Religion and Geopolitics Review: Saturday, July 22

by Dr. David Pence and A. Joseph Lynch

I. POPE FRANCIS AND THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

SECRETARY TO CARDINAL COCCOPALMERIO IN DRUG/HOMOSEXUAL ORGY: The secretary of 79-year-old Cardinal Coccopalmerio was arrested in a CDF-owned apartment during a "drug infused gay orgy." Coccopalmerio is a member of the Congregation for Doctrine of the Faith and chief interpreter of Vatican texts. He was appointed to his offices by Pope Benedict and had recently recommended that his secretary be made a bishop. The CDF has been a notorious center for gay clergy who maintain the letter that homosexuality is a disorder, but always come up short on enforcement and are notorious for their clandestine secret cults. A homosexual Polish priest who worked at CDF was fired after publicly coming out. He wrote a blistering letter to Pope Francis that the clergy from cardinals to priests are full of homosexuals and he was fired for being honest.

The "orthodox" American Catholic press is full of laborious reasoned arguments against the new book by Jesuit James Martin advocating a more pastoral approach to the LGBTQ lobby. None of the reviewers take on the central fact in Martin's Jesuit order and every major urban center in America that there are already huge homosexual clergy subcultures who were made to feel very welcome in Catholic seminaries while greasing their trips up the career ladders in the church. Thirty years ago the homosexual seminarians were much more flamboyant in their proclivities. Now they are told to be discreet which has made their merry band of special brothers even more the insiders. How can the welcome mat for homosexuals be any more accommodating than the diocese of our nation's capital headed by Cardinal "Uncle Ted" McCarrick from 2001-2006 and now Cardinal Donald "Donna"Wuerl? (Here is a defense of Cardinal Wuerl).

This abomination has emasculated our priesthood and episcopacy. This radical desacralization of fatherhood and fraternity is the still unpunished cause of the clerical abuse scandal which disfigures the Body of Christ. When Cardinal Wuerl was asked if allowing open homosexuals throughout the US military would adversely effect the armed forces he said the Catholic Church had no position on the issue. The Church may have no official position but we are a living testament. Incest is very bad for brotherhood. The homosexual problem in the Catholic clergy is NOT a policy or doctrinal issue. It is a personnel problem, and there are no bishops right now who will face their duplicitous brothers. For two decades the Church has been explicit that homosexuals should not be allowed in the seminaries -- very explicit. What about the episcopacy? Should homosexuals be allowed to stay in that apostolic role? What is the message? Sneak through the seminaries, and there will be  plenty of wink-wink clerics who will help you up the career ladder.

VATICAN NEWSPAPER EMBARRASSING ANALYSIS OF AMERICAN POLITICS: The Fr. Spadaro article: Evangelical Fundamentalism and Catholic Integralism in the USA: a Strange Ecumenism. Some withering reviews: by Samuel Gregg and Fr. Raymond De Sousa. The best response, however, was by a Catholic thinker who has a map in his head and measurable testosterone in his blood stream. Austin Ruse. No serious American will think the Vatican editors understand American politics. This statement about Pope Francis casts doubt about their knowledge of Francis.

"Francis wants to break the organic link between culture, politics, institution and Church."

As the pope's biographer, Austen Ivereigh, noted: this is neither the language nor the voice of Francis. The editors' lumping of the biblically inspired black civil rights movement with atheistic communism and anti-patriarchal feminism is a typical error of the left, as is their juxtaposition of exclusionary land base Old Testament thinking with "Imagine there are no borders" inclusivity of the New Testament. From the Spadaro text:

"The panorama of threats to their understanding of the American way of life have included modernist spirits, the black civil rights movement, the hippy movement, communism, feminist movements and so on. And now in our day there are the migrants and the Muslims. To maintain conflict levels, their biblical exegeses have evolved toward a decontextualized reading of the Old Testament texts about the conquering and defense of the “promised land,” rather than be guided by the incisive look, full of love, of Jesus in the Gospels."

This text is an embarrassment in which anti-American animus (especially against those benighted southern whites) is its driving force. This screed tells us nothing about America and less about Pope Francis. Apparently, the Vatican pundits missed the rather interesting fact that "Conservative Catholic intellectuals" who had supported Reagan and George Bush were ostentatiously opposed to Donald Trump and his emphasis on God, manual workers, and nationalism. They had preferred to champion natural law reasoning, creative capitalism of free trade and ideas and the promotion of western democracy. American Catholic intellectuals have misunderstood both Donald Trump and Pope Francis. This Vatican essay fails to grasp that Catholic men supported President Trump but many of the intellectual architects of the Catholic Evangelical alliance missed his message entirely. The essayists locked in their tired western mindset  also must have missed  the Pentecost memo from Pope Francis. Right there in the middle of Rome,  Pope Francis asserted even more boldly his own initiative to those crazy Christ loving Protestant brothers ( see Pentecost with the Pentecostals- a Pope Francis initiative).  The relationship of Catholic Protestant and Jew (and now Muslim) in American politics is worth a thoughtful essay from the Roman mind. We are waiting.

DECENTRALIZING THE CURIA - FRANCIS' STRATEGY: From Monday Vatican -- a perceptive weekly essay from Italian speaking Catholic News writer. The Curia is no longer the center -- it is not the top of a career ladder. A return to diocesan preeminence. This commentator is interesting.

AUTONOMOUS INDIVIDUALS MAXIMIZING PLEASURE VS. CHRISTIAN LIBERTY: A 1995 essay by Cardinal Avery Dulles.

WHY MANY CATHOLICS DON'T TRUST POPE FRANCIS: Tom Hoopes interview.

FELIPE ALOU AND CHRISTIAN ATHLETES: Catholics and Protestants and the FCA.

II. ISLAM AND THE MIDDLE EAST

"SAUDI ARABIA SUPPORT FOR TERROR DWARFS QATAR" ACTIONS: Senator Bob Corker is Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

THE KURDS FOUGHT BUT WILL THEY GET A COUNTRY? From Asia News, an Independence referendum on Sept 25, 2017. (See our Map on Monday on Kurdistan.)

III. R&G ROUND UP

MONGOLIA - A YOUNG LEADER PRO-PUTIN: Mongolia with three million people is a huge landmass (18th largest country) with copper, gold, and coal resources underlying a still robust horse and herd culture. This resilient people play a buffer role between Russia and China. This election shows the success of Putin's leadership in winning allies on Russia's huge southern front.

XI JINPING AND THE RESTORATION OF CHINESE TRADITIONALISM: From Asia news.

IF A REPRESENTATIVE OF NORTH KOREA SAID HE HAD A DISK CONTAINING THE 30,000 EMAILS HILLARY CLINTON DESTROYED WOULD YOU MEET WITH HIM? An unfriendly government with valuable information - looking for the moral principle here that would preclude one from finding what was destroyed. During the campaign, candidate Trump publicly asked Russia if you can find the 30,000 emails the press will "mightily reward" you. What campaign would not meet with someone to see if the "lost has been found"?