Suffer the naked godless heathens to come unto to me, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven
This one burns.
Thank you, Amy, Juan, and guests. If there’s a part II, I can’t find it.
More strong sentiments:
I seem to have mislaid an article that featured excerpts from a book that chronicled Serra’s history from Baja north up the coast, and Serra’s purported reasons for all of it. Given that, I’ll provide this piece by Bill Berkowitz, ‘Franciscan Friar Who Brought Destruction and Death to California’s Native Peoples Canonized by Pope’.
Berkowitz mentions some of the very laudatory things this Pope has done, including apologizing for the church’s crimes against the Indigenous in the Americas while he was in Bolivia, and wonders at the major disconnect of this act.
And ‘Walk for the Ancestors Brings Attention to Mission System, Rejects Serra Sainthood’ by Nanette Deetz, 9/22/15
Aside for the personal voices speaking, this:
“Between 1797 and 1850 approximately 6,690 burials were recorded at Mission San Jose, with 8,200 baptisms recorded by 1850. According to “The Missions of California: A Legacy of Genocide” 81.6 percent of Indians baptized, died here.”
Just at one of his missions, note.
“Under the mission system, California’s Native people endured torture, brutal slavery, abuse, theft of land, and the loss of language, culture, and spiritual practices. “Mothers would give themselves abortions so their children would not have to suffer abuse. These stories have been passed down to us from our mothers and grandmothers. We want people to know the truth, not the historic myth that surrounds these missions. The walk has also made me realize that historic trauma is still with me today. It never goes away,” Holland explained. “I now realize this walk is about inter-tribal relations, and building solidarity between all California Indians. Before we started, I didn’t know who the Ohlone or Miwok were, and many tribes didn’t know about the Tataviam.”
One of the most difficult areas of the walk has been the treatment of graves. “At Mission Dolores in San Francisco, there are some gravesites, but most are under the parking lots and streets surrounding the Mission. At the Mission in San Rafael, there are none. Yet we know there were mass graves, so our ancestors are there, just not acknowledged,” Holland said.”
Christianity’s ‘Saving Souls’ is not a concept I can get behind; the hubris and arrogance is almost too much to bear. ‘Don’t mess with a Missionary Man’.
‘The Pope is Dishonest About Zero Tolerance for Child Sex Abuse; Pam Spees of the Center for Constitutional Rights and Barbara Blaine of SNAP say the Catholic Church and Pope Francis are not serious about addressing the church’s on-going struggles with child sexual abuse’ at the real news network.
I haven’t read the transcript or watched, but I do have great admiration for the folks at CCR. If they’re on target, it’s a subject worth pursuing mightily.
davidly
Greyson Smythe
LeMoyne
juliania2
ohiobarbarian
stephenadavis1
wendyedavis
café babylon 
These institutions are such pathetic creatures. Authoritarian vivification of their monsters and personification of their apparatus servitutis demonstrates their own soullessness. How can these institutions speak the truth? How can they be contrite?
Let their monsters be damned by their own (blasted) gawd.
and yet against all odds, this particular pope has begun a reformist agenda by papal bull, including allowing divorce (kinda/sorta) and other good things (climate change edicts),. but yes, in the main, religious institutions evidence a sort of male authoritarianism that chills my blood.
i look forward to reading/hearing the crr and snap folks. well, not looking forward in a pleasant way, of course.
https://twitter.com/NOIResearch/status/643794548699856897
(Gold King mine spill in Silverton, CO)
‘Serra-gate: ‘The Fabrication of a Saint’ deftly and mercilessly deconstructs the “Serra created the first bill of rights for Indians” rubbish. (long) I hope that it notes the fact that Serra worked for the Spanish Inquisition. I’d seen that Indians were left alone by the Inquisitors, but woe to the mulattoes, oh yes.
on the lighter side…
“I’d seen that Indians were left alone by the Inquisitors, but woe to the mulattoes, oh yes.”
Really? Where can I find this?
i’m out of time, nomad. it may have come from excerpts of a book called ‘crown of thorns’. but mulattoes in this case were half-indigenous, half…something else. spanish? it didn’t say.
now the Wiki on the mexican inquisition is a long and grisly read, especially the sections about jews and homosexuals (i did just scan it.) but it does chronicle the ‘jesuits out’, the ‘franciscans in’, and some of the history of serra and others gaining power over the military. at least i think that’s where i read it; i just scanned loads of essays and brief histories, but oh my: does serra have some major defenders! jerry brown, for one, former jesuit. “we need to remember that saints weren’t perfect” or close to that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_Inquisition
Interesting. Mulattoes. In my study of the history of African American art I discovered the earliest were all mulattoes. They were all black/white mulattoes, except for one black/American Indian: Edmonia Lewis. It would be interesting to find out more about that nexus.
i’m not quite understanding this, nomad. the earliest african americans’ or ‘african american artists’? of course, in louisiana, there were many first american/white blends, as well as black/native americans. sorry to be a thick-wit…again. ;-)
the artists. and of course I am referring to those that made art their careers. they were all mulatto. some, well one, light enough to pass for white.
thank you for explaining. do you have a theory? and are these artists present day or all or most of them? and do i assume you mean ‘fine artists’, not poets, writers, etc.? my mind’s awhirl, since i’ve never thought about color and art. well, ‘skin color’, that is.
paper bag test, or color blends as inclination for art?
as an aside, it’s kind of spooky that when i do get emailed comments from this site, i never receive yours. additionally, your avatar doesn’t appear in the comment queue on the right side of the page…until well after it’s made, perhaps even when i’ve posted a comment myself.
weird sorta mojo at play, dude. ;-)
on edit: i clicked into the juxtapox site in the tweet above, and clicked ‘illustrations‘; some are knockouts!
“do you have a theory? “Yep. Three tier system of racial classification that was in effect before the one drop rule became official in these United States, in which mulattoes were for all intents and purposes an intermediate class. Shared some of black’s unfreedom but had some of white’s freedom. This was the class of relatively privileged blacks that first acquired the opportunity to pursue a career as an artist (painter/sculptor). The term Free Blacks is used a lot to describe this class. Certainly there were some dark skinned free blacks, but most of them were mulattoes and usually free largely due to the degree of white blood in their veins.
i can buy it; i might add that they were often exploited, as well, to keep the status quo intact. especially as capitalism requires there to be a chattel slave class…still. i’ve just been listening to boots riley expound on it, and while he seems very bushed, he still knows his stuff. the mulattoes were seen to have ‘pulled themselves up by their boot straps’.
heck, i’m only 13 minutes in, but i’ll embed it. the bootstrap folks often act as the constructed ‘comprador’ class the comrade speaks of so often. and as the i guess Free Black/Free Indians in lousiania were created to do.
indeed much of the emphasis of legislation leading up to the Civil War was to eliminate the mulatto class and reduce them to the status of blacks, i.e. slaves. Culminating in the one drop rule. No more intermediate racial status.
i bogged down a bit since it’s so long, but the wiki entry on the ‘one drop rule’ is fascinatingly horrid history.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-drop_rule
Getting thin up here, but anyway, seeing as how this is Cafe Babylon, this seems appropriate. Feel it in the one drop!
Another mulatto, come to think of it.
“your avatar doesn’t appear in the comment queue on the right side of the page…until well after it’s made”
The comment doesn’t appear either. That’s why I sometimes repeat myself. I’ve learned to be patient.
could you try adding your e-address when commenting? or does the software simply recognize you?
left ‘chant down babylon’ at the end of the thread; dunno how you had a reply option, and i didn’t. moar weird mojo, mon?
“could you try adding your e-address when commenting? or does the software simply recognize you?”
autofill
might you sign out (up in the right hand corner, click your avatar), then sign in again? see if that works?
oh, for a memory, nomad! let me think on it a bit, i know i mislaid the several links i’d collected earlier.
The papacy is still a political position that must conform to expectations of an increasingly diverse but still religiously conservative in many different ways. Fr. Junipero Serra is not the only religious imperialist who conservatives are lobbying for. An attempt to plant a Jesuit mission on the Chesapeake Bay in Virginia in 1570 ended in the Powhatans killing all of the monks and burning the mission. Local Catholics are seeking to have them recognized as martyrs of the Church. And have already printed prayer cards in their name. Here is a site plumping for them:
http://www.unamsanctamcatholicam.com/history/79-history/169-jesuit-martyrs-of-virginia.html
What is most interesting about this story is the biography of Don Luis, who was kidnapped, raised in the Church, became a monk, went to Spain, apparently was not overawed by the height of the Spanish empire, went to Virginia as a translator for his own people, went MIA from the mission, and was likely responsible for persuading for the destruction of the mission. Historian Carl Bridenbaugh hypothesized that Don Luis was perhaps the brother of Chief Powhatan, and after Powhatan’s death led that last major attack on the English Jamestown colony as an old man.
Given the local parishes that want a saint in their turf to venerate, maybe Junipero Serra will suffice to satisfy the conservative mission heritage folks. It is all too easy to judge historical figures against moral sentiments and standards that did not exist until the Enlightenment — long after they were dead. It will be curious to see the twists and turns used to document this canonization.
One of the failures of political discussion about people these days is a bad case of the halo effect. People are not perfectly consistent in anything. And allowing the bad stuff to totally discount the good is good way to miss when there are possibilities for effective temporary alliances. That possibility is what has attracted interest in this Pope as compared to the previous one. But from the perspective of secular power, the Pope’s only army is the Swiss Guard at the Vatican. So all the guy has is words and private persuasion.
And the indigenous peoples of the Americas are correct in finding the canonization of Junipero Serra offensive.
But the tourist trade in California improves as these can now become points of pilgrimage:
Mission Basilica San Diego de Alcalá, July 16, 1769, present-day San Diego, California.
Mission San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo, June 3, 1770, present-day Carmel-by-the-Sea, California.
Mission San Antonio de Padua, July 14, 1771
Mission San Gabriel Arcángel, September 8, 1771, present-day San Gabriel, California.
Mission San Luis Obispo de Tolosa, September 1, 1772, present-day city of San Luis Obispo, California.
Mission San Juan Capistrano, November 1, 1776, present-day San Juan Capistrano
Mission San Francisco de Asís, June 29, 1776, present-day San Francisco, California chain of missions.
Mission Santa Clara de Asís, January 12, 1777, present-day city of Santa Clara, California, and
Mission San Buenaventura, March 31, 1782, present-day Ventura, California.
See. It’s all good.
But having the Pope call out the arms industry in a chamber full of people who have gorged on that blood money was a moment of some kind of justice. I looked to see if Pope Francis offered private moments of confession for all Roman Catholic members of Congress after his speech. Being a fly on the wall for a papal confession with folks like Ted Cruz and Mario Rubio and Nancy Pelosi after that speech would be quite the thing. For one, one could see just how serious the ritual of confession gets.
And having pro-life pivot to abolition of the death penalty and the arms trade was quite a surprise.
At the very least it might get some of the more religious than thou political Catholics off their high horses. And it might cause some people to FOIA the CIA for all documents related to the death of Thomas Merton.
i say good on don luis. it’s a bit akin to the 1680 pueblo revolt, or ‘popé’s rebellion’, eh? no, this canonization won’t satisfy those who want more saints and beatifications of martyrs. look for santa fe to want those catholic martyrs beatified as well. though i’ll admit, there has been some pushback in that area as more and more indigenous and friends bring the old histories to light.
i’m sorry to say that in this i find no merit:
“It is all too easy to judge historical figures against moral sentiments and standards that did not exist until the Enlightenment — long after they were dead. It will be curious to see the twists and turns used to document this canonization,” and not only because this canonization happened yesterday, and Serra’s beatification happened under John Paul II in 1987, when serra was said to be “one miracle away from sainthood”. ha!
i reckon that the pope’s ‘halo’ won’t be dimmed give i) all the ink that’s been used in approval of Serra’s canonization by er…non-indigenous, and ii) no one of Importance gives a shite about what a bunch of Redskins think any way. so there will be those vaunted alliances, i’m sure, but not so much with the Induns. they see his hypocrisy for exactly what it is. oh, and the missions seemed to have been doing quite well, anyway.
you did made me chuckle about the Pope’s only army being the vatican swiss guard, though. i went back and dug up a post i’d written on liberation theology, and as it turned out, it was published the very same day the white smoke for Francis came up the chimney. the entire piece was based on wikileaks files showing the (to me) ‘unholy alliance’ among the CIA, state department, and catholic church hierarchy to ‘deal with’ those dangerous priests (post-vatican II) who essentially believed that marxist ideology and horizontal democracy in local congregations was the way to change the world for the better. there were of course, plenty of different tactics used in the strategy, including outright assassination of clergy, overthrow of elected leaders in coups-d’etat, discreditation, etc. but yes, this pope has made some good moves, but this canonization proves that he’d certainly no liberation theologist, though not a few people have called him so.
heh; how funny you didn’t wonder about john kerry and confession. ;-)
but he sure does wear a sheepskin well! HA HA.
This careless reflex, “It is all too easy to judge historical figures against moral sentiments and standards that did not exist until the Enlightenment” caught my attention, too. Didn’t Bartolome de las Casas stand against the standards of his time? Shouldn’t we have the insight to celebrate those who did (and do)? Glad to see comrade Tarheel, below, escaped this indiscriminate apology but …
So, what barbarity does this Jesuit monster bring to a degenerating modernity? Catholic Realist reeducation camps?
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA.
Listening to these motherfuckers is mental abuse.
ah, thank you for leading me/us to Bartolome de las Casas; if i’d ever known of him, i’d forgotten. ah, yes, brought into the protective missions, ‘but at a price’, some of serra’s apologists are saying.
catholic evangelization: yes, exactly what this canonization seems to be.
“[he’s] certainly no liberation theologist”
and he’s said to be good a ideological fellatio.
oh, holy shit, so to speak. i do remember some of that coming forth the day francis was white-smoked. while it’s nice shadowproof kept some of our diaries, there are no comments extant on my Liberation Theology one, of course. lotta bandwidth.. and it was in the comment stream i may have added those charges against him, although i’d thought they were far milder, as in: not harboring a few priests who were…under the gun, so to speak. matthew fox is an interesting man, and the wikileaks are telling.
ah, well; i’ll be back tomorrow.
last night we had (now) very rare visitors in the form of four presumably great-horned owls. two close to the house, two maybe a mile away, and a mile away from each other.
magnificently, they switched locales, as evidenced by their discrete calls. a veritable symphony it was. i used to fancy that i could call them in, and so it did seem…. there’s good hunting out in the dryland, too many (sorry) cursed prairie dogs.
i’m shutting down in anticipation that at least a couple of them might be back tonight. the coyotes are out there, throwing their voices like the best ventriloquists, making it nigh on to impossible to guess how many are out there.
it’s been another blessedly late harvest day, i dried tomatoes there are so many, baked bread, and put masses of flowers in vases. so much bounty is almost unseemly when so many have so little.
From the TRNN interview above on the Pope’s claim of ‘zero tolerance for child sex abuse’:
Pam Spees, senior attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, where she has represented the Survivors’ Network of those Abused by Priests at the International Criminal Court in the Hague and the United Nations in Geneva:
“And we’ve seen in, for instance, in documents that have come through in discovery in several cases here in the U.S., they’ve learned that bishops have often sought guidance from those in Rome as to how to handle certain accused priests. And often they were pleading to be able to remove these priests from the priesthood, and there was delay and often, you know, there were instances even when Joseph Ratzinger, when he was head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, was declining those requests.
So it’s just not true that the Vatican doesn’t exercise control over this issue. And many others. Very tight control over bishops. For instance, you will see the swift removal of a bishop who speaks out on certain issues or goes astray of certain doctrine. But on this issue what we’ve seen repeatedly is that for instance, in the case of Cardinal Mahony in the Los Angeles archdiocese, repeated instances of very elaborate efforts to shield accused priests. This is known. And yet Cardinal Mahony is alongside Pope Francis now. And he’s still a cardinal. So it’s just–it’s not true. The process is very clear.
And I think it speaks to this issue of the tribunal that was set up, because there were mixed messages going from the Vatican to bishops. If you’re a bishop, and the mid-2000s there was a letter that was sent from a higher-ranking official in Rome to the bishops basically praising a bishop in France for having protected and having refused to cooperating with the court, cooperate with civil authorities, and report a priest who had admitted, basically, to sexually assaulting at least ten boys in that diocese. And what the Congregation for the Clergy said is you did the right thing, and you’re to be congratulated, and we’re going to share this letter with bishops around the world so they know how to act.”
remember when i was teasing about the pope’s climate encyclical and suggesting that the vatican might divest of its fossil fuels portfolio? (i also like to see the vatican start a ‘teach a man to fish’ program with the proceeds of selling half of its global church gold and jewels, but…)
‘Top Pope Advisor Says Vatican Will Not Divest From Fossil Fuel’; Pace University’s Chris Williams and IPS’ Janet Redman discuss the Vatican’s contradictory policy in light of the Pope’s call to fight climate change
almost as funny as this on september 25:
…given her stance on it being ‘a necessary fact of life’ as Secretary of state in the past, and that experts say that it’s now unnecessary (steve horn, especially.).
Best waggish comment about Pope Francis’s speech to Congres: Pope Francis visits the sick.
A paragraph from Tom Sullivan (on digby’s Hullabaloo) coverage of Dr. Barber’s speech to a regional dKos gathering in Asheville.
Pushing intersectionality and coalitions. Staying away from partisan politics. But most people in Barber’s Moral Monday movement make their own minds up about who to vote for through informal conversation and not formal endorsements. Formal endorsements are more an identification of who in an organization has the power to shove through the endorsement. If there’s that focus of power, it likely no longer a movement but an ossified organization.
Re: the Junipero Serra canonization, understanding why it happened is not the same as agreeing that it should have happened. For me, it is an interesting and archaic religious practice of identifying potential role models. The difficulty that you and I both have is figuring out what it is that one would want to model about Junipero Serra’s life and work. Which causes me to conclude that a big part of it was Vatican-US politics. But I sense in Pope Francis’s speech that he us queueing up Thomas Merton and Dorothy Day in the beatification-canonization process. It turns out that it was Benedict XV who beatified Junipero Serra; Francis canonized him. He can now have a feast day and is available (I suspect) for a future pope to adopt him as his name as the Church contemplates the addition of the Romulans to the Empire.
good quip, indeed. and boehner wept. will leave the den of iniquity. ;-)
wiki says ‘Serra was beatified by Pope John Paul II on September 25, 1988′, but small matter; wiki can be wrong.
i still don’t see why whites don’t just take part in the movement, myself. i will concede that some in the movement (or are interested, but not in the street, say) are prone to dissing ‘whites’ rather than ‘white supremacists’. and of course he’s right about ‘it’ being about race and class, as we’ve discussed numerous times. The Disposable Rabble Class, perhaps.
if the pope sees anything estimable about serra… but yes, it it were a political move, that makes it worse. and it may or may not prove all that effective to either bring more into the fold or back to the fold, imo. it is interesting that sectarian libruls seem to be the greater ‘hallelujah! chorus over his’ breath of fresh air’. well, mebbe not.
good thing no one needs me to be in alliance over much of it, nor over bernie’s sort of ‘revolution’. ;-) a few essayists are beginning to ask questions about the pope’s policy disconnects, though, and that’s all to the good, i believe. aside from the ‘zero tolerance’ interview, trnn has one something like ‘is the pope green-washing?’ i’ll read or watch.
“Is pope greenwashing Vatican” with Comrade Sourpuss, HA HA HA HA HA: ” In terms of the church’s need to validate itself in Latin America, it’s good for him to get validated by the Castros.” Il Papa is hosing off that Vatican sleaze with the half-century aged credito guerilla. HA HA HA HA HA HA. I wonder what he’s paying for that?
But baptizing Caesar in precious wine makes him no less filthy …
Too, Il Papa washes Vatican with legacies of Merton and Day. Certainly they would have demanded Il Papa take a scrub before coming into their reservoirs.
egad; it was Old Sourpuss. but okay, since there was a transcript i read it. funny that he had so much more fire speaking about the bern, though, eh? but sure, neither he nor the pope are socialists, but liberation theologists sure were marxists, or at steeped in marxist traditions. calling out the excesses of capitalism are one thing, but thinking it might be reigned in again, i believe, is silly. but then, the pope ain’t gonna say that, is he?
is he apologizing for the catholic church supporting some hideous regimes in the past in some act of contrition? but yes, the comments were interesting, some of the links looked worth exploring, too.
the pope lauded obama’s climate change policies? now there’s a hoot and a half! oh, excuse me, after hillary, he did mumble something about the xl pipeline not being his cuppa tea or something. pfffft.
would thomas merton have loathed being beatified of canonized? guess i’d like to think so. i keep a few of his quotes around, especially the ones on social activism. he was also suffused with the importance of love; pretty cool.
ooof; and what finally turned you against Old Sourpuss, anyhoo? i will admit that the popular resistaance newsletter carried one of his colums about the natural world…and the two paragraphs i read were surprisingly sensitive. but…i got called away, and dunno where it went.
Turned me against Comrade Sourpuss? Had I arrived at a verdict? Did it appear he deserved an ice-axe?
Google recalls one issue: Why had Hedges recently decided to spawn in this decomposing empire? Is that a family tradition or does Sourpuss have more confidence than he evinces?
Rest easy, Comrade Orange Peel; that interrogation is not a denunciation.
ah, nomad; i’d never heard that one! and this is indeed Café Babylon: soul food and freedom music. let’s chant down babylon! ha; made me think of abbie hoffman and friends levitating the pentagon. ;-) (reminds me i haven’t put up a food post in ages…)
ack, i’d forgotten jerry rubin, alan ginsberg, and the fugs! shoot, i hadn’t been aware a lot of this, including:
“…as Time magazine dutifully explained:
[B]y chanting ancient Aramaic exorcism rites while standing in a circle around the building, they could get it to rise into the air, turn orange and vibrate until all evil emissions had fled. The war would end forthwith.” there’s even video, and the 48th anniversary will be on oct. 21. my stars, i feel old. oh! i am!
“[B]y chanting ancient Aramaic exorcism rites …”
HA HA HA HA. Go yippies! Killing two birds with one stone!
Wow. I didn’t know any of this either. Fantastic!
A good rule of thumb:
but this thread needs a few yogi-isms, no?
https://twitter.com/DavidCorreiaUNM/status/646906080044318720
https://twitter.com/DavidCorreiaUNM/status/646901642944643072
https://twitter.com/DavidCorreiaUNM/status/646890867655970816
“If you don’t know where you are going, you’ll end up someplace else.” #RIPYogiBerra
“When you come to a fork in the road…take it.”
yanno what? it continues to amaze me that none of you ever remark on my (stellar) photo banners of birds, bugs, flowers, ‘n critters. what i wanna know is:
what the fook is wrong with y’all, ya great idjits? yogi’d have known!
But don’cha think he’d extend them false hope?
hmmm. for tonight, i’m bushed; long day
.Ayotzinopa on Twitter
https://twitter.com/hashtag/Ayotzinapa%20on%20twitter?src=hash
Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women in Harperville
https://twitter.com/hashtag/MMIW?src=hash
morning edit: do you mean that he might believe the students are still alive? or believe he might be able to influence the bastard nieto to stop what’s being called ‘a massive cover-up’? i looked to see if he’s gonna go to mexico, but no. but in saying ‘no time this trip’, he did offer that the US should treat the influx of non-documented fleeing gangs, police terror, etc. with generosity. dunno what effect it had in the end; maybe some.
on the other hand, he told the catalonians that ‘there is no moral justification’ for secession’. the plebiscte vote is today; guess we’ll see by tomorrow.
The false hope that he represents a power to rectify the malign world when in fact he cooperates with it.
unless he’s turning over some major new leaf, yes. and i doubt it. he could call nieto on the phone, no?
but this is great:
‘ Vandals deface statue of Pope Francis’ new saint Junípero Serra; Canonisation caused controversy among Native Americans
Carmel Mission posts picture of ‘Saint of Genocide’ scrawled on stone’
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/27/vandals-deface-statue-pope-francis-saint-junipero-serra
guess he went off-script in front of congress and left out his diss of capitalism, too.
comedy entry wins second prize:
this opinion piece by jon rappoport, author of the Matrix series has some suggestions for the Pope. ‘The Pope ‘A Poor Church For The Poor‘
snippets:
“The Pope’s recipe for change, if there is to be any change at all, seems to fall under the category of “income redistribution.” Apparently, carbon taxes and cap and trade would fit the redistribution agenda.”
“The Pope is headlining a big show in the US because he and Obama are on the same page. They both want to excoriate capitalism, while conveniently avoiding the subject of Globalist trade treaties, which are designed to expand poverty and destroy millions of jobs.
Since the Pope is willing to mention specifics, such as the horrors of air conditioning, he should be willing to address GATT, the WTO, NAFTA, CAFTA, and the TPP: the treaties by which elite Globalists wreak havoc. Until he does discuss them, and at length, his statements about poverty deserve no more attention than any politician’s.
As for his stance on immigration and the US southern border, his sympathy for destitute Catholic refugees making their way into America dovetails nicely with the goal of expanding the flock, which has been declining in this country.
If the Pope wants a poor Church, I have a suggestion. Bring in an army of expert appraisers and have them pore over every rare book, every scripture, scroll, artifact, piece of furniture, painting, sculpture, jewel, gold coin—every possession of the Vatican, including its lands and buildings—in order to see what price the whole collection might bring at the largest auction ever held on the planet.
Then sell it all. Take the cash and feed and house the poor.
At that point, I would start to take this man in the robe and the big hat seriously.”
Let Il Papa keep his furnishings and immobilaria as mementos (of corruption, HA HA) and yield the Vatican’s assets to Riforma Economica del Popolo (I wish the acronym turned out RED!)
Obama and Il Papa are both minimal evil-ists who maintain your subjugation for your own good. Both adorn the mask of sympathy while wielding the mace of necessity.
… the Vatican’s [financial] assets …
heh; i liked it especially for a couple reasons. one, it echoed my own sentiments somewhere on the thread, except for i’d advocated the redistribution for longer term help for the poor, as in the: ‘don’t give a hungry man a fish, but teach him to fish’; idea.
and that the pope was advocating cap-and-trade, for chrissake, and lauded obama’s alleged policies. old sourpuss missed that ‘un.
but srsly, if the vatican investment portfolio is somewhere near $20 billion, think of the vast wealth contained everywhere else. i vaguely remember that decades ago it was said that catholics liked the gold and jewels as symbols of how much the church valued…something or other. might even be true for some.
“An investigation by the Economist estimated that the American Catholic church alone – which has the fourth largest follower base by country, behind Brazil, Mexico and the Philippines – spent $170bn in 2010 on things like healthcare, schools and parishes.
Money flows in from individual donations from Catholics, government grants, the church’s own investments and corporate donors.
According to Georgetown University, the average weekly donation of an American Catholic to the church is $10. There are 85 million in North America, meaning each week the Catholic Church pulls in $850m through donations from individual Catholics.”
170-(.85*52)=125.8 billion
There’s a fuck of a lot more than 20 billion in it’s “investment portfolio”.
it would seem to be so; nice googling, comrade x.
it also seems that all news is Pope news recently. well, at least most of it. contest winners were: The Democrats! as his holiness never uttered the words ‘abortion’ or ‘homosexuals’ that the Rs count on . oh, but he did, but in disguised bullshit terms: “Pope also suggests Kentucky clerk Kim Davis, who was jailed for refusing marriage licences to gay couples, was denied her right to religious freedom” mmmmm-hmmmm. she was a “conscientious objector”, see? (guardian author bought it wholesale; isn’t that special?)
but his schtick about nuns never becoming priests was great, imo:
“Francis praised the role of women in the US church – saying that an important US government figure had told him the education he received was thanks to them. But he reiterated his absolute objection to women becoming priests, even though “church women are more important than men, because the church is a woman”.”
at the top is the bit about survivors of clerical sex abuse, good god all-friday. “almost a sacrilege”? the bits about the suffering of the bishops…wth? weren’t they covering it all up as much as they were able?
Back at the Vatican they’re compiling the greatest hits of Il Papa in America. The get a good laugh when he says atheists (only the double agents) can get into heaven.
:-)
guess they’re sellin’ a lotta soap pope on a rope again, too, and other papal kitsch. time to update the vatican rag, though, eh?