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

Map on Monday: TERRITORIAL ORGANIZATION OF THE CHURCH

TERRITORIAL ORGANIZATION OF THE CHURCH

FROM THE MEN OF GALILEE TO THE PROVINCIAL AND DIOCESAN CHURCH

by A. Joseph Lynch

At the Ascension, Christ commanded the Apostles to go and make disciples of all nations. The map above displays the fruits of 2,000 years of apostolic labors. Many missionary-oriented churches or movements have world maps with small dots representing mission territories. The world map above shows the territorial organization of the Catholic Church by neither dots nor dioceses, but by provinces.

For those unfamiliar with ecclesiastical provinces, the Church organizes groups of dioceses together as a province with an archdiocese playing a leading role in the province. Some archdiocesan sees have a significant enough Catholic population to merit its archbishop to be elevated as a cardinal. A quick glance at the map reveals that the provinces and dioceses of the Catholic Church respect and reflect national territorial boundaries -- certainly in keeping with Christ's command to baptize the nations.

Judging by the map the larger the province, the smaller the overall numbers of Catholics in its region. Areas with many small provinces, on the other hand, generally reflect larger numbers of Catholics. Regions outside Europe that indicate high Catholic populations include Mexico and coastal South America, the west coast of Africa, and south and east Asia. Compare the Philippines -- a smorgasbord of small but highly populated provinces -- to the United States. The Philippines is home to over 80 million Catholics whereas 66 million Catholics are spread across the geographically larger United States.

As an example of a provincial map that also displays dioceses and archdioceses, the above map shows the territorial organization of the Church in the United States. Notice the large, black dots represent an archdiocese and the large, red dots represent archdioceses whose archbishop is also a cardinal eligible to elect a pope. Regions with small Catholic populations - like the southeast - tend to form provinces that include dioceses across multiple states. Other provinces are organized along state lines, like Iowa and New York. Only two states in the U.S. - Texas and California - are broken into more than one province. Provinces are named after its sole archdiocese. The province encapsulating Missouri, for example, is called the Province of St. Louis.

This final map (see right) is a provincial map of Italy. Pope Francis is not just a leader of the global Church, his first title is Bishop of Rome. The Diocese of Rome encompasses 340 square miles and is administratively subdivided between the Vatican and the city of Rome itself. Two vicars general - one for the Vatican and one for the city - oversee day-to-day affairs.They are assisted by 1,219 diocesan priests, 2,331 priests from outside the diocese, and over 5,000 religious priests. Rome is also home to 2,266 women religious.

Rome is also the leading diocese of the Province of Rome. The province is comprised of seven suburbicarian dioceses, located around the city of Rome. Cardinal-bishops, the highest rank within the cardinalate, are the titular heads of these dioceses. In addition to these seven, ten dioceses throughout the province look to Rome as their metropolitan see.

The apostolic work of baptizing the nations continues to this day, but the maps above reveal the fruits of the apostolic labors in terms of global territorial organization.

Religion and Geopolitics Review: Saturday, June 18

by Dr. David Pence and A. Joseph Lynch

I. MISDIRECTION AND FALSE FLAGS AT THE ORLANDO MASSACRE 

We must bury the dead and then, as Mr. Trump likes to say, "Figure out what the hell is going on."

This event happened at the intersection of Modernity’s twin demonic forces (gender ideology and Jihadism) which Cardinal Sarah warned about at the Synod on the Family. We need to be very careful to sort things out before we take our lessons and respond. Experience is a good teacher but only if you learn her true lesson.

There was no figure, though, who so quickly, so disgracefully raised a false flag as Bishop John Lynch of St. Petersburg. Like many of his fellow adult-oriented homosexuals in the American episcopacy, he knows how to misdirect.

His blog post ("Orlando, Orlando we love you") blamed "religion (including our own)" for creating animus toward homosexuals. Now past retirement age (born in May 1941), he wrote an op-ed in the Tampa Bay Times (January 2015) after a court decision overturned the state’s ban on homosexual marriage (enacted by state referendum). In it he said:

However, together with Pope Francis and in light of the discussions at the recent Extraordinary Synod on the Family held in Rome, I also recognize that the reality of the family today, in all its complexities, presents the church with pastoral challenges as the church strives to accept people in the specific circumstances of their lives and support and encourage them in their search for God and their desire to be members of the church.

Therefore, I do not wish to lend our voice to notions which might suggest that same-sex couples are a threat incapable of sharing relationships marked by love and holiness and, thus, incapable of contributing to the edification of both the church and the wider society.

This, of course, is the exact opposite of what the Synod on the Family concluded and Pope Francis wrote in his Apostolic Exhortation after the synod. Here is what the pope really said:

251. In discussing the dignity and mission of the family, the Synod Fathers observed that, “as for proposals to place unions between homosexual persons on the same level as marriage, there are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be in any way similar or even remotely analogous to God’s plan for marriage and family”. It is unacceptable “that local Churches should be subjected to pressure in this matter and that international bodies should make financial aid to poor countries dependent on the introduction of laws to establish ‘marriage’ between persons of the same sex”.

In 2002 Bishop Lynch paid $100,000 to a departing male communications director who accused the bishop of sexual harassment. A revolting but typical tale. Lynch utterly distorted the Pope’s words on homosexuality and marriage and was never removed or shamed for spending Church funds to compensate for his sexual misdeeds. He has benefited from the journalist taboo on investigating the role of an episcopal homosexual subculture in covering up the abuse scandal in the Catholic Church. Florida journalists certainly didn’t want to pursue a story about an adult homosexual male taking advantage of a straight subordinate. This is the story that the 'Spotlight' crowd didn’t dare touch in Boston as well. It will turn a lot of journalists into pretzels trying to report on the Orlando massacre as well. To answer the bishop we would remind him that the problem in the Catholic Church is not our animus toward homosexual sin but our incorporation of so many homosexuals in the priesthood and episcopacy. Case in point: Bishop Robert Lynch of St Petersburg.
 A Muslim  murders fifty persons at his favorite homosexual bar. The Catholic Church's labeling of homosexuality as an intrinsic disorder and American proposals to screen Muslims as terrorist threats are blamed as underlying causes--the Bishop was among the first to raise these false flags. He won't be the last.

II. POPE FRANCIS AND THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

LITURGY ELEVATES, BUT PRIESTS PROTEST: Half of American Catholic priests do not like the too elevated language of the five-year old-Mass translation. Here is an argument why it may take a somewhat awkward liturgical language to convey a somewhat awesome liturgical reality.

MUSLIMS CONVERT TO CHRIST AND BRING EUROPE WITH THEM - THE NEW EVANGELIZATION: As the evangelicals like to ask, "How big is your God?"

WHEN CHRISTIANITIES COLLIDE: An excellent introduction to the meeting of Mideast and American Christian communities with a goal of defending the Mideast Christians from extinction in the region of Christ’s homeland.

III. ISLAM AND THE MIDDLE EAST

SAUDIS MAKE U.N. REVERSE THE CONDEMNATION OF YEMEN BOMBING OF CHILDREN: The Saudis are kings of outrage over insult, no matter how true. At some point their whole House will come crashing down, but for this UN committee... not quite yet.

FROM FP DAILY BRIEFING: In a stunning set of revelations, FP’s (FOREIGN POLICY MAGAZINE) Colum Lynch writes that Saudi Arabia threatened to pull hundreds of millions of dollars from U.N. programs if the international body included the kingdom in a report detailing how various regimes and militias around the world are guilty of killing and maiming children. The report included details about the Saudi-led bombing campaign in Yemen, which has killed thousands of people, including hundreds of children. The U.S. has provided extensive aerial refueling and intelligence support to the Saudis over the past year in the bombing effort. The threats led U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to scrub mentions of Saudi in the report, and sparked international outrage over his decision. Lynch reported “senior Saudi diplomats told top U.N. officials Riyadh would use its influence to convince other Arab governments and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation to sever ties with the United Nations.” The upshot? Now that U.N. officials have been telling the media about the kingdom’s behavior, the report has received more press than it likely would have in the first place.

Read the Lynch article.

FORMER US AMBASSADOR TO PAKISTAN TELLS THE TRUTH ABOUT PAST HISTORY AND FUTURE POLICY: A single article with the clearest narrative I have seen on US mistakes in understanding Pakistan goals. Breaking the Taliban-Pakistan Alliance by Zalmay Khalizad.

DRONES (TARGETED KILLINGS) ARE NOT ENOUGH: A Mideast Strategy by George Friedman of Stratfor.

ISLAM VS. LIBERAL DEMOCRACY: If that is the choice, they will win. That is why we continue to argue that we are fighting for Christianity and a civilization based on the fraternity of nations. Some of those nations will be grounded in Islam. Rod Dreher of The American Conservative puts together more insightful links and clips from other important religious writings than any columnist in the journalism blogosphere. His terrific synthesis of several sources on Islam vs. Liberal Democracy. What is becoming increasingly clear is that the Cold War was not really Liberal Democracy against Communism, and neither is the present conflict.

IV. AROUND THE GLOBE: NATIONS R&G ROUND-UP

MODI OF INDIA - A NEGATIVE REVIEW BUT SERIOUS CONSIDERATION OF HINDUISM AND NATIONAL IDENTITY: Modi and the Mob.

BREXIT - BRITAIN PONDERS LEAVING EU, A VOTER PROFILE: From this article and embedded video, the author finds growing momentum to leave. Typical stay voter: Female 18-28 Green party, College educated, professional or mid-management. Typical Leave Voter: Male, >60, UKIP party, High school or less education, skilled tradesman.

NATIONS REASSERT IN THE BALKANS: An excellent overview of Bosnia and the coming Balkan conflicts as Euro-western integration loses its hold over Serbians and other nationalities.

CATHOLIC POLAND VS. CONSTITUTIONAL DEMOCRACY: Each nation has a soul and that is what its form of government must be fit to. The ideal of The West and liberal democracy with a celebration of individual autonomy is not the end of history for most peoples - not even those in Europe. Philip Reith of Imaginative Conservative in this insightful article is telling a particular story about Poland that has significant meaning for many other nations.

V. GENERAL R&G ROUND-UP

SOCCER FANS DRESSED AS CRUSADERS: BBC says "no! no!" but maybe the footballers have got it right. This picture is a great ray of hope - masculine, joyful, the Cross of the Lord, and a bit of ale.

DRAFTING WOMEN - A WOMAN MARINE OBJECTS: Jude Eden on Selective Service and Women in Combat. She shows the exemptions and changes in standards required to get a few women in top programs. She shows "the shredding of records." She shows the continued central role that John McCain plays in the abolition of sex roles.

THE JUDGE MAY BE BIASED. DOES THAT MAKES TRUMP A RACIST?: Were his remarks really so inexcusable? The Donald and the Judge from La Rasa. Why Trump should not apologize.

A profile of Judge Curiel is needed to help think about this. I have not yet seen one. A new strategy of impeachment of our more out of control judges has to be part of the reform of our present problems. A judiciary should not be independent of natural law or the sovereignty of God. How will we get to impeaching the likes of Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor if a defendant can’t even criticize Judge Curiel?

Frank Rich doesn’t care for either but his comparisons are insightful - the Donald and the Ronald.

WHITEWASHING ALI - A LOOK AT THE CHAMP FROM ANOTHER CHAMP: Joe Frazier, winner of the 1976 Fight of the Century with Muhammed Ali, didn’t like being called an Uncle Tom and then an "ignorant gorilla." An interview in Sports Illustrated with Frazier on the canonization of a man whom he helped return to boxing and then who turned on him. Joe Frazier was darker-skinned, less educated, Christian not Muslim, and a patriot not protester. He, too, has his tale. Whitewashing Ali.

THE CULT OF CRIME - A MEXICAN ASSASSIN: A real-life killer as a You Tube sensation.

Friday BookReview: Alexander Hamilton, "the most progressive and most neglected of the Founding Fathers"

           
(first published May 22, 2015)

1755 - 1804

Here are excerpts from David Brooks' take on the Ron Chernow biography of Hamilton:

When Alexander Hamilton was 10, his father abandoned him. When he was around 12, his mother died of a fever in the bed next to his. He was adopted by a cousin, who promptly committed suicide. During those same years, his aunt, uncle and grandmother also died. A court in St. Croix seized all of his possessions, sold off his personal effects and gave the rest to his mother's first husband. By the time he was a young teenager, he and his brother were orphaned, alone and destitute. 

Within three years he was a successful businessman. Within a decade he was effectively George Washington's chief of staff, organizing the American revolutionary army and serving bravely in combat. Within two decades he was one of New York's most successful lawyers and had written major portions of The Federalist Papers. Within three decades he had served as Treasury secretary and forged the modern financial and economic systems that are the basis for American might today. Within five decades he was dead at the hands of Aaron Burr. 

Alexander Hamilton was the most progressive, and is the most neglected, of the founding fathers. He was the most progressive because he saw that America could be a capitalist superpower, and he figured out which institutions it would need to realize that destiny. 

He is the most neglected, first because he was a relentless climber (and nobody has unalloyed views about ambition), second because he was a great champion of commerce (and nobody has uncomplicated views about that either) and third because his most bitter rivals, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, outlived him by decades and did everything they could to bury his reputation. So there is no Hamilton monument in Washington, but at least we now have Ron Chernow's moving and masterly Alexander Hamilton, which is by far the best biography ever written about the man... 

Hamilton, we now see, was a dark thicket: aspiring and optimistic, but also pessimistic about human nature and often depressed. He was a modern striver, but also an archaic man with a deeply self-destructive lust for aristocratic honor. He was devoted to his heroic wife, but he was uncontrollable at times... 

Hamilton, whose life, as Chernow notes, was ''a case study in the profitable use of time,'' absorbed Plutarch, Bacon and the Bible and emerged onto the public stage as a pamphleteer for the American Revolution. ''The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records,'' he wrote in 1775 at 20. ''They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature by the hand of the divinity itself and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.'' 

During the war, his administrative talents were quickly recognized, and he was plucked to serve on Washington's personal staff, beginning the most important relationship of his career. Washington was steady, elevated and active. Hamilton was frenetic, combative and intellectual. Though they were not affectionate toward each other until later in life -- Hamilton actually repelled Washington's friendly overtures during the Revolution -- neither man's greatness would have been possible without the other.

At Valley Forge, Hamilton saw how fundamentally weak the nation was, how lacking in the sort of productive capacity one needs to wage a war or survive as an independent nation. This was the formative insight that shaped his career. 

His conclusions put him outside the mainstream at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. He favored more centralized power than most of the delegates and was more suspicious of the masses. But he threw himself into the cause of ratification. He wrote his part of The Federalist Papers, America's most significant contribution to political philosophy, during the spare moments of the day between meetings with law clients. 

''He always had to fight the residual sadness of the driven man, the unspoken melancholy of the prodigy,'' Chernow observes. While others resented him with a furious passion or gaped at him with amazement -- Talleyrand considered him one of the three greatest men of the epoch -- Hamilton himself was lacerated with a feeling of ''personal inadequacy that the world seldom saw.'' 

His greatest achievements came as Treasury secretary. He was confronted by an economically weak and fractious nation. He nationalized the debt, binding the states together and creating the fluid capital markets that are today the engine of world capitalism. He was working at a time when many around him had an entirely static view of economics. They scorned credit, banks and stock markets, and considered manufacturing the least productive form of economic activity. 

But Hamilton dreamed of a vibrant economy that would allow aspiring meritocrats like himself to rise and realize their full capacities. He sought to smash the aristocratic fiefs enjoyed by Southern landowners like Jefferson and to replace them with a diversified marketplace that would be open to immigrants and the lowborn. Their vigor, he felt, would drive the nation to greatness... 

Hamilton's relationship with his wife and family is one of the revelations of this book. At home he was a loving father, who could compose a treatise on how to bathe a sick child as expert and specific as anything he wrote on tax policy. He was utterly dependent on his wife, who emerges in this account as a woman of almost superhuman fortitude. 

And yet Chernow never lets us forget that he was a man inflamed by his desire for honor. The final duel with Burr started over nothing. But the feud between the two men escalated and escalated. Chernow rebuts those historians who have argued that Hamilton was really seeking to commit suicide. Among other things, his attachment to his family was too deep, and his awareness of the suffering that his death would cause them too profound. But Hamilton still went to Weehawken [July 1804, on a remote bluff of the Palisades of New Jersey] determined to throw away his own shot, fully aware this choice might cost him his life. 

His widow outlived him by 50 years, trying vainly to repair his reputation against the assaults from the Jeffersonians. As Chernow is aware, this book finally accomplishes her task.

Check out Peter Robinson's interview with Mr. Chernow. One of the discussion points is the ferociously bitter fighting between Jefferson's philosophical camp ("Farmers are the salt of the earth, and national power is anathema!") and the Hamiltonians ("Cities with manufacturing, along with a strong federal government, are our future.") The political climate back then makes ours today look benign.

                   

Hamilton with King George III

UPDATE: Currently, the biggest Broadway hit is a musical rapping version of Chernow's book. (It received the most Tony Award nominations in Broadway history.) Here is a good overview by the 'CBS Sunday Morning' show.

Peggy Noonan called the show a masterpiece:

There is nothing like it on the New York stage, and never has been. I got choked up so often I started counting how many times I tried not to weep... Why was everyone so moved? 

Because it hits your heart hard when you witness human excellence. Because the true tale of how an illegitimate, lowborn orphan from the West Indies went on to become an inventor of America is a heck of a story. And because it is surprising yet perfect that that story is told in a hip-hop/rap/rhythm-and-blues/jazz/ballad musical whose sound is pure 2015 yet utterly appropriate to the tale... 

Young Hamilton was alone in the world, an orphan with no connections, a self-tutored genius... He is ambitious, full of hunger for life, but he needs a stage. He gets himself to New York, then as now the city of ambition, and hears in the taverns of the rising American revolutionary spirit. This is his moment, his chance... Barely arrived and Alexander Hamilton was already an American.

In a telephone interview Mr. Miranda [the star and creator of the show] says: "There are so many highs and lows in Hamilton’s life—tragic circumstances. Then he pulls himself up to incredible early American heights. Then he pulls himself down!" Mr. Miranda recalls that by the end of the second chapter of Ron Chernow’s biography, Alexander Hamilton, on which the show is based, "I fell in love. I know this guy. I know about improbability. He’s like Pip in ‘Great Expectations’—the genius, the frustrated genius, I know who this guy is."

The show is not politically correct, but not in a way that feels forced. It seems effortless and natural, as if Mr. Miranda never heard of political correctness. 

And there’s some kind of new racial alchemy in the show. Mr. Miranda is Puerto Rican, his cast is black, white and brown, and the actors get to play the parts that suit their talents, not their racial circumstance. "Hamilton" marks multicolored America seizing U.S. history and making it its own, and producing in the process a work not of all colors but of a universal American color. By respecting the American Dream and presenting it in this way, "Hamilton" says the dream is alive, everyone owns it, and if you look close you can see it playing out every day, all around you... 

"If there’s a political takeaway," says Mr. Miranda, "it is that it’s always been like this. The Eden in which we had no political parties lasted about six months or a year. Divisions were inevitable. We fight, we’re people, it’s messy."

Ulysses S. Grant

                                   

General David Petraeus was recently asked what historical figure he would most like to have dinner with. His answer: U.S. Grant.

"In my view, Grant stands alone among American military leaders as hugely impressive at all three levels of war: tactically (as shown in his capture of Forts Henry and Donelson in Tennessee early in the war); operationally (the Vicksburg victory in 1863, one of the greatest operational-level campaigns of all time); and strategically (devising and overseeing the first truly comprehensive strategy for the Union forces to defeat Robert E. Lee’s Confederate Army)... 

For me, Grant was always captured best in the pithy response he offered to Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman, his most trusted commander, after the nearly disastrous first day of the Battle of Shiloh in 1862, when Grant’s army was almost pushed back into the Tennessee River. Sherman had emerged from the darkness to encounter Grant sitting under a tree with the rain dripping off his slouch hat. 

'Well, Grant,' Sherman said, 'we’ve had the devil’s own day today, haven’t we.' 

'Yep,' Grant replied, taking a soggy cigar out of his mouth. 'Lick ‘em tomorrow, though.' 

And he and his army did just that – all the way to Appomattox."

                                 

UPDATE --

The historian Phil Leigh writes: "After Lincoln’s assassination, radical Republicans urged that Robert E. Lee be tried for treason, thereby potentially starting a wave of executions. General Grant ended the matter by telling President Andrew Johnson he would resign if the surrender at Appomattox, which included de-facto amnesty for Lee and his soldiers, were not honored."       

Here is our review of Bruce Catton's book on Appomattox.

Check out this "History in Five" video with biographer Jean Smith. 

[Scroll down to find it].