OK, I couldn’t resist. It’s a great line and it shows the hypocrisy of the Left on several different levels.
As for myself, I just can’t figure out this guy. I’m sure he’s a good enough guy all things being equal, but consistency isn’t his long suit.
I mean really: the recent communique he issued together with Patriarch Kirill of Moscow is pretty conservative/traditional if you ask me. All that talk about sodomy, abortion and traditional marriage. In addition, there was much detailed discussion about the Christian patrimony of Europe and what could be done to protect it from the barbarian invasions. I’ll even go further: reading between the lines, I’d say he’s going to cut the Uniates loose when the time is right in order to heal the rift between Orthodox East and Catholic West (but that’s a story for another day).
But judging an American presidential candidate’s Christian faith? I thought that was something that only evil Red-state Republican pastors did. At such an utterance, the typical prog/lib usually clutches his pearls and faints.
As to Trump’s religious faith, I thought that was always between him and God. Regardless, it was a stupid thing to do. Forget about the massive forty foot wall surrounding the Vatican. Forget the fact that the Vatican has the most restrictive immigration policies in the world. The stupidity is found in the fact that this inconsiderate broadside will ensure that Trump wins the presidency.
George fears that the Pope’s “inconsiderate broadside will ensure that Trump wins the presidency.”
I do wonder about that, George. Anyway, he will have to do it without my vote.
No doubt Trump will be devastated to learn you won’t vote for him.
I’m with you, Fr. Pat. If Mr. Trump get the nomination, he will proceed without my vote. He is unpredictable and untrustworthy. He himself told Greta Van Sustren last week that he could change very fast into whatever he wants to.
I disagree with George when he says that a person’s faith is a personal matter. Manifold are the Scriptures and writings of the Father that couple faith with obedience and our Lord Himself says that we are to know them by their fruit and St. James says show me your faith by your works.
That said, Francis is, as usual, too simplistic and superficial in his statements about immigration and a nation’s right to protect its borders and its own population–which is not necessarily unChristian. Of course, walls may not be the answer . . .
lxc
A Presidential debate between Hilary and Donald would be theater of the absurd. Time for a ballet choice: None of the above.
It’s Aliens vs. Predator: Whoever wins, we lose.
“Anyway, he will have to do it without my vote.”
I suppose you will vote (or not vote) according to your conscience. For my part, the pathological lying of Hillary….and the socialism of Bernie….and both of their undying support for everything abortion and gay marriage…..compels me to vote for whoever will run against them.
Amen Father – the Don is a fraud and a huckster. He is starting to make the political class look good.
He’s not my choice but I will certainly vote for him if he’s the nominee. I’m not voting for a pastor, a role model, or someone to be my friend. Better to crash and burn under him than under the alternative.
Yeah, that was a bridge too far for Francis considering the tumult in his beloved Europe and the immigration policies of Latin American countries. Pot calling the kettle black. Guy needs to just shut up and listen to wiser folk for awhile.
I used to have an article written by a clergyman down in whatever South American country Francis hails from which basically said that Francis would say odd and contradictory stuff day in and day out. In the morning he’d speak out against something; by the afternoon he’s for it. You’ll recall that just last year his handlers were constantly having to come out from behind their desks to explain to everybody what the pope meant to say when he spoke the day before. The priest who wrote the article said it drove everybody down there crazy. Maybe it’s that stream-of-conscious stuff that liberals used to find so groovy.
A lot of what I’ve been reading from the RC blogs is basically anger that mean Kirill conned poor Francis into making all the concessions whereas Kirill conceded nothing. None of them came right out and called him a nincompoop but, to me, that seemed to be the drift. If you’re gonna be dizzy you’re gonna get taken advantage of. Rorate Caeli credits +Kirill for, in effect, forcing Francis to commit to supporting the traditional Christian values stipulated in the document–the implication being that Francis would never have done it on his own.
I harken back to that comment I retrieved from another website last year which said that Francis is a big, gushy teddy bear who would make a great parish priest but is well in over his head as patriarch of an autocephalous church. His remarks about the wall and the Donald prompted Michele Malkin to say that the pope had just given Trump a big wet kiss.
The papacy is losing relevance. It is dying. So it is natural that a moribund institution will try to insert itself where it can as an act of denial. Mr. Trump scares the left, because he probably is going to win, and he is going to win with street power, populism. Bernie Sanders has accepted the neo liberal foreign policy/Woodstock social agenda of the liberals to be the standard bearer of his party. He has shouted he is Hillary Clinton’s understudy from Vermont and is a safer choice to make because he doesn’t bring the Clinton sleaze with him. Trump has said that he is going to run on delivering on what his electorate wants as a hard negotiator with an American political establishment right and left hate. In this, of course he is pandering to the masses. And that’s where he and the pope have a lot in common: both use religion as a political tool. Trump is more in touch with the masses. That says a lot, even when it casts aspersions on the pope, because yesterday Obama began the let’s stop Trump campaign, Trump being liberal political establishment enemy number 1.
A homophone, hypocritical heretic in the Vatican being a moral coward on abortion, homosexuality, ending ethnic cleansing, American imperialism and social justice does not get to bully for the DNC with any moral legitimacy. He is a hypocrite engaged in political gamesmanship, and he should shut up and look up the word consistency and meditate on it for two years and humbly act on it before opening his mouth again.
That being said, Mr. Trump is a demagogue and a person who will look out for the interests of capital when elected. He will only do so pragmatically when he has to. He is as big a liar and politician as any limousine liberal and heretical pope. The difference is he is listening and at least giving lip service. Liberalism is dead. Liberals provoking polarization to pit generations against each other is suicidal. Children grow up and eventually this 25 year love affair with the 1970s is going to get old. The fad of the rap subculture is going to pass away. And the music and movie business will end up being the canaries in the mine which will become the harbingers of the global death of McCulture. Nihlism is a realm of iconoclasm and predation where the bored and disaffected become cannibals. Trump is betting on a place where he knows the deck is stacked in his favor.
I however will be writing in Chewbacca/Tyrion Lannister for president.
+Patriarch Kirill is part of Putin’s machine of symphonia. He is using the temporary window dressing of Renovationist charlatans like Hilarion Alfeev to speak the retrograde language of religious liberals to say he is the representative of the defender of the Faith. Russia represents an Orthodox Christian civilization in continuum. And the Patriarch’s role in this is solidifying the continuum.
wow…just….wow. Try decaf.
May the force be with you. (Or the schwartz). It’s time, America, to put a Wookie in the White House. We shall overcome!!!
George, when will we hear more from you about how the Pope is going to cut the Uniates loose when the time is right in order to heal the rift between Orthodox East and Catholic West?
The banderofascist regime will fall soon enough, and the day when its crimes are broadcast on cable news is the day the Vatican says Mr. Sczevczuk acted unilaterally and we disavow everything he and his followers represent. The Vatican cannot survive the Unia being outed, while remaining part of its religious organization. That’s when rhetoric like “the fish rots from the head first” begins to endanger papalism at its foundation. Papal moral cowardice and evil created unia, and it will wash its hands of it.
You see, you can’t be all into Rosary crusades for the unborn when you license eastern rite religious counterfeits to sponsor neo nazi cadres who perpetrate Uniate ethnogenesis by herding peaceful protesters into a trade union building to beat, ravage, rape mutilate them only then to douse them in accelerants and burn them alive. Especially when one of the victims of this Kristallnacht-esque pogrom was a pregnant woman in her third trimester and there is video footage of her raped, broken, and burned remains. Wonder if the Catholic League will say rosaries for her at a future “Match for Life.” Odessa 02May2014, the day Unia committed suicide and got to be too much a political liability for the Vatican. Then when the world sees that and learns of how Uniate banderofascists staged a campaign of human vivisection to harvest organs to sell on the world market and the Uniate church blessed these people… I think the Vatican might just plead with Russia to eradicate the filth of Unia to excise itself from complicity in Uniate crimes against humanity.
Unia is dead. Its supporters are the future lunatic fringe of holocaust deniers and NAZI sympathizers. It will be eradicated. Uniates are the new NAZIs. Byzantine Catholic papalist sanction of anything will signal to the world that the Vatican’s idea of “the new evangelization and our Lady’s plea at Fatima” includes Nei NAZI cadres wearing nachtangel swastikas and dropping cluster bombs on Donetsk school children and directing mortar fire on pensioners, fire trucks and ambulances in Lugansk.
Unia is NAZI-ism in our time. It is a scandal which can’t be fixed with out of court settlements to molested children. Anyone who thinks the papacy could get away with a Uniate tribute to Adolph Hitler and institutionally survive is a sociopath who needs to be institutionalized and heavily medicated. The papacy will GLADLY write off Uniate filth to 1). Avoid culpability. 2). Compartmentalize the shame. 3). Control the damage. 4 ). Pursue a better relationship with world’s sole Christian superpower.
That’s why the pope rejected the incompetence of usurper Obama, blessed Putin as “defender of the Faith” in Havana and is ready to bankroll “GO RUSSKY MIR!!!” tee shirts. Those checks from the Vatican bank will keep coming.
Hey, they are not Christians in the south these days, immigration. Houston Texas has as many Muslims as as La these days, so don’t talk about red states being so different these days.. I don’t care for Trump prefer Cruz or Rubio to him since they don’t attack George W Bush in a debate. You can disagree with the war but to be a main candidate for President and attack Bush that way in public is a little much. Its like Hillary Clinton attacking Harry Truman on the Korean War. I thought the pope was wrong to say that Trump is not a chirstian, I like Trump is nomially Christian at best but if I was a religous leader I would not make statements about people’s religious fiath.
Rather rich, given that Trump denigrated Carson’s Adventism, and claimed that Cruz couldn’t be Evangelical because he was Cuban (I guess before he was Canadian).
but it put wind in Trump’s sails, just what we don’t need.
I don’t like Trump he himself has hired people illegality in the US as far as the 1980’s, polish construction workers who were not all paid for their work. Cruz should have been pushed instead of Trump. Also, Trump attracts the crazies like the white nationalist that do robotcalls for his campaign. Granted, sometimes they vote Republican but this is the first time in a long time they are really happy about a Republican candidate. There may be a brokered convention for the Republicans or Cruz running as an indpt in the general election. Trump also has done a lot of damage to the image of Christians since he appeared on Pat Robertson son.
I find it interesting that foreigners who criticize the immigration policies of the USA come from countries that don’t have an immigration issue (because no one wants to move to their country, legally or illegally). Europe, in past decades, has been very critical of the border policies of the USA … until they experienced it themselves. Now suddenly they are wondering what happened to their countries, to their borders and now they’re silent on American border issues.
Steve Sailer did a little homework and discovered that the current wall around the Vatican was built by Pope St. Leo the Great following….an Arab Muslim attack. He also noted that Leo was a guy who like the Donald, being pretty full of himself, like to build lots of buildings and name them after himself. Seems Leo was something of an Islamophobe.
Gregory, Pope St. Leo the Great lived in the 5th Century, two centuries before Islam was invented.
Thank you Fr. Herman. It was Pope St. Leo IV who sat on the throne from 847-855 who built the wall. I mis-read my own link! Again, thank you.
The article Gregory linked to correctly states that the Pope Leo who built the wall around the Vatican was
Pope St. Leo IV ( from 847- 855) . Pope St. Leo I ( the Great) , reigning from 440- 461, predates the rise of Islam , as Fr. Herman points out.
Gregory Manning cites a researcher to claim that “the current wall around the Vatican was built by Pope St. Leo the Great.”
This is unlikely for several reasons:
(1) Pope Leo the Great was Leo I. The referenced wall was constructed by Pope Leo IV.
(2) The referenced wall was not built around the Vatican complex, which did not become the papal residence until after the Avignon period.
(3) The current wall around the Vatican, obviously a very modern construction, is not the one referenced in the article.
The current powers that be, in both parties, have brought the Trump phenomennn
upon themselves. Since they would never agree to term-limits, Trump is the only
legitimate option that frustrated voters have. He will cruise to the nomination and
easily beat Bernie or Hillary. Many Dems will cross over, like they did with Regan.
Right or wrong, Trump standing up to the Pope probably endeared to to many an
Evangelical voter in the South. Just sayin’
Trump, more often than not, tells it like it is. I did not care much for him when he first started out then found myself applauding him more often than anyone else except maybe Rand Paul on policy position. Rand Paul though he tows the Libertarian line of his dad Ron Paul just doesn’t have the same command of subject matter the way his dad had however he was getting better, would have liked to of seen him stay in. Meanwhile Trump, now seems like the only actual “conservative” without the “neo.” All the rest are “neo-cons” meaning essentially they write a blank check for all military spending and will waste another 2 Tril. going into war on basis of “intelligence” of “weapons of mass destruction” not to mention all the lives that will be lost, American and also lots of innocent civilian lives of others. So far, it does not seem like Trump is in the hip pocket of the “military industrial complex” as like Jeb who will start sending troops back to the Middle East all over and everywhere he will have all the rabid warmongers like Cheney and Rumsfeld starting widespread war chaos destruction all over again however this time being far worse. When Trump was doing that beauty pageant thing and the beauty queen stated a belief for traditional values regards family and marriage and after getting blowback pressure from the dems/libs/progs and threw her under the bus I said to myself this guy is a worm, I can’t ever respect him, well, now I am thinking maybe I have to just let that one go. He has made quite a bit of amends. He has stood up to “political correctness” in the mainstream, gets lots of credit for that. I always tend to see republican/democrat difference as somewhat like Pontius Pilate and the Pharisaic Sanhedrin and Jesus said to Pilate “Jesus answered, Thou couldest have no power at all against me, except it were given thee from above: therefore he that delivered me unto thee hath the greater sin.” John 19:11 .. democrats now directly contradict the Scriptures with issues whereas republicans not quite so, directly, “neo-cons” however resemble the Pilate of Luke 23:12 “That very day Pilate and Herod became friends with each other, for previously they had been at enmity with each other.” So I like Trump long as he is as he has been so far, least “neo-con” of republicans, and he states he is “honest” I will give him benefit of that doubt for now.
George Michalopulos,
I like getting 200 dislikes. Or don’t. Well, the one like, thank you. Sometimes I get a few more likes
that always makes my day. You want people to agree with you, and agree with them.
Cy, I miss it too. Unfortunately, my webmaster told me that because of a significant increase in traffic, my web host told me that the like/dislike button was putting too much of a strain on the site. And unless I was willing to pay an extra $30/month it couldn’t be fixed.
As I am doing this for free, I thought: “no way.”
Unless of course people want to pay –say a dollar a like/dislike–for me to restore the function.
Nah — just let it go.
That ‘like/dislike’ function often seemed to me to be used meanly and instead of an intelligent reply, and it sometimes created unnecessary controversies within discussions. After all, in our laziness, why would we offer serious thoughts if we can just press a button?
I hope that we can have better dialog here without that silly opinion poll.
BTW: I like the new font, much easier for me to read
It’s probably for the best. The buttons had been misused so often that it was hard to say whether they offered any real informational value any more.
Please, please, PLEASE! Don’t restore those buttons, They are a horrible trial and temptation. I experimented a couple times bu posting JUST a Scriptural quote, and I was revolted to see “Dislikes” in response. OBVIOUSLY, many contributors used the buttons to show their like or dislike of a given CONTRIBUTOR, rather than of the content of any message!
Any of us who are sincere when we pray, “And lead us not into temptation,” must be relieved to see those boxes go!
My drunken brother in law “tells it like it is.” Sure don’t want HIM to be president.
You’re turning your backs on the only candidate that has the personal courage, organizational talent and political skill to beat back the Left, restore many of your constitutional rights, and put an end to the Democrat registration drive that is the immigration issue. He has some unfortunate down-sides, but you can’t have everything.
Ted Cruz is a good Christian, but he lacks the personality needed to get disparate interests to pull on the rope at the same time. Marco Rubio is strong on national security but also lacks this rare ability to inspire, and his doubtful immigration stance endangers your vote. If the Left succeeds in its numbers game, we’ll lose our right to vote against cultural relativism, assert our religious freedom, and affect any other issue dear to Christian hearts. Not to mention that our quality of life will also suffer greatly as we descend into the muck of a socialist utopia. Anyone up for standing in line for toilet paper? (cf. Venezuela.)
America is out of time, and Donald Trump’s campaign is its hail-mary pass. If cultural and economic balance is not restored to America, and soon, things are going to get ugly, indeed.
I find you singularly unimaginative for Christians. The Jews of 2,000 years ago believed the Messiah would appear as a powerful soldier/king to lead them to victory. When he appeared in the form of a carpenter, they were unable to recognize him. This is by no means to suggest that Trump is a messiah—heavens, no—but only to suggest that solutions to problems often appear in forms much different from those we imagine.
Which reminds me of that old punch-line:
“‘God, why didn’t you help me?’
‘I sent you three guys, but you turned them all away.'”