Telling

 I have seen this pop up over the last couple days:

It references the continued push to expand sex change procedures on minors while lowering the age of exposing our children to our modern porn sex culture.  It might include the sudden debate over just when celebrating the genocidal slaughter of Jews is or isn't a deal breaker.  I don't know.  I should mention that some of the individuals who posted this are not exactly your hard right of conservative types.  A couple actually shocked me.  

Almost hand in hand with this, I've seen this Rockwell pop up in response (a sort of how far we've fallen reference):

Suggesting that while never perfect, we certainly have lost something with throwing God out the window and into the ghettoes of our society.  Believe it or not, there are Christians who think allowing God and Christ to be removed from our societal stage has been detrimental to our nation. 

Well, as I'm seeing the above images, I then see this linked to from Catholic deacon and film critics Steven Greydanus:

Because to the Left, our past is 100% bad.  One of my sons once quipped that with the modern Left, it's not a case of the glass half empty as oppose to half full.  When it comes to our history, heritage and heroes, the glass is altogether empty, crush by a steamroller, and covered by radioactive waste.  

Deacon Gredyanus swooping in to remind us that no appeal to the past can exist apart from focus on the sins of the past demonstrates one of the Left's main trump cards.  Condemn the past for its sins.  Define the past by its sins.  Declare those all defining sins irredeemable and all tainting.  Anything in the past is therefore tainted by these sins.  Anything the past condoned is therefore suspect.  If you think boys and girls used to exist, or raising kids should be parents' priorities, or judging based on skin color is always wrong?  Well, that what those racists in the racist past said, ain't it?  Therefore, anything and everything from the past is, at best, open to debate.  Including the idea that sexing up our children or altering their underage bodies might be suboptimal.  

In fairness, I should mention that I don't know Deacon Greydanus posted the above image in direct response to the others.  After all, this isn't the first time that a Christian argued for remembering a time of more religious devotion in the past as a positive. Nor is it the first time Deacon Greydanus has swept aside appeals to the past that don't emphasize slavery or Jim Crow.   It just all happened around the same time, and I felt it telling.  

UPDATE: Then again.  Someone explained to the good deacon that not all was bad in the past, and not all is the best in the present.  Let's say, school shootings?  And he responds:

So there you go.  Trying to find the good of the past should always deflect to the bad.  But if you pine for the good but don't embrace the proper politics of today, can faith ever be found on the Earth? 

The State and God are not the same

 Because obviously God would have some improving to do to equal the State:

The ease with which Christians have shoved God into the Sunday closet and deferred to the efficacy of the State as our only salvation shows the speed with which God can so easily be mocked. 

For the godless Left, of course, the State is substitute God.  And activists are its prophets.  For the believer and the sane and rational individual who made it through kindergarten, we know better. 

Now I have no idea what issue is being referenced here. Mocking thoughts and prayers began with selectively chosen shootings and the idea that guns and guns alone are the only thing worth focusing on.  Since then it has spread to a host of issues where the only acceptable response is to take your loser thoughts and your loser prayers to your loser God and keep them for an hour on Sunday mornings where they belong.  

Again, it is the progressive activist and the dogma of progress that will save the day.  God, prayers, and anything spiritual has bupkis to do with the real problems of the real world.  Let's bet on how many good and faithful Christians approve this message. 

I should say that it goes without saying I believe Christians should be involved in things, including politics.  But since mocking thoughts and prayers unless tied to distinctly leftwing activism has become all the rage among the Left, I'm wagering the shirt is supposed to imply more than a simple statement of intent. 

David French continues to repeat leftwing talking points

Here:

I don't subscribe to the NYT, and wasn't interested enough to pull the tricks I sometimes pull to access an article.  I know what it says: leftwing talking points.  Gun owners are the problem. Gun cult is the problem.  Fear and rage among the right is the problem. Anything and everything right of center is problem.  To the left being the beautiful people who are never to blame. 

Oh, perhaps he mentions crime rates within the black community, the high rates of gang and drug violence that contribute to the overall homicide rate.  Perhaps he ponders the uptick in crimes and attacks against police officers and thinks it might have to do with BLM rhetoric.  When he speaks of fear and rage, he might cast a glance at the growing narrative that  conservatives and Christians are engaged in a genocide against the transgender community, and muse over whether that might have had an impact on the Nashville shooter, whose manifesto has yet to be released.

If he goes there, then fair enough.  I'm all for looking at anything when it comes to problem solving.  But if not, then I have a hard time believing French gives a rip about gun violence one way or anther and, like the Left in general, sees it merely as one more weapon in the leftwing arsenal, to be used only when convenient. 

FWIW, I'd love to see the stats on how many lawful gun owners are behind the gun violence, how many NRA members, how many MAGA types, how many who are part of this 'gun cult' actually become involved in gun violence.  Just like the stats that show pro-life people don't care about kids, or conservatives don't care about the poor.  I always ask, and yet I never see.  

If you are an enemy of the United States and the West

You could do worse than following liberals as a source for your propaganda - courtesy of Iran State-affiliated media:

Yep. Going back to our first Gulf War, I said our enemies shouldn't waste time or money on their own anti-American propaganda.  They need only watch the news and record interviews with Democrats and liberal pundits. 

Mothers have no special value where raising kids is concerned

 It must be true, it says so right here in the NYT:

Of course that's not what the NYT is trying to say.  That's just what is implied, as many things that promote leftwing agendas can send shivers down the spine when you consider the implication of what they're saying.  In this case, the NYT, like all leftwing propaganda organs, is about destroying the concept of anything true or real other than the dogmas of the Left.  Families? Whatever you want them to be.  Gender?  Whatever you want it to be.  Napoleon Bonaparte?  Whatever you want him to be.  

So the purpose of the piece is, no doubt, to insist it's the most normal thing in the world to define family, reality and whatever you want however you want.  Exactly what is true about the wellbeing of kids raised by same sex parents is tough to say.  I didn't find much info out there, at least info not reported by the propaganda ministry.  

Like the lack of hard evidence that looser gun laws leads to more gun violence, I'll bet that's because the stats don't benefit the agenda.  In fact, I've come to assume that if I don't hear something reported in our modern propaganda ministry, I'll assume it's because that something is true, and yet not helpful to the Left's agendas.  

I could be wrong of course.  I did find this study, which actually suggests it's not always a healthy thing for kids to be raised by same sex parents.  But that was one.  Others I found through Google were merely news posts praising the glories of same sex parenting, or a few obviously traditional, Christian sites insisting it's bad - both sides seeming to be rather biased in their approach to the subject.  This was the closest thing to a study by something not immediately connected to such agendas, and it doesn't read well for the LGBTQ parenting movement.  But it's only one study.

Nonetheless, I doubt we care.  Based on National Geographic interviewing experts from Harvard and Johns Hopkins a few years back, we're still trying to pinpoint why a disease spread overwhelming by sexual behavior and drug use like AIDS suddenly exploded in the world during the 1970s. Big mystery that.  An age willing to look away from a mounting pile of dead bodies numbering in the tens of millions rather than admit the obvious is not an age that is going to sweat studies that don't say what it wants to hear. 

Russell Moore and the new American Church

Russell Moore joins Beth Moore in abandoning the Southern Baptist Convention. From those I know who are still in the SBC, the general response will not be weeping and gnashing of teeth among those he leaves behind. 

You see, contrary to the observation of Deacon Greydanus, who has showered Dr. Moore with great praise, as well as others who have lifted him up to his opulent office in Manhattan, most I know in the SBC who follow the news have no beef with Moore per se.  If he chooses to oppose Trump, so be it.  If he wants to hang at gay wedding receptions, that's on him, though many think that's a step away from compromise and sin.  The problems the convention is facing, they say, are problems that need addressed - together. 

They wouldn't care so much if Moore didn't come off as, well, a snob.  A man who consistently says, "Hey World, look at those loser racist misogynist Baptist deplorables over there, let's get'em.'  If he didn't constantly talk of those who disagree with him as if they are a bunch of stupid, bigoted reprobates who simply don't see his obviously superior position and infallible standards that should be the measure for all others to follow.  That is what set most of them off. 

I knew Russ in seminary.  Not personally in a close friendship way, but enough to notice some things.  He was part of the Mohler revolution.  If he really loved Catholics as he has said, or despised the fundamentalism that accompanied that bold change in Seminary life, including the belief that women do belong in the home, he kept such thinking to himself.  He was never one who suffered from a disproportionate level of humility, so those who criticize his high and mighty contempt for Baptists who disagree with Russ are easy to sympathize with. 

Like Beth Moore before him, who chalked up all criticisms of her ministry as being the result of misogynist men who displayed their woman hate by pointing out she was easy on the eyes, Russ has bolted from the Convention that made him one of those lucky few who live in wealth and luxury for the Prince of Peace.  With his departure, he bemoans the hatred and attacks on his family by all those white supremacists who seemed to have eluded me in my Baptist ministry days.

Oh, I saw racism of course. Really.  Real, honest racism.  I once was asked to fill in at a church one Sunday.  I delivered a message that included  a story, courtesy of Tony Campolo, about a young man coming to realize the humanity of a single mother in the inner city; a mother who happened to be African American.  After the service, a family invited me to dine with them at their Sunday dinner in the best manner of Baptist eating.  During the meal, I was gently informed that if I come back, I might not want to use Black people as the center of an illustration.

So I'd be stupid and a liar to say there was no racism.  Sure there was.  Good old white racism against non-whites, but back before racism became the all defining, unforgivable monolithic sin that a growing number of religious leaders now admit it is.  Of course, when working among the inner city missions, I encountered anti-white racism among some black pastors I met.  Among some women I knew there was prejudice as well, including anti-male bigotry.  There was bigotry and sin across the board, from people I knew overseas to those at home - all of those people being human, sin happens.  

But Russ has bought the Leftist bug that there are only certain all defining and all encompassing sins based on skin color and political party as defined by the modern Left.  His contempt for those targeted by the modern Left, while accepting of others who toe the leftwing line, is what made so many in the convention upset.  I don't think there will be many tears shed at his leaving. 

And if Moore, or the author of the piece, or the good Deacon Greydanus, yearn for a time when God seizes the crushing power of Rome and Caesar to finally stamp out those who stand in the way of the New Left and its new American church, then we'll just have to see. Given what the new Left stands for, I don't think I'll sweat it.  If the courts and the State come after us, as some apparently are hoping for, it likely won't be at the behest of the Almighty, unless the first 2000 years of Christianity were as disastrously wrong about almost everything as some would have us think. 

The Jesuits put out a Social Justice viewing list

Here.  'Nuff said.  

If America does become the next socialist totalitarian terror state of gulags and/or gas chambers, its flag will have a footnote at the bottom saying, "The Jesuits approved this message". 

Father James Martin muses on the Bible's errors

It's funny.  Like mainline Protestant denominations, progressive Catholics lean heavily on the 'Development of Doctrine'.  That is a very Christian, and biblical, understanding of God's unfolding relationship with mankind.  Simply put, God didn't reveal everything at once.  He revealed a little and a little and a little over the ages.  The ultimate revelation being God incarnate in Jesus Christ.

Now, Jesus is the final true revelation, but that's not to say the Christian Faith never accepted new ideas or new understandings.  From the beginning, Church leaders realized a need to confront the context of the ages and even examine the historical Faith to see ways in which God interacts with new discoveries and ways of seeing the world.

What happened, at least in Protestant denominations, is that this very Christian concept became a blank check to basically throw anything and everything out the window to keep up with the latest Joneses.  Not only did it require a blind acceptance of the infallibility of progress, but it also tended toward a growing arrogance, a presentism as dogma in which many in these denominations severed almost all ties with the past, owing to their contempt for everyone who came before.  If they saw farther than those before, it's because they were the towering giants, looking back with increasing contempt on those deplorable dwarfs who came before.

Well, that seems to be where Fr. Martin is headed:

So there you have it, the Bible is just wrong sometimes.  Makes you wonder how valuable it really is.  Yes, yes.  Fr. Martin didn't say he agreed. He just found it - interesting.

Increasingly, it seems as if Catholic leaders - not to mention Catholics in general - are embracing the same notion:  Oh sure, there was a time when the Church OK'd the death penalty, or taught that women can't be priests, or the silly old Bible writers loved them some slavery and homophobia, but praise be to God!  The Lord finally got off the pot and created the first Generation to set it right! 

Same thing I saw in Protestantism.  Like all things today, it's happening at a faster pace.  Just like new forms of racism.  What took centuries to lead to Jim Crow, or millennia to arrive at Auschwitz, has emerged almost overnight to the point where people can, with a straight face, say the whole of white heritage must be exterminated.  So Catholics, unlike Protestants who took decades, or generations, to come to something like this, are within a matter of decades pushing the Church in all but its skeletal structure to the same brink.

FWIW, Rod Dreher notices many legit problems with Fr. Martin's take, but it is the same that we see with all of the Left.  To embrace the manifold heresies and blasphemies that characterize that thing called the Left (or SJW, or secular paganism), one must peddle in lies, idiocy, BS, and outright apostasy.  So far, despite the loud boast that the Catholic Church alone can save us from the degrading slavery of being a child of the age, it seems like a growing number of Catholics are equal to the task nonetheless.

As my boys said, it looks like we were pretty stupid to have given up everything to become Catholic, when the Catholic Church is doing everything in its power to become like the world.  We could have just become liberal Protestants and met the Church halfway and not lost almost everything we had.

The reader on Rod's blog gets it and gets it good - the abyss into which the Catholic Church is rushing by leaps and bounds:

“Where the Bible mentions murder at all, it clearly condemns it. I freely grant that. The issue is precisely whether the biblical judgment is correct.”

“Where the Bible mentions adultery at all, it clearly condemns it. I freely grant that. The issue is precisely whether the biblical judgment is correct.”

“Where the Bible mentions exploiting the poor at all, it clearly condemns it. I freely grant that. The issue is precisely whether the biblical judgment is correct.” 

Joe Biden joins the "Screw Prayer" movement

In response to the Colorado STEM school shooting, Biden echoed a common mantra among the Left.  That mantra says that your God and your prayers are worthless.  Only the horses and chariots of the Leftist State can deliver us from this evil of gun violence.  The near equal number of Americans dying of AIDS/HIV continuing to be ignored.  If you "only" offer prayers and nothing else, then you are not doing a damn thing to solve the problem. 

This isn't something that only atheists and secular leftists say.  If it were them, it would make sense.  But it is a growing number of Christians in devotion to the Leftist State who echo the same.  Remember, Joe Biden hangs his Catholic Faith around his neck for all the world to see.

Of course orthodox believers are fine with looking to solutions beyond prayer, provided they actually work.  But for the Left, there is nothing but stupidity and evil unless you conform 100% to the Left.  Despite strong evidence that the Left is not always correct, the Left will allow for no such observation.  It is the Leftist State, and only the Leftist State, which is efficacious in delivering us, sanctifying us, and saving us.  Anything else, even 99% fealty to the Left, and you become 100% irredeemably deplorable. 

Apparently, given the reaction among them, New Prolife Christians approve this message.  Almost from the beginning, more and more Christians on the left have embraced this idea that it is not through prayer and trust in God that we will solve our nation's ills, but through the wisdom and efficacy of the Leftist State and its socio-political and economic policies.  If that seems like heresy, it is.  But it's merely one case among many, and almost impossible to focus upon anymore given the number of ways the Faith is being converted by the World. 

Robert De Niro demonstrates why outrage about Trump's behavior falls on deaf ears

Yep.  At another celebration of liberal values intended to keep our eyes off the ball of reality, the Tony Awards pulled all the appropriate levers.  But it was De Niros' vulgarity laden rant against Trump, to the thunderous applause of the free thinkers in the audience who all think alike, that reminds us why screams about Trump's bad behavior are merely pots calling a kettle black.

If I understand Fr. James Martin

Apparently he is saying that anyone should be able to work at the American Bible Society:

See that?  It's like the Book of Acts was never written.  Why, how can you possibly think homosexuality is wrong, or insist Christians be part of your Christian ministry, without having to bar King David or Abraham from the table?  Isn't it all the same?  Did anything big happen between the time of Esau and now?  And sin?  Why we're all sinners, so how can we have standards?  Let practicing homosexuals in.  Let serial adulterers in.  Let racists in.  Child molesters.  Murderers.  I suppose.  Maybe those last ones are going too far.   It's hard to tell.  Perhaps he's just bending and twisting to allow for the LGBTQ community, and not thinking about the long term ramifications.  That happens when trying to pound the square peg of Leftist heresies into the round hole of a Christian model of Creation.

But such are the attempts to cozy up to the greatest heresy since Arianism.  LGBTQ acceptance is merely an extension of that heresy.  But the heresy itself is a denial of Jesus the Christ.  If, to Arius, Christ was the Logos, albeit not co-eternal with the Father, then how much more is the heresy that denies Jesus even existed, or at best was merely an obscure traveling preacher who looked like John Lennon and was executed for his efforts, after which he rotted into the fabricated myth and legend as some Christ of Faith?

And yet that is the cornerstone of the modern Left, and everything - its theories of the universe and its origins, the origin of man, human morality, soteriology, ethics and morality - are all founded on that heretical pronouncement.  So what can you do?  Well, do what Fr. Martin and a growing number of Christians giving up the fight must do.  Appeal to anything, no matter how ludicrous, and hope that either we're too ignorant to care, or too lazy to care.  All the while, of course, ignoring the fact that while we imagine such tactics will somehow convert the Left, it is the Left that is actively and militantly working to convert the Faithful.  And, if I may say so, doing a bang-up job.