Religion, Nations, and Geopolitics Review: Saturday, November 24

I. POPE FRANCIS AND THE CHURCH

Fact: The New York Archdiocese Commission that uncovered the abuse of a minor by Theodore McCarrick offered financial compensation to victims in exchange for a promise they would not sue the Archdiocese.

                                                                 THE US BISHOPS 
    FROM NOVEMBER BALTIMORE MEETING TO JANUARY CHICAGO RETREAT      
                                                        AWAITING THE MACCABEES

They sold the young boys for harlots. exchanging a young girl for the wine they drank... Announce this to the nations. Proclaim a holy war! Alert the warriors! Let all the soldiers report and march. Beat your plow shares into spears and your pruning knives into spears. Let the weakling boast, "I am a warrior."   Joel 4:

Cardinal Vigano was right about the infestation of the Vatican with a homosexual subculture but he was very wrong about the influence of Theodore McCarrick on Pope Francis.  However the influence of Donald Wuerl and Blaise Cupich on the Pope  is undeniable and pernicious. They are his most trusted American advisors. One significant contribution American laymen and priests could give the Church and Pope is to make a serious case against both of these men.  The evil of these men has not been properly and definitively exposed. That has not been done yet.

On the diocesan level, each Bishop should appoint a cleric as promoter of justice in his diocese. He can use lay and private investigator techniques as well as direct interviews and chancery records to assess the worthiness of every priest in his diocese to offer Mass and remain a priest. Any priest who has committed pedophilia(sex with a minor under 18)  or incest(sexual relations with a family member) or sodomy(sexual relations with a male of any age with or without consent) should be barred from any priestly sacramental acts. Procedures should then be initiated for laicization and loss of any benefits or privileges of the priestly office. The initial act of authority is a duty of the local bishop--not a lay committee and not the Pope. The higher authorities are needed to formalize laicization.
(Pedophilia, Incest and Sodomy should be clearly delineated in Canon Law as " by the act separation offenses" (graviora delicta) against sacred orders. These desecrations of the fatherhood, filiation and fraternity of the Apostolic Priesthood are more profound trespasses than the current misguided approach of classifying  these depravities as individual failures in "keeping the sixth commandment". That formulation is a serious "category error."

Pope Francis is urging retreats and face to face encounters among bishops so a truth telling separation can occur between the Petrine apostolic priests who have failed but are reforming themselves vs the Judas priests who have defiled the sacred bond and must be expelled. There can be no integral apostolic fraternity until there is a violent separation and exorcism of the many evil clerics. To avoid these acts of separation and punishment in the name of priestly unity and affection is an evil form of clericalism which must be rooted out.
The bishops do not owe abuse victims sympathy or a role in decision making. They owe them a purified priesthood. This will take courage and acts of authority; not sympathy and acts of service. The February worldwide meeting of bishops needs a template of bishops in some nation calling each other out by name. The 197 US dioceses and 2900 worldwide dioceses need an example of a bishop who starts cleansing the priesthood of his local church. The February worldwide bishops' meeting is not coming too late because "the Vatican has no sense of urgency." It may be coming too early because no Donald Trump Bishop has yet found his voice nor has a Philippine like diocese found Duterte's punitive sword.
Our bishops are still having difficulty accusing one another by name--starting with Rembert Weakland. Not a one was brave enough to confront Cardinal Levada or Cardinal  Mahoney face to face when they dared to speak at the Baltimore Conference in November, 2018. Not a single bishop  was sharp enough to ask Cardinal Cupich who was winking at  "sexual acts by consensual adults" if that is his euphemism for sodomy. His fellow bishops were not agile  enough to use his speech as a signal to declare adult consensual sodomy by a cleric as an act that forever separates a man from the holy act of consecration. (Cupich removed a famous Latin Mass priest in Chicago for just that sin).  Cardinal Cupich should be asked  how many Chicago priests have desacralized the collar and altar by committing sodomy since they have been ordained. It is a big number in Chicago. It should have been a big issue in Baltimore. The Lord commanded the apostles to do as He had done after washing Judas from the group. Local bishops know the local offenders much better than the Pope or any committee he might appoint. Papal or Vatican authority is needed for laicization but investigation and ritual separation is part of the oversight duties of local bishops. Laymen should be feeding clerics with well documented dossiers on local Judas priests so that conversation among priests and bishops can begin in every diocese.

"When thy glorious disciples were enlightened by the washing of the feet before the supper, then the impious Judas was darkened. " Eastern Holy Thursday Liturgy

The Second Vatican Council was not a Council of the Laity. It was a Council about the Apostolic Church bringing the Word and Eucharist to the Modern World.  It was about the brotherhood of bishops as an Apostolic Church being a light to the nations. It was about the well formed sacramental priestly Church asserting itself in the middle of the 20th century to meet the Pentecostals of the South  full of the Spirit but in search of Confession and the Mass. The Council was a Council of Bishops in communion with the Bishop of Rome. It was an ecclesial act of masculine priestly authority in a world searching for meaning after centuries of war, revolution, and skepticism.
 In his diocese surrounded by his priests or in a synod accompanied by his fellow bishops, the main actor in rebinding humanity to Christ is the Bishop in apostolic fraternity. If a single bishop would grasp his apostolic identity and respond to the disgrace of priestly desacralization like Phineas or Mattathias Maccabee, both the sacral Eucharistic office of the bishop and the fruits of Vatican Two would be truly revealed. Pope Francis is pushing his Bishops to be men in face to face fraternity. This is the proper form of patriarchal fraternity-- not lay reform committees.  Pope Francis will be as surprised as we are when a few good men respond to his challenge.    A lot of "the first" will turn out  last.
Let us fast and pray that something new happens when the American Bishops go to pray together in January. By going to Chicago, they will be gathering at "the scene of the crime" for there was no cleric more central to the homosexual desacralization of the Catholic priesthood than Chicago's  Cardinal Joseph Bernadine(1928-1996).

II. PRESIDENT TRUMP AND AMERICA

CRIMINAL JUSTICE REFORM AND IMMIGRATION: Forget the suburban women, the new nationalists have to go into the inner city and get the males. A real beginning is criminal justice reform to reverse the disastrous Clinton triangulation scene. Next is insuring that citizens without college degrees can get a living wage doing manual labor. This can only happen by stopping the swamped market in labor created by porous borders.

BANNNON AT OXFORD UNION: Steve Bannon explains the 2008 bailout and the populist revolt - a perspective not often shared of America's "bailing out the elite." Presidents Bush and Obama are not sinister. They were over their heads. Both were pliant to winds much stronger than their own sailboats could ever manage.

TRUMP AND THE SAUDIS: President Trump on Saudi Arabia. The virtue of President Trump is the clarity with which he explains our policy. The tragedy is that he is continuing the incoherence of supporting the Kingdom which is the protector of the Salafist Sunni leaders who are responsible for terrorist jihadism. President Trump once advocated closing our borders to Muslims "until our representatives figure out what the hell is going on." We have not yet figured that out and President Trump has allied himself with the religious movement that beheaded Christian men on the shore of the Mediterranean and killed 3,000 of our own on 9-11-2001. Israel has no interest in our understanding this more clearly because they want us in an alliance against Iran. President Trump is carrying out the logic of the foreign policy establishment that President Obama resisted. This is a huge strategic blunder about foreign policy which calls for a correction by the Senate. Instead there is an obsession with investigating the person of the President and threatening impeachment by the House. Our attention is misdirected; our allies and enemies are confused.   See more below on MbS and the murder of Jamal Khashoggi.

THANKSGIVING DAY WAS ON NOVEMBER 22: Here is how Woodrow Wilson consecrated the day in 1918:

“Wherefore, I, Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States of America, do hereby designate Thursday, the twenty-eighth day of November, next, as a day of thanksgiving and prayer, and invite the people throughout the land to cease upon that day from their ordinary occupations, and in their several homes and places of worship to render thanks to God, the ruler of nations.

Don't call it "Turkey Day". Remembering John Kennedy - our religious countryman when liberals could still be masculine.

III. THE NATIONS

RUSSIA'S JOURNEY: From Orthodoxy to Atheism, back to Orthodoxy.

US AND CHINA IN EAST ASIA: China and US naval dominance East Asia.

NATIONAL FINANCES: Money, Currency, Gold Silver and Nations. A ten-part series: the secrets of money - a gold-centered introduction. A good way to start thinking about money and national currencies.

Khashoggi and MbS
There are very few leaders in the Mideast who think public life should not be organized around the religious culture of the dominant population. Israel has recently declared itself as  a Jewish nation.
Iran under Ayatollah Khomeini was trying to organize a larger Muslim ummah than the Iranian nation. The sobering war with Iraq and negotiations with multiple nations and civilizations while dealing with the enmity of Israel, Saudi Arabia and the US had driven subsequent Iranian leaders to understand Iran as Muslim but also a particular Shiite nation among the nations.  A central dispute between Sunni Muslims about the future of Mideast political organization has been a "republican" form of Islamic rule vs the monarchical principal. Muhammed bin Salman and Jamal Khashoggi were on different sides of this dispute. Qatar (TheWahhabis of the Sea) are on opposite sides of this dispute  with Saudi Arabia(The Wahhabis of the Land).  Al Jazeera, the most successful of all Arabic media empires, has reported favorably and honestly about mass movements against royal families or military dictators.  Shutting down that news outlet is a major demand of the Saudi led boycott against Qatar.  The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt was a good example of a mass organized movement of non Royalists who honestly won an election and then were overthrown(by the el Sisi military coup). The Saudis opposed the Brotherhood and financed the coup. Qatar media aired the grievances of the Brotherhood.
 The advocates of Sunni purification and monarchical rule are the Saudis and UAE. Egypt has joined them in an "anti populist" coalition of rulers. They have found Israel as an ally in their stance against Iran which supports most popular grass roots movements to restore Islamic rule. Many of the popular movements in Sunni majority countries  are more tolerant of the Shia populations than the Wahhabis and Saudi royal family. This is noted in countries with significant Shia minorities--Pakistan, Turkey, Afghanistan and Syria. None have joined the Saudi attack on Yemen's Shiites(the Houthis) or the blockade of Qatar.
Jamal Khashoggi was no "western liberal."  He believed in the Muslim revival without the excesses of MbS in Yemen, hatred of Shiites  and stoking war with Iran. He knew where a lot of bodies were buried. He favored popular movements and elections including the work of the Muslim Brotherhood.  Muhammed bin Salman (see Islam and Mideast section)saw him as a formidable ideological foe. If Khashoggi's death opens the American press and public to see the incoherence of our support for MbS and the Wahhabi front, his death will not be in vain. The greatest obstacle to such a reassessment is the temptation of the press to look at this only in terms of another chance to bash the unique perverseness of  Donald Trump. This will obscure two decades of failed policy, religious blindness and strategic incoherence. 

IV. CULTURE OF LIFE, CULTURE OF PROTECTION

ATHEIST-HOMOSEXUAL HIJACKING: Why have American schools and the Democratic Party become so militantly homosexual and anti God? Profile of AFT head - Randi Weingarten. Born in 1957. Cornell University (BS) and Yeshiva University (JD). Considers herself very religious. President UFT 1998-2008.  AFT President-2008-. Came out as Lesbian 2007, partner psychotherapist Liz Margolies. Now with female rabbi, Sharon Kleinbaum. "Married" Mar 25, 2018.

Hillary Clinton and AFT Weingarten's  "Rabbi wife". 

Picture of Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer's daughter's wedding.

ABORTION DECLINE: Abortion rates drop in US last decade. In 2005 20% of pregnancies in the US ended in abortion. In 2015 it was 15%. There were 320 million Americans in 2015. There were 640,000 abortions. Black babies were aborted 3.5 times the rate as white babies. Guttmacher Report.

Religion, Nations and Geopolitics Review: Saturday, November 17

Weekly Brief

By Dr. David Pence and A. Joseph Lynch

The Lesson of WWI : Nationalism, Patriotism and Empires

 
40 year old French President Emmanuel Macron used the memorial visit of Americans to lecture our President 100 years after the Armistice ending the Great War on 11-11-1918.  He warned of "old demons coming back to the surface... ready to wreak chaos and death."  "Patriotism is the exact opposite of nationalism. Nationalism is a betrayal of patriotism. By saying our interests first, who cares about the others, we erase what a nation holds dearest, what gives it life." 
 A few maps to remind President Macron of France that WWI was about overthrowing empire not nations. It is true that only the losing empires (Ottomans, Austria-Hungarian and German) were divided into nations. France and Britain kept their colonies until they lost them during WWII to the Japanese and after WWII to the nations themselves. The history of the 20th century is the emergence of religion and nationalism as the fundamental  group loyalties by which we organize humanity for either war or fraternity. Nationalism does not mean we love our countrymen and despise every other nation any more than marriage means I love my wife and despise all other women. Patriotism is a form of love for a land and people. Nationalism is the object of patriotic love.  Faith is an act of intellect and heart  but it needs God as its object. Faith is not set against Religion (the binding of men in practice and creed to God) any more than patriotism should be set against nationalism.  Can there be a love of nation to the exclusion of all others? Of course. That can be very dangerous because nations can be very powerful actors. Can a man love his wife to the exclusion of all other duties. Of course. Moderns  call it being " ..whipped." The medievals called it uxoriousness-an excessive love of wife and domestic concerns.  Because there can be an exclusionary kind of love do we say with President Macron that amor and marriage are opposites? Of course not.

The heart of the patriot burns for the soul of his nation. If he burns too exclusively hot, he can injure humanity. If he burns too universally cold,  brotherly love becomes an abstraction.
It is not nationalists but the Social Darwinist "foreign policy realists" who  argue that members of nation states have no fraternal tie to other countries. It is the think tanks who argue  international politics is about eternal war and keeping down other "hegemonies" because there is no transcendent authority for humans and nations. The atheists recognize only the competing nations and the ever-changing "balance of power." Christian nationalists like Americans love our country like we love our wives- with a particular intensity in the context of that deeper love of God and a wider love for humanity that Christ taught so clearly.
On the one hundredth anniversary of the end of WWI, Polish veterans filled American airwaves with thank you messages to Americans for Polish national freedom and independence won by WWI. Their nation had disappeared for a century between Russian and German empires. Poland reappeared on Europe's map as one of Wilson's Fourteen Points. The Poles remembered what Macron never knew--the indissoluble link in political life of independent nations and free men.
Here are some excerpts of President Trump's remarkable speech to the UN on September 25, 2018. Read the words of President Trump-- not the hysterical caricatures of his enemies. Which President understands the relationship of patriotism to nations better-the suave Frenchman or the "buffoon American."

"Each of us here today is the emissary of a distinct culture, a rich history, and a people bound together by ties of memory, tradition, and the values that make our homelands like nowhere else on Earth.

We will never surrender America’s sovereignty to an unelected, unaccountable, global bureaucracy.
America is governed by Americans. We reject the ideology of globalism, and we embrace the doctrine of patriotism."

"We recognize the right of every nation in this room to set its own immigration policy in accordance with its national interests, just as we ask other countries to respect our own right to do the same — which we are doing. That is one reason the United States will not participate in the new Global Compact on Migration. Migration should not be governed by an international body unaccountable to our own citizens. Ultimately, the only long-term solution to the migration crisis is to help people build more hopeful futures in their home countries. Make their countries great again."

"The whole world is richer, humanity is better, because of this beautiful constellation of nations, each very special, each very unique, and each shining brightly in its part of the world.
In each one, we see awesome promise of a people bound together by a shared past and working toward a common future.

Inside everyone in this great chamber today, and everyone listening all around the globe, there is the heart of a patriot that feels the same powerful love for your nation, the same intense loyalty to your homeland.

The passion that burns in the hearts of patriots and the souls of nations has inspired reform and revolution, sacrifice and selflessness, scientific breakthroughs, and magnificent works of art.
Our task is not to erase it, but to embrace it. To build with it. To draw on its ancient wisdom. And to find within it the will to make our nations greater, our regions safer, and the world better.
To unleash this incredible potential in our people, we must defend the foundations that make it all possible. Sovereign and independent nations are the only vehicle where freedom has ever survived, democracy has ever endured, or peace has ever prospered. And so we must protect our sovereignty and our cherished independence above all.

When we do, we will find new avenues for cooperation unfolding before us. We will find new passion for peacemaking rising within us. We will find new purpose, new resolve, and new spirit flourishing all around us, and making this a more beautiful world in which to live.

So together, let us choose a future of patriotism, prosperity, and pride. Let us choose peace and freedom over domination and defeat. And let us come here to this place to stand for our people and their nations, forever strong, forever sovereign, forever just, and forever thankful for the grace and the goodness and the glory of God.

Thank you. God bless you. And God bless the nations of the world."

I. POPE FRANCIS AND THE CHURCH

U.S. BISHOP MEETING: No Proposals yet says Vatican to US Bishops. Don't feel bad if we are going to miss a US Bishop's Policy Statement on clerical abuse. There is nothing in the proposed Bishops' Code of Conduct  that declares sodomy as incompatible with offering the Mass. There is nothing that says "since homosexual personalities can't be allowed in the seminary, they should resign from the episcopacy". The American bishops need a debate - a searing debate - among themselves that states "there are many among us who must be washed out." Instead Cardinal Mahoney is saying we have to all bond together. The narrative of the U.S. Bishop's sorry homosexual history will have to be delivered as a major speech. Names will have to be named. The house must be divided. The temple must be cleansed before the fraternity can be reformed. This is no time for policies - we haven't even had an honest public discussion. Pray, fast, and then talk straight. DON'T VOTE ON POLICIES AND PROCEDURES UNTIL YOU FACE THE PRINCIPALITIES AND POWERS IN YOUR MIDST.

It will be easier for bishops to excuse themselves with an anti-Rome story then face each other. Liberal secular media and Catholic conservative media can all come together in their shared sport of  patricide--"it must be the head man who is at fault."   That has been the fallback position of Bishop Barron who is deathly afraid of looking his brother bishops in the eye. The bishops must look at the adult "consensual" homosexual acts which deform and pollute the sacramental practice of so many bishops and priests. Cardinal Cupich alludes to "consensual sex among adults" as different than minor abuse. He does not make this distinction to spotlight the homosexual network and exorcize sodomites.  This is his way to excuse them and get such acts off the radar of concern as graviora delicta. We need honest speeches right now - from bishop to bishops - not more policy votes. Consensual Sodomy is an abomination which should render a man incapable of acting as a priest. Sodomy is qualitatively different than heterosexual sins against the sixth commandment. The public brotherhood must sweep out the sodomite closet. If this is not done first in word,  it will never be done in deed.

Catholics are not Presbyterians - we don't need a board of lay elders to oversee our work. Which laymen shall we have? Last time the Bishop's Conference recruited the old Democratic party excuse makers like Bob Bennett and Leon Panetta. As Secretary of Defense, Panetta oversaw initiatives to have open homosexuals serve in military and extend benefits to their partners. On his last two days of office he removed all combat barriers to women. There we have is the bishops' great lay expert on the consecrated masculine brotherhood of father protectors.

We need bishops to emerge and act as bishops. That has not yet happened. Let's hear the bishops tell the truth to each other about the corruptions everyone knows about. When the great conservative hero Bishop Chaput was asked in an interview for his diocesan newspaper about the Vigano allegations, he said it was beyond his pay grade. If that is so, he should resign as an episkopos. The best preparation for the world wide meeting of bishops in February will be prayer, fasting and and an honest debate among the Americans. People say that February meeting is too far away. Not at all. We shouldn't have that meeting until a lot more bishops learn to speak truthfully about the huge cleaning that has to happen among priests and bishops. There is plenty of evidence readily available about double lives being lived as we speak.

The conversation has not yet ripened. It has barely begun except for Vigano and few snippets from American bishops at the October Baltimore meeting. We don't need a document from all the bishops. We need an honest speech from one bishop. Don't ask that Pope Francis resign.  Don't ask him to hurry up with his investigations. Hurry up yourselves and tell the truth about the predator perverts infesting the American clergy. Don't wait for journalists to expose them, attorney generals to discover them or popes to investigate them.  American bishops and 100 top priest bureaucrats know the situation best. Write it down and publish the ugly tale so bishops can agree, add to or correct. The American bishops or a Maccabean minyan of ten can present to their fellow bishops and the Pope a dossier sin the story. Here is an example of a deliberately limited set of charges about specific priests in a white paper for one diocese.  A small group of American bishops could easily compile a list of 100 open homosexual American clerics to be laicized. Rembert Weakland should head the list.
 Don't silence Jesuit James Martin. Ask him why he is targeting young confused homosexual men. Don't silence him -debate him, confront him. Ask him why he is recruiting homosexual males to come into the gay parishes and  homosexual infested Jesuit living spaces filled with 50-70 yr old predatory chicken hawks?

The Vatican has saved the American bishops from being inconsequential - now get down to an honest conversation between Judas priests and the faithful apostles. Bring Pope Francis a list of 20 bishops and a hundred priests who need to be laicized. That would be a real American contribution to the world wide meeting. But hurry - February is almost here! (Laymen are invited to help make a few hundred laicization dossiers.) Don't hold a vote - fast, pray, and hold an honest conversation.

COUNCIL OF EIGHT: Chilean Bishop Barros is off Council of Nine and soon to see Chilean police.
                         

VIGANO: Viganò and His brother - Court orders payment. Vigano profile

AFFECTIVE VS EFFECTIVE RESPONSES: Cardinal Mahoney was allowed to speak and says the bishops must look not at effective response but affective relations with each other. The difference between apostolic fraternity and clericalism is exactly what the bishops should discuss. Put Mahoney in the clericalism camp. His clericalism  message, "we are all together guys--we have to cover".  The Apostolic message:  "Judas has to go...and there are a lot of Judas priests." The priesthood is a sacred brotherhood meant as an icon of the love of the Father for the Son and the Son for the Apostles. The reason clerical homosexuality is such an abomination is precisely because the priesthood is the sacred form of masculine  love that is meant as the primal glue to rebind a fallen humanity into the Body of Christ.

SPEAKING TRUTH TO THE IMPOTENT: It is not clericalism vs homosexuality but how the two feed each other. The bishops cannot talk straight. They cannot tell the truth to each other. Their mission was to be reliable witnesses preaching the Word of God. Thank God they are not voting on practices and policies. While the bishops look pathetic, the commentary is sharpening for the better. There is a prophetic role for the laity - speak clearly; speak the truth. We have to recognize this is not the sixties adolescents speaking truth to power. This is a new situation in which adults are speaking truth to the impotent.

SALVATION FROM THE EVIL ONE: Where have all the devils gone? by Michael Pakaluk. A truly brilliant article.  Christ came as one who finally had true authority over the Evil One. The first thing he did after his baptism was to be led by the Spirit to confront Satan in the Desert. The Apostles were given authority to cast out demons. This is central to the identity of the priesthood and the apostolic church. His authority over demons was actually referred to as "Christ's teaching." We are trying to establish the Kingdom of God - that involves casting out and separating. When we say Christ came to save the world, we can ask "Save us from what?" It is not just "our sins". He is saving us and our fellow humans from the Evil One. Let us assemble in proper formation to be rid of him - no salvation till the Evil One is cast out for good. Let's start with the priesthood.

THE NUNCIO'S LETTER: The nuncio to the bishops. The Church cannot reform by using secular models or asking some other authority to replace our own. The Pope will not let the American bishops hide behind a lay panel. The conservatives scream he doesn't care. Frauds like Cupich and Wuerl become the Pope's defenders.

THE BISHOPS SPEAK: Report on what Bishops said. The two interventions receiving applause were the most forthright about homosexuality in clergy. This is much closer to what must happen. Regarding the code of conduct for bishops, one bishop said they already had a code and signing a new set of statements left him "chagrined." (chagrin: distress at having been humiliated). Bishop Barron was very weak and misdirectional. Bishop Cozzens from St Paul said the issue is fraternal correction. Several bishops said the metropolitan archbishop should assert a corrective role over brother bishops. The strongest statement on homosexuals in priesthood came from Bishop Strickland in Texas. Cardinals Levada and Mahoney both dared speak - the Maccabees are not yet ascendant. The new bishop in Guam showed legitimate dissatisfaction with utterly inadequate punishment of Apuron, his sodomitic predecessor. That was the disgraceful work of Cardinal Ray Burke whose prissy orthodoxy seems immune to criticism by the enraged conservative media stars.

SERIOUS PROBLEMS WITH PROPOSED USCCB ACTIONS: It is lucky they were saved by Congregation of Bishops advice: Take no Votes. An Independent Commission of 6 laymen and 3 clerics to oversee crimes of bishops? The Pope's alternative. Go on retreat and ponder with Raniero Cantelemessa: The Mission of the Apostles and their Successors. There has been serious discussion of Metropolitan Bishop oversight in different provinces. The rush to establish a new bureaucracy instead of facing the spiritual degeneracy of the apostolic body is American management vs. Catholic penance and renewal. The matter is too urgent not to take time to pray. The next big meeting for American bishops is not the worldwide February head of national conferences but the January retreat. That is where brave bishops must hear and respond to the Holy Spirit and renew the apostolic fraternity. We have escaped the bureaucratic model, now let us pray our bishops show a Pentecostal one.

II. PRESIDENT TRUMP AND AMERICA

BUCHANAN RESPONDS: Buchanan answers Macron on patriotism and the nation.

THE CARAVAN: Honduras and the caravan. Caravan Report. Nov 12 in Guadalhara, Mexico. 1,500 miles to the US border. 1,200 miles traveled from Honduras. Headed up Pacific coast land to Tijuana. 6500 souls.

GARY HART: Excellent Review of the meaning of Gary Hart campaign (in 1987 for 1988 Democratic Party presidential nomination) and new movie about him. Gary Hart understood the techs were replacing the industrials.

U.S.-SAUDI RELATIONS: A real debate on Saudi Arabia? Starting with arms to Bahrain. Will it comfort Americans who want a "moral policy" in Yemen to know that Saudi apologist and American statesman Bob Menendez (D-NJ) may soon be the head of the foreign relations committee as Democrats take power? Menendez, probably the most corrupt member of the US Senate, may not quite organize the foreign policy review needed that Senator William Fulbright offered in 1966.

III. THE NATIONS

JAPAN AT 150: Japan looks back 150 years as a nation amidst empires. Read this to see an adult look at history vs. the embarrassing historical illiteracy of Macron.

MUJAHEDIN-E KHALQ (MEK): The Iranian opposition. Cult or Freedom Fighters. Be wary. Here is one view. There are others. 

INDONESIAN ELECTION: Indonesia - not all Muslims look alike. An important election in the world's largest Muslim country.

TWO GREAT WARRIOR EMPIRES: The Mamluks (1200-1500). Genghis Khan and the Mongols.

TWO WAHHABI STATES: Qatar and Saudi Arabia: two Wahhabis - one of the land and one of the sea.  Did the UAE set up Qatar?

YEMEN: The Shiite Houthis in the North have faced a brutal blockade of port cities where most of their food arrives. The Hodeidah siege may end. In the south the UAE, Al Qaeda, and the Yemen government vie for power in the Sunni region. The Saudis aid the fight against the Shiite Houthis with bombing and the US acts inside the South against al Qaeda with drones. UAE has a ground game looking toward a southern regime who will be their client/ally. The more the war becomes Sunni south vs. Shia north, the more the warriors of ISIS and Al Qaeda (AQAP) gain influence. The Saudis are always more interested in killing Shia than jihadist Sunnis.
The US fear AQAP as the most likely Jihadist group to plan an attack on our homeland. The Houthis have been their most effective enemy and now we are aiding the Saudis killing Shiites under their usual cover story-"they are proxies of Iran".   This war is a direct project of Muhammed bib Salman who wanted to show Wahhabi clerics he would use the state to rid the Mideast of armed Shiites.   Historical overview of Yemen and maps.


Patriotism Good; Nationalism Bad.                          Where did that idea start?
One candidate-George Orwell. Another is Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Christian martyr in Nazi Germany said the same . From American Thinker article:
"In the analysis of the two terms, patriotism and nationalism, an essay Notes on Nationalism by George Orwell written in May 1945 has been influential. He identified nationalism as the habit of identifying oneself with a single nation or unit, placing it beyond good and evil and recognizing no other duty than that of advancing its interests. Patriotism he saw as devotion to a particular place and way of life which one believed to be the best in the world, but has no wish to force on other people.  He concludes that patriotism is of its nature defensive both militarily and culturally. Nationalism is inseparable from the desire for power."

IV. CULTURE OF LIFE, CULTURE OF PROTECTION

THE INTELLECTUAL DARK WEB: A space where serious political and philosophical thought is expressed without fear of political correctness squelching truth or soundbite journalism preventing coherent thought. It is an overwhelming masculine enterprise but Claire Lehmann of Quillette has a room of her own. A profile.

SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE: Dan Crenshaw and Saturday Night Live - what a great skit. Never forget.

KILLING A BLACK PROTECTOR: A good guy with a gun is black...and now he is dead.

Map on Monday: November 11 Rememberance: World War I Redraws European Boundaries

This article was originally posted in November 2014, around 100 years after World War I began. November 11 of this year marks the 100th anniversary of the war's armistice. As the maps below reveal, the great prewar religious land empires of Catholic Austria-Hungary, the Orthodox Russian Empire, and the Sunni Muslim Ottoman Empire did not survive the war's conclusion. Read on to learn more about the downfall of these major religious land empires along with the other changes to Europe's map following the war.

The map above depicts the European map during the years of World War I. Below is a map which looks strikingly different. It is the redrawn map of Europe following the defeat of the Central Powers in 1918.

The most significant changes between the two maps may be found in the Balkans and around the Baltic Sea. The Austro-Hungarian Empire, defeated in war, was broken up and the many nations which were conglomerated within her were given the ability to rule themselves as governing states. In the decades ahead, however, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia would themselves require more separation as the nations within them had yet to achieve statehood. In the northeast, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia appeared out of what was once a part of the Russian Empire - which itself had now fallen to militant atheists under Lenin's communist USSR. Though it had a long history of statehood, Poland re-appeared as yet another new nation on the post Great War map.

Other areas had changed to a lesser degree. Germany was now cut off from East Prussia due to a land corridor of the newly formed Poland which gave it access to the sea. Italy had shifted slightly, gaining further territory to the northeast in Tyrolia. France, victorious in war, regained the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine which it had lost to the Germans following a stunning defeat in the Franco-Prussian War (indeed Germany had hoped its 1914 campaign in France would have been as successful as the one in 1870).

An often overlooked area of the map is the division of the Ottoman Empire. The Turkish nation will be the first secular regime emerging from the Ottoman caliphate. Much of today's Mideast map was reconfigured from the Ottoman Empire's dismemberment. The map below demonstrates:

Addenda:
  World War One and the Armistice  100 years later by Adam Hochschild

The Twentieth Century-The Triumph of Religion and Nations amidst the Fall of Empires. AOA

Religion, Nations, and Geopolitics Review: Saturday November 10

Weekly Brief

Civility, Fraternity and Nationalism--Masculine Political Bonds vs Party Faction
Political parties are coalitions of citizen volunteers, paid consultants, big donors, special interests, and aspiring candidates who act together to win elections. Party caucuses in legislative bodies also play roles in combining together to win institutional offices like committee chairmanships and the Speaker of the House.  This is how our system has developed though there is no mention of party in the original Constitution. The founding fathers spoke in a negative tone about faction vs healthy politics and citizenship. A remarkable tribute to the party system was the ability of a non partisan like Donald Trump to enter the Republican primaries as a citizen (like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson-a very rich citizen) and become the Party nominee. Parties and partisanship are necessary for the civic rituals of election battles. They become deadly to political concord if they are the sole lens of governance and policy.
It is a symptom of our desacralized and emasculated language that "politics" has become a word meaning  deviousness and self interest. Substitute "partisanship", "faction", "party intrigue" or "self serving careerism"  whenever we hear "politics." That will bring our language much closer to the truth and allow us to once again remember the high communal calling of politics, civics, citizenship, civility, and politeness. Politics means member of a polis-the Greek word for city. The Police are the guardians of the city. Civics, citizen and civility are all derived from the Latin word civitas which is the city as a social group of men with the same status and duties--they form the res publica the public relationship of male citizens which distinguishes a republic from a monarchy. A renewal of this bond will bring peace to our large cities, civility to our discourse, national identity to our spiritual malaise, and national interest to our disastrous foreign policy of imperial wars.
Even though men belong to different parties, our deeper political loyalties are as fellow citizens with obligations to fight for each other and die for the group if necessary. All fathers know we cannot protect our families and homes unless we have developed the institutional protection of city police, county sheriffs, vigilant neighbor men, and national armies. We are civil to each other because we know we are bound together at a deeper level than the divisions engendered by any single election. Like boxers in a ring, we are meant to punch as hard as possible on fight night and then respect each other after the battle. (A very good way to understand Donald Trump is to think of him as a white Muhammed Ali).
Even if women vote and hold office, the most fundamental bond that holds the city and nation together is the agreement of men to protect each other and all the women and children in our common national territory. There is no similar relationship in history among adult women of such  shared territorial  duty and communal identity.  In fact biologically the maternal disputes between females and their hyper particularity in picking and rejecting males has never fostered  a culture of  sharp conflict followed by concord. One would have to be culturally blind to miss that adding more females to all male institutions has not leavened us with love but divided us with distrust.  The history of male group dynamics is harsh conflict followed by concord  that we know so well in sports and war and how we made friends as little boys. The shared territorial identity of nationalism can overcome the real but limited loyalties we know as fellow Democrats or Republicans. That is civility.
Suburban white women(who are electorally defined not by their geography but their marketplace roles in  health, government, corporate, and education bureaucracies) will continue to  jockey back and forth between the two parties as they seek the status of office holding. The political work of nationalists is not to chase after the "suburban woman" but to seek out our shamefully neglected brother-the inner city male. The political task is to build a renewed brotherhood among white, black, and Latino males. After the Trump presidency (in two years or six years or in an irregular year determined by violence), either party with the right male leader could unify our interracial country in the name of Christian nationalism and brotherhood under our common Patriarch in heaven.  Jackson, FDR and JFK led America through the Democrats. Lincoln, Eisenhower and Reagan led our nation through the Republicans. Political Parties are vehicles not destinations. We await the man and party  who can best evoke the loyalty and shared duty of brother citizens to renew the American nation under God.

I. POPE FRANCIS AND THE CHURCH

NEW REPORT ON HOMOSEXUAL PRIESTS: Sullins report on homosexuality in priesthood as major contributor to sex abuse. A new rise in cases? Interview with Fr Sullins and link to report itself.

HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF: St. Peter Damien tried to reform rampant homosexuality in the priesthood. Some lessons.

REFORMING THE REFORM: Pope's C9 Council: Is a reform of the reform needed? First and foremost Cardinal Oscar Maradiaga of Honduras has deceived him and betrayed the Church. In June 2018 - the tales of financial corruption. In July 2019, seminarians in Honduras blew the whistle on the homosexual subculture running the clergy and seminary. There is a honeycomb of closets and the C9 as constituted is utterly incapable of looking at them.

 Pope Francis had a great initial idea how to reform the Vatican.  He couldn't do it alone so he formed a junta - a council of Cardinals with global representation and perspective to help him counter the bureaucratic, Italian, gay mafia of the Curia.  But everywhere he turned, it was deceivers who befriended him. The large conservative English speaking media became his enemy and the English speaking homosexual friendly "progressive"  media became his defenders. Like his two papal predecessors he seems particularly unable to discern homosexual pretenders unless they wear the traditionalist/right wing costume.  As Cardinal Mueller said when he left the CDF: "The Pope thinks his enemies are his friends and treats his true friends as his enemies."

II. PRESIDENT TRUMP AND AMERICA

PRESIDENT TRUMP ON THE ELECTIONS: President Trump's post election news conference on November 7 after the Republicans won the Senate and the Democrats took the House had a number of fascinating insights and exchanges. The  rudeness of a CNN reporter who would not sit down or give up the microphone after the President did not take his follow up questions was particularly glaring. Only Trump would list several Republicans who lost and "didn't accept his policies or support". But his most interesting insight was that this configuration of Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the Democratic majority House might be much better for breaking gridlock than a Republican majority with one or a two-vote edge.

The Republican majority includes the very conservative/libertarian "Freedom Caucus". A few members can block almost any legislation in areas needing compromise like infrastructure, healthcare, or immigration. Also "principled individuals" like to virtue signal  as the last real conservative and self inflated careerists like to  "grandstand " as the last moral man.  When the margin is so thin, it plays to  the obstructionist. It will be interesting how many reporters understand what the President was saying. His first two years he saw firsthand how "principled conservatives" and "one grandstander" can make legislation impossible when Republicans held a razor thin majority. He alluded to John McCain's final act of grandstanding to block the repeal of Obamacare without mentioning the deceased Senator by name. The more President Trump thought about it, the more it struck him this could be a much better configuration than a one-vote Republican hold on the House. The fact that a Democratic majority puts many committees in the hands of some of the most tenured, most wacky, most "investigation-not-legislation" prone of the Democrats is the downside.

When a PBS reporter asked if saying he was a nationalist meant he was comforting white nationalists, he answered by saying the question was offensive and very racist -"very racist". He was right. America as a nation is a territorial community including whites, browns, and blacks. Territorial communities with definable borders define citizenship the way sports teams do--its all about your home town and country. Nationalism is the antidote to racism not its cause.

The Racism of White Globalists against our Interracial Nation. 

The real "racist dog whistle" is among the globalist cliques who are overwhelmingly White Educated Industrialized, Rich, Democratic (the WEIRDS who don't believe in God, binary sexes or nations). It is peculiar that the race conscious media never notes that it is the white English speaking Brits who most interfered with our election. The white European elite hates to see our multicolored nation break away from the Anglo Atlantic Alliance. Washington reporters are so filled with hate toward President Trump, they cannot see the real enemies of our nation who have stopped the President from making peace with Russia.  The foreign policy establishment and Western intelligence agencies have been very successful in preventing  a new nationalist foreign policy. Our enemies are disguised as our allies and they are painted in whiteface.     

SETTING UP GEORGE? Interview with George Papadopoulos who convincingly argues that he was set up by several intelligence communities trying to discredit President Trump. This was not a plot by Hillary Clinton and the Democratic party. This was above their pay grade.  If Donald Trump rebuilt America foreign policy on nation to nation agreements, this would greatly aid Russia and greatly reduce the influence of Britain. British patriots in the Five Eyes consortium have been Trump's foreign enemies since he emerged as a Republican spoiler. Unfortunately the anti Hillary anti Democratic Party analysis of so many good media investigators is blinding them to the foreign influence of "Western English speaking whites". Democratic Party money and impetus is part of this for sure but they were not colluding with Russia but anti Russian globalists in interlocking western intelligence agencies. Fox News has been the leader in really investigating these crimes but they are still so much the voice of the white West they can't see the Canadian and Australian and British conservatives who frame the news  are NOT American nationalists. They dont want an American great power alliance of the US, Russia, China, and Brazil. They want the old Cold War alliance which boosts the status of the nations of the old British Empire. So far they have been very successful in preventing the new nationalist alliances favored by President Trump.

III. THE NATIONS

THE TALKS CONTINUE: China-US talks - structures for real dialogue. China and the US will hold the second round of Diplomatic and Security Dialogues (DSD) in Washington DC Nov 9, 2018.  It is a "two plus two" meeting. Secretary of State Pompeo and Secretary of Defense Mattis on the US side. Yag Jiechi Director of Chinese Communist Party Office of Foreign Affairs and Defense Minister Wei Fenge for China. In April 2017 President Trump and President Xi Jingpig announced four dialogue pillars for the two countries. DSD is one of them,.

ILLNESS IN CUBA: Cuba and Havanna Syndrome - what we know and what we don't about the American illnesses.

SAUDI MONEY IN AMERICA: The New York Times and Washington Post have run major stories on the lobbying, think tank and University penetration by Saudis in US foreign policy debates. This dwarves any efforts by the Russians. The success of our enemies to pose as our allies is stunning. American Conservative on Saudi money machine.

VENEZUELA AND BRAZIL: What happened in Venezuela? A good 10-minute video. Brazil and Venezuela from article in Foreign Affairs by Roberto Simon and Robert Winter:

“Under the [leftist] Workers’ Party, Brazil was a strategic ally to Venezuela’s former presidents, Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro. Yet following Rousseff’s impeachment in 2016, diplomatic coziness between the two governments gave way to overt antagonism, as her more conservative successor Michel Temer took a somewhat harder line. Now Venezuelan refugees are pouring across Brazil’s northern border—37,000 have requested asylum since January— and the crisis in Venezuela has entered Brazilian domestic politics and become critical for public opinion.

"Under Temer’s tougher approach, Brazil played an important role in the creation of the Lima Group, an informal alliance of Latin American countries committed to reestablishing democracy in Venezuela. The country contributed to regional efforts at the OAS and elsewhere to isolate the Maduro regime. At the same time, Brazil refused to support any U.S. or European sanctions against Venezuela or Venezuelan authorities, sticking to its decades-long principle that only the United Nations Security Council can impose such penalties. When Trump publicly flirted with the idea of taking military action against Maduro or supporting a military coup in Caracas, Brazil made clear that it would never support such actions.

"But under Bolsonaro, ‘never’ is a big word. The far-right candidate favors imposing sanctions and establishing refugee camps for Venezuelans along the border. Speaking with voters from the state of Roraima, where most of Venezuelan refugees are, he made a promise: “You can count on me, I will do whatever is necessary to defeat that government.” In the first round of voting on October 7, Bolsonaro received almost 70 percent of the votes in the state capital of Roraima, Boa Vista. The Workers’ Party got only ten percent. The possibility of Brazilian support for, or even participation in, military action against Venezuela—unthinkable until recently—will be on the table under Bolsonaro."

IV. CULTURE OF LIFE, CULTURE OF PROTECTION

One of our contributors has a confession to make. He said as long as there is a Senate majority to confirm judges he would rather see a bisexual Democratic female carry the Democratic Party banner in Arizona than a "female fighter pilot" pose as the new face of the  Republican warrior-senator. Arizona has produced two strangely delusional national role models,  Jeff Flake and John McCain,  for too many years. Senator-elect  Krysten Sinema is a better representative of the  truth in packaging we need to clarify the American conversation.

Religion, Nations and Geopolitics Review: Saturday November 3.

WEEKLY BRIEF 

By Dr. David Pence and A. Joseph Lynch

                     Hatred, Jews, and Nationalism--Ordering the Loves and Loyalties  of Men.

46 war old Robert Bowers killed eleven Jewish members of the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh on the Sabbath Oct 27, 2018.  He yelled "I want to kill all Jews." Earlier that day he had posted a message decrying HIAS (Hebrew Immigration Aid Society) for flooding the country with "invaders that kill our people. I can't sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics. I'm going in." Like the 2017 faction of white supremacists in Charlottesville, Bowers was  anti Trump for "being globalist". Like the Charlottesville speakers who condemned Trump for allowing "his beautiful daughter to marry a kike" Bowers associated  Trump with the "kike infestation."
 Most of the mainstream media however quickly associated the killing of Jews with the "hateful rhetoric of the President" who had condemned hatred in his first statements after the killing. When President Trump visited the synagogue to pay his respects to the dead, a demonstration formed. A female Protestant minister yelled he was "not welcome in our neighborhood.. we welcome everybody."  A sign was brandished decrying  "Nazi President". President Trump visited without other media shy government officials but he was accompanied by his wife and the Israeli ambassador to America. The president came as head of our nation state to grieve the deaths of fellow citizens. He has recently said proudly, "I am a nationalist." This affirmation of TERRITORIAL national community which links Pittsburgh Jews and Georgia's black and white Christians and Boston's Irish Catholics is repeatedly treated by the media and university elite as a dog whistle to white racists. Below is a beautiful essay on being a Jew in America after this shooting.  We cannot repeat often enough but it must be repeated and explained. Nationalism is the antidote to racism not its expression.  As a nationalist I am tied in a fundamental bond of loyalty and shared duty to the black and brown men of my territory. Citizenship under God links Protestant, Catholic and Jew as we used to say and Muslim, Hindu and Sikh as we add now. Our multi color territorial bond distinguishes us  from the white highly educated globalist elites in the EU bureaucracy and at Davos conferences. Determining if American nationalism is a deep form of interracial brotherhood and love or a form of racist hate is a truth before us that we must resolve soon. The media and educational system who have turned communal identities like American nation or Christian nation into their opposites  are relentlessly undermining national unity. Hatred is a real force and it can only be overcome by ordered loves. While local officials and rude neighbors could not extend the simplest of courtesies to America's chief of state, Rabbi Jeffrey Myers of the Synagogue had a very different message, “I am a citizen. He is my president. He is always welcome.”... “Hate is not blue, hate is not red, hate is not purple… hate is in all. Speak words of love, speak words of decency and of respect. When the message comes loud and clear, Americans will hear that and we can begin to change the tenor of our country."

 In 1947, Israel declared itself a territorial nation state once again to insure that Jews at worship or work could not be murdered without armed defense. President Trump, the nationalist, acknowledged the crucial territorial nature of Israel by moving the US embassy to Jerusalem. He also reminded American synagogues that armed guards could have prevented this killing. Jair Bolsonaro the newly elected nationalist of the world's largest Catholic nation will soon follow President Trump's example in Israel. Thus the two "right wing nationalists " are the most forthright in defending the Jewish nation's right to territorial integrity. They are assertive about  government's duty to protect and maintain communal order.  Israeli Ambassador Ronald Dermer came to join the President in Pittsburgh to affirm the President's unique contribution to normalizing the Jewish nation state. It seems that actors on the world stage who understand the necessity of "armed love" in the face of hatred appreciate our president more than the educated elite of his own people. May his courage and good grace in the face of daily amplified vitriol and hatred be rewarded.
Robert Bower's father divorced his mother before he was one. His father later raped a woman in this same Pittsburgh neighborhood and then committed suicide awaiting trial. Robert Bowers had not yet turned seven.   

I THE POPE AND THE CHURCH

The Pope's last remarks to Synod on our Mother the Church, the Church's sinful sons and the accusations of Satan:

Pope Francis (10-27-2018) “Our mother, [the Church] is holy, but we the children are sinners,” he said. “Sinners, all of us. Let’s not forget this expression from the fathers [of the Church]: The Church is holy, the Mother is holy, with children who are sinners.” 

“At this moment, [the devil] is accusing us very strongly,” the pope said. “And this accusation becomes persecution.” 

This persecution can take the form of violence against Christians, as the one lived in regions in the Middle East, which was referenced before the pope’s remarks by Iraqi Cardinal Raphael Sako. But, Francis said, this persecution can take other shapes, “constant accusations, to dirty the Church.” “The Church is not dirty,” the pope said. “The children are, but the mother isn’t. This is the moment to defend the mother with prayer. It’s a difficult moment, because through us, the great accuser wants to attack the mother. And you don’t touch a mother.”

The Pope had asked the daily praying of the rosary during the “Marian month of October to unite the faithful “in communion and penance, as a people of God, in asking the Holy Mother of God and St. Michael the Archangel to protect the Church from the devil, who always aims to divide us from God and among us.” Prayer is the weapon against “the Great accuser who ‘travels around the world looking for accusations’.” Beyond daily praying of the rosary, the pope is also requesting that the faithful add two prayers: An ancient invocation Sub Tuum Praesidium to Our Lady and a prayer to Saint Michael the Archangel “who protects and helps fight against evil,” according to the Book of Revelations.

{Ed note: When a group of men - a synod or junta of us - worked to clean our local archdiocese of the priestly pollution we made that same crucial distinction. We subtitled our white paper The Spotless Bride and the Scattered Apostles. Unbelievably, Raymond Arroyo of EWTN interpreted the pope's distinction of the perfect Mother and the sinful sons as the Pope's veiled jab at Archbishop Vigano for criticizing men of the Church.}  

Pope Francis  final homily - listen, neighbor, witness. Being a synod together - more important than the document.

Sub Tuum Praesidium

An ancient prayer to the Blessed Virgin Mary, the oldest known version of which is found on an Egyptian papyrus from the 3rd century. This prayer is used in Litanies to the Blessed Mother and as a concluding prayer to Compline.

We Fly to Thy Patronage

WE fly to thy patronage, O holy Mother of God; despise not our petitions in our necessities, but deliver us always from all dangers, O glorious and blessed Virgin. Amen.

ROBERT ROYAL AND RAYMOND ARROYO ON THE  SYNOD - GOOD MEN GET AN AWFUL LOT WRONG: Bishop Synods and diocesan presbyters are the real public male group alternatives to the hidden homosexual clericalism of the present Chancery/Curia culture of modern Catholicism. Mr. Royal in his writing and with Raymond Arroyo on EWTN are criticizing the Synod for saying young people and the Church need a "deeper anthropological theological discussion of male and female identity and sexual inclinations". They look aghast and exclaim with horror that all of this has been settled by St John Paul II and the theology of the body and marriage. How horribly wrong the "papal posse" is about this glaring deficit in Catholic anthropology. Shall we really say the past two pontificates (when a thousand chanceries and the Roman Curia were flooded ever more deeply with "the homosexual plague") are a golden age on Church teachings about sex.  Really?

They missed the sexual agreements and ordered loves that form public life. They missed a reassertion of the Patriarchy of God and its most dramatic expression - the Apostolic priesthood. They missed the public fraternity of male groups in the priesthood and civic life. These are pretty big anthropological deficits in the marriage family centered teaching on sexuality. The sacramental foundation stones of the Catholic Church is not marriage but the all-male communio of the priesthood. The absolute cluelessness of the EWTN "conservative" commentators on synodality is also striking. Synods are not "audience participation" for everyone in the Church.  It may be that some of Pope Francis allies see it that way. But let us remember the only people who misunderstand Francis more than Arroyo and Royal  are the homosexual proponents like James Martin who think Francis is their guy.  Synods are one important way to replace the homosexual clericalism of the last century with the public Apostolic fraternity which forms the living foundation stones of the Church. Every time European bureaucrats have inserted homosexual love language in synodal documents - the male bishops of the Synod have struck them out. This has always been true for the African bishops and this time Bishop Chaput of America was pleasantly aggressive in driving the predator network underground. Public bodies of men in every diocese (presbyteral gatherings) and nation (episcopal conferences) are called to discharge their paternal duties by fraternal correction and fellowship. This is the synodal movement which carries on the real spirit of Vatican Two - the Holy Spirit who calls all men to public brotherhood through institutional fraternities of one Catholic priesthood and 200 civic territorial nationalisms. Just as marriage is an institutional formal expression of the love of male for female, so the nations are institutional formal expressions of the masculine brotherly love of fellow patriots. And thus are synods and diocesan presbyterial gatherings and the Pentecost of the Vatican II Council of Church Fathers--all are living forms of Christ and his Apostles in the highest form of brotherly love in service to the Father.  

IN ARGENTINA, THE PARLIAMENT REJECTS GENDER IDEOLOGY: The Pope ties together the war against marriage and the war against gender as ideological colonization. His countrymen hear him.

THE FRANCIS OPTION: Austin Ivereigh on the Francis Option. Austin Ivereigh quotes a lot of Francis but in this piece he substitutes a lot of his own British anti-Putin pro-homosexual biases in his attempt to recruit the Pope fro his narrative.  Ivereigh falls to that well known syndrome of the papal biographer(especially a good one)  taking on a papal persona and  tone of his own.

A MINYAN COULD HAVE SAVED SODOM. MINYANS AND SYNODS WILL SAVE THE CATHOLIC CHURCH: Priests and laymen should form working groups of men to investigate and expose the sodomites amidst them. Clerical sodomites should be asked to resign on their own but then reported to church authorities and exposed if nothing is done. Bishops who will not cleanse their diocese of sodomites should be asked to resign by juntas or councils or synods of laymen.

Likewise different working groups should investigate bishops and present to the president of national or regional conferences the cases against those bishops who have committed sodomy at any time in their priesthood to be removed. Special ad hoc groups of men should form to investigate the cardinals who will enter the next papal conclave. We need to insure as few homosexuals enter the conclave as possible.  It takes a minyan to save a Sodom. A true renewal of brotherhood among priests and among priests and laymen and among bishops will drive out the homosexual plague. The pope is wisely asking for synods and priest retreats. These are the fraternal minyans, the priestly public gatherings where light must be shone on the predators. A firm resolution to rid the priesthood of sodomites must be proclaimed. The fraternal love of the priesthood is not cultivating particular affections but bonding by sharing common duties. It is a mightier bond than the cliques of chancery Nancys.

We do not need priests bringing this up in the pulpit during Mass in front of our kids. Bring it up when the adult males infiltrated by homosexuals are all together at some priest gathering. Resolve this at your presbyteral meetings, national conferences, deaneries and Synods. Talk about it at your parties and conferences. Act like men and remember the goal is not "to all come together". The goal is to expel who has to be expelled so the rest of you can truly come together and the Roman collar can regain its Christic luster.

The Mosaic priesthood was purified (Ex32:27) when the Levites killed a kinsman, a friend, and a neighbor to show their loyalty to God superseded the personal bonds formed in the time of the Golden Calf. That is a model. The best way to do these investigations its through an aggressive promoter of justice in each diocese investigating all clergy. A similar position should be established by bishop conferences to investigate bishops and those dioceses in which bishops are covering up or refusing to investigate and purify. Until then the lay groups with help from brotherly priests can get a lot of leg work done to make a list and check it twice. Our longer argument.

Mere Christianity does not keep us Catholic - Why we stay. by Casey Chalk at the Federalist

Christian Geopolitics: Ukraine, Russia Constantinople and Orthodoxy - a terrific exposition of the historical and geographic and ecclesial situation.

 II AMERICA, PRESIDENT TRUMP, AND THE  NATIONS

ANTISEMITISM IN PITTSBURGH: A  Jew in America by John Podhoretz. After Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, Nationalism is the Solution not the Problem. To protect the Tree of Life - Arm the Jewish men.  Certainly that is one of the chief lessons of the State of Israel and all nations. The nation state is a male armed covenant protecting our shared sacred spaces.

IN BRAZIL, BOLSONARO FOR GOD AND NATION: Israel welcomes his election. Almost every major news outlet marked his 55% (58 million) to 45% victory as a win for the "far right". Everywhere there was alarm. He identifies himself as a nationalist. He is willing to use physical force to establish order. There are 210 million people in Brazil - the largest Catholic country in the world. America led by Donald trump is the largest Protestant country - 310 million. Russia led by Vladimir Putin is the largest Orthodox Country - 145 million. If we can stop thinking in terms of the Anglo-Atlantic Alliance tying us to a fading white English speaking empire, then possibly these three great Christian nations of South America, North America, and Eurasia might form the nucleus of a more fraternal conception of relations among the nations under God. 

This writer is aghast at Bolsonaro victory but plenty of good facts. His election is a sea change for South America. We have a new model instead of Fidel Castro for popular national leadership. Nations need men - personalities to show a new path and policy. Finally a reformer who is an ally of the US and one who honors God over gender ideology. May Christian nations replace the anarchic view of foreign policy realism that leads us to unending wars and enmity. May a strong Christian leader in South America show the Catholic nations that a government's first duty is to rule and provide safety - a lesson the bishops and Pope could heed as well.

Bolsonaro wrecks the narrative that nationalism is racist. Video of discussion with Yoram Hazony on nationalism. He is author of Virtue of Nationalism.

Thinking about Immigration, Refugees, and the Caravan
Here is AOA Map on Today introducing Central America nations--always start with geography and demographics.
Honduras (8.9 million) was the original site of the caravan's origin. It is a glaring indictment of leadership in Honduras showing their inability to protect and govern. The country has that fatal combination of violent streets and a deep homosexual penetration of the Catholic clergy.  The Archdiocese of Tegucigalpa is headed by Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga who is the coordinator of Pope Francis Council of Nine which he established as his own "junta" to help him govern the Church bypassing the corrupt Curia. Maradiaga appears thoroughly corrupt with fifty seminarians recently publishing a letter decrying the homosexual network that really runs his diocese and seminary. Honduras has had murder rates from 88/100,000  to 44/100,000 in the last five years.   In 2015, the US national murder rate is 6/100,000 with Chicago the 15th most deadly city at 15/100,000 and St Louis the most dangerous at 60/100,000. Cultures that cannot provide masculine authority and order will be wracked by violent young males. When the religious authorities go gay, the street boys go rogue. Latin American countries and America's great urban centers are both suffering from this pathology in Christianity's failure to socialize protective and productive males.  This is especially true for the Catholic Church whose brotherhood of fathers has become something else.

KIPLINGS - EAST AND WEST: The brotherhood of the male warrior honor code is not racism.

SAUDI PERSECUTION OF SHIA CONTINUES: This is a much more important sign of cultural oppression than all male driving laws. It should also remind us of when the opposition in Iraq became an anti-Shiite campaign and the birth of ISIS. The Shiite militias who fought back were allied with Iran but they have become more nationalist with the expulsion of ISIS.

THE CHINESE CENTURY: ...is well under way.

POPULISM IN CANADA: Populism on the Rise?

EAST ASIA ISLAM: Southern Phillipines and Islam. Pakistan, Asia Bibi, and Blasphemy Laws - A Supreme Court Ruling for Freedom.

BOLTON IN LATIN AMERICA: Troika of Tyranny - Bolton approach to Latin America - Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua are the bad guys.  Not exactly the nationalist approach that is really needed.