I should have known this would happen, but I never considered it. And now it’s time to say good bye to Pope Francis. I have spent quite a bit of time watching other people’s tributes to him. I couldn’t imagine how they could say anything so soon, but of course they aren’t writing blogs on their own schedule. They have editors, managers, and advisors. But their tributes were helpful. I’ll link them at the end.
(more…)Tag: Pope Francis
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Guard Against Spiritual Contagion
Diego Fares SJ wrote an article in 2018 about ‘the spirit of fierceness‘. He said this spirit pervades all of human history. It has a certain dynamic–opposition against ‘the other’. I think Fares’s article is important because it provides tools to help us guard against spiritual contagion.
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Irrationality as a Weapon Against the Enlightenment
I have previously criticized the Enlightenment, but now I think it may have been too easy to find fault. I was asking whether our present reality has benefitted from the Enlightenment’s promises. Now it’s time to compare Enlightenment thought to competing systems. In this article we will consider the Enlightenment from the point of view of the fascists. Probably the most disturbing revelation in Kevin Coogan’s book is the fact that fascists have purposely used irrationality as a weapon against the Enlightenment.
Since 1918, irrationality has been part of an assault on liberal notions of political discourse. This approach began as part of a Weimar intellectual current called the Conservative Revolution. 1 (Coogan p. 76). Today, we are seeing it at work in the United States. I believe this is the meaning of Kellyanne Conway’s ‘alternative facts’. It would also explain the behavior of Supreme Court justices who calmly demonstrate their disregard for legal argument and for the law itself. The fascist attack on the Enlightenment might help to clarify the Enlightenment’s importance to the West. If we want to avoid being overcome by this tactic, it’s necessary to recognize it for what it is.
Francis Parker Yockey’s Attack on American Rationalism
Among Francis Parker Yockey’s criticisms of Americanism was his claim that America’s Founding Fathers practiced a religion of Rationalism. He thought there were two key reasons that this ‘religion’ had been able to dominate America. The first reason was, America lacked tradition.
The second reason that rationality had been able to dominate America was that it had no originating ‘mother soil’ to provide Cultural impulses and Culture-forwarding phenomena. Rationalist religion came to America instead, through England. And it arrived in England by way of France (Coogan pp. 133-134).
Yockey argued that Europe had been able to resist Rationalism, thanks to tradition. Although he acknowledged that European tradition only lasted until the middle of the 19th century, he thought the European resistance had found support in Carlyle and Nietzsche. They proclaimed the coming of an anti-rationalist spirit in the 20th century.
Carl Schmitt
European Revolutionaries like Carl Schmitt shared Yockey’s belief that liberalism, democracy, individualism, and Enlightenment rationalism were the products of a superficial and materialistic capitalist society. The Revolutionaries yearned for the collapse of this order because its collapse would open the way for a new virile man of adventure. This man of adventure would be willing to risk all, due to an almost mystical belief in the state (Coogan p. 76).
In this Context, the Jewish Question is Never Far Away.
Yockey also argued that rationalist and materialist ideology made America vulnerable to domination by the Jewish ‘culture-distorter’. The Enlightenment was responsible, in his opinion, for opening up the West to Jewish influence. Jewish entry into Western public life would have been impossible if not for Western materialism, money-thinking, and liberalism–which he saw as Enlightenment concepts. These influences made America especially vulnerable to ‘Jewish capture’.
Feminism and the Irrational Right
Spengler called liberalism ‘the form of suicide adopted by our sick society‘; Yockey saw it as a sign of gender breakdown. According to Yockey, feminism was a means of feminizing man. In his opinion, man’s focus on his personal economics and relation to society made him a woman. The result in Yockey’s opinion was that American society is static and formal without the possibility of heroism and violence.
Polarity was a central concept for Yockey. Several of his polarities are listed on page 140 of Coogan’s book. He considered feminism and sexual polarity to be opposites. ‘Liberalistic tampering’ with sexual polarity would confuse and distort the souls of individuals.
Polarity, Credit: Designer_things The Right in general considered feminism to be against the natural order. However, the fascists’ definition of the natural order was different from that of the clerical and monarchist right. The old right still saw man as made in God’s image. By contrast, the Conservative Revolutionaries glorified the irrational, the wild, and the violent. At the same time, they were conflicted on this point.
They despised the Enlightenment argument that man was essentially a rational being who had been blinded by centuries of priestly superstition. But their confusion had to do with the irrational, wild and violent aspect of their belief system. They celebrated natural impulses, but the ‘natural’ pursuit of pleasure was in direct opposition to their idea of heroic life. They saw the pursuit of pleasure as weakness and degeneracy.
Rationalism or Polarity? Materialism or the Soul of Culture-Man?
In Imperium, Yockey wrote that the 20th century would bring about the end of Rationalism. Materialism would be no match against ‘the resurgence of the Soul of Culture-Man’. Unfortunately, the triumph of this new religiosity would not necessarily be a peace movement.
Conservative Revolutionary Ernst Jünger wrote in 1930 that modern war and technology were logical outgrowths of scientific progress. And war and technology had begun to undermine another Enlightenment idea–popular faith in reason. For Jünger, the real question was how to live in a new age of ‘myth and titanium‘ that was born in the trenches of Europe.
Jünger was one of the most decorated German soldiers in World War I. He believed that the sheer monumentalism of modern war had buried the idea of ‘individualism’ under a storm of steel. This marked the death of ‘the 19th century’s great popular church’, the cult of progress, individualism, and secular rationalism. In a world where a little man sitting far behind the front lines could push a button and annihilate the fiercest band of warriors, even battlefield heroics were meaningless.
Futurism built its mythology around speed, airplanes, and cars. Bolshevism gloried in an ecstatic vision of huge hydroelectric power plants stretching across the Urals. America saw the birth of the cult of Technocracy that viewed engineers as a new caste of high priests.
Coogan p. 141
In atheist Russia, even Stalin became a human god. Jünger wrote his essay The Worker to herald the coming of the new god-men of technology and total state organization in both the West and the Soviet Union.
Technocracy, Credit: kgtoh Time and Space
However, the far right’s thinking was already in flux before World War I. Coogan says there was a rebirth of mythological politics after the French Revolution (p. 141). This rebirth was brought on by the feeling that bourgeois constitutional democracy and civil society were obsolete. The rebirth of the mythic in the heart of the modern led the historian of religion, Mircea Eliade, to identify a nostalgia for the myth of eternal repetition. He thought he saw the abolition of time in the writings of T. S. Eliot and James Joyce. He called this ‘a revolt against historical time’.
In 1934, the Marxist philosopher Herbert Marcuse wrote an essay about the German new right. It was entitled The Struggle Against Liberalism in the Totalitarian View of the State. Like Eliade, Marcuse noted the right’s devaluation of time in favor of space, the elevation of the static over the dynamic…the rejection of all dialectic, in short, the deprivation of history (as cited by Coogan, pp. 141-142).
Pope Francis, on the other hand, Tells us that Time is Greater than Space
Progressives may not have understood Pope Francis when he told us that time is greater than space. That’s because he wasn’t necessarily talking to us. He was talking to the new right. Aleteia and other Catholic websites have explained it for those of us who didn’t get it the first time. Here I will try to explain the importance of this concept to the right.
Coogan explains the right’s thought process regarding time and space.
The turn to myth was intimately related in the quest for a new kind of post-Christian absolutism, since the new right rejected ‘God’. ‘Blood,’ not faith, was at war with reason, honor fought profit, ‘organic totality’ clashed with ‘individualistic dissolution’, Blutgemeinschaft [the community of blood] struggled against Geistgemeinschaft [the community of mind]. The Conservative Revolutionaries set as their task the creation of a new, virile warrior mythology. Right-wing Sorelians, they hoped that such a mythology would slow, if not reverse, Germany and Europe’s perceived decline.
Coogan p. 142
This phenomenon also called universal truth into question. One of its basic premises was that ‘Man’ did not exist. And if Man did not exist, neither did his universal rights. Only unique cultures existed–Germans, Frenchmen, Japanese, and Russians. What was ‘true’ was each cultures unique inner spiritual truth, and this could not be shared with other cultures. Nor was it subject to rational analysis.
The Left Resisted the Conservative Revolutionaries’ Glorification of Irrationalism
This glorification of irrationalism came under fierce assault from the left. But they had a unique understanding of its threat. The left identified Marxism as the logical heir of Enlightenment ideals. That said, we now know that Steven Pinker, who is not a Marxist, is also a defender of Enlightenment ideals.
Georg Lukács
Georg Lukács was a philosopher, literary critic and Stalinist. He argued that irrationalism begins at the same point of antinomy as dialectical thought. However, irrationalism deliberately ‘absolutizes the problem’. It calls into question the power of reason to ever know. In the absence of reason, faith and myth take center stage.
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse stated the formulation of irrationalist theory: ‘Reality does not admit of knowledge, only of acknowledgment.’ In such an argument, ‘Life’ is the ‘primal given’. It is an existential or ontological state which the mind cannot penetrate. It follows that reason is actually hostile to life.
There are certain irrational givens (‘nature,’ ‘blood and soil,’ ‘folkhood,’ ‘existential facts,’ ‘totality,’ and so forth). These givens take precedence over reason. Reason is then causally, functionally, or organically dependent on those givens. Under such a paradigm, such existential facts became new absolutes. They are outside of time in the same way that myth is outside of time. Now antinomies are beyond the world of discourse and above historical mediation. In such a world, conflict between opposites could only be mediated by the stronger will. Will became to fascism what Reason was to the Enlightenment.
- Kevin Coogan, Dreamer of the Day: Francis Parker Yockey And the Postwar Fascist International, Autonomedia, Brooklyn, New York, 1999. ↩︎
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Ecological Conversion: Think in a New Way
In Pope Francis’s encyclical, Laudato Si’ there is a section on Ecological Conversion. This section was written to encourage Christians to start thinking of their relationship to the world, to ecology and to the environment in a new way. Francis aims to encourage a new spirituality that can sustain us. In that spirit, Fr Peter Knox SJ is offering a Lenten lecture series on ecological conversion. This article is a summary of the first lecture in the series. Fr Knox wants us to leave these lectures feeling empowered to make a significant contribution in caring for our common home. He begins by quoting Pope Francis.
I would like to offer Christians a few suggestions for an ecological spirituality grounded in the convictions of our faith, since the teachings of the Gospel have direct consequences for our way of thinking, feeling and living. …I am interested in how such a spirituality can motivate us to a more passionate concern for the protection of our world. A commitment this lofty cannot be sustained by doctrine alone, without an ‘interior impulse which encourages, motivates, nourishes and gives meaning to our individual and communal activity’.
Pope Francis – Laudato Si’ 216Introduction and Definition of terms
This series was produced by The Social Apostolate desk of the Society of Jesus in South Africa. Fr Knox begins by defining some important terms. These terms include Lent, ecology, and conversion.
What is Lent?
What is Lent? Lent is a time of Reflection, Repentance, and Reconciliation. It is a process of connecting ourselves with the Son of God suffering with us, and with the broken world. Catholics traditionally focus on prayer, fasting and almsgiving. This was preached in the Gospel of Ash Wednesday: Mt 6: 1-6… 16-18. But this year, Pope Francis encourages us to ‘listen to the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor’. In that way we participate in an ‘ecological conversion’. The goal is to develop habits that will remain with us through the rest of the year.
What is Ecology?
What is ecology? Ecology is everything that surrounds us. We are living organisms–not higher than nature or above nature. Pope Francis uses the term ‘integral ecology’ meaning that everything is inter-connected. This includes urban ecology.
What is conversion?
What is conversion? Conversion has an element of repentance. Repentance is being sorry for our actions. There is also the element of making good resolutions to favour a new way of life, with the help of God. Repentance and sorrow is a gift from the Holy Spirit. It is not necessarily a bad thing. We may not feel good, but it is a gift.
Jesus announced: ‘The reign of God is at hand. Repent and believe the Good News.‘ (Mk 1:15) However, apart from Jesus’ many parables, we don’t know exactly what the reign of God looks like. What we do know is what the reign of God is not. It is not division, pollution, poverty, and struggle.
What do we have to repent of?
With this question, what do we have to repent of? Fr Knox addresses Christians in general. He offers a critique of the part Christians and Christian dogma have played in the present crisis. An article by Lynn White: The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis1, accuses Christians of destroying God’s creation. White says this was the result of following the injunction in Genesis 1 to subdue the earth.
The following is Lynn White’s premise, as related by Fr Knox.
As we enter the last third of the 20th Century, (he wrote this in 1967) concern for the problem of ecological backlash is mounting feverishly. …Modern science…modern technology is at least partly to be explained as an Occidental, voluntarist realization of the Christian dogma of man’s transcendence of, and rightful mastery over, nature…Christianity bears a huge burden of guilt. …What we do about ecology depends on our ideas of the man-nature relationship. …More science and more technology are not going to get us out of the present ecologic crisis until we find a new religion, or rethink our old one. …[We] shall continue to have a worsening ecologic crisis until we reject the Christian axiom that nature has no reason for existence save to serve man.
Lynn WhiteAccording to Fr Knox, Pope Francis agrees with with this article. The Pope’s term for this mindset is, ‘excessive anthropocentrism‘, the belief that humans are at the center of creation.
Pope Benedict, on the other hand was more cautious about White’s article. Benedict argued that this is not the only way of understanding what’s going wrong with the world.
The World Struggles to Correct Past Mistakes: The United Nations Conference on the Human Environment
In 1972, the UN had the first conference on the Human Environment, the Stockholm Conference. Since then there have been regular UN conferences and protocols relating to the environment. They include Biological diversity; the Ozone layer; Nuclear waste; POPs (Persistent Organic Pollutants); LOSC (Law of the Seas); UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Control or change; this is probably the most pressing concern); SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals, where we hope to see all of humanity being able to survive in a sustainable way that doesn’t deplete the environment); Hazardous waste; CITES (Convention on the International Trade of Environmental Species); Watercourses (This is aimed at ending pollution and not blocking watercourses, or allowing water to go through and nourish all the people downstream); High Seas; Biosafety (trying to prevent disease crossing from one species to another–this should have prevented Covid19); Pesticides; Migrant species (birds, whales, fish); etc.
How Bad is it? The Earliest Scientific Analyses
In 1972, the Club of Rome published a book called The Limits to Growth. The club of Rome was a group of scientists based in Chicago. They used numerical modeling to discover whether the earth can continue to sustain growth. It indicated that the earth can’t handle continued growth of populations and continued growth of economies. Since 1972 this conclusion has only become more evident. The earth has a limit to what it can provide, and to the amount of pollution it can absorb.
Planetary Boundary Theory
The year Pope Francis published Laudato Si’, another group of scientists from around the world promoted a theory called Planetary Boundaries. Pope Francis cited at least 6 of these planetary boundaries in Laudato Si’. Much has been written about Planetary Boundary Theory. The basic argument is that the earth can only give so much and absorb so much, and after that point there will be serious problems.
Fr Knox mentions one disagreement with Pope Francis on the subject of planetary boundaries. Francis has argued that concerns about population growth are the result of the unfair distribution of resources. If we could correct the distribution problem we wouldn’t have to limit population. Fr Knox thinks this is an optimistic assessment, and it may not be entirely accurate. However, he adds that Francis is a scientist and scientists sometime disagree with each other. Pope Francis does acknowledge that many of these boundaries are being exceeded.
Which Planetary Boundaries are Threatened and Have Any Actions Been Taken?
The hole in the Ozone layer (Stratospheric Ozone Depletion) was discovered in the 1980s by the Montreal Protocol. In response, countries around the world stopped using chemicals that deplete the Ozone layer. However, there are several other problems that must be dealt with.
Additional problems include atmosphere aerosol loading (dust storms that blow across the Sahara and carry very small particles that get into human and animals lungs and cover the surfaces of leaves); ocean acidification (the Ph of the ocean is decreasing and the acid is dissolving the coral reefs. This makes them unable to sustain the baby fish); biochemical flows (two chemicals in particular, nitrogen and phosphorus, have been used for chemical fertilizer. We don’t know how much nitrates the atmosphere can absorb, but the nitrogen cycle and the phosphorus cycle appear to be out of balance at this time. Too many nitrates are coming into the atmosphere and too many phosphates are flowing into the water).
The most concerning issues at this time are: biochemical flows; fresh water change; land system change; biosphere integrity; and climate change.
Individuals Might Ask, What Can I Do?
Individuals might ask, What can I do? I’m just one small person, I don’t know how to convince people. Fr Knox recommends Christians ask themselves, What would our Lord’s response be in a situation like this?
As an example, he recites the parable of the Wedding feast in Cana. Jesus’ mother comes to him and tells him that the hosts have run out of wine. Jesus seems to say that the wine is not his problem–it is the host’s responsibility. But Mary tells the servants at the feast, Just do what he tells you.
Fr Knox says that’s what we have to try to work out in our ecological conversion. What is Jesus telling us? What do we have to do?
Christianity’s other-world focus
Again, an element of the Christian belief system is implicated in the problem. This time, Fr Knox cites, Christianity’s other-world focus, or a focus on the hereafter. St Paul, for example, said that Christians should set their mind on the things that are above, not on the things of this earth (Colossians 3:2). But that can be problematic.
It’s a problem because we have to live on this earth, to take care of this earth, and to take care of our fellow citizens on this earth. We shouldn’t allow ourselves to be accused of being other-worldly focused. We must take responsibility for what is happening in the environment.
The Second Vatican Council addressed Christianity’s other-world focus
This same concern was stated at the Second Vatican Council by over 2,300 bishops from around the world. Christians should not be focused only on eternity. Believers should also be involved in the world order. The bishops urged the Church to promote sustainable development and care for the vulnerable.
The UN was also a subject of importance at Vatican II. Christians should not see the UN as the enemy of the Church. The Church may be on different track than the UN, but they are working for the same goals. The UN, together with people around the world, is trying to develop a sustainable world where people can live together.
Today, the Catholic church has membership status in the UN and is allowed to contribute to the discussion.
Gaudium et Spes, the Pastoral Constitution of the Church in the Modern World
The document Gaudium et Spes was produced at the end of the Second Vatican Council. The title means Joy and Hope, and its focus is the Church in the world. It states that the Church is not living in a bubble or on Planet Mars. Church members should not see themselves as cut off from the world or better than the world. Whoever supports the human community is contributing to the Church.
Moreover, she gratefully understands that in her community life, no less than her individual sons, she receives a variety of helps from men of every rank and condition, for whoever supports the human community at the family level, culturally, in its economic, social and political dimensions, both nationally and internationally, such a one, according to God’s design is contributing greatly to the church as well, to the extent that she depends on things outside herself. Indeed, the Church admits that she has greatly profited and still profits from the antagonism of those who oppose or who persecute her. (LG 44)
…Christians should cooperate willingly and wholeheartedly in establishing an international order that includes a genuine respect for all freedoms and amicable brotherhood between all… Those Christians are to be praised and supported, therefore, who volunteer their services to help other men and nations. Indeed, it is the duty of the whole People of God, following the word and example of the Bishops, to alleviate as far as they are able the sufferings of the modern age. (G+8 88)
Gaudium et SpesLaudato Si’
Laudato Si’ is an encyclical in six chapters. It follows the pastoral circle, meaning that its basic routine is See, Judge, Act. We see what’s going on in the world. Once we see, we make a faith judgment, or a social judgment from Catholic social teaching. And then we take action. We have to be involved–we can’t leave it to others. To this end, we have to educate ourselves and our children.
We have to change our spirituality. Pope Francis proposes an ecological spirituality. And ecological spirituality will be Fr Knox’s focus in these Lenten lectures. This new spirituality should make practical demands on who we are and how we live in the world.
At the end of the encyclical there are two prayers: A Prayer for our Earth; and a Christian Prayer in Union with Creation. If nothing else you can take these prayers from this lecture. But, if you want to go further, you can undertake an ecological conversion.
Anthropocentrism to Cosmocentrism
Pope Francis is very clear that human beings are at the root of the environmental crisis. And no serious scientist disputes this. It’s true that there are cycles beyond our control, but the present crisis has anthropological roots. We human beings, particularly since the Industrial Revolution, are at the center of the climate change crisis.
The term Pope Francis uses is anthropocentrism, the belief that humans are somehow at the peak of the world, and everything serves man. Women are included because they are somehow below men. Also included are money, oil, mineral resources, animals, robotics, and anything agricultural. We human beings have to change this belief and the resulting behavior, as much as we are able.
Umdenken: Think in New Ways
Instead of anthropocentrism, we have to move to cosmocentrism. Cosmocentrism puts the world at the center of everything–not humans. Human beings are part of a cycle of life. The earth provides for them and they provide for the earth.
Fr Knox acknowledges that since the damage took place on a global scale over the last two hundred years, any contribution we make will seem minimal. But every effort is significant.
Germans use the word ‘umdenken’, meaning to rethink or change our mind completely. Fr Knox considers umdenken an element of conversion. We have to think in new ways.
- Lynn White, The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis, Science 155 no 3767, 1967 ↩︎
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Cardinal Pell’s Delusions of Grandeur
After Cardinal Pell passed away, I happened to watch a 1993 debate between Pell and Father Uren SJ. Also participating in the debate were Catholic lay people and priests on both sides of the debate. (The two sides sat in separate groups.) The debate was published by Church Militant Australia. Judging by the comments, this organization expected viewers to be sympathetic to Pell and his group. I thought it demonstrated Cardinal Pell’s delusions of grandeur.
Fighting Vatican II and the Jesuits
As a non-CatholicI knew nothing about the debates taking place in the decades following Vatican II, so I didn’t realize that Pell was part of a faction that has been fighting Vatican II since the beginning. Nor did I know that this faction is fighting the Jesuits in particular.
Pope John Paul’s Encyclical on Contraception
The debate centered on an encyclical letter from Pope John Paul, which contains his teachings on contraception. It became clear that Pell thought it was his job to bring members in line with this encyclical, even though it contradicted previous teachings. His response to objections from other participants, was to act as thought his word should be final. Many of the participants seemed insulted by this approach.
Father Uren Explains That an Encyclical Can Be Debated
Father Uren explained that an encyclical letter is not supposed to be above debate. But Pell argued that it should not be debated at all, at least not on television. He stopped short of demanding obedience.
Why Did This Video Shock Me?
I am not going to argue any of these points because I am aware that this Pell faction still exists today. What I hope to do is explain what shocked me about this video. I was shocked because I realized that the insults Cardinal Pell has given to Pope Francis were part of this old debate. Even though this debate is now more than 30 years old, this faction is still determined to keep the Church captive to its own idea of what the Church should be. It wouldn’t matter to me if not for the fact that these people have been successful.
Hubris is not a strong enough word. Arrogance is better. This is one of the most outrageous things I have ever witnessed. And it may even explain Pell’s support of Donald Trump.
I thought highly of Cardinal Pell when I saw how he conducted his debate with a well-known atheist, so it pained me when he publicly supported Donald Trump’s bad behavior and criticized Pope Francis.
There was more than one occasion when he was publicly disrespectful to Pope Francis. Now we know that he was also disrespectful in private. It has come out since his death that he was the author of an anonymous letter criticizing Pope Francis.
Pell Tries to Influence a Our Election
Pell’s insults to Francis were hurtful to me when I first heard them. Now that I understand what was going on I can hardly believe this man would carry his fight into the Vatican and rail against a sitting pope. And it wasn’t just Pope Francis who he opposed. He opposed the Jesuits as a group. The conservative Catholics seem to blame the Jesuits for Vatican II.
You could say that when Pell tried to influence our election It was as if the rest of us didn’t exist. Regardless of Pope Francis’s contributions to the world, all Pell cared about was this obscure debate. Pell lost touch with everything but his own delusions of grandeur. It’s embarrassing.
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Neoconservatives Against the World
We knew that this election was a contest between two deep state factions, but the most interesting thing in my opinion is the fact that both Trump and Clinton represent neoconservative influences.
It was Bill Clinton who allowed the left-wing neocons to take control of the Democratic Party.[1] (Page 36, Location 465) He did so because he needed their support for his first presidential campaign. This would explain the DNC’s treatment of Bernie Sanders in 2016. Bernie’s Democratic Socialism is more threatening to left-wing neocons than the right will ever be. However the neocon influence on the left tends to stay under the radar. It usually takes the form of neoconservative candidates posing as progressives, including John Kerry, Howard Dean, and John Edwards. Those ‘in the know’ hoped that the imperialist-democratic ideal was on its way out with the election of Barack Obama. Little did they know…
It goes without saying that the right-wing religious leaders who supported Donald Trump are also neocons, although everyone seems to chalk up their bizarre statements to religious extremism. The Christian Right has been considered a natural ally of the neocons since the time of Irving Kristol. The neocons shared the Christian Right’s aversion to the cultural revolutions of the 60s and 70s. They rejected the Democratic Party when President Carter proved to be too open-minded and respectful of people’s different lifestyles, and they were disappointed again at Reagan’s moderate stance on family and cultural issues. From that time the Christian Right has supported the most radical groups and it has violently opposed the Democrats, particularly the Clinton administration, which it considered too timid in foreign affairs.
This alliance has been courted by both the Christians and the neocons. Ralph Reed, head of the Christian Coalition from 1989 to 1997, had neocon sympathies, putting him somewhere between a sometimes anti-Semitic protestant fundamentalist and the pro-Israeli group in Washington. On the neocon side, PNAC sought to create links with key Christian groups such as William Bennett’s Empower America, and neocons like Kristol or Eliott Abrams showed their support by sharing extreme Christian positions on abortion and Aids. This alliance was boosted after September 11 when Christian Right think tanks, lobbies, and affiliated preachers adopted the neoconservative vision of Islam, Islamic terrorism and the ‘War on Terrorism’.
Many Americans are not aware of how often the Christian Right has swayed presidential decisions. George Bush was threatened with their sanctions when he condemned Israel’s assassination attempt on Hamas leader Rantissi in June of 2003. As a result of their threats Bush’s reaction to the successful assassinations of Sheikh Yassin and Rantissi in 2004 took on an entirely different character: he sided with Sharon. (When Empire Meets Nationalism, Page 35, Location 447)
Thus, starting from a deep-rooted anti-communism, the neoconservatives have gradually developed their analyses, which go far beyond the strict mould of their supporters to irrigate the whole political scene. During all their historical trajectory, there has always been a desire for American supremacy and a wariness of the rest of the world which can only lead them towards a re-legitimization of the Empire as a key to world order. (When Empire Meets Nationalism, Page 38, Location 489)
Given this discouraging state of affairs, it’s important to identify a pointed and coherent resistance. The position of Pope Francis in this struggle is probably best illustrated by the identity of his Catholic critics. As described in Todd Scribner’s book, A Partisan Church: American Catholicism and the rise of Neoconservative Catholics,[2] Francis’s critics are Catholic neocons. This is probably the faction represented by Paul Ryan when he stated that Francis should not be involved in politics. Bernie Sanders on the other hand, has been sympathetic to Francis’s approach.
Orthodox criticism of the Catholic Church represents political rivalry of another sort. The Orthodox Church is not a disinterested religious voice. It vies with Alexander Dugin for influence over Vladimir Putin.
Dugin’s neo-eurasianism represents a line of thought similar to neoconservative thought. His influence on both Vladimir Putin and Steve Bannon reveals the true dilemma of our time.
[1] Didier Chaudet, Florent Parmentier, Benoit Pélopidas, When Empire Meets Nationalism: Power Politics in the US and Russia. Ashgate Publishing Limited, Surrey, England and Burlington VT, 2009. (All page numbers and locations correspond to the Kindle edition.)
[2] As reviewed by Patrick Garry, Neoconservative Catholicism in America. First Things, December 2, 2015
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Religion and Politics in the Age of Trump
Religion and politics in the age of Trump have become more intertwined than usual. When someone asked Pope Francis if a good Catholic could vote for a man who wants to build a wall between Mexico and the United States, he answered that a person who wants to build walls rather than bridges is not a Christian.
Trump was outraged at this statement. However he claims he wasn’t mad at the Pope. He was mad at the Mexicans for telling the Pope lies about him.
Questions US Politicians Must Answer Before Rejecting the Pope’s Comments
Some might doubt my impartiality on this issue for the reason that I’m not only a supporter of Bernie Sanders, I’ve argued for the importance of dialogue with the pope. However this touches on an issue that I was having problems with before the presidential race began. I’ll list the main points in no particular order.
1. There is nothing more confusing to an observer than a secular system in which politicians are expected to prove themselves to religious voters.
2. Politicians insist the pope has no right to comment on their behavior in office, even Catholic politicians.
3. Religion has had an enormous influence in America’s secular system.
4. Politicians who claim to be religious also claim autonomy from religious authority.
5. It seems that politicians violate the principle of the separation of church and state when they use their religion to win votes.
6. The behavior that was said to be un-Christian was the plan to build a wall to keep out migrants. Trump defended this plan on grounds that the Pope was unaware of its importance. However its importance hinges on the unproven assumption that migrants are dangerous and therefore not deserving of our help.
7. Even if we accept the claim that the pope has no authority in politics and that his role is limited to spiritual matters, wouldn’t the definition of Christian behavior fall within his purview over spiritual matters?