness to the poor too, to women who are exploited, to children who are exploited for labor. She must ask forgiveness for having blessed so many weapons. The Church must ask forgiveness for not behaving many times – when I say the Church, I mean Christians! The Church is holy, we are sinners! – Christians must ask forgiveness for having not accompanied so many choices, so many families..I remember from my childhood the culture in Buenos Aires, the closed Catholic culture. I go over there, eh! A divorced family couldn’t enter the house, and I’m speaking of 80 years ago. The culture has changed, thanks be to God."

CARDINAL MARX ON THE OTHER HAND: (FROM 'NCR' ARTICLE) -- "German Cardinal Reinhard Marx wants the church to do more than apologize to gay people - a statement Pope Francis affirmed June 26. He said society must create structures to respect their rights, like civil unions, and the church should 'not to be against them.' Marx made his comments to journalists in Dublin, where he had delivered a keynote address at the conference 'The Role of the Church in a Pluralist Society: Good Riddance or Good Influence?' hosted by the Loyola Institute in Trinity College. Marx, who is president of the German bishops' conference and a member of the pope's advisory council of nine cardinals, called on not just the church to apologize to gays and lesbians, but society as a whole, which he said was implicated in this 'terrible scandal.' 'The history of homosexuals in our society is a very bad history because we have done a lot to marginalizes them. It is not so long ago and so as church and as society we have to say sorry.' The 62-year-old cardinal archbishop of Munich and Freising reiterated his view, expressed at the first Synod of Bishops on the Family in 2014, that, 'You cannot say that a long-term relationship between a man and a man, who are faithful, is nothing. That it has no worth.' He admitted his views had shocked some at the synod. Referring to the passing of legislation in Germany recognizing civil partnerships, he urged the church 'not to be against them'. He said the state had to make arrangements for homosexuals so that their rights are recognized as equal but he also suggested that marriage is something different. So far, there has been no move in Germany to permit gay partners to marry."

The position of Cardinal Marx of Germany and Bishop Lynch of Florida is diametrically opposed to the position of Pope Francis and the Catechism. To the Pope there is "nothing remotely analogous" about homosexual relations to marriage. To Marx and Lynch male homosexual relations are a form of LOVE which deserves respect. Again, the most important apology relating to homosexuality and Catholic clergy should come from the huge hidden subculture of homosexual priests and bishops who perpetrated and covered the sex abuse scandals in Germany, the US and Dublin. How can anyone say the Catholic clergy was not welcoming to gays in the last 40 years - we turned our priesthood and episcopacies of several large rich countries over to them and their sympathizers. This is especially true in the sexually corrupted, financially plush state-supported dioceses of Germany.

II. ISLAM AND THE MIDDLE EAST

ISIS HAPPENED BEFORE - THE FOUNDING AND EXTENSION OF SAUDI ARABIA: An excellent history essay.

ARE WE REALLY AT WAR WITH SAUDI ARABIA? A six-point strategy for war against the Salafists and Saudi Arabia by Dr Pence.

TURKEY HIT BY ISIS. COULD THEY STRIKE BACK?
Turkey (72% Sunni, 28% Shia) has been an ISIS enabler to this point focusing hostility on their wars with the Kurds and Syria and animosity toward Russia. They are actually ranked the Mideast premier military power. If they were part of a serious coalition to destroy ISIS, it would happen.

III. NATIONS R&G ROUND-UP

BREXIT - NATIONS RISING AS THE GLOBALIST PRESS MELTS: Buchanan applauds. The Washington Post says double down on NATO so we can show Putin (of Russia) and Xi (of China) there is still a West with Brits and US arrayed against them.

THE RUSSIAN SOUL: Putin, Tolstoy, and Dostoevsky. Each nation has a gift - a ray of life. The real Russian project.

POLAND SET FREE FROM THE SOVIETS - A NEW FILM: From a review of the film: liberating Continent - JPII and the fall of communism. "Interestingly, the film rightly posits the beginning of the end of the Polish Communist regime with one event. On the first trip to Poland, in 1979, at the Mass in Victory Square the Holy Father prayed loudly and intently for the Holy Spirit to come upon his homeland and set it free. As he did so, something happened."

IV. PRESIDENTIAL POLITICS

NEO-CON KAGAN FOR HILLARY -- SHE WAS A HIGH ALTITUDE WARRIOR AS FIRST LADY, TOO: The husband of Victoria Nuland is stumping for Mrs. Clinton. Globalism vs. nationalism really is the debate. Hillary, Madeleine, and getting Bill to bomb those Serbs.

THE REVOLT OF THE ELITES - AN ANALYSIS OF TRUMP: American Conservative Editor McConnell - very good article and reminder of the early campaign.

TRUMP SPEECH: His most coherent sustained differentiation of the two candidates.

V. AMERICAN CULTURE R&G ROUND-UP

FROM 'A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS' TO 'BONNIE AND CLYDE': A masterful piece on the degradation of cinema and the new Hollywood. Real insight about one facet that turned American culture.

THE SEXUAL LEFT: The best historian of the sexual left is Professor Paul Kengor. Here he is on an influential founder of America’s homosexual/leftist connection.

NEW CHAIR OF RELIGIOUS FREEDOM: Fr. Thomas Reese, SJ, appointed by President as Chair of Religious Freedom.

RUST BELT PATRIOTISM BEATS THE CALIFORNIA VALLEY: From Cleveland on Lebron James - God, Country, and the NBA championship.

Friday BookReview: The sneakily simple play that may be America's greatest

(first published December 5, 2014)

"Want to tell you something about that boy Joe Crowell there. Joe was awful bright -- graduated from high school here, head of his class. So he got a scholarship to Massachusetts Tech. Graduated head of his class there, too. It was all wrote up in the Boston paper at the time. Goin' to be a great engineer, Joe was. But the war broke out and he died in France. -- All that education for nothing."                                                                                    (Stage Manager addressing the audience)

               

Thornton Wilder wrote 'Our Town' between the World Wars. Set in a small New Hampshire town, the play opens in the spring of 1901. (Hal Holbrook gave one of the best portrayals of the Stage Manager.)

What is it about? As Emily, one of the main characters, puts it: "Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it? -- every, every minute?"          

                                                                                     

                                                                                 

Mr. Wilder, son of a diplomat (and strong Christian), grew up in China. He was an artillery corporal in the First World War; and rose to lieutenant colonel doing intelligence work in WWII.  

This 7-minute video will give you a better idea of what animates the heart of the play.





Arthur Ballet, longtime professor at the University of Minnesota, contended that 'Our Town' was suffused with elements of Greek tragedy.
(Taking his lecture course on the history of theater, I would exit each session walking on air. He regularly offered up a brief panegyric on the hidden depths of Wilder's classic.)

This short clip of the closing scene reveals why the actress Penelope Ann Miller is considered the finest interpreter of Emily.

"Now there are some things we all know, but we don't take'm out and look at'm very often. We all know that something is eternal. And it ain't houses and it ain't names, and it ain't earth, and it ain't even the stars... everybody knows in their bones that something is eternal, and that something has to do with human beings. All the greatest people ever lived have been telling us that for five thousand years and yet you'd be surprised how people are always losing hold of it. There's something way down deep that's eternal about every human being."                                                                                               (Stage Manager)

                                                     

   [sketches by David Tripp]

                                        

                                                                                   

Religion and Geopolitics Review: Saturday, June 25

by Dr. David Pence and A. Joseph Lynch

I. BREXIT AND THE RISE OF NATIONS

Citizens in the United Kingdom (England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland) voted for Great Britain to leave the European Union. This was against the urging of the British Prime Minister who has resigned and the US president. It was against the advice of the cosmopolitan press and financial experts. The vote to leave was led by older voters and the working class of the English countryside. Scots and Northern Ireland, as well as the city of London, voted strongly to remain. A leftist-dominated Scotland will now probably vote to leave Britain and stay in the European Union. This will cause acute economic re-configurations. Long term it is devastating to the European project and its institutions -- the EU and NATO. The two foreign leaders who will cheer this are Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump. The foreign leader most discredited by this action is Merkel of Germany.

II. ORLANDO TERROR

ORLANDO - A FAMILIAR SOFT TARGET FOR A JIHADIST OR A HATE CRIME AGAINST HOMOSEXUALS: We know the gunman was an excellent marksman. We know his father is misdirecting the narrative. He said his son (the shooter Omar Mateen) was upset that his three-year-old boy had seen a couple men kissing. But multiple witnesses have said Mr. Mateen was a regular visitor to the Pulse nightclub. He was not repulsed by the Pulse, and while not adapting a gay identity, he had no problems with male-male sexual contact for release. We need to see much more of the transcripts of negotiations. But what has been released makes no comments about the degeneracy of the club. When asked his name he stated: "My name is I pledge allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi of the-Islamic State." Now that is a pretty clear identity and plenty of motivation.

The New York Times, the FBI, and  NBC have been quick to downplay his proclivity for same-sex relations. Almost all political officials have said this was an attack on "the LGBT community for who they are.” The FBI has said there is no physical evidence that “he was gay”. There are multiple witnesses to his homosexual interests but technically witnesses are not “evidence.”  There will also be some publicity seekers  whose lies will be used to discredit all other testimony. There is desire to paint this story as more hate crime and  less jihad.  But once the gay pride parade season is over, the obvious truth will emerge if there are men who will speak it. It will help if we understand the man who did the mass shooting has told us clearly why he did it. It will also help if we leave the peculiar modern western notion that same sex encounters constitute a “gay identity."  Along with 99.9% of all men who have regularly or sporadically engaged in such acts, Mr. Mateen would never consider himself or call himself “gay" and neither would his relatives.   It seems more likely that the Pulse club was a very well known, very soft target in which one killer could execute a maximum number of Americans in retaliation for "bombing my country" and in solidarity with the new Islamic caliphate of al-Baghdadi. He knew the place well and did not fear there would be a "let’s roll" response to thwart him. At one point he asked people hiding in the bathroom if there were any blacks among them. He said he would spare them  because they had suffered enough. As of now there are no reports that he made any distinctions of special animus in terms of sexual proclivities.

A homosexual nightclub (like the printing offices of Charlie Hebdo’s anti-religious pornography magazine) will prove to be an irresistible symbol of a depraved United States for ISIS propaganda. ISIS will spin this as a heroic single Muslim gunman able to kill fifty and wound fifty spiritually emasculated Americans. This model of warfare is much more deadly and repeatable than the highly coordinated, capital intensive attacks of 9/11 which required government level organization and funds. This was a huge loss for America.

III. THE NATIONS ROUND-UP

CHINA AND INDIA - PICKING SIDES, GOADING DIFFERENCES, LIVING TOGETHER: Getting these two civilizational nations right is what  the "tilt toward Asia" is really about. This review of Manuel’s new book is a good start. Anja Manuel, This Brave New World: India, China and the United States.

IS THE US POLICY TO SURROUND THE CORE CIVILIZATIONAL STATES OF RUSSIA, CHINA, AND IRAN? "In the coming era, the avoidance of major intercivilizational wars requires core states to refrain from interfering in conflicts of other civilizations." Samuel Huntington.

US fleet forward in Pacific. Apparently no one read Huntington’s book (Clash of Civilizations) about allowing regional powers their own spheres of influence in a post-bipolar world. The US is building up military forces against Russia on her land border to the West and against China on its eastern sea border. Both countries were attacked from these areas of US build-up in WWII - a war in which those two allies of the US lost millions more soldiers and civilians than we did. In the Mideast, here is a typical rather hysterical account of how "our allies" like Saudi Arabia are feeling abandoned because the US is not doing enough to restrain the hegemony of Iran. Hegemony is the state of dominance by one power in a region. It is a fairly natural state of affairs which can be acceded to by lesser powers (often called bandwagoning) or opposed (often called balancing) when allies are recruited against the dominant power.

ARMS INDUSTRY - TOP SELLERS AND TOP BUYERS: The top buyers are Saudi Arabia (by a big margin), India, Egypt, UAE, Australia and South Korea. The five top sellers are a who’s who in the UN Security Council: USA, France, Russia, China, and then Germany. Is there something wrong with this picture?

IV. AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY, DOMESTIC AFFAIRS, AND PRESIDENTIAL POLITICS

BODY COUNT - OBAMA AS MCNAMARA: In answering a June 12 question about why Islamic terrorism was not named as the enemy, press secretary Josh Earnest defended the strategic incoherence with this: "Obama's record combating terrorism speaks for itself, and that record includes a lot of dead terrorists." This reminds us of the worst days of General Westmoreland in Vietnam and the "body count" rubric for success. While there is no clear strategy it is true there have been a lot of killings.

From a Council on Foreign Relations report on death by drones: "As of today (January 2016), there have been approximately 550 strikes - 50 under George W. Bush, 500 under Obama, which have cumulatively killed an estimated 3,405 militants and 470 civilians." -Micah Zenko in January 2016 report on those killed by drones.

HILLARY AND THE SAUDIS: The Saudis got this quote offline in a hurry but they are big fans of Mrs. Clinton's campaign. They put their money where their mouths are. What if the state we need to declare war against is Saudi Arabia?

THE WAR CAUCUS: Fifty officials in the State Department sent an unusual letter to the president urging resumption of bombing of Assad government. While the president seems to passively welcome Assad and Russia fighting ISIS, there are plenty of dissenters in his government. This could be résumé padding for a job interview with a future Clinton administration. Mrs. Clinton has been much more hostile toward Assad than has President Obama.

IMMIGRATION REFORM NEEDED BUT NOT BY FIAT: The Supreme Court was deadlocked and thus a lower court voiding President Obama’s executive action to change the status of millions of illegal immigrants will not go into effect. The one best chance President Obama had to reform immigration was in his first term when he had both House and Senate majorities. No laws were passed at that time and thus he tried to do by fiat what he chose not to do by legislation earlier.

Friday BookReview: "Uncle Tom's Cabin"

[Doc Pence has long considered Mrs. Stowe's 1852 classic, which outsold every other fictional work of the 19th century, as the Great American Novel.

The masthead lookout, however, promises that a review of Farmer's nomination will swim into view next month "spouting his frothed defiance to the skies."]



             

Here are excerpts from an essay by Kelly S. Franklin (he's a professor at Hillsdale College):

In its first year of publication, Uncle Tom’s Cabin sold more copies in America than the Bible did.

The novel catapulted Harriet Beecher Stowe onto the world stage, and by 1854, only two years after publication, the novel had been translated into 37 different languages. Attacking the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which forced free states to assist in recovering escaped slaves, Stowe ignited the powder keg of popular sentiments surrounding the tragedy of American slavery. She gave us the memorable figures of Uncle Tom and Little Eva, and the daring escape of Eliza Harris across the floating ice of the Ohio River...

As a professor of American literature, I face a challenge every time I teach Stowe’s famous book in the classroom. Her stock characters, her melodramatic set pieces, and the moralizing of her narrator grate on 21st-century readers. Yet this strange, sensational novel remains one of the most important works in our cultural heritage.

Is it, we might ask, just an artifact of our history? Do we dutifully overlook Stowe’s imperfect artistry for the sake of the admirable (if dated) anti-slavery message of her book? But as we read it, we find that inexplicable power surging between the lines of her prose. "You’re going to hate it," I tell my students, "and then you’re going to love it."

So why do I teach Uncle Tom’s Cabin? I teach it not only because of its anti-slavery message, but just as importantly because of the way that Stowe delivers it. That is, I think Stowe’s great contribution to American culture lies not merely in rejecting slavery, but in the amazing narrative technique that deeply moved millions of readers. Stowe’s powerful novel works not so much by arguing against the evils of slavery (although it does), but rather by bringing readers face-to-face with a suffering fellow human being. In that encounter, she creates dramatic moments of empathy that—for Stowe—serve as the necessary foundation for any future social or legal action. Her approach, even a century and a half after slavery’s abolition, remains extremely relevant to us today, as we face our own array of moral and societal evils. Stowe offers a fundamentally democratic approach to solving national problems: we must first change hearts if we want to change laws.

                       

       

By the time Stowe wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin, all the arguments for and against slavery had already been made. Legislators and thinkers on both sides of this divisive issue had used philosophy, economics, science, law, and even the Bible to make their case. But in Stowe’s mind, both argument and law had failed the American people, and the United States needed an approach that appealed instead to the human heart. Even for many Americans opposed to slavery, the issue remained somewhat abstract; but Stowe’s novel brings her readers into a fictional encounter with an individual slave, where human empathy—the power of shared feeling—does the work that other forms of persuasion had failed to do.

To bring about this encounter, Stowe consciously draws readers into the world of her novel. In the fourth chapter, titled "An Evening in Uncle Tom’s Cabin," she even addresses us directly with this invitation: describing Tom’s home, a “small log building,” Stowe’s narrator says, “Let us enter into the dwelling.” Indeed, the title of the novel itself is Uncle Tom’s Cabin so that when we begin to read, we enter the book itself, as if we were entering the cabin...

In the ninth chapter of her novel, titled "In Which It Appears that a Senator Is But a Man," Stowe takes readers into another home, that of the fictional Ohio senator John Bird, who is personally opposed to slavery but a vocal advocate of the Fugitive Slave Act. The senator defends this contradiction to his wife, protesting, "Mary! Mary! My dear, let me reason with you." We can hear Stowe’s own frustration in Mrs. Bird’s response: "I hate reasoning, John,—especially reasoning on such subjects. There’s a way you political folks have of coming round and round a plain right thing." For Stowe, American reasoning can no longer be trusted, because politicians have sacrificed the good and the true upon the altar of the pragmatic.

But when the escaped slave Eliza Harris, fleeing the Kentucky master who tried to sell her child, arrives on Senator Bird’s doorstep in distress, Stowe creates an encounter that changes the heart of the legislator. The abstract issues of law and property collide with the physical presence of a suffering woman and her child. The senator, struck by Eliza’s real sorrow, and by her fierce love for her child—for he, too, is a father—rejects the Fugitive Slave Act and breaks the law. Stowe’s narrator tells us that, before this encounter,

his idea of a fugitive was only an idea of the letters that spell the word,—or , at the most, the image of a little newspaper picture of a man with a stick and bundle, with “Ran away from the subscriber” under it. The magic of the real presence of distress,—the imploring human eye, the frail, trembling human hand, the despairing appeal of helpless agony,—these he had never tried.

Here it is the vaguely Eucharistic "real presence" of an actual escaped slave (Stowe claimed to have conceived the novel during a communion service) that converts Senator Bird. Empathy—the compassionate experience of another’s suffering—rather than logic or debate, has won. Senator Bird himself helps Eliza escape, driving her by carriage at night to a safe location. Empathy has turned into real charitable action, for as Mrs. Bird says to her husband, "Your heart is better than your head."

Stowe does more than change the hearts of her characters; she acts out this life-changing encounter for her readers in hopes that we will respond in kind. To move us in this way, she leaves one tragedy unanswered by the resolution of the novel: the brutal murder of Uncle Tom at the hands of Simon Legree. Tom’s death, for all its melodrama and heavy-handed Christian allegory, retains real dramatic power and clinches Stowe’s appeal to empathy. The characters in the novel cannot save Tom. Now it is we whose hearts must change to end the horror of human slavery. Stowe leaves it to us to decide what comes next...

The meeting between President Lincoln and Mrs. Stowe

Francis and Fraternity: Orthodox/Catholic unity

Maybe it is time for all of us -- the broad spectrum of defenders and critics -- to take a break from the cycle of Pope Francis' impromptu remarks transmitted through the jarring megaphones of today's media.

Slow down when you have a chance, and listen to this recent address (40 minutes, followed by questions) of Orthodox bishop TARASIOS. Much of it is about the close friendship he forged with Francis when both of them led their flocks in Buenos Aires.

Metropolitan Tarasios was born in Gary, Indiana, in 1956. One of the men he studied under was the Jesuit expert on Eastern Christianity, Father Robert Taft (part of the political family). Tarasios spent four years in Rome, and later worked with the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople: Bartholomew. That high cleric (accompanied by Metropolitans Tarasios and Zizioulas) attended the inaugural Mass of Pope Francis -- the first time that had occurred in all of Church history!
                                         

Patriarch and Pope