• THE ROMULUS AND REMUS LEGEND AND THE PAPACY

• CULTURE WAR WITHIN THE CHURCH OF ROME

• "AMERICANISM" AND ITS CURRENT IMPACT

• THE POWERS REVEALED IN REVELATION 13

• ARE PROPHETIC EVENTS IN PALESTINE ABOUT TO MOVE FORWARD?

THE ROMULUS AND REMUS LEGEND AND THE PAPACY

With the dethronement of "Cyrus" "the Chosen One" the Evangelicals are about to be swept out of the White House, ceding influence to the papal Caesar whose benign Vatican II Council countenance masks the spirit of Romulus and Remus:-

In his book The Consecrated Way to Christian Perfection A. T. Jones demonstrated from the annals of history the reality that the papacy is but a continuation of the Roman Empire:

The Consecrated Way to Christian Perfection

CHAPTER XIII THE TRANSGRESSION AND ABOMINATION OF DESOLATION

And all this is confirmed by latter Rome herself. For Leo the Great was pope A.D. 440 to A.D. 461, in the very time when the former Rome was in its very last days, when it was falling rapidly to ruin. And Leo the Great declared in a sermon that the former Rome was but the promise of the latter Rome; that the glories of the former were to be reproduced in Catholic Rome; that Romulus and Remus were but the forerunners of Peter and Paul; that the successors of Romulus therefore were the precursors of the successors of Peter; and that, as the former Rome had ruled the world, so the latter Rome, by the see of the holy blessed Peter as head of the world, would dominate the earth. This conception of Leo's was never lost from the Papacy. And when, only fifteen years afterward, the Roman Empire had, as such, perished, and only the Papacy survived the ruin and firmly held place and power in Rome, this conception of Leo's was only the more strongly and with the more certitude held and asserted. . . .

Taking the ground that she is the only true continuation of original Rome, upon that the Papacy took the ground that wherever the New Testament cites or refers to the authority of original Rome, she is now meant, because she is the only true continuation of original Rome. Accordingly, where the New Testament enjoins submission to "the powers that be," or obedience to "governors," it means the Papacy, because the only power and the only governors that then were, were Roman, and the papal power was the true continuation of the Roman.

"Every passage was seized on where submission to the powers that be is enjoined, every instance cited where obedience had actually been rendered to the imperial officials; special emphasis being laid on the sanction which Christ Himself had given to Roman dominion by pacifying the world through Augustus, by being born at the time of the taxing, by paying tribute to Caesar, by saying to Pilate, 'Thou couldst have no power at all against Me except it were given thee from above'"—Bryce. And since Christ had recognized the authority of Pilate, who was but the representative of Rome, who should dare to disregard the authority of the Papacy, the true continuation of that authority, to which even the Lord from heaven had submitted.

And it was only the logical culmination of this assumption when Pope Boniface VIII presented himself in the sight of the multitude, clothed in a cuirass, with a helmet on his head and a sword in his hand held aloft, and proclaimed: "There is no other Caesar, nor king, nor emperor than I, the Sovereign Pontiff and Successor of the Apostles;" and, when further he declared, ex cathedra: "We therefore assert, define, and pronounce that it is necessary to salvation to believe that every human being is subject to the Pontiff of Rome."

This is proof enough that the little horn of the seventh chapter of Daniel is Papal Rome and that it is in spirit and purpose intentionally the continuation of original Rome. (Underscored emphasis added.)

Ellen G. White also wrote from the historical record in copious detail about this sinister perversion and subversion of the Christian Church. It is a fascinating account, and only a small portion is quoted here:

Ecclesiastical Empire

CHAPTER XIII - RESTORATION OF THE WESTERN EMPIRE

IT is evident that as the papacy had hitherto claimed, and had actually acquired, absolute dominion over all things spiritual, henceforth she would claim, and, if crafty policy and unscrupulous procedure were of any avail, would actually acquire, absolute dominion over all things temporal as well as spiritual. Indeed, as we have seen, this was already claimed, and the history of Europe for more than a thousand of the following years abundantly proves that the claim was finally and fully established. . .

90. The conferring of the dignity of patrician, as well as that of consul, was a prerogative that pertained to the Roman emperor alone. For the pope then to confer such a dignity was in itself first to assert that the pope occupied the place of emperor, and possessed an authority that included that of emperor. This is exactly what was claimed. We have seen that even while the Roman Empire yet remained, Pope Leo the Great, 440-461, declared that the former Rome was but the promise of the latter Rome; that the glories of the former were to be reproduced in Catholic Rome; that Romulus and Remus were but the precursors of Peter and Paul, and the successors of Romulus therefore the precursors of the successors of Peter; and that as the former Rome had ruled the world, so the latter by the see of the holy blessed Peter as head of the world would dominate the earth. This conception was never lost by the papacy. And when the Roman Empire had in itself perished, and only the papacy survived the ruin and firmly held place and power in Rome, the capital, how much stronger and with the more certitude would that conception be held and asserted. . .(Underscored emphasis added.)

From the Roman Catholic publication Crisis Magazine comes the following commentary in 2013:

St. Peter and St. Paul, the Fathers of Great Rome

Peter and Paul, the Fathers of great Rome,

Now sitting in the Senate of the skies,

One by the cross, the other by the sword,

Sent to their thrones on high, to Life’s eternal prize.

Elpis, the wife of Boethius, sings the praises of St. Peter and St. Paul in her Latin poem, Decora lux aeternitatis. In another translation of this hymn, these two apostles are referred to as the “twin founders of Rome.” This historical allusion recalls the legend of the founding of the city of Rome by the twin brothers, Romulus and Remus. Their city matured into an Empire that was one of the most powerful civilizations in human history. Yet over 800 years from the founding of the city of Rome, another set of brothers, Peter and Paul, not natural brothers, but united by the bonds of the Spirit in Christ, laid a foundation of a new civilization which would outlast and outshine the Roman Empire.

Early Christian writers often contrasted Peter and Paul with Rome’s founders, Romulus and Remus. According to the ancient Roman myth, Rome was violently established when Romulus killed his brother as they laid the city’s walls. In comparison, Peter and Paul built up the civilization of love found in the Church with brotherly affection. The Roman Empire, in nascent form at the time of the twin founders, would rule the world through fear and violence under the shroud of the pax romana. Peter and Paul would set the example for the Church to serve the world through faith and charity under the mantle of the pax Christi. The spiritual kingdom of the Church would far surpass the boundaries of time and space to which the Roman Empire had aspired. As noted by Pope St. Leo the Great, the Roman Empire which was the great teacher of error became the disciple of Truth under the guidance of the two great apostles, Peter and Paul.

Through preaching truth in word and practicing charity in deed, Peter and Paul re-founded the city of Rome for Christ. . .

Since the first Rome was founded on fratricide, Rome needed to be re-founded as a Christian city in fraternal love. Elpis continues her hymn in praise of the great apostles Peter and Paul by extolling the great city of Rome.

O happy Rome! Who in thy martyr princes’ blood,

A twofold stream, art washed and doubly sanctified.

All earthly beauty thou alone outshinest far,

Empurpled by their outpoured life-blood’s glorious tide.

The blood of the brothers united in Christ serves as the seed of the Church which will grow in time. We sing their praises together, according to Tertullian, because they “poured forth all their teaching along with their blood.” Their witness in teaching and blood is what truly makes Rome the urbs sacra and urbs aeterna. It was their martyrdom in Rome that at last led to the unending reunion between Peter and Paul in the true Holy and Eternal City, the Heavenly Jerusalem. For eternity, they are united with one another and with their Redeemer who called them both to the great mission of bringing the gospel to the entire world. (Underscored emphasis added; italics in the original.)

Further the magazine published the following commentary in 2016:

Saints Peter and Paul and the “Catholicizing” Principle

This Wednesday, June 29, is the Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul. It’s the patronal feast of the city of Rome and a high feast day throughout the Church.

Obviously, it honors the two great apostles of the Christian faith.

Each apostle, however, has other feast days that are only associated with them. For example, on February 22 we honor the Chair of St. Peter, a symbol of the authority given to the papal office by Jesus Christ, and on January 25 we honor the Conversion of St. Paul.

Why then does the Church have a joint feast day for both apostles? What lessons could be drawn from the feast day today that could help the Church in its dealings with the world?

Traditionally, the joint feast day was celebrated because it was believed that both apostles died on June 29 in the year 64 AD. While the historicity of that assertion is debated today, the belief of a shared day of martyrdom reflected a strong “Catholicizing” principle within the Church and in her engagement with the Roman culture at that time.

A little history can clarify things.

Ancient Rome prided itself in the story of its foundation. The city rallied around the mythic story of Romulus and Remus, the twin brothers who were born from the union between their human mother, who was a Vestal Virgin and either Mars, the Roman god of war, or the great hero Hercules (depending on the source of the myth).

From their mother’s side, the twins were related to the Trojan prince Aeneas, one of the most iconic figures of the ancient world. After a rebellion against their grandfather’s rule, the young twins were left in the wilderness to die. The two, however, were nurtured by Lupa, a She-Wolf and eventually founded Rome.

The pride and importance of such myths cannot be underestimated since ancient cities and peoples developed their identities around them. No city would just exist. It needed a narrative. Rome especially needed a narrative as it grew and conquered vast portions of the known world at its time.

Romulus and Remus, therefore, were hailed as princes of Rome and their story and lineage were used as sources of credibility and prominence. Incidentally, even today the image of the twins and the she-wolf are on the shield of Rome.

The early Christians of Rome were also heavily influenced by the myth of the city’s foundation. And so, they saw Saints Peter and Paul as a new and improved Romulus and Remus, and looked for ways in which the apostles fulfilled the ancient myth and could be the true founders of Rome.

In particular, and in reference to the coming feast day, since the apostles were not twins and not even brothers in the flesh, the early Christians accepted a shared day of martyrdom for the apostles since it made them twins by being born into eternal life on the same day.

The apostles would be twins in eternity. For the Roman mind at that time, this was enough evidence to prove that the two apostles were the new princes of the city or, in Christian terms, the patronal saints of the city.

While the lack of clarity between myth and history might make the contemporary believer uneasy, the principle at work is very much needed in today’s Church. . .

The early Christians could have fought the idolatry of Rome, they could have declared a culture war with the world around them, but they did not.

Instead, they chose to follow a Catholicizing principle explained by St. Paul, who taught: “Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.” (Philippians 4:8)

The early Christians understood their responsibility to be leaven within culture and salt and light within the world. Being a Christian was known to be principally about sharing Good News, and not just about zealously engaging in battles over bad news.

Why is this history important? Can it provide an invaluable lesson to the Church today?

The Catholicizing principle of the early Church in Rome can be a great help to the Church today. In the midst of Western state of affairs, it seems that some within the Christian faith are very eager to engage in culture wars before even attempting a Catholicizing principle.

The witness of the early Christians reminds believers today to focus on what is shared with culture, and to discern what is true and admirable, and to baptize whatever can be into a shared and universal worldview. (Underscored emphasis added.)

Consistent with the inherent contradictions of Roman Catholicism, the above commentary of 2016 appears to denigrate the culture war, which flows naturally from the legend of Romulus and Remus, while extolling the virtues of the "Catholicizing principle of the early Church in Rome" by corrupting Philippians 4:8. The fiction that "the early Christians accepted a shared day of martyrdom for the apostles since it made them twins by being born into eternal life on the same day" is biblically false  and an unholy libel of the early Christian Church which was corrupted by the proud and blasphemous boasts of the Popes Leo the Great and Boniface VIII.

There is not the slightest indication in the above commentaries of any reservations about the validity the Roman Church's vision of her mission and destiny. In fact the declared organizational purpose of Crisis Magazine is precisely that of realizing the vision of "Great Rome." Note the following information about the purpose and the intellectual heft of the founders of the publication in which the essay appeared:

About Us

The word “crisis” comes from the ancient Greek krisis—“decision”.

The West has arrived at a crisis point. We must decide: Do we serve the City of God or the City of Man? Does our first allegiance lie with the Church or with the State? Do we profess the ancient and immutable Faith or the latest fashionable secular dogmas?

Not since the Cold War have we experienced such violent political, cultural, and spiritual unrest. Not since the Civil War has our country been divided so bitterly against itself. Our civilization is under attack from the far-left within and radical Islam without.

Most thought-leaders downplay the gravity of the crisis at hand. The rest promise fresh perspectives and new solutions. Ideologies and ideologues rise and fall with the tides, carrying us further and further out to sea. Night draws in on the West.

Yet the solutions we need are anything but new. In fact, they’re as old as time itself. They’re written on man’s hearts and wired into his brain. They were handed down to Moses on Mt. Sinai and taught by Our Lord on the Sea of Galilee.

Every generation has its moment of crisis—the moment when it must decide. And each generation is tasked with articulating these timeless truths of the Faith to guide its decisions.

In 1982, America’s leading Catholic intellectuals founded Crisis for just that purpose.

To this day, Crisis remains America’s most trusted source for authentic Catholic perspectives on Church and State, arts and culture, science and faith. We have one purpose, and one only: to proclaim Christ’s Kingship over all things, at all times, to all nations.

So long as the present crisis endures, we’ll be on the front lines. We can do no other, and we say with St. Peter: “Lord, to whom shall we go?” (Underscored emphasis added.)

The purpose of proclaiming "Christ’s Kingship over all things, at all times, to all nations" declared by the Crisis Magazine editors must be understood in the context of the paean of praise to Romulus and Remus and the scandalous misappropriation of the names of the Apostles Peter and Paul. The vision is of the papal "Caesars" reigning over the whole world.

The spirit of Romulus and Remus already hovers over the American nation, and looms large in the future.

In keeping with the spirit of Romulus and Remus the Church of Rome has been violently militant in her past history. Pope Francis is doing his best to soften this image of the papal Institution:

Pope asks Protestants for forgiveness for persecution

Pope Francis asked Protestants and other Christian Churches for forgiveness for past persecution by Catholics as the Vatican announced on Monday he would visit Sweden later in the year to mark the 500th anniversary of the Reformation.

Speaking at an annual vespers service in St. Paul’s Basilica in Rome attended by representatives of other religions, he asked “forgiveness for the un-gospel like behaviour by Catholics towards Christians of other Churches”. He also asked Catholics to forgive those who had persecuted them. . . (Underscored emphasis added.)

Note the last sentence. No persecution of Roman Catholics by Protestants could ever legitimately be compared to the vast scope and ferocity of papal Rome's wars against Protestants who simply wanted the freedom to worship God in peace.

Given the Machiavellian character of Rome, there is every reason to doubt the sincerity of the Pope's apology. The reality is that papal Rome's wars against Protestants were completely consistent with her roots in the imperial Rome of Romulus and Remus. This analogy which originates with papal Rome herself fits her history of cruel persecutions perfectly.

What is of even greater significance to the Bible student is the identification of papal Rome as a continuation of the persecuting power of Imperial Rome:

ANTI-CHRIST - WHO IS HE?

7 After this I saw in the night visions, and behold a fourth beast, dreadful and terrible, and strong exceedingly; and it had great iron teeth: it devoured and brake in pieces, and stamped the residue with the feet of it: and it was diverse from all the beasts that were before it; and it had ten horns.

NOTE: - The fourth universal power to rule the world from Daniel's day was Rome. It was so different from any beast that Daniel knew, he was unable to name it. It is non-descript. The ten horns are noted in Daniel 7:24 as "ten kings that shall arise." It is a fact that the Roman Empire was split into ten smaller kingdoms between the years 351 and 476 A.D. The following are their ancient and modern names:1. Alemanni - Germany; 2. Franks - France; 3. Anglo-Saxons England; 4. Burgundians ‑ Switzerland; 5. Visigoths - Spain; 6. Suevi - Portugal; 7. Lombards - Italy; 8. Heruli; 9. Vandals; 10. Ostrogoths.

8. I considered the horns, and, behold, there came up among them another little horn, before whom there were three of the first horns plucked up by the roots: and behold, in this horn were eyes like the eyes of man, and a mouth speaking great things.

NOTE:- In this verse there are two identifying marks to locate "the little horn" in history. It came up "among" the ten horns, and "three" of the original ten were overthrown in its rise to power. In Daniel 7:24 another identifying mark is given. The "little horn" would come up "after" the ten horns. There is only ONE power in history that answers to this description. At Rome itself, at the very center of the fractured Empire, there arose after 476 A.D., the Papacy - the one man government of the Catholic Church. In its rise to power, three of the Gothic tribes - the Heruli, the Vandals and the Ostrogoths - were uprooted and disappeared from history. The reigning power of these kings passed to the pope, and thus figuratively, the crowns, the symbols of power, were placed on the head of the Pope. This gives the significance of the triple crown worn by the pontiffs. See II Samuel 12:30. The power of the Papacy was established by the decree of Justinian in 533 A.D. and was carried out by force of arms in 538 A.D. in the overthrow of the Ostrogoths by Justinian's general, Belesarius. He came up "after" them.

The Book of Revelation amplifies the exposure of papal Rome's true character:-

Rev. 12:3, 9

And there appeared another wonder in heaven; and behold a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads. . .

And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world . . .

The following is from exegesis by Wm. H. Grotheer:

"There is an overall picture conveyed by Revelation 12. In each period, whether in regard to "the Man-Child", or the period of the woman in the wilderness, or in the war against the "remnant," it is the "dragon" operating. This dragon or serpent is specifically called "the Devil, and Satan." In the following chapters, other symbols are used designating powers under the control and authority of the dragon doing the work which the 12th Chapter attributes to the dragon. This chapter is the outline which the following chapters detail and enlarge" (EXEGESIS OF REVELATION The Woman, The Dragon, The Man-Child, and the Remnant of Her Seed Part 1.)

Rev. 13:1-4

And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy. And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion: and the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority. And I saw one of his heads as it were wounded to death; and his deadly wound was healed: and all the world wondered after the beast. And they worshipped the dragon which gave power unto the beast: and they worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? who is able to make war with him?

Excerpted from relevant exegesis by Wm. H. Grotheer:

EXEGESIS OF REVELATION The Beast and the False Prophet (Part 2

In the Twelfth Chapter of Revelation, John heard a "Woe" pronounced on "the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea." In the Thirteenth Chapter, two "beasts" are seen, one rising "up out of the sea," and the other "coming up out of the earth." (vs. 1, 11) These two beasts are related in the text to the dragon. One receives "his power, and his seat, and great authority" directly from the dragon (v. 2). The other, "spake as a dragon" and exercised "all the authority of the first beast," which authority had been given it by the dragon. (vs. 11-12).

The commonality between the first beast and the dragon is further heightened in the imagery. Both have seven heads and ten horns (12:3; 13:1) However, there is a movement of one item in the symbols; the crowns are placed on the "horns" of the first beast, rather than remaining on the "heads." It must also be kept in mind that the book of Revelation presents a third beast with seven heads and ten horns. (17:3) No crowns are seen on this symbolism either on the "heads" or the "horns."

What is this telling us? If a "crown" is symbolic of reigning, then the "dragon" is portrayed as functioning through its seven heads from the time of the first gospel promise to the time of, and including the war with the "remnant of her seed." The first beast of Revelation 13 would then be operating at the time of the reigning of "the ten horns."

To further identify this beast, the description is closely associated with the vision given to Daniel (Chap. 7). The lion, the bear, and the leopard are followed by a nondescript beast. In Revelation 13, the nondescript beast is a composite, "like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion" (v. 2). This is the exact order as found in Daniel 7, only reversed. In the vision to Daniel, he saw that the dominion of the three beasts was "taken away: yet their lives were prolonged for a season and time." (7:12). The symbolic representation in Revelation 13, tells us that the lives of the three beasts of Daniel 7 lived on in the first beast.

We must next turn our attention to the seven heads. What do they represent? The span of Revelation 12 covers the time from the first gospel promise made in Eden till the war against the "remnant of her seed." Genesis gives the beginning of the first nation or peoples through whom this promised "seed" would be realized. (Gen. 12:3; 21:12) They were to go into bondage. (Gen. 15:13-15) This defiant power - Egypt - was the first power to seek to "devour" the people of God. Pharaoh was the "son of Ra," one of the sun gods of Egypt. The symbolisms of Egypt used to represent their sun gods, as noted in the previous study of Revelation 12, was the "serpent of fire" around a sun disc. (See WWN - 5(95), pp. 3-4)

From the first attempt to destroy the people of God through whom the Promised Seed would come, there were five powers to John's day - Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Medo-Persia, and Grecia. The power of John's day was Rome, another was yet to come. (Rev. 17:10) At this point, we need to determine how we are to understand prophecy. Do we place the count, "five are fallen, one is, and the other is not yet come," as beginning in our day, or do we understand it to be in the time frame of John to whom the statement was made?

There is another problem however; the seventh head was "to continue a short space." If the sixth head is pagan Rome, and the seventh, papal Rome, we have the seventh head continuing for a longer period than any of the previous six heads which the wording of the definitive statement will not permit.

The book of Daniel in the visions as recorded in Chapters 7 & 8, present both pagan and papal Rome as one continuous power. The "little horn" of Daniel 7, ever remains in and is nourished by the nondescript beast (7:8). Further this beast is pictured as continuing "till ... slain, and his body destroyed, and given to the burning flame." (7:11) The problem then is to interrelate all of this data to the first beast of Revelation 13, for it is this beast along with the second which are consigned to "the burning flame" (Rev. 19:20)" (Underscored emphasis added.)

The Bible lays bare the true ferocious character of the papacy. There is no excuse for any Bible student to be deluded into believing that this is a Christian Church, or that it has ever in its history been the Christian Church. So what has happened to the Seventh-day Adventist Church?!!

THE SPIRIT OF ROMULUS AND REMUS IN THE CULTURE WAR

The ferocious character of the papacy is impossible to suppress. Physical warfare has been suspended, but the papal Caesar's fierce countenance is still visible in the culture war, as illustrated in the following Roman Catholic essay:

The Mission Field and the culture war

Are we witnessing the ugly end of culture-war Catholicism? The conservative Catholic media landscape—born out of a battle with social liberalism that goes back at least to Pat Buchanan’s popularization of the term “culture war”—seems to have entered a decisive new phase of its decline.

As Pope Francis makes call after call for peace and global solidarity among all people, the culture war troops continue to find new ways to generate enmity through agitprop. Formerly middle-of-the-road Catholic conservative magazines and personalities have become dispensers of crude arguments that are meant to end reasoned debate and inspire outrage. It really is far worse than it ever was. A recent (non-satirical!) article by David Carlin, published in The Catholic Thing, captures perfectly this devolved culture-war mentality:

I FIND HOMOSEXUALITY DISGUSTING. I FIND DRUNKENNESS DISGUSTING. I FIND PROSTITUTION DISGUSTING. I FIND DRUG ADDICTION DISGUSTING. I FIND ABORTION DISGUSTING.

AS FOR PEOPLE WHO DON’T FIND THESE THINGS DISGUSTING—I FIND THEM DISGUSTING.

Liberalism (and I am using that term in a deliberately blurry way, to encompass all that the culture warriors oppose, even if it tends to center around post-World War II secularism, social progressivism, and the heritage of the sexual revolution) has become so profoundly other in the mind of the culture-war Catholic that it can no longer be examined dispassionately, let alone be engaged with respectfully. It is simply “disgusting.”

At one time, I saw liberalism as a titanic ideological and technological force that could only be resisted, and perhaps one day overcome, by a reactionary politics devoted to restoring a pre-liberal social order. But alas, I can’t abide the increasing tendency of the Catholic right to portray their opponents as either imbeciles or demons. The culture war has turned our moral reflexes into automatic expressions of disgust, leading us to engage in a never-ending caricature of debate. The political allegiances and machinations demanded by the culture war drain us of charity, numb our consciences, and deform our faith.

Having said that, I must admit that I agree with those more high-minded culture warriors, the Catholic “Integralists,” about one thing: liberalism functions like a religion and should be treated as such. But liberalism is not all abortion-as-sacrament extremists and Drag Queen Story Hours. It binds people together in a shared system of belief in universal values (however vaguely defined these may be), with the goal of creating a global order in which humanity can flourish. It is more than merely political, but that is why we should engage with liberalism according to the principles of the new evangelization, or even those of inter-religious dialogue. . . (Upper case italics in original; underscored emphasis added.)

Here we have a clear representation of both the culture war, which reflect the spirit of the Beast acknowledged in the legend of Romulus and Remus, and the new face of the papal Caesar initiated by Vatican II. But there is more to the culture war. The following are examples of the darker hidden culture war which has accomplished the erosion of democracy in America:

Breaking The Opus Dei Code (Dated May, 2006)

Opus Dei, Latin for “work of God,” has, according to media reports, at least 3,000 members in the United States but its influence, critics say, has been more substantial than its numbers would indicate. In 2002, an Opus Dei priest, the Rev. C. John McCloskey III, former director of the Catholic Information Center, converted U.S. Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) from evangelical Protestantism to Catholicism. Brown\xadback’s [sic] conversion was shepherded by U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.), a conservative Catholic and Opus Dei booster.

Long the scourge of progressive Catholics, Opus Dei, with an estimated 80,000 members worldwide, has enjoyed a close relationship with the church’s conservative hierarchy, serving, as one writer put it in the mid 1980s, as a “holy mafia” to promote far-right views on “culture war” issues. . .

In Washington, Opus Dei relies on influential senators like Santorum and Brownback [both no longer in any public office] to advance its agenda. The two are known for frequently pushing “culture war” issues, in\xadcluding [including] ardent opposition to abortion and gay rights and the promotion of “intelligent de\xadsign” [design] in public school science classes. . .

In the nation’s capital, the Catholic Information Center, now directed by the Rev. William H. Stetson, an Opus Dei priest ordained in 1962, serves as a clearinghouse for the Catholic far right and a bridge to the mostly fundamentalist Protestant Religious Right. Prominent Catholic thinkers often appear at the center. It has recently hosted Michael Novak of the American Enterprise Institute and the Rev. Richard John Neuhaus, editor of First Things, a journal that frequently attacks church-state separation. (Underscored emphasis added.)

The following is a revealing and cautionary analysis of the present threat to democracy, which prophetically will finally end in totalitarian government by the papal Caesar. The author is Massimo Faggioli, a professor of theology and religious studies at Villanova University. His most recent book is The Liminal Papacy of Pope Francis: Moving Toward Global Catholicity. He is obviously no enemy of papal Rome, and favors the new face of Rome presented by Vatican II. The essay is so illuminating and educational that it is quoted in full:

Democracy Is the Problem?

The Return of Catholic Anti-Liberalism

One of the most troubling developments in the current debate on religion and politics is the renewed characterization of liberal democracy as a bigger threat to Christian morality than any other political system. This is not just a return of the old legitimist doctrine that nondemocratic systems and monarchies are more Christian than democracies; rather, it’s a general crisis of the theological-political alignments of the twentieth century. Catholic anti-liberalism is trying once again to cast serious doubts on the idea that democracy and Christianity are even compatible. This is a sign that what Ross Douthat has called “the John Paul II synthesis” is in crisis, while demonstrating as well that John Paul II was not a neo-conservative pope.

In Tertio millennio adveniente (1994), his apostolic letter introducing the church to the third millennium, John Paul II wrote that “the Second Vatican Council is often considered as the beginning of a new era in the life of the Church. This is true, but at the same time it is difficult to overlook the fact that the Council drew much from the experiences and reflections of the immediate past, especially from the intellectual legacy left by Pius XII” (italics in the original).

In that legacy there is also Pope Pius XII’s radio message of December 1944, what French historian Jean-Dominique Durand has called the pontiff’s “baptism of democracy.” Delivering it on the eve of the last Christmas during World War II, Pius XII said:

[U]nder the sinister glow of the war that surrounds them, in the burning heat of the furnace in which they are imprisoned, the peoples have awakened from a long torpor. They confronted the state and faced their rulers with a new, questioning, critical, wary attitude. Tempered by a bitter experience, they oppose with greater impetus to the monopolies of a dictatorial power, unquestionable and intangible, and demand a system of government, which is more compatible with the dignity and freedom of citizens.

Pius XII quoted Leo XIII’s encyclical Libertas (1888), which affirmed that “it is not of itself wrong to prefer a democratic form of government, if only the Catholic doctrine be maintained as to the origin and exercise of power. Of the various forms of government, the Church does not reject any that are fitted to procure the welfare of the subject; she wishes only—and this nature itself requires—that they should be constituted without involving wrong to any one, and especially without violating the rights of the Church.”

Less than four months after the death of Pius XII, his successor, John XXIII, announced the Second Vatican Council—whose teachings on the social and political message of the church are often ignored or avoided by Catholics who talk about the church’s disposition towards the political question, even though Vatican II is integral part of the Catholic tradition and of the official teaching of the church. For neo-traditionalists, the problem is that Vatican II substantially redefined “the rights of the church.” It elaborated a theology of the secular world and founded on the Catholic “baptism of democracy” celebrated towards the end of World War II—while adding significant new elements to it, especially freedom of religion, freedom of conscience, and a post-Hiroshima theology of war and peace. Building on John XXIII’s last encyclical, Pacem in terris (April 11, 1963), Vatican II ushered in a new understanding of the Catholic view of the secular nation-state, democracy, and individual rights, especially in the pastoral constitution Gaudium et spes and the declaration on religious liberty Dignitatis humanae. It was a theology growing out the defeat of totalitarianism and authoritarianism (which, until the war, many Catholics supported) in Western Europe and the rejection of communism dominating Eastern Europe, Russia, and China. The Catholic Church came to terms with the new international, post-colonial, liberal-democratic order: it was officially post-fascist and anti-communist, despite the institutional church’s support for some fascist regimes (Spain, Portugal, Latin America) even long after the end of Vatican II, and despite the fact that millions of Catholics in Western Europe voted for communist parties.

The post-Vatican II period saw a development of this theological and magisterial shift. There was, for example, Paul VI’s apostolic letter Octogesima adveniens (1971), which acknowledged the pluralism of political options for Catholics: “While recognizing the autonomy of the reality of politics, Christians who are invited to take up political activity should try to make their choices consistent with the Gospel and, in the framework of a legitimate plurality, to give both personal collective witness to the seriousness of their faith by effective and disinterested service of men.”

Today, almost sixty years after the announcement of Vatican II in 1959, Catholics are left to wonder how their church can guide them in understanding their political options in this new world “dis-order” shaped by, among other things: 9/11 and the insufficiency of military action in establishing a more secure, peaceful, and just world; the decline of American world leadership and the emergence of new authoritarian regimes (especially China and Russia); the paralysis of the European project; the inability to address widening gaps in social and economic equality both globally and within individual countries; and the rise of populism and ethno-nationalism in response to a new oligarchy of technocrats-without-borders. All of this is influencing how younger people think about democracy; polls show that millennials are not simply less interested in it, but also losing faith in it as a viable system.

Are younger Catholics just as pessimistic? How is the return of anti-liberalism affecting them specifically? It’s important to note that today’s version of Catholic anti-liberalism is not the same as that which prompted Catholics to vote for the Fascists in Italy or the Nazis in Germany. Until the mid-twentieth century, Catholic anti-liberalism assumed that anti-republicanism and opposition to democracy and popular sovereignty—and, of course, to communism—were the only possible Catholic positions. Today’s version stems from the disappointments of the last few decades, and has challenged assumptions typical of the period between Vatican II and the beginning of the twenty-first century.

One important element in contemporary Catholic anti-liberalism has to do with the legacy of the “culture wars”—the linking of liberal and secular democracy with attacks against the sanctity of life. Now, there is no question that secular progressive governments have become more dismissive of the sensibility of citizens who have religious convictions, as demonstrated by the recent furor over the Canadian government’s summer jobs program and a pitched debate about rights, beliefs, freedoms and the power of the state.

Yet this also seems to be a forgetting of history. I am not referring to well-known liberal causes like opposition to racism, militarism, and anti-Semitism (the causes that fascist regimes are known to support). What I find disturbing is the assumption that liberal democracy simply by virtue of liberalism is to blame, say, for the legalization of abortion. In his Moscow Diary, for example (December 1926-January 1927), Walter Benjamin wrote of the disruption of traditional marriage in early Soviet Russia as a relic of the bourgeois epoch. In 1936, Soviet Russia under Stalin also passed one of the strictest anti-abortion policies in the world in order to stimulate the birth rate.

On the other side of the ideological spectrum, authoritarian and anti-communist regimes sought the support of Catholic hierarchies by legislating according to doctrines of Catholic sexual morality. One of the reasons for criticism of Paul VI’s Humanae vitae (1968) was the consonance between pre-Vatican II prohibition of contraception and the legislation of authoritarian and totalitarian regimes on the matter. Humanae vitae was compared to the fascist-era legal prohibition of contraception and the corresponding censorship of information on birth control. Catholic rejection of modern medical technology had to contend with the legacy of the secular and anti-fascist rejection of the sexual and abortion politics of Mussolini’s pro-natalist regime, where the prohibition of contraception was justified by the need for nation-building.

Younger Catholics who are drawn to anti-liberalism and who have developed a sensibility for life issues different from that of their parents and grandparents may be seeking an alternative system that enshrines pro-life values. But they may also be failing to note the tragedies that have occurred at the hands of non-democratic leaders and movements, including those related to life issues. The assault on the sanctity of life, as expressed in support for abortion and contraception, did not begin with liberal democracy.

Catholic social teaching gives Catholics the ability to assess the moral and political crisis of a nation (and of a democracy) without rejecting the idea of the nation-state and of the legitimacy of a political authority that is pluralistic, non-confessional, and respectful of secular and non-Christian or post-Christian identities. What Tony Judt said in his last public lecture in October 2009 about our necessity to “think the state” is also an urgent need for Catholics today—particularly in the West, given the contribution of the Catholic intellectual and magisterial tradition to the constitutional and political questions of the last hundred years. It is worth remembering that the failure of Catholics to make the case for democracy, and their dream for a return to the “golden age” of medieval Christendom, were key factors in the rise of authoritarian regimes in the twentieth century. (Underscored emphasis added.)

The following is one more recognition of the culture war continuing to rage in America, the ultimate objective of which is the destruction of the American experiment in constitutional liberal democracy:

The post-Christian culture wars

The Trump administration’s two most revealing speeches weren’t given by Trump.

Republicans control the White House, the Senate, and the Supreme Court. They have 27 governorships and governing trifectas in 21 states. But many conservatives — particularly Christian conservatives — believe they’re being routed in the war that matters most: the post-Christian culture war. They see a diverse, secular left winning the future and preparing to eviscerate both Christian practice and traditional mores. And they see themselves as woefully unprepared to respond with the ruthlessness that the moment requires.

Enter Donald Trump. Whatever Trump’s moral failings, he’s a street fighter suited for an era of political combat. Christian conservatives believe — rightly or wrongly — that they’ve been held back by their sense of righteousness, grace, and gentility, with disastrous results. Trump operates without restraint. He is the enemy they believe the secular deserve, and perhaps unfortunately, the champion they need. Understanding this dynamic is crucial to understanding the psychology that attracts establishment Republicans to Trump, and convinces them that his offense is their best defense.

If this sound exaggerated, consider two recent speeches given by Attorney General William Barr. Barr is a particularly important kind of figure in the Trump world. He previously served as attorney general under George H.W. Bush, and had settled into a comfortable twilight as a respected member of the Republican legal establishment. It’s the support of establishment Republicans like Barr that gives Trump his political power and protects him from impeachment. But why would someone like Barr spend the end of his career serving a man like Trump?

Speaking at Notre Dame in October, Barr offered his answer. He argued that the conflict of the 20th century pitted democracy against fascism and communism — a struggle democracy won, and handily. “But in the 21st century, we face an entirely different kind of challenge,” he warned. America was built atop the insight that “free government was only suitable and sustainable for a religious people.” But “over the past 50 years religion has been under increasing attack,” driven from the public square by “the growing ascendancy of secularism and the doctrine of moral relativism.”

This is a war Barr thinks progressives have been winning, and that conservatives fight in the face of long institutional odds.

Today we face something different that may mean that we cannot count on the pendulum swinging back. First is the force, fervor, and comprehensiveness of the assault on religion we are experiencing today. This is not decay; it is organized destruction. Secularists, and their allies among the “progressives,” have marshaled all the force of mass communications, popular culture, the entertainment industry, and academia in an unremitting assault on religion and traditional values.

Whatever political power conservatives hold, progressives occupy the cultural high ground, and they strike without mercy. “Those who defy the [secular] creed risk a figurative burning at the stake,” says Barr, “social, educational, and professional ostracism and exclusion waged through lawsuits and savage social media campaigns.”

In a November speech before the Federalist Society, Barr expanded on the advantage progressives hold. It’s worth quoting his argument at length:

The fact of the matter is that, in waging a scorched earth, no-holds-barred war of “Resistance” against this Administration, it is the Left that is engaged in the systematic shredding of norms and the undermining of the rule of law. This highlights a basic disadvantage that conservatives have always had in contesting the political issues of the day. It was adverted to by the old, curmudgeonly Federalist, Fisher Ames, in an essay during the early years of the Republic.

In any age, the so-called progressives treat politics as their religion. Their holy mission is to use the coercive power of the State to remake man and society in their own image, according to an abstract ideal of perfection. Whatever means they use are therefore justified because, by definition, they are a virtuous people pursuing a deific end. They are willing to use any means necessary to gain momentary advantage in achieving their end, regardless of collateral consequences and the systemic implications. They never ask whether the actions they take could be justified as a general rule of conduct, equally applicable to all sides.

Conservatives, on the other hand, do not seek an earthly paradise. We are interested in preserving over the long run the proper balance of freedom and order necessary for healthy development of natural civil society and individual human flourishing. This means that we naturally test the propriety and wisdom of action under a “rule of law” standard. The essence of this standard is to ask what the overall impact on society over the long run if the action we are taking, or principle we are applying, in a given circumstance was universalized — that is, would it be good for society over the long haul if this was done in all like circumstances?

For these reasons, conservatives tend to have more scruple over their political tactics and rarely feel that the ends justify the means. And this is as it should be, but there is no getting around the fact that this puts conservatives at a disadvantage when facing progressive holy war, especially when doing so under the weight of a hyper-partisan media. . . (Underscored emphasis added.)

The foregoing quotations from William Barr's speech to The Federalist Society reveal a twisted, delusional state of mind. To unbiased observers the last thing that Progressives (Liberals) have on their minds is a "holy war." To the contrary, all of the evidence points to Barr's conservatives, and Barr himself, engaged in the "holy" "post-Christian culture war," with all of the intensity attributed to "the Left." Barr is exhibiting insane psychological "projection." He is a prominent representative of the culture war and proudly Roman Catholic. He has brazenly exposed himself to public scrutiny; but there is a multiplicity of other influential personalities, working under deep cover in America, who are culture warriors subverting democracy.

CULTURE WAR WITHIN THE CHURCH OF ROME

Statements have been quoted in earlier passages of this paper which indicate antipathy on the part of Pope 'Francis to the culture war against non-Catholics; and yet his coddling of Opus Dei suggests that he does approve of the culture war concealed in the activism of secret societies. He is a Jesuit, and quite possibly disapproves of the open culture war which hampers his world evangelization program, while he encourages the subtle, sophisticated work of the secret societies which have penetrated the Legislatures and the Supreme Court. Thus, discord has been created within the Catholic world because of the open culture war, and Francis has been the primary target of the open warriors, both lay members and members of the hierarchy. These genuinely dislike and oppose Pope Francis. The following are examples of this papal aberration, and also of the role of billionaires in the opposition to Francis:

Don't like that pope? Read what he wrote

The whole world now knows that Pope Francis is more or less fed up with some of his critics. His comment about it being an "honor" to be attacked by conservative Catholics in the U.S. made that clear for all to see. Francis had just been presented with a copy of a new book by French author Nicolas Seneze, which catalogues conservative Catholic efforts, largely American, to influence this pope or to limit his influence and undermine his efforts. The fallout from the pope's comment is kind of fun to watch. Last week, EWTN host Raymond Arroyo began his hour-long show with an eight minute "commentary" that pronounced the pope's comment "troubling." I actually found the pope's candor refreshing.

Arroyo referred to a "string of lazy articles." He went on: "This is tired, and, frankly, a fact-free narrative." He complained that it had been peddled mostly by "Europeans and progressive Americans" and claimed these critics "make the mistake of casting orthodox Catholics in America as right-wingers, players in a political plot to undo the agenda of Francis." He countered this portrayal, saying, "The truth is much more simple. American Catholics actually believe what the church has always taught, and they're loud enough and have big enough platforms to broadcast that belief." Arroyo insisted that "all traditional Catholics have done is ask questions."

Arroyo unwittingly confirmed the thesis he was trying to debunk when he concluded: "The truth is this is all a craven attempt to demonize and purge voices form the church who dare to question the radical changes that are under way and the brutal tactics used to enact them." Radical changes? Brutal tactics?

To prove his claim to editorial balance, Arroyo played a tape of him of the night a year ago when he reported about Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò in which he said, "I am a little squeamish about a pope resigning again." Huh? Had a former nuncio publicly demand that Pope Benedict XVI resign? Why add the word "again"? He did, to his credit, acknowledge there had been criticism of Viganò, but one year later, on a show just two weeks ago, Arroyo and his papal posse, Robert Royal and Fr. Gerald Murray, spent more than half the show defending Viganò and arguing that most of his claims had been proven true, when in fact, most of them had been proven false. . .

There is, indeed, a cabal among right-wing Catholics to undermine or minimize this pope and his teachings, and you could discover it merely by watching EWTN or reading its auxiliary media outlets. No one would have Cardinal Raymond Burke or German Cardinal Gerhard Müller on their show as an authoritative guest unless such undermining was the goal. No one would have Phil Lawler, who was the first guest on Arroyo's show last week, on their show as an expert unless undermining the pope was the objective. The two men enjoyed themselves complaining about all the damage they think Francis is doing to the church.

I wish to send Arroyo and other conservative Catholics an invitation, one that I received a long time ago and from which I derived enormous benefit. During the more conservative pontificates of John Paul II and Benedict XVI, friends encouraged me to read their writings with an open mind, not to dismiss them because they were so conservative. Of course, in the area of Catholic social teaching, there has been enormous continuity, not only across the last three pontificates but stretching all the way back to Pope Leo XIII. But, when I read some of the writings of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, from his early work Introduction to Christianity to the trilogy on Jesus of Nazareth that he wrote while pope, I not only learned a great deal, I had my faith strengthened by the insights he discerned. Here is the column I wrote the day after his resignation. I was not yet a writer when Pope John Paul II issued Novo Millennio Ineunte, but I remember thinking it was a magnificent document that made me stretch in ways I would not have done if I had simply stuck to my more liberal Catholic texts.

So, instead of painting Francis in such a harsh and negative light, rather than poking fun at synods, or highlighting and even championing a score-settling text like Viganò's "testimony," I invite conservative Catholics to come to Francis and his teachings with an open heart and an open mind. I hope they might find, as I did with his conservative predecessors, an opportunity to stretch their faith, which always leads to an expansion and a deepening of that faith as well. It is a big church, and there is room for everybody. The alternative is the emergence of a sectarian, para-schismatic church in the United States. And, if a full-blown schism were to occur, its source would largely be found on EWTN. (Underscored emphasis added.)

The assertion of continuity in the area of Catholic social teaching stretching all the way back to Pope Leo XIII should be noted. The implication is that Pope Francis is no exception. There is clear evidence that the problem is not disagreement on the social teaching but the timing and application of it to the best advantage of Rome politically. Also involved are two ecumenical unions, one completed and the other far advanced but yet to be fully consummated. The one completed has characteristics which are in conflict with the ecumenical agenda of Pope Francis. The papacy is a world-wide religioo-political institution. As such it is open to political disagreements and rifts. There is also in the Church of Rome a practice known as Hegelian politics which is explained in the following essay, and applied to the Jesuit Pope Francis:

A Hegelian Papacy?

That deafening silence which hung over the Synod, a quiet that drowned out even the discordant clamor of some 200 Catholic prelates, was that of absent voice of Peter. Over the past two weeks, as we have observed the arguably prophetic contest of cardinals opposing cardinals. The figure most noticeably removed from the fray has, ironically, been the man sitting at the very center of it all. Indeed, even as we saw the Sacrament of Matrimony attacked and deeply profaned, watched closely as carefully crafted plans unfolded, and listened intently as a modern-day Paul rebuked Peter for his dereliction of duty, even then, in what might rightly have been called a supreme moment of need for the Church, the one who should have spoken remained silent.

But no longer.

As the Synod came to a close, the Holy Father at last stepped forward to offer what Catholics hoped would be the words of clarity so sorely needed by a Church seemingly awash in of confusion. Yet rather than placing a firm hand on the rudder of a barque that had truly begun to reel, the pope instead decided to assure the faithful that the spectacle of watching a ship tossed about by every wind of doctrine, was actually for “the good of the Church, of families, and the supreme law, the good of souls.”

How can we make sense of this? Precisely what good is done to souls by a synod that leads the faithful — invoking the pope as their authority — to hector their priests about permitting the impossible? To believe, as if it were possible, that the Church has changed her immutable teaching?

No good can come of such widely-sewn misconceptions, nor from the notion that fidelity to those same immutable teachings is nothing more than

a temptation to hostile inflexibility, that is, wanting to close oneself within the written word, (the letter) and not allowing oneself to be surprised by God, by the God of surprises, (the spirit); within the law, within the certitude of what we know and not of what we still need to learn and to achieve. From the time of Christ, it is the temptation of the zealous, of the scrupulous, of the solicitous and of the so-called – today – ‘traditionalists’

What conclusions can we draw from such language, and how does a Roman Pontiff apply the epithet “traditionalist”, not just to those he has allegedly chastised for their addiction to the “fashion” of the Tridentine Mass, but even to those who adhere to the papal teaching of St. John Paul II? How can adhering to the Church’s timeless teachings on marriage, sexuality, and the family be construed as “hostile inflexibility” rather than faithful docility?

Why would the pope do such thing? Perplexing as it may seem, for those who have been following this pontificate closely, the most obvious answer is also the most unsettling: Pope Francis gives every appearance that he wants to change the understanding and practice of Church teaching, and to this end he has already altered the discussion around his stated intentions with respect to the deposit of faith. (Could any of us imagine such a headline being written about any other pope?) . . .

For those unfamiliar with the work G.W.F. Hegel, scholars at the University of Chicago explain his philosophy of dialectic this way:

Hegel’s dialectic involves the reconciliation of ostensible paradoxes to arrive at absolute truth. The general formulation of Hegel’s dialectic is a three-step process comprising the movement from thesis to antithesis to synthesis. One begins with a static, clearly delineated concept (or thesis), then moves to its opposite (or antithesis), which represents any contradictions derived from a consideration of the rigidly defined thesis. The thesis and antithesis are yoked and resolved to form the embracing resolution, or synthesis.

Pope Francis’ final address provides us with a textbook example of the Hegelian dialectic at work. First, we have the thesis — namely, that on matters regarding marriage, sexuality, and the family, the Church should simply capitulate to the world and, in the name of mercy, adopt an attitude of pure permissiveness:

The temptation to come down off the Cross, to please the people, and not stay there, in order to fulfill the will of the Father; to bow down to a worldly spirit instead of purifying it and bending it to the Spirit of God… The temptation to a destructive tendency to goodness [it. buonismo], that in the name of a deceptive mercy binds the wounds without first curing them and treating them; that treats the symptoms and not the causes and the roots. It is the temptation of the “do-gooders,” of the fearful, and also of the so-called “progressives and liberals.”

Thus, with the thesis on the table representing one extreme, we move instead to the contrasting anti-thesis: the position that, with respect to marriage, sexuality, and the family, the Church should simply adhere to her time-honored Tradition, both in teaching and pastoral praxis. No changes or updating are necessary. As we have already seen, Francis rejects this position as:

[A] temptation to hostile inflexibility, that is, wanting to close oneself within the written word, (the letter) and not allowing oneself to be surprised by God, by the God of surprises, (the spirit); within the law, within the certitude of what we know and not of what we still need to learn and to achieve. From the time of Christ, it is the temptation of the zealous, of the scrupulous, of the solicitous and of the so-called – today – “traditionalists.”

The danger of these formulations is immediately clear. While the thesis actually represents an absurd fringe position — essentially, that the Church should adopt the wisdom of the world — the anti-thesis, rather than representing an equally absurd position (such as stoning adulterers and homosexuals) instead tries to suggest that the status quo in the Church — her immutable teachings on marriage, sexuality, and the family — is somehow the appropriate ideological foil to a call for complete moral compromise. As such, in an effort to achieve a sensible reconciliation between these two ostensibly ridiculous extremes, the Holy Father is now poised to offer a synthesis. . . (Expanded font in original; Underscored emphasis added.)

It seems logical to conclude that the synthesis is Rome at the pinnacle of world power. Thus we have unwitting clarification from a conservative Roman Catholic source of the puzzling, contradictory aspects of Francis' papacy. He is a Jesuit, and comfortable in the practice of Hegelian politics. He accommodates both the "left-wing" of apparent liberalization of Rome's posture on the world stage since Vatican II, (thesis) and the anti-democratic, secretive right-wing activism of Opus Dei (antithesis,) the extreme right-wing "ecumenism of hate" being a premature exposure of threatening tyranny. The objective of both thesis and antithesis is world power:

OPUS DEI IN THE USA [N.B. To the reader of the full article: Adventistlaymen.com vigorously disagrees with the statement in Para. 2 that "Americans United for Separation of Church and State is a wicked secular humanist organization."]:

What the Jesuit Order is for the left wing of the Roman Catholic Church, Opus Dei is for its right wing. (Hegelian politics at its finest, for the Roman Catholic Church cannot lose if it has strong ties with both ends of the political spectrum! Of course, to work it requires Protestants to be duped into political alliances with heretics.) (Underscored emphasis added.)

An essay written by Antonio Spadaro SJ, and Marcelo Figueroa, a Protestant pastor, illustrates this fact and throws down the gauntlet against the Religious Right in America in no uncertain terms. The passages quoted below do not completely present the tightly reasoned attack on the right-wing culture warriors:

EVANGELICAL FUNDAMENTALISM AND CATHOLIC INTEGRALISM: A SURPRISING ECUMENISM

In God We Trust. This phrase is printed on the banknotes of the United States of America and is the current national motto. It appeared for the first time on a coin in 1864 but did not become official until Congress passed a motion in 1956. A motto is important for a nation whose foundation was rooted in religious motivations. For many it is a simple declaration of faith. For others, it is the synthesis of a problematic fusion between religion and state, faith and politics, religious values and economy.

Religion, political Manichaeism and a cult of the apocalypse

Religion has had a more incisive role in electoral processes and government decisions over recent decades, especially in some US governments. It offers a moral role for identifying what is good and what is bad.

At times this mingling of politics, morals and religion has taken on a Manichaean language that divides reality between absolute Good and absolute Evil. In fact, after President George W. Bush spoke in his day about challenging the “axis of evil” and stated it was the USA’s duty to “free the world from evil” following the events of September 11, 2001. Today President Trump steers the fight against a wider, generic collective entity of the “bad” or even the “very bad.” Sometimes the tones used by his supporters in some campaigns take on meanings that we could define as “epic.” . . .

The term “evangelical fundamentalist” can today be assimilated to the “evangelical right” or “theoconservatism” and has its origins in the years 1910-1915. In that period a South Californian millionaire, Lyman Stewart, published the 12-volume work The Fundamentals. The author wanted to respond to the threat of modernist ideas of the time. He summarized the thought of authors whose doctrinal support he appreciated. He exemplified the moral, social, collective and individual aspects of the evangelical faith. His admirers include many politicians and even two recent presidents: Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush.

Another interesting aspect is the relationship with creation of these religious groups that are composed mainly of whites from the deep American South. . .

Theirs is a prophetic formula: fight the threats to American Christian values and prepare for the imminent justice of an Armageddon, a final showdown between Good and Evil, between God and Satan. In this sense, every process (be it of peace, dialogue, etc.) collapses before the needs of the end, the final battle against the enemy. And the community of believers (faith) becomes a community of combatants (fight). Such a unidirectional reading of the biblical texts can anesthetize consciences or actively support the most atrocious and dramatic portrayals of a world that is living beyond the frontiers of its own “promised land.” . . .

Theology of prosperity and the rhetoric of religious liberty

Pastor Norman Vincent Peale (1898-1993) is an important figure who inspired US Presidents such as Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump. . .

A third element, together with Manichaeism and the prosperity gospel, is a particular form of proclamation of the defense of “religious liberty.” The erosion of religious liberty is clearly a grave threat within a spreading secularism. But we must avoid its defense coming in the fundamentalist terms of a “religion in total freedom,” perceived as a direct virtual challenge to the secularity of the state.

Fundamentalist ecumenism

Appealing to the values of fundamentalism, a strange form of surprising ecumenism is developing between Evangelical fundamentalists and Catholic Integralists brought together by the same desire for religious influence in the political sphere.

Some who profess themselves to be Catholic express themselves in ways that until recently were unknown in their tradition and using tones much closer to Evangelicals. They are defined as value voters as far as attracting electoral mass support is concerned. There is a well-defined world of ecumenical convergence between sectors that are paradoxically competitors when it comes to confessional belonging. This meeting over shared objectives happens around such themes as abortion, same-sex marriage, religious education in schools and other matters generally considered moral or tied to values. Both Evangelical and Catholic Integralists condemn traditional ecumenism and yet promote an ecumenism of conflict that unites them in the nostalgic dream of a theocratic type of state.

However, the most dangerous prospect for this strange ecumenism is attributable to its xenophobic and Islamophobic vision that wants walls and purifying deportations. The word “ecumenism” transforms into a paradox, into an “ecumenism of hate.” Intolerance is a celestial mark of purism. Reductionism is the exegetical methodology. Ultra-literalism is its hermeneutical key. [Expanded text added.]

Clearly there is an enormous difference between these concepts and the ecumenism employed by Pope Francis with various Christian bodies and other religious confessions. His is an ecumenism that moves under the urge of inclusion, peace, encounter and bridges. This presence of opposing ecumenisms – and their contrasting perceptions of the faith and visions of the world where religions have irreconcilable roles – is perhaps the least known and most dramatic aspect of the spread of Integralist fundamentalism. Here we can understand why the pontiff is so committed to working against “walls” and any kind of “war of religion.”

The temptation of “spiritual war”

The religious element should never be confused with the political one. Confusing spiritual power with temporal power means subjecting one to the other. An evident aspect of Pope Francis’ geopolitics rests in not giving theological room to the power to impose oneself or to find an internal or external enemy to fight. There is a need to flee the temptation to project divinity on political power that then uses it for its own ends. Francis empties from within the narrative of sectarian millenarianism and dominionism that is preparing the apocalypse and the “final clash.”[2] Underlining mercy as a fundamental attribute of God expresses this radically Christian need.

Francis wants to break the organic link between culture, politics, institution and Church. Spirituality cannot tie itself to governments or military pacts for it is at the service of all men and women. Religions cannot consider some people as sworn enemies nor others as eternal friends. Religion should not become the guarantor of the dominant classes. Yet it is this very dynamic with a spurious theological flavor that tries to impose its own law and logic in the political sphere.

There is a shocking rhetoric used, for example, by the writers of Church Militant, a successful US-based digital platform that is openly in favor of a political ultraconservatism and uses Christian symbols to impose itself. This abuse is called “authentic Christianity.” And to show its own preferences, it has created a close analogy between Donald Trump and Emperor Constantine, and between Hillary Clinton and Diocletian. The American elections in this perspective were seen as a “spiritual war.”[3]

This warlike and militant approach seems most attractive and evocative to a certain public, especially given that the victory of Constantine – it was presumed impossible for him to beat Maxentius and the Roman establishment – had to be attributed to a divine intervention: in hoc signo vinces.

Church Militant asks if Trump’s victory can be attributed to the prayers of Americans. The response suggested is affirmative. The indirect missioning for President Trump is clear: he has to follow through on the consequences. This is a very direct message that then wants to condition the presidency by framing it as a divine election. In hoc signo vinces. Indeed.

Today, more than ever, power needs to be removed from its faded confessional dress, from its armor, its rusty breastplate. The fundamentalist theopolitical plan is to set up a kingdom of the divinity here and now. And that divinity is obviously the projection of the power that has been built. This vision generates the ideology of conquest.

The theopolitical plan that is truly Christian would be eschatological, that is it applies to the future and orients current history toward the Kingdom of God, a kingdom of justice and peace. This vision generates a process of integration that unfolds with a diplomacy that crowns no one as a “man of Providence.”

And this is why the diplomacy of the Holy See wants to establish direct and fluid relations with the superpowers, without entering into pre-constituted networks of alliances and influence. In this sphere, the pope does not want to say who is right or who is wrong for he knows that at the root of conflicts there is always a fight for power. So, there is no need to imagine a taking of sides for moral reasons, much worse for spiritual ones.

Francis radically rejects the idea of activating a Kingdom of God on earth as was at the basis of the Holy Roman Empire and similar political and institutional forms, including at the level of a “party.” Understood this way, the “elected people” would enter a complicated political and religious web that would make them forget they are at the service of the world, placing them in opposition to those who are different, those who do not belong, that is the “enemy.”

So, then the Christian roots of a people are never to be understood in an ethnic way. The notions of roots and identity do not have the same content for a Catholic as for a neo-Pagan. Triumphalist, arrogant and vindictive ethnicism is actually the opposite of Christianity. The pope on May 9 in an interview with the French daily La Croix, said: “Yes Europe has Christian roots. Christianity has the duty of watering them, but in a spirit of service as in the washing of feet. The duty of Christianity for Europe is that of service.” And again: “The contribution of Christianity to a culture is that of Christ washing the feet, or the service and the gift of life. There is no room for colonialism.”

Against fear

Which feeling underlies the persuasive temptation for a spurious alliance between politics and religious fundamentalism? It is fear of the breakup of a constructed order and the fear of chaos. Indeed, it functions that way thanks to the chaos perceived. The political strategy for success becomes that of raising the tones of the conflictual, exaggerating disorder, agitating the souls of the people by painting worrying scenarios beyond any realism.

Religion at this point becomes a guarantor of order and a political part would incarnate its needs. The appeal to the apocalypse justifies the power desired by a god or colluded in with a god. And fundamentalism thereby shows itself not to be the product of a religious experience but a poor and abusive perversion of it.

This is why Francis is carrying forward a systematic counter-narration with respect to the narrative of fear. There is a need to fight against the manipulation of this season of anxiety and insecurity. Again, Francis is courageous here and gives no theological-political legitimacy to terrorists, avoiding any reduction of Islam to Islamic terrorism. Nor does he give it to those who postulate and want a “holy war” or to build barrier-fences crowned with barbed wire. The only crown that counts for the Christian is the one with thorns that Christ wore on high.[4] (Underscored emphasis, and also expanded text in one sentence, added.)

The authors of this essay are described in Two associates of Pope Francis accuse right-wing American Christians of practising 'apocalyptic' politics, as "close associates" of the Pope, and Figueroa as "a Protestant pastor who worked closely with Francis in Buenos Aires." The link is quite clear.

An array of Roman Catholic publications in America have supported the essay, including the following: The Civilta article: FINALLY!; Vatican article on ‘ecumenism of hate’ in U.S. was long overdue; Manichean-style hatred must be resisted on both left and right.

As much as some of the essay is worthy of commendation, the attempt to divorce this current papacy from its roots in Imperial Rome is not credible. The Holy See cannot be severed from its connection with Romulus and Remus and the warrior history of papal Rome.

Paradoxically it was the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) who launched the “ecumenism of hate” in the culture war by the publication of their "Pastoral Plan" in 1975, followed by their blessing of the "Moral Majority" alliance with the Evangelicals.

The two authors published a follow-up article in 2018:

Spadaro and Figueroa rile the Christian right again in new essay

Jesuit Fr. Antonio Spadaro and Rev. Marcelo Figueroa are at it again. Last year, their provocative essay, "Evangelical Fundamentalism and Catholic Integralism: A Surprising Ecumenism," caused all manner of discomfort to religious Americans by forcing us to confront the reduction of religion to ethics and thence to politics that had become so dominant in our culture. Now, with the publication of "The Prosperity Gospel: Dangerous and Different," they are stirring up trouble again. Happily.

Right out of the box, they level their indictment against the prosperity gospel's theology: "The risk of this form of religious anthropocentrism, which puts humans and their well-being at the center, is that it transforms God into a power at our service, the Church into a supermarket of faith, and religion into a utilitarian phenomenon that is eminently sensationalist and pragmatic," they write. Indeed, it is almost a category mistake to call this theology. It is a projection of our most crass and materialistic desires onto the Godhead.

One of the reasons that Spadaro and Figueroa rile so many on the right is that they eschew the false politeness that regrettably characterizes too much writing on the Catholic left. So, when they catalogue the many and varied sources of the prosperity gospel and they come to Norman Vincent Peale, they write straightforwardly that he "gained an enormous following with his books whose titles speak for themselves: The Power of Positive Thinking, You Can If You Think You Can, A Guide to Confident Living. Peale was a successful preacher and managed to mix marketing and preaching." Speak for themselves, indeed.

Interestingly, while they earlier cite President Trump and how his invocation of "the American Dream" dovetails with the prosperity gospel in significant ways, the authors fail to note that the Trump family began attending Peale's Marble Collegiate Church in the 1950s precisely because they warmed to his preaching. Peale presided at Trump's first wedding and his successor did the honors at Trump's second wedding. Now, as then, I render the same verdict that Adlai Stevenson rendered on Rev. Peale after the preacher warned against voting for John Kennedy because of his Catholicism. "Speaking as a Christian," said Stevenson, "I find Paul appealing and Peale appalling."

The authors, nonetheless, have done an admirable job collecting the observations of other theologians on the subject. My favorite comes from James Goff in Christianity Today who said the prosperity gospel reduces God the Father to "a sort of 'cosmic bellhop' that responds to the needs and desires of his creatures." Ouch.

Among the theological anchors of the prosperity gospel is a consequentialism rooted in an essentially Pelagian understanding of salvation. Their proof text for this line of thinking is Galatians 6:7 "Do not be deceived; God is not mocked, for you reap whatever you sow." But, as Spadaro and Figueroa point out, if the prosperity preachers and their flocks would just keep reading, they would encounter this — in the very next verse — in Galatians: "If you sow to your own flesh, you will reap corruption from the flesh; but if you sow to the Spirit, you will reap eternal life from the Spirit." Not for the first, nor the last, is preaching confused with cherry picking by some of our Protestant brethren. Thank God for the lectionary, which makes such proof texting more difficult.

Prosperity preachers also like to cite Deuteronomy 28:1-14, which lists the blessings God will bestow upon those who follow his commandments. This is the ground from which springs the prosperity gospel's understanding of covenant. Interestingly, Joseph Ratzinger, later Pope Benedict XVI, for whom the concept of covenant was also central, likewise turned to the 28th chapter of Deuteronomy as a critical text for his theology, but he focused on the verses that follow, in which God details the curses he will visit upon his people for their disobedience. Ratzinger, also, brought immense theological sophistication to his reading of these Hebrew Scriptures.

The part of this essay that will cause the most agita in certain circles is the linkage between "the American Dream" and the prosperity gospel, a linkage that the authors portray as essential — that is, it is hard to imagine the prosperity gospel getting its start in any other country — but in no way pre-determined. (Perhaps it is better to say in this context, predestined.) The authors do not mock the desire for a better life that has brought millions of people to America's shores. Catholic social teaching enshrines the belief in a living wage as well as the right of people to migrate when violence, including the violence of poverty, requires them to leave their homeland. Besides, the aspiration to "come to America" was always about "yearning to breathe free" and not just about wages; there was a spiritual component, a commitment to human dignity that was not in addition to the hope for a decent livelihood, but of which that concern for a decent livelihood was a part.

But the authors recognize that materialism creates its own appetites, and the acquisitiveness of American culture is the factual rock upon which the ideology of neo-liberalism is built. Further, the authors note that it is just a small step from seeing America as a providential nation to seeing God's providence in one's getting a bigger bank account. Indeed, you could say the prosperity gospellers are the ones who mock the spiritual yearnings that were also part of the American Dream with their materialistic reductionism and their sense that it is not enough to be working class, earning a living wage. Nonetheless, I predict that Spadaro's critics, and they are many, will exaggerate what he and Figueroa say here to paint them as anti-American, which they are not. . . (Underscored emphasis added.)

As informative as the above partial quotation from the analysis of the authors' essay is, the rest of the analysis is also worth reading. Expressions of concern for the poor and marginalized is characteristic of the Jesuits.

As to the first essay's identification of billionaires with the "ecumenism of hate," and the exposure of their opposition to Pope Francis, the following illustrates this aspect:

The Rise of the Catholic Right

How right-wing billionaires are attempting a hostile takeover of the U.S. Catholic Church.

TIMOTHY BUSCH IS A WEALTHY MAN with big ambitions. His version of the prosperity gospel, Catholic in content and on steroids, is a hybrid of traditionalist pieties wrapped in American-style excess and positioned most conspicuously in service of free market capitalism.

Busch’s organization, the Napa Institute, and its corresponding foundation are among the most prominent of a growing number of right-wing Catholic nonprofits with political motivations. Such groups, some more extreme than others and all on the right to far-right side of the political and ecclesial spectrum, have in recent years muscled in on territory that previously was the largely unchallenged domain of the nation’s powerful Catholic bishops.

What Busch calls “in-your-face Catholicism” is often expressed amid multicourse meals followed by wine and cigar receptions, private cocktail parties for the especially privileged, traditional Catholic devotionals, Mass said in Latin for those so inclined, “patriotic rosary” sessions that include readings from George Washington and Robert E. Lee, and the occasional break for a round of golf.

Busch’s Catholic Right brand of American libertarianism aligns with some far-right leaders based in Italy who oppose Pope Francis and appear interested in joining forces to fashion an alternative to official Catholic leadership structures, which in this country means the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). . .

Money, politics, and religion

Paralleling the ascendancy of the Religious Right out of 1980s evangelicalism, today’s Catholic Right is rising and well-financed. While pendulum swings are common between conservative and progressive tendencies in Catholicism, the 35-year traditionalist reign of popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI allowed the Far Right to flourish. In the United States, Catholics constitute the largest and most organized Christian denomination and include Catholic parishes, schools and universities, and hospitals. . .

For Christianity, money and power have been corrupting influences since Judas Iscariot accepted the silver in exchange for a betrayal. In Roman Catholicism, from the times of the Medicis and Borgias up to more recent scandals—such as when the Legionaries of Christ used large sums of money to buy influence (and a temporary buffer from scrutiny) in the Vatican—the mix has produced high art, toxic papacies, and distortions of the gospel and of church teaching. . .

In the United States today, influence is not peddled through royal families and palace intrigues, but often through a peculiarly American construct—the nonprofit sector, which has exploded in recent decades with a particular emphasis on politics. Traditional groups such as the Knights of Columbus continue to make substantial charitable contributions, but its capacity for funding has given the Knights an inordinately loud voice, unmatched by other lay groups. It has millions to send to dioceses in need, or to clean the façade of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome—or for other purposes.

With that kind of financial power, no one in the hierarchy is likely to object when the Knights appropriate funds for politically conservative think tanks, news agencies, and even the Federalist Society, an organization that advocates for conservative justices, with no connection to anything religious or charitable. Nor did any bishops question a communiqué supporting Judge Brett Kavanaugh for a seat on the Supreme Court.

Newer groups—including the Napa Institute, Legatus (launched by Domino’s Pizza founder Thomas Monaghan), and the Acton Institute—use the nonprofit designation to push an extreme libertarian economic agenda. Their devotion to individualism, unrestricted capitalism, and diminishment of government services, especially to the poor and marginalized, runs counter to the central tenets of Catholic social teaching.

“I think we’re in a kind of brave new world where these groups really are setting themselves up as authorities above the authorities,” said Stephen Schneck, former director of the Institute for Policy Research and Catholic Studies at the Catholic University of America (and a Sojourners board member). “I don’t know how else to say that. They’re challenging the legitimacy of existing structures of authority and trying to fill that space with their own agenda and their own people.” . . .

The decline of the bishops

The eruption of independent groups may not have been that surprising in the Protestant world where evangelical leaders and their movements, taking up issues on the margins of society and church, often exercised a degree of suspicion about mainline denominations.

In the rigidly hierarchical Catholic world, on the other hand, dissent was often smothered beneath the rubric of Catholic unity. Since its founding in 1917 (as the National Catholic War Council) to ensure Catholic support for World War I, the U.S. Catholic bishops’ conference has been one of the most powerful religious organizations in the country. Until recently, the Catholic clerical culture, particularly at the bishops’ level, was able to present a united and authoritative front when speaking on social and political issues.

The phenomenon of independent organizations challenging the established Catholic authority emerged in the 1980s, just as the U.S. bishops were at the apex of their power as a teaching body, addressing major issues of the day. In 1983, the bishops released a far-reaching pastoral on modern warfare, the result of broad consultation with lay experts. They followed in 1986 with a pastoral letter titled “Economic Justice for All,” a document anchored in a century of Catholic social teaching and highly critical of President Ronald Reagan’s economic policies—and completely unwelcome to the 1980 vice-presidential candidate for the Libertarian Party, David H. Koch.

The ascendancy of the Catholic Right, Schneck said, is rooted in the bishops’ letter on economics. Countering the pastoral letter, he said, marked “the beginning of the conservative efforts to create their own magisterium [teaching authority] on the side.”

Well before the pastoral letter was published, Michael Novak, a leading conservative Catholic scholar with the American Enterprise Institute, another nonprofit that has become an influential voice in the religion conversation, and William E. Simon, treasury secretary under Richard Nixon, began attacking the document and its support for government policies that aid the poor. Novak and Simon presented an 80-page rebuttal arguing that church teaching supported free enterprise. The paper appeared before the first draft of the pastoral was even released.

The USCCB’s diminished role is due in part, said Schneck, to a “tremendous turnover of staff in recent decades” that “undercut the organization’s ability to do staff-level work. And frankly, for all sorts of reasons, some of the bishops themselves are less supportive of the USCCB’s public and policy applications ... the role the USCCB might play in American public life and politics has been dramatically pulled in for all sorts of reasons.”

Among those reasons was a document by Pope John Paul II in 1998 that dramatically reduced the authority of national bishops’ conferences and their ability to address major social issues. John Paul’s appointments to the episcopacy also tended to be men less inclined to take on cultural issues other than abortion and, more recently, gay marriage and religious liberty. Another reason for the diminished role of the U.S. conference these days is the bishops’ preoccupation with a disaster of their own making, the clergy sex abuse crisis. . .

Attacking Pope Francis

During previous pontificates, Busch was all-in on loyalty to the pope and the teaching authorities of the church. In the era of Pope Francis, however, he has associated himself with right-wing Catholic efforts to discredit the pope using the largely debunked accusations of Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, the former papal ambassador to the United States. In one of several letters criticizing the pope, Viganò urged Francis to step down. . .

A right-wing phenomenon

Since their emergence in the 1980s, right-wing Catholic groups, with their deep alliances among the bishops themselves, have achieved a prominence that essentially makes them an alternative to the U.S. bishops’ conference. Schneck said that it has become “increasingly difficult to identify the line between this conservative Catholic deployment of organizations and the official institutions of the church in America.”

In a bizarre turn, we now have Catholic groups accusing the pope of betraying the church and calling for him to resign, as well as initiating what amounts to hate group activity against gays and others in church settings. Money, and the power of U.S. nonprofits, has given extreme-right Catholics new means of communicating to the wider world what they think the Catholic narrative should be. That generally, but not always, is confined to sexual issues—abortion, gay rights, the rights of divorced and remarried people within the church. . .

If the bishops allow the extreme-right groups to continue unchallenged, Schneck said, their influence will only increase, and they’ll be able to “claim legitimacy and their own authority in making their pronouncements. Because they have the money and because the church always needs money at every level, the doors will continue to be open to them to interact with the church.”

And the money, he said, resides mostly on the right of the ecclesial and political spectrums. He sees nothing of similar ideological heft or funding on the left. “Maybe,” he said, “it’s because progressives have just given up on the church and aren’t willing to contribute a dime to anything that might go toward it.” (Underscored emphasis added.)

Assuming that they are in decline as asserted above, the Bishops of the USCCB have been "hoisted on their own petard" (blown up by their own bomb,) although they will undoubtedly survive.

The following essay addresses how divorced from true Christianity the unbridled pursuit of wealth is, although the use of the word "trope" in the first sentence downgrades the categorical warnings in the Bible against the love of money, and in the second sentence the writer confuses the Apostle Paul with Jesus Christ:

My Turn: The Catholic right, the religious right and the corruptions of wealth

One of the unmistakable, yet slighted, tropes in the Bible is the warning against the perils of money and affluence.

Jesus himself cautioned that the love of money is the root of all evil and that a rich person has about as much chance gaining entry into the kingdom of heaven as a camel successfully negotiating the aperture of a needle.

I wonder how many sermons over the centuries have been devoted to scaling back those declarations, explaining them away so that the affluent in the pews would not feel uncomfortable – and would not suspend their contributions. More to the point, I’d love to know how many such sermons have been preached (or the texts avoided altogether) in the past several decades.

I recall many sermons about camels and the eyes of needles during my evangelical childhood. I haven’t heard such a sermon in years. Since 1980, to be exact.

Now, finally, the bills are coming due. Two of the largest and most influential religious movements in American history – the Roman Catholic Church and evangelicalism – are facing their own crises over the corrosive effects of money.

The cover story in the current issue of Sojourners magazine is entitled “How Right-Wing Billionaires are Attempting a Hostile Takeover of the Catholic Church.” Reported and written by my longtime friend and former colleague Tom Roberts, the story explores the intricate tangle of money, politics, organizations and billionaires seeking to push Catholicism away from its venerable tradition of Catholic social teaching, with its concern for the poor and the rights of workers, toward a fulsome embrace of free-market capitalism.

Such views contradict Catholic doctrine. “God blesses those who come to the aid of the poor and rebukes those who turn away from them,” according to the Catechism of the Catholic Church. “A theory that makes profit the exclusive norm and ultimate end of economic activity is morally unacceptable; the disordered desire for money cannot but produce perverse effects.”

A growing number of Catholic individuals, however, don’t see it that way.

Timothy Busch, founder of the Napa Institute, which aspires to “equip Catholic leaders to defend and advance the Catholic faith in the next America,” favors libertarian economics and has endowed the Busch School of Business at Catholic University of America. The Napa Institute in turn sponsored an event at the school called “Good Profit,” honoring a book by the same name written by Charles Koch, who may represent the embodiment of what the Catechism calls “disordered desire for money.”

The monied web of right-wing influence in the Catholic Church extends to Tom Monaghan, founder of Domino’s Pizza; Steve Bannon, Donald Trump’s former adviser; and the “supreme knight” of the Knights of Columbus, Carl Anderson, who began his career working for the late Jesse Helms, the far-right senator from North Carolina. [Jesse Helms died in 2008.]

The Knights of Columbus expends millions of dollars on charity, but it also funds such hard-right organizations as the Ethics and Public Policy Center, the Federalist Society and the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which battled the contraceptive mandate of the Affordable Care Act, even though most Catholic entities, including the Catholic Health Association, said the accommodations offered by the Obama administration were sufficient.

This Catholic right network extends into the College of Cardinals, especially James Harvey and Raymond Burke, and to Carlo Maria Viganò, the archbishop who was removed by Francis as the papal ambassador to the United States. Viganò, with the support of Busch and other conservatives, has called on Francis to resign, essentially because he’s too “liberal” on matters like poverty, sexuality and climate change.

As Roberts writes in the Sojourners article, “While pendulum swings are common between conservative and progressive tendencies in Catholicism, the 35-year traditionalist reign of popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI allowed the Far Right to flourish.” . . . (Underscored emphasis added.)

There is yet another cause of dissension in American Roman Catholicism that is related to the culture war, but separate from it. It has existed for well over a century, and it has a profound bearing on the result of the presidential election. The pendulum has temporarily swung away from the "ecumenism of hate" towards the Hegelian "left-wing" Pope Francis.

"AMERICANISM" AND ITS CURRENT IMPACT

The election result has again focused attention on Americanism:

‘Americanism’: Phantom Heresy or Fact?

On Jan. 22, 1899, Pope Leo XIII sent Cardinal James Gibbons of Baltimore, leader of the American hierarchy, a document in the form of a letter whose opening words in Latin were Testem Benevolentiae (In Witness to Good Will). “It is clear, our beloved son,” Pope Leo wrote, “that those opinions that, taken as a whole, some designate as ‘Americanism’ cannot have our approval.”

Appalled, Cardinal Gibbons held up the document’s release in the United States for a week, until the publication of excerpts originating overseas forced his hand and moved him to give it to The Baltimore Sun. In a letter to a friend, the cardinal called it “very discouraging … that the American Church is not understood abroad.”

But the bishops of the Milwaukee province, a center of German-American Catholicism, said the errors condemned by Pope Leo were real.

The story of the condemnation of “Americanism” is notably tangled. Even today, accounts of this crucial episode in Church history are often incomplete and biased. As the Americanization of U.S. Catholics becomes a matter of increasing contemporary concern, we need to get this story right.

Troubling reports drifted to Rome from the United States during the 1890s, and concern grew at the Vatican regarding conditions in the Church in America as well as American Catholicism’s influence on Catholics in Europe, especially in France. As the 19th century was drawing to a close, this anxiety hardened into suspicion of the Americanists and their French admirers.

In January 1895, Leo XIII fired a warning shot across the Americanist bow in the form of a letter to the Church in America. Lavishing praise on America and American Catholicism, the Pope nevertheless cautioned against things like divorce and secret societies and against presenting American-style separation of church and state as the ideal arrangement everywhere. The message to Americanists: Don’t push too hard.

Infighting intensified in the next several years. So did the Pope’s concern.

The immediate occasion for Testem Benevolentiae appears to have been the publication in 1896 of a French translation of a shortened version of a biography of Father Isaac Hecker, the American founder of the Paulist order, who had died in 1888. The book carried a long, provocative preface by a liberal French priest named Felix Klein. It went through six printings in a matter of months and touched off heated controversy.

Hailing Father Hecker as a world-class innovator, Father Klein ranked him among history’s “great religious figures” while setting out his thinking with what a later biographer calls “considerable exaggeration.” That included the notion that individuals could count on having the direct, personal inspiration of the Holy Spirit and spiritual directors should encourage them to do so. Father Klein called it an “American idea … God’s will for all civilized people of our time.”

It’s an interesting question whether the views singled out for criticism in Testem Benevolentiae were those of Father Hecker, his biographer, Father Klein or all three. Taking them together, Pope Leo called them “Americanism,” and he condemned them. . .

But Leo XIII’s critique is more substantial than apologists for Americanism care to admit. Much of it, in fact, is pertinent to conditions in American Catholicism today.

One set of condemned ideas concerns ranking natural virtues above supernatural ones, along with a division of virtues into “passive” and “active” that gives preference to the latter as more suited to modern times. The Pope says this fosters “contempt … for the religious life” and the disparagement of religious vows. Here, one might say, is a Victorian anticipation of the crisis that has afflicted religious life in the United States over the last half century.

Turning to the origins of Americanism, Leo XIII says it reflects a desire to attract to the Church “those who dissent.” Central to it, he adds, is the idea that the Church — “relaxing its old severity” — must “show indulgence” to new opinions, including even those that downplay “the doctrines in which the deposit of faith is contained.”

Leo XIII’s reply is that how flexible the Church can and should be is not up to individuals but rests with “the judgment of the Church.” Opposing this orthodox view, he notes, is the modern error that everyone could decide for himself, inasmuch as the Holy Spirit today gives individuals “more and richer gifts than in times past” — no less than “a kind of hidden instinct” in religious matters.

All this and more was the Americanism condemned by the Pope.

On March 17, 1899, Cardinal Gibbons sent Leo XIII a letter thanking him for his document but insisting that no one in America held the views it condemned.

In truth, it is unlikely that men like the cardinal of Baltimore, Archbishop John Ireland of St. Paul, Minn., and other prominent Americanists had much interest in such ideas. These men were builders and doers, not theorists, and they wanted to be loyal to the Church and to the Pope.

But there’s more to the story than that. Better than Leo XIII or anyone else could have known at the time, the opinions condemned in the papal letter have turned out to be widely held among American Catholics today.

That is the case with the notion that each individual member of the Church can decide religious questions for himself or herself and that this remarkable ability comes directly to each one from the Holy Spirit. This opens the door to “cafeteria Catholicism” — a name given to the pick-and-choose selectivity regarding Church teaching on faith and morals now found among many Catholics.

All of which is simply to say it looks very much as if Pope Leo XIII wasn’t wrong to condemn Americanism — he was just ahead of his time. (Underscored emphasis added.)

Americanism undoubtedly continues to be a thorn in the side of the papacy. It is a deadly challenge to the central autocratic principle on which the Church of Rome is founded. Note in particular Pope Leo XIII's letter dated January, 1895, which exposes the papacy's opposition to the separation of Church and State. This is the constitutional guarantee of religious and secular freedom within the constraints of the civil law. (Hence the importance of Opus Dei which has a dominant influence on the Supreme Court as the ultimate interpreter of the Constitution.) The following article underscores the Americanism problem of the Church:

Americanism: Then and Now

The Vatican spoke out authoritatively almost a century ago, but the lessons drawn from the American experience remain crucial for the Church today.

One hardly expects the 95th anniversary of a Church document to command a great deal of attention around the world-or even within the Church, for that matter-when almost no one reads the document in question these days. Still, when the 95th anniversary of rolled around early last year, it probably deserved better than the near total silence it received.

An apostolic letter addressed by Pope Leo XIII to Cardinal Gibbons of Baltimore and dated January 22, 1899, is the papal document that condemned "Americanism." Today the Americanist impulse reigns supreme in American Catholicism. That is not a bad career record for what has been called a "phantom heresy."

To be fair, the Americanists of the 19th century-men like Father Isaac Hecker, founder of the Paulists; Orestes Brownson, the convert journalist and social critic who lies buried in the chapel crypt at the University of Notre Dame; and Archbishop John Ireland of St. Paul, Minnesota-had no inkling of what would happen. They dreamed of evangelizing American culture, even as they faced the challenge of defending their Church against the slur that Catholicism could only be an alien force in a democratic, pluralistic society. . .

What is Americanism?

"There's not a dime's worth of difference between Catholics and their fellow Americans now in moral outlook or religious practice. We fornicate at the same rate. We divorce at the same rate. We abort our children at the same rate. We are materially rich and so, in true chauvinistic fashion, we claim favored-nation status before the Lord." That unflattering judgment appears in a recent article on Americanism by Father Rory Conley, a Washington, DC priest and student of Church history. Writing in (winter 1993), he calls what has happened "the triumph of Americanism over the Roman Catholic Church in this country." . . .

A case study

Consider the Knights of Columbus. . . . With 1.2 million members in the United States, this organization of American origin occupies a position of great importance in Catholic life. More than any other Church institution (with the possible exception of the parochial school), it is a distinctive expression of American Catholicism-one that tells much about the Church in this country. The Knights of Columbus were founded in 1882 in New Haven, Connecticut, by a young Irish-American priest, Father Michael J. McGivney, and a group of Irish-American laymen. Their choice of Columbus as patron was a true indicator of their intentions: a conscious symbolic affirmation of the compatibility of Catholicism and Americanism. Hadn't the Catholic Columbus arrived here in America first, well over a century before the (Protestant) Puritans reached Plymouth Rock? By putting the focus on the symbol of Columbus, argues historian Christopher J. Kauffman in his history of the K of C, Faith and Fraternalism, "this small group of New Haven Irish-American Catholics displayed their pride in America's Catholic heritage. The name Columbus evoked the aura of Catholicity and affirmed the discovery of America as a Catholic event."

In the years that followed, the Knights not only remained true to their original inspiration-the vision of their Church and their country forever linked-but the organization also functioned, practically speaking, as a powerful engine for the assimilation of several generations of Catholic immigrants into American culture. Irishmen, Germans, Poles, Italians, Slovaks-all became American as well as Catholic partly through the good offices of the K of C. Writes Kauffman:

From its origins to World War I, the Order's goals were most visibly expressed in its assertion of the social legitimacy and patriotic loyalty of Catholic immigrants [a striking instance of that is the Knights' "patriotic" Fourth Degree]. By accepting-indeed, extolling-the religious and ethnic pluralism of American society, by portraying Catholic citizenship as the highest form of American citizenship, by promoting American- Catholic culture...and by expressing a firm belief that the American Catholic experience has had a transforming effect upon Catholicism and upon American society, the Knights generally reflected the optimism characteristic of several ecclesiastical leaders associated with the "Americanist" posture in American Catholicism."

If the Knights' role in fostering the assimilation of Catholic immigrants diminished after the First World War, that was because Catholic immigration also diminished, thanks to changes in immigration law inspired (at least in part) by the nativist sentiment of the times. The basic affirmation-Catholicism and America are compatible- remained strong, so that in 1960 the Knights of Columbus took rich satisfaction from the fact that John E. Kennedy was a Fourth-Degree Knight.

A shift toward the counterculture

As the cultural revolution of the 1960s set in and progressed, however, the Knights' situation began to change. The change can be traced to-among other sources-the rhetoric of John W. McDevitt, Supreme Knight of the K of C in those years. McDevitt, who died last December at the age of 87, headed the organization from 1964 to 1977-by anyone's standards a stressful period in secular and ecclesiastical history. One measure of the times can be found in the increasingly negative tone of McDevitt's public comments about the Church's enemies within and without.

Responding in 1968 to the question, "Are the Knights progressive or conservative?" McDevitt argued that they were both: progressive on matters of social policy, "conservative in our reaction to those who lobby for causes which would rob our country of its ties to Judeo-Christian morality."

The inroads of secular humanism became a frequent McDevitt theme. In 1976, in one of his last major addresses as Supreme Knight, he lashed out at the Supreme Court as a source of much of the trouble. "Contrary to the original intent of a benign tolerance of all religions," he said, "the current court philosophy has forced government to take a position of negative neutrality on all religion." As a result, "we do have an established religion...the religion of irreligion-secular humanism, established and decreed by the courts." We have come a long way here from John Ireland's "glorious future... beneath the starry banner." . . .

The end of assimilation

Not all individual Knights of Columbus share the convictions and commitments of the organization's leadership; no group the size of the K of C enjoys uniformity like that. But these are the policies, the programs, and the principles of the Knights as a collective entity. Born in the late 19th century as a grassroots expression of the American Catholicism of that day, the K of C now is arguably the most strongly Roman Catholic institution of its size in the Church in the United States. Kauffman concludes his history with the observation: "Still grounded in a strong pride in the Catholic heritage of North America, Columbianism developed into a conscious cultivation of traditional Catholic loyalties to authority and of Catholic social and moral values in a society characterized by the decline of tradition." Having served for decades as a powerful force for cultural assimilation, the K of C now helps slow down what could otherwise be the terminal assimilation of American Catholics-their absorption to the vanishing point by the secular culture that surrounds and threatens to overwhelm them.

Plainly, the Knights of Columbus alone will not save the Catholic community in the United States from that fate. It remains to be seen whether anything will. Here and there, one sees signs of hope, especially in the increasing talk (if not yet action) regarding "Catholic identity." But the "American Church" is now dominant-so that, for example, the attenuated religious identity of those colleges that formerly called themselves "Catholic" and now tellingly call themselves colleges "in the Catholic tradition" occupies the mainstream albeit a mainstream in visible decline-of institutional Catholicism in the United States today.

For Catholics who regard this as a profoundly unhealthy state of affairs, there is an obvious conclusion. Roman Catholics in the United States must urgently explore the range of options open to them for practicing creative counterculturalism. Obvious models exist. These range from the Amish (separatism, flight-the deliberate effort to escape a corrupt and corrupting secular culture and raise walls against it) to the model of the Christian Coalition (aggressive engagement, in hopes of besting the adversary culture with political weapons). Does either model appeal to Roman Catholics of the United States? Is there some Catholic third way? Without panic, but in clear-eyed recognition of our parlous state, we need to begin talking about these things. If the Catholic Church in the United States means to survive, Americanism must finally- nearly a century after [Testem Benevolentiae (from the original published essay)] undertook to do the job be laid to rest. What comes next? (Underscored emphasis added.)

Note the profound implications of the last two sentences. It is a stark reminder of the ultimate despotism predicted in Rev. 13:11-17. However the final prophecy of the end is the event prophesied in Dan. 11:45. Events under Rev. 13 have been progressing so rapidly that covering them has diverted attention from the Daniel prophecy which is the very last sign that probation is about to close and the final apocalyptic events begin (Dan. 12:1.) It seems highly likely that a pause in the onward rush to consummate the theocratic dictatorship in America should be linked with the fulfillment of Dan. 11:45. Will Americanism play a major role? The religion and commitment of the man who has dethroned "Cyrus, the Chosen One" is significant:

Joe Biden’s Catholic politics are complicated—but deeply American

In spring of 1980, Pope John Paul II had one of the longest meetings of his fledgling papacy. It wasn’t with a world leader, a U.S. president or even a secretary of state. It was with a 37-year-old Joe Biden, a U.S. senator barely a year into his second term.

According to a Catholic News Service account of the encounter, the pope shooed away Vatican aides several times when they attempted to interrupt the 45-minute conversation. After waving them out of the room, John Paul pulled his chair out from behind his desk to sit closer to Biden. The pontiff ribbed the senator about his age as the two discussed everything from the politics of Eastern Europe to the spread of communism in Latin America. Biden, a Roman Catholic from Pennsylvania coal country with an interest in foreign policy, listened intently.

But despite the thrill of meeting John Paul, there was one thing Biden refused to do: kiss the pope’s ring, a customary greeting when meeting an esteemed cleric. It was later revealed that it was Biden's mother who insisted he refrain, telling her son, “Don’t you kiss his ring.”

His refusal has become a hallmark of how Biden manages his faith, a throwback to a brand of mid-20th-century political Catholicism that eschews obsessive obedience to the Holy See on matters of policy. . .

“I’m as much a cultural Catholic as I am a theological Catholic,” Biden wrote in his book Promises to Keep: On Life in Politics. “My idea of self, of family, of community, of the wider world comes straight from my religion. It’s not so much the Bible, the beatitudes, the Ten Commandments, the sacraments, or the prayers I learned. It’s the culture.”

It’s a form of faith that experts describe as profoundly Catholic in ways that resonate with millions of American believers: It offers solace in moments of anxiety or grief, can be rocked by long periods of spiritual wrestling and is more likely to be influenced by the quiet counsel of women in habits or one’s own conscience than the edicts of men in miters.

Biden’s complicated relationship with the Catholic hierarchy is a slight reimagining of the Catholicism modeled by John F. Kennedy, the United States' first and only Catholic president who, like Biden, declined to kiss a pontiff's ring when he met Pope Paul VI at the Vatican in 1963. . .

“When John Kennedy ran for president, I remember being so proud that he was Catholic," Biden told the The News Journal of Wilmington, Delaware in 2005. "But he had to prove that he wasn’t ruled by his beliefs. I’m with John Kennedy on the role religion ought to play in politics.”

While serving on the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1982, he faced a decision on whether to forward to the full Senate a constitutional amendment that would allow states to pass new abortion restrictions and effectively overturn Roe v. Wade, a landmark Supreme Court decision on abortion. Biden voted for the resolution, but insisted in an impassioned speech that while he personally opposed abortion on religious grounds — “I’m probably a victim, or a product, however you want to phrase it, of my background,” he explained — he remained unsure if he had “a right to impose” his religious beliefs on others. . .

But in the years that followed, the line between public policy and private beliefs seemed to fluctuate. Biden voted against the anti-abortion amendment when it once again appeared before the Judiciary Committee in 1983, but in 1984, he backed an amendment praising the so-called Mexico City policy, which banned the use of federal money for foreign groups that provide abortion counseling or referrals. By 1987, advocates for abortion rights were already describing his voting record on the issue as “erratic.”

Biden's compartmentalization of faith and policy has become harder to maintain in recent years, especially after critics of pro-choice Catholic politicians became more vocal under John Paul and Pope Benedict XVI. In January, Biden was reportedly denied Communion at a South Carolina Catholic church due to his abortion stance. Shortly after Biden announced Kamala Harris, a Baptist, as his running mate, Bishop Thomas Tobin of Rhode Island tweeted: “First time in awhile that the Democratic ticket hasn’t had a Catholic on it. Sad.”

“In 1960, Americans needed reassurance that Rome wouldn’t control the Catholic candidate’s conscience, and would allow Kennedy to govern in the nation’s interest,” Imperatori said. “This year, it seems that some bishops will accept nothing less than full control of Catholic consciences, be they the candidate’s, or the voters’.” . . .

Biden, for his part, has occasionally shown a willingness to return the clerics’ barbs. When he met with Benedict in 2011, Biden reportedly chastised the pontiff for cracking down on nuns like Campbell who had backed the ACA in defiance of the bishops.

“You are being entirely too hard on the American nuns,” Biden told the pope, according to The New York Times. “Lighten up.”

Meanwhile, Biden’s personal connection to the faith remains a highly visible part of his political persona. He carries a rosary at all times, fingering it during moments of anxiety or crisis. When facing brain surgery after his short-lived presidential campaign in 1988, he reportedly asked his doctors if he could keep the beads under his pillow. Earlier this year, rival Pete Buttigieg noticed Biden holding a rosary backstage before a primary debate. . .

Biden, who also lost his first wife and a child in an automobile accident shortly after being elected to the U.S. Senate in 1972, talked about Beau’s death with Francis when the pontiff met with Biden’s extended family at the end of his 2015 U.S. visit. Biden later said the meeting with the pope “provided us with more comfort that even he, I think, will understand.”

When the two met again privately in St. Peter’s Basilica a year later during a Vatican conference on cancer, Ken Hackett, then ambassador to the Vatican, caught snippets of Francis offering “moving prayers and concerns about the vice president’s loss of a child.”

“Your religion is complicated, but your faith is something that really motivates and moves you every day — and gives you the strength to carry on,” Hackett said.

But it’s the nuns and rank-and-file Catholics, not popes, whom Biden most often relies on for religious counsel, once telling Campbell that it is “nuns and Jesuits who keep me Catholic.” It’s a preference shared by many of his fellow faithful: In opinion polls, U.S. Catholics show significantly higher support for nuns than for bishops.

Catholics are also more likely to side with Biden on issues of abortion and sexuality than with the church hierarchy. According to a recent RealClear Opinion Research poll, 53% of Catholics don’t agree with the church that abortion is “intrinsically evil,” and 51% say it should be legal in all or most cases. A 2019 Pew Research poll found that a sizable majority of Catholics — 61% — approve of same-sex marriage.

There is also broad agreement where Biden’s beliefs and church teachings overlap. Recent surveys show that most Catholics oppose President Donald Trump’s border wall and believe climate change is not only caused by humans but is one of the major issues facing the world. (Underscored emphasis added.)

In this report is represented a Roman Catholic deeply devoted to his religious faith, including its superstitions. The Rosary includes mysteries, twenty of them added by Pope John-Paul II; but the greatest mystery of all is how intelligent, sophisticated men and women can devote themselves to such practices as "praying the Rosary." It also has its origin in paganism (Cf. The TRUTH about the rosary.) As to Biden's Roman Catholicism in general, the above report is also a depiction of Americanism in action. It also reveals Biden's high comfort level in face to face meetings with the Popes. This is surely a portent of his coming relationship with Pope Francis, especially since the Pope is a Jesuit.

Here the question of separation of Church and State arises. Biden has declared an Americanist support for separation of Church and State:

Joe Biden's Views on Church and State

From "The Fourth R: Conflicts Over Religion in American Public Schools" by Joan DelFattore (Yale University Press 2004):

At a 1995 Senate hearing on a proposed constitutional amendment that would have re-introduced school-sponsored prayer, among other forms of state-endorsed and state-subsidized religion, Senator Orrin Hatch argued that] [t]he government should foster spirituality . . . as an antidote to moral decay. Biden replied, "The coin of religious freedom, we must never forget, has two sides."

America is one of the most religious nations on Earth, he maintained, precisely because the government has stayed out of religion. In his view, the issue before the Senate was not whether religion was good but whether all Americans, including religious minorities, would benefit from increased government involvement with it. . .

From the Associated Press (August 2007):

Biden, a practicing Catholic, acknowledged that he rarely has talked about religion in his 34-year Senate career, but suggested that would change if he wins the Democratic presidential nomination.

Let me also add a quick summary of Senator Biden's record on some major church-state legislation that ultimately became law and some other church-state issues. Biden supported the Equal Access Act of 1984, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, and the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998. As the first excerpt listed above indicates, Biden opposed the Istook amendment, a proposed amendment to the Constitution that was designed to reintroduce school-sponsored prayer and to allow other forms of government-endorsed and government-subsidized religion. The Istook amendment was defeated in 1998.

Biden criticized a court decision that held that the Pledge of Allegiance with the words "under God" violated the First Amendment. He has spoken against teaching intelligent design alongside evolution in public school science classrooms, and he supported Clinton administration efforts to help public school officials, parents, and students to better understand religion's place in public schools under the First Amendment.

From a Christian Science Monitor piece on how Biden's faith informs his public work (August 2007):

"The animating principle of my faith, as taught to me by church and home, was that the cardinal sin was abuse of power," he said in an interview with the Monitor. "It was not only required as a good Catholic to abhor and avoid abuse of power, but to do something to end that abuse."

The issues that have most engaged Biden in public life draw on those teachings, from halting violence against women to genocide. At a personal level, his faith provides him peace, he says. "I get comfort from carrying my rosary, going to mass every Sunday. It's my time alone," he says. . . .

But Biden believes he can bridge much of that divide. "My views are totally consistent with Catholic social doctrine," says Biden, a six-term Democratic senator from Delaware. "There are elements within the church who say that if you are at odds with any of the teachings of the church, you are at odds with the church. I think the church is bigger than that.". . .

"My idea of self, of family, of community, of the wider world comes straight from my religion. It's not so much the Bible, the beatitudes, the Ten Commandments, the sacraments, or the prayers I learned. It's the culture," he writes. . . .

Biden was one of the first Catholic politicians of the Vatican II generation. From 1962 to 1965, the Vatican Council II produced documents that opened the door to ecumenical dialogue, freedom of religion and conscience, and greater involvement of the laity in affairs of the church, including saying the mass in English and more emphasis on individual Bible study.

"I was raised at a time when the Catholic Church was fertile with new ideas and open discussion about some of the basic social teaching of the Catholic Church," Biden says. "Questioning was not criticized; it was encouraged."

"[A Catholic teacher] led me to see that if you cannot defend your faith to reason, then you have a problem," Biden says. . .

On the Senate floor, the tough votes also came early and often. In his first term, Biden faced the first of many votes on whether to curtail abortion rights for women. As a freshman Democrat, he was approached by all sides. He told them that while he personally opposes abortion, he would not vote to overthrow the US Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that gave women the right to terminate a pregnancy. Nor, however, would he vote to use federal funds to fund abortion.

"I don't think I have the right to impose my view – on something I accept as a matter of faith – on the rest of society," he writes in his autobiography. . . .

"Joe Biden is one of the most sincere Catholics I've known in my 40 years as a priest," says Monsignor William Kerr, executive director of the Claude Pepper Center at Florida State University. The two men met by chance outside Biden's Senate office and began a conversation on faith and politics that has continued nearly 30 years. Monsignor Kerr recounts a conversation with Biden on Pope John Paul II's efforts to discourage President Bush from going to war in Iraq. He says that Biden told him: "I just have to tell you the pope's wrong on this, I'm going with the president. That was morality, this is politics."

Looking back on this decision, he writes, "I made a mistake." He had "vastly underestimated" the incompetence of the Bush administration in its conduct of the war. The "fantasy" of remaking Iraq in the US image was a goal that could not be imposed on a "fragile and decimated country," he writes in his new book. Instead, Biden proposes a partition of Iraq along sectarian and ethnic lines to help restore security for Iraqis – and more robust international diplomacy to help sustain it.

Without taking a position on how Catholics should vote, Biden makes a case for staying connected to the church and its culture. "If I were an ordained priest, I'd be taking some issue with some of the more narrow interpretations of the Gospel being taken now," Biden says. "But my church is more than 2,000 years old. There's always been a tug of war among prelates and informed lay members."

Democratic Candidates on Religion, Denver Post (July 2007):

In 2005, Biden told The News Journal (Wilmington, Del.): "This is a nation founded on the idea of the separation of church and state. After 200 years, why the hell would you want to start messing with that?" Biden also stated that his religion is "part of my spirituality, part of my identity." However, Biden supports abortion rights and federal financing for embryonic stem-cell research, stances that run in opposition to those of his church.

Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE), on separation of church and state:

"It was not written to prohibit the government's acknowledgement of God. In my opinion, the court's decision is dead wrong."

Joe Biden on teaching intelligent design in public science classes (The Hotline, August 2005):

Pres. Bush's comments last week "supporting the teaching of intelligent design' alongside the theory of evolution in public school science classes has fueled concerns among some of the wall between religion" and gov't " could be breached. This is a nation founded on the idea of the separation of church and state. After 200 years, why . . . would you want to go messing with that?" (Underscored emphasis added.)

Joe Biden appears to be firmly committed to the constitutional separation of Church and State. Although only peripherally relevant to this paper, it is worthy of note that encroachments on the First Amendment by the motto "In God We Trust" and the Pledge of Allegiance are actually examples of pressure by Christian organizations to identify the United 'States as a "Christian" nation. The motto in its present form was promoted by the National Reform Association, a Protestant organization. The Pledge in its present form was promoted by the Roman Catholic Knights of Columbus. Anyone who wishes to be fully informed on the role of these two organizations in pressing for recognition of the United States as a "Christian" nation in violation of the Constitution will find this essay to be a comprehensive history of their successful advocacy: History of Motto “In God We Trust” and “Under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance.

The Christian Supremacists have been at work for a long time. President Elect Joe Biden shares the blind spot of jurists, politicians, and the body politic in general to the fact that the inclusion of "God" in the Motto and the Pledge of Allegiance has always been a religious exercise in violation of the separation of Church and State. It is the light of Bible prophecy which alerts to the involvement of Theocrats and their objectives.

The Theocrats are now facing a frustrating interruption of their headlong rush to complete and consolidate their absolute power over the American nation. It must be infuriating to the participants in the "ecumenism of hate" that a Roman Catholic who is committed to the separation of Church and State has dethroned their "Cyrus," "the one chosen by god." they hate him, as they also hate Pope Francis:

The Catholics Who Hate Joe Biden—And Pope Francis

Some of Trump’s most committed Catholic supporters have leveled dark charges against Biden as they battle to sway the vote in crucial swing states. And wait until you hear what they think of the pope.

Joe Biden or Donald Trump: Who’s the better Catholic? If this seems like an odd question to raise in the context of a race for the highest secular office in America—and a race in which one of the two candidates is Protestant—never mind. Both campaigns, and their surrogates, are hotly contesting the answer. . .

Of course, every presidential race since Roe v. Wade has featured tension between single-issue anti-abortion-rights Catholic voters and the more liberal, “social justice” Catholics who consider abortion just one issue of many. This time, though, the Catholic wars have greatly expanded. Trump’s amorality, and actions such as Attorney General Bill Barr’s resumption of the death penalty after a 20-year hiatus, have something to do with that: Liberal Catholics are now united in a kind of concentrated fury that conservatives have always directed at abortion. But another factor is the war within the Catholic Church in America—which has become more vicious and is fueled by the same forces that have wrought polarization and conspiracism in U.S. politics. While Joe Biden says he is fighting for the soul of the country, U.S. Catholics are fighting for the soul of their Church.

The president has aligned his reelection campaign with a proudly revanchist corner of the Church, one unfamiliar to many American Catholics, even those adamantly opposed to abortion. This faction’s positions on women, gay people, Muslims, immigration, socialism, and climate change are much closer to those of pro-Trump white evangelicals than to those of liberal Catholics, whom they consider not to be Catholics at all. Far from being bothered by Trump’s scuffles with the pope—Francis has called the president’s immigration policies “not Christian,” Trump has called him “disgraceful” for saying such a thing, and so on—these ultraconservatives applaud the attacks on the leader of their Church. To them, Francis is the embodiment of abhorrent modernist, globalist, even secularist values.

The effective leader of this part of the Church, which is both superglued to certainty and whirring with conspiracy, is Carlo Maria Viganò. “So honored by Archbishop Viganò’s incredible letter to me,” Trump tweeted in early June, to little general notice. “I hope everyone, religious or not, reads it!” Later, during one of the several White House interviews he has granted to EWTN, the conservative Catholic television network, the president lauded Viganò as a “great gentleman,” who’d written “a tremendous letter of support from the Catholic Church.” . . .

In late July, Trump appointed Taylor Marshall to his campaign’s Catholic Advisory Board. A Texan and convert to Catholicism, Marshall has long used YouTube to propagate a version of the faith that combines hard-core traditionalism with cloak-and-dagger intrigue. “From the year A.D. 33 to 2020, Catholicism has not changed one iota,” he stated in a recent video, terming those who disagree “algae, bacteria, goo.” In his new book, Infiltration: The Plot to Destroy the Church From Within, Marshall alleges a centuries-old plot to groom recruits to rise in the Church hierarchy, pervert its teachings, and thus empower the forces of global Freemasonry. He quotes admiringly from admonitions, laid down in the early 19th century by Pope Gregory XVI, against such notions as liberty of conscience and the separation of Church and state. As for Francis, Marshall depicts him as the culmination of “organized efforts” of the “enemies of Christ” to place a “pope for Satan on the Roman Chair of Saint Peter.”

Lately, Marshall has turned his prolific video-production efforts to promoting Viganò’s case against Biden—entwining it with the case against Francis. “They all want Joe Biden, who is a fake Catholic … on the so-called throne in Washington, D.C.,” he says of the pope and his liberal confreres, “so they can continue their agenda, which is to create the East-West globalism.” Translation: Deep-state China and deep-state America will converge with their Vatican enablers to do the devil’s work on Earth. . .

To take an arguably more germane page from history, John F. Kennedy had to go on television in 1960 to reassure voters that he was not too Catholic to serve as president. Sixty years later, Biden is compelled to reassure voters that he’s Catholic enough. Rarely, in this melee, has anyone paused to ask why Biden’s religion—not his character or morality, but his religion—is an issue in a political system carefully constructed by the Founders to prevent such tests of avowed faith. But maybe someone should. (All but one underscoring added; italics in the original.)

What the facts reveal is that there is an alliance of right-wing Evangelicals and Roman Catholics, with some Jews, Mormons, and even some Secularists. The Secularists are presumably primarily interested in the political ideology of the Religious Right and not their theology. One may make an educated guess that they are mainly interested in wealth and power.

The main right-wing Evangelical and Catholic alliance has aptly been described as the "ecumenism of hate." The alliance as a whole is waging a culture war against all Americans who oppose its basic religious ideology, or variations of it. There is a diversion of the alliance in which the Roman Catholic segment is waging an internal culture war against those who choose "ecumenism that moves under the urge of inclusion, peace, encounter and bridges." There is a history which raises some pertinent questions about the fulfillment of the prophecies of Rev. 13:14-17 and Dan. 11:45.

THE POWERS REVEALED IN REVELATION 13

The prophecies of Revelation 13 involve three powers. Of these three which are identified in the following study, the third creates an agent which is distinctly a separate entity, just as a human agent in contractual relationships is a different person from the principal person creating the agency. This is a critically important point in the context of the ultimate tyranny predicted in  Revelation 13:

The Battle of the Great Day of God Almighty It is Pending!

Recent events and the forces at work behind the events as indicated in prophetic Scripture indicate that the final phase of the great controversy between Christ and Satan has begun. The final battle is pending. It dare not be overlooked that the revelation given to John on Patmos clearly and unequivocally stated that the "frog" symbols coming out of the mouth of the "dragon, ... and the beast" ... and the "false prophet" ... "are the spirits of devils" (Rev. 16:13-14). These spirits of evil gather the rulers of earth into one great combine or ecumenical assembly for the final phase of the "war" (Greek) of the great day of God Almighty. It begins by the "false prophet" suggesting to those who "dwell on the (prophetic) earth" that they should make an "image to the beast" (Rev. 13:14). . .

The book of Revelation designates three powers symbolically represented as the "dragon," the "beast," and the "false prophet" which vomit out "frogs," which are defined as "spirits of devils" which in turn "go forth unto the kings of the earth and of the whole world to gather them to the battle (πόλεμος - war) of that great day of God Almighty" (Rev. 16:14). They are gathered "together into the place which is called in Hebrew, Har-Magedon" (verse 16, ARV).

These powers - the dragon, beast, and false prophet - are defined symbolically in chapters 12 and 13, and placed in a locality, "heaven," "sea," or "earth." In the 12th Chapter, "heaven" is used either as the screen on which the drama is portrayed (vs. 1, 3) or heaven itself from which is heard "a loud voice" (verse 10). Beginning with verse 12, the warfare is transferred to the earth and sea, a "beast" rising "up out of the sea (13:1);" and a second beast "coming up out of the earth" (13:11). This second beast is designated as the false prophet. Compare Rev. 13:14 with 19:20. . .

A simple identification of the "beast" is: it is the religious power which arose from the prophetic "sea" and for "forty and two months" (13:5) used the state to carry out its agenda until the state turned on her and inflicted a "deadly wound." The "image to the beast" would be the creation of a government in the prophetic "earth" which would carry out the agenda of the "false prophet." To this end the "religious right" has been seeking to create through the Christian Coalition a theocratic government which will enact and force their agenda on the people of the United States of America revoking the liberty and freedom so long enjoyed by those dwelling in the prophetic "earth."

A perceptive, documented, analysis of the current situation in the prophetic "earth" is to be found in the Yurica Report prepared by Katherine Yurica, a lawyer, and her Editorial and Research Assistant, Laurie Hall - "The Despoiling of America." This report which was first issued, February 11, 2004, documents "How George W. Bush became the head of a new American Dominionist Church/State" A footnote [# 58] was corrected Nov. 6, 2004. This correction alone is alarming. It reads:

Taking his cue from Leo Strauss, Scalia [the Vatican "voice" on the Supreme Court] argued, a democratic government, being seen as 'nothing more than the composite will of its individual citizens, has no more moral power or authority than they do as individuals...' Democracy, according to Scalia, creates problems: it can foster civil disobedience."

The Report begins with a discussion of "The First Prince of the Theocratic States of America:"

It happened quietly, with barely a mention in the media. Only the Washington Post dutifully reported it. And only Kevin Phillips saw its significance in his new book, American Dynasty. On December 24, 2001, Pat Robinson resigned his position as President of the Christian Coalition.

Behind the scenes religious conservatives were abuzz with excitement. They believed Robertson had stepped down to allow the ascendance of the President of the United States of America to take his rightful place as the head of the true American Holy Christian Church.

Robertson's act was symbolic, but it carried a secret and solemn revelation to the faithful. It was the signal that the Bush Administration was a government under God that was lead by an anointed President who would be the first regent in a dynasty of regents awaiting the return of Jesus to earth.

Robertson himself had sought to run for the presidency of the United States and entered the primaries as a candidate for the Republican Party. He has promoted via his 700 Club TV show, a political religious movement called Dominionism. Dominionism started with the Gospel teaching of the invisible and spiritual "kingdom of God" and turned this concept into a literal political empire that could be taken by force. Forgetting that Jesus said, "My kingdom is not of this world," the framers of Dominionism boldly presented a gospel whose purpose was to inspire Christians to enter politics and execute world domination so that Jesus could return to an earth prepared for His earthly rule by His faithful "regents." This cult has gathered in an estimated thirty-five million Americans who calling themselves Christian form the core of the religious right. Unless recognized for what it is, Americans will find themselves living in a theocracy that has already spelled out its intentions to change every aspect of American life including its cultural life, its Constitution and its laws.

This cult, born in Christian Reconstructionism, was founded by the late R. J. Rushdoony. The core included Rushdoony, his son-in-law, Gary North, Pat Robertson, Herb Titus, the former dean of Robertson's Regent University School of Public Policy, Charles Colson, Robertson's political strategist, Tim LaHaye, Gary Bauer, the late Francis Schaeffer, and Paul Crouch, the founder of TBN, the world's largest television network, plus an army of television and radio evangelists and news talk show hosts.

Prior to his death, Schaeffer was the leading evangelical theologian. Appearing on the 700 Club show, he urged revolt against what he termed a humanistic society. While not using the word "Dominionism," he charged that the "dominant culture" in the United States was the humanistic, and that Christians had to regain the dominance. He was joined in this appeal for Christians of the religious right to get into politics by Billy Graham. Appearing on the same show, April 29, 1985, he stated:

I'm for evangelicals running for public office and winning if possible and getting control of the Congress, getting control of the bureaucracy, getting control of the executive branch of government. ... I would like to see every true believer involved in politics in some shape or form.

According to these men, Schaefer, Graham and Robertson, - leading voices in the American protestant church which arose in the "earth," - "God's people" have a moral duty to change the government of the United States. . .

From the above passages can be seen the false prophet clearly identified as an apostate Protestant (Evangelical) movement of longer standing than the present alliance of the Religious Right:

The Real Origins of the Religious Right

They’ll tell you it was abortion. Sorry, the historical record’s clear: It was segregation

This myth of origins is oft repeated by the movement’s leaders. In his 2005 book, Jerry Falwell, the firebrand fundamentalist preacher, recounts his distress upon reading about the ruling in the Jan. 23, 1973, edition of the Lynchburg News: “I sat there staring at the Roe v. Wade story,” Falwell writes, “growing more and more fearful of the consequences of the Supreme Court’s act and wondering why so few voices had been raised against it.” Evangelicals, he decided, needed to organize.

Some of these anti- Roe crusaders even went so far as to call themselves “new abolitionists,” invoking their antebellum predecessors who had fought to eradicate slavery.

But the abortion myth quickly collapses under historical scrutiny. In fact, it wasn’t until 1979—a full six years after Roe—that evangelical leaders, at the behest of conservative activist Paul Weyrich, seized on abortion not for moral reasons, but as a rallying-cry to deny President Jimmy Carter a second term. Why? Because the anti-abortion crusade was more palatable than the religious right’s real motive: protecting segregated schools. So much for the new abolitionism. . .

So what then were the real origins of the religious right? It turns out that the movement can trace its political roots back to a court ruling, but not Roe v. Wade.

In May 1969, a group of African-American parents in Holmes County, Mississippi, sued the Treasury Department to prevent three new whites-only K-12 private academies from securing full tax-exempt status, arguing that their discriminatory policies prevented them from being considered “charitable” institutions. The schools had been founded in the mid-1960s in response to the desegregation of public schools set in motion by the Brown v. Board of Education decision of 1954. In 1969, the first year of desegregation, the number of white students enrolled in public schools in Holmes County dropped from 771 to 28; the following year, that number fell to zero. . .

Paul Weyrich, the late religious conservative political activist and co-founder of the Heritage Foundation, saw his opening.

In the decades following World War II, evangelicals, especially white evangelicals in the North, had drifted toward the Republican Party—inclined in that direction by general Cold War anxieties, vestigial suspicions of Catholicism and well-known evangelist Billy Graham’s very public friendship with Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon. Despite these predilections, though, evangelicals had largely stayed out of the political arena, at least in any organized way. If he could change that, Weyrich reasoned, their large numbers would constitute a formidable voting bloc—one that he could easily marshal behind conservative causes.

“The new political philosophy must be defined by us [conservatives] in moral terms, packaged in non-religious language, and propagated throughout the country by our new coalition,” Weyrich wrote in the mid-1970s. “When political power is achieved, the moral majority will have the opportunity to re-create this great nation.” Weyrich believed that the political possibilities of such a coalition were unlimited. “The leadership, moral philosophy, and workable vehicle are at hand just waiting to be blended and activated,” he wrote. “If the moral majority acts, results could well exceed our wildest dreams.” (Underscored emphasis added.)

Paul Weyrich was the first among equals in seizing upon the segregationist history of the apostate Evangelical Protestants to bring about a formidable political alliance with Roman Catholics. It is important to note that Weyrich and his Roman Catholic associates were certain that they had the support of the Pope. Rome  is ever on the alert to ensnare apostate and unwary Protestants. This was the case with Vatican II, which was convened after Protestant ecumenism had advanced significantly. Rome approved of what Weyrich and his associates accomplished; but this was far from approving of Protestant Dominionism.

The Beast and the False Prophet are clearly defined in the Bible. The historical record in The Battle of the Great Day of God Almighty It is Pending! cited earlier in this paper describes how the False Prophet evolved from a fundamentalist apostate American Protestantism into the contemporary Religious Right coalition. The Image to the Beast is another identity, defined as to its tyrannical actions; but not as to its composition. It is not the False Prophet, which power gives it life. It then acts, obviously prompted by the Dragon, the Beast, and the False Prophet (Rev. 13:.15-17.) From the course of history and current events it is reasonable to assume that the Image to the Beast comprises the "ecumenism of hate." Created by a powerful voting bloc as forecast by Paul Weyrich, the authority of the Image is embedded in the voting population of America. If this is a valid assumption it is highly problematic for the Vatican in two critical areas: the Vatican's "ecumenism that moves under the urge of inclusion, peace, encounter and bridges," and the Papacy's policy on Jerusalem. The "ecumenism of hate" has been problematic for both, and on an elevated level because of the Roman Catholic component of this form of ecumenism, which has generated the culture war within the Church of Rome. The religious Right Roman Catholics are on a separate path from the Vatican. Metaphorically, they are in the path of Romulus and Remus while in general the Hegelian dialectic of Francis papacy is in the pseudo-Peter and Paul path. Both paths are rooted in the mythical foundational history of the papal Caesar. In the light of Bible prophecy the two paths must be destined to converge because of the common goal of world domination. It is reasonable to deduce from the nature of the Beast that Rome will be entirely approving of the tyranny unleashed by the "ecumenism of hate," which is identifiable as the Image to the Beast.

ARE PROPHETIC EVENTS IN PALESTINE ABOUT TO MOVE FORWARD?

How Will The Obstacles Be Overcome?

The entire Religious Right alliance has impeded the Vatican's progress towards establishing a presence in Jerusalem in fulfillment of Dan. 11:45. A harmony of documentation on both relevant United Nations Resolutions and Papal Policy appears to define a probable path to fulfillment of the prophecy:-

International city

Status of Jerusalem

The Holy See has had a long-held position on Jerusalem and the protection of the holy places in the Holy Land which predates the British Mandate for Palestine. The Vatican's historic claims and interests, as well as those of Italy and France were based on the former Protectorate of the Holy See and the French Protectorate of Jerusalem, which were incorporated in article 95 of the Treaty of Sèvres (1920), which incorporated the Balfour Declaration, but also provided: “it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine“. The Balfour Declaration and the proviso were also incorporated in the Palestinian Mandate (1923), but which also provided in articles 13 and 14 for an international commission to resolve competing claims on the holy places. These claimants had officially lost all capitulation rights by article 28 of the Treaty of Lausanne (1923). However, Britain never gave any effect to Mandate provisions arts 13 & 14. During the drafting of proposals that culminated in the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine (also known as Resolution 181) in 1947, the historic claims of the Vatican, Italy and France were revived, and expressed as the call for the special international regime for the city of Jerusalem. This was also confirmed in UN General Assembly Resolution 194 in 1948, which maintained the position that Jerusalem be made an international city,[3] under United Nations supervision.

Pope Pius XII supported this idea in the 1949 encyclical Redemptoris nostri cruciatus. It was proposed again during the papacies of John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul II and Benedict XVI.[4] The Vatican reiterated this position in 2012, recognizing Jerusalem's "identity and sacred character" and calling for freedom of access to the city's holy places to be protected by "an internationally guaranteed special statute". After the US recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital in December 2017, Pope Francis repeated the Vatican’s position: "I wish to make a heartfelt appeal to ensure that everyone is committed to respecting the status quo of the city, in accordance with the relevant resolutions of the United Nations." (Internal hyperlink and underscored emphasis added.)

JERUSALEM - PAPAL POLICY

U. N. Security Council Document S/14032

The United Nations Security Document #S/14032, dated, 30 June 1980, was given general distribution in both English and French. A cover note by the President of the Security Council read:

"The attached letter dated 30 June 1980 from the Charge d'Affaires a.i. of the Permanent Observer Mission of the Holy See to the United Nations was addressed to the President of the Security Council.”

"In accordance with the request contained therein, the letter is circulated as a document of the Security Council."

The letter signed by Monsignor Alain Lebeaupin is included in the Document as Annex I. It reads:

"On instructions from His Eminence the Cardinal Secretary of State of His Holiness, I have the honor to request you to circulate as a Security Council document the attached text published in the 30 June issue of Osservatore Romano, which reflects the position of the Holy See concerning Jerusalem and all the Holy Places. The English translation, which was made from the Italian, may be regarded as authorized." . . .

In short, the Jerusalem question cannot be reduced to a mere "free access for all to the holy places." Concretely it is also required: (1) that the overall character of Jerusalem as a sacred heritage shared by all three monotheistic religions be guaranteed by appropriate measures! (2) that the religious freedom in all its aspects be safeguarded for them; (3) that the complex of rights acquired by the various communities over the shrines and the centres for spirituality, study and welfare be protected; (4) that the continuance and development of religious, educational and social activity by each community be ensured; (5) that this be achieved through an "appropriate juridical safeguard" that does not derive from the will of only one of the parties interested.

This "juridical safeguard" corresponds, in substance, to the "special statute" that the Holy See desires for Jerusalem: "this Holy City embodies interests and aspirations that are shared by different peoples." The very universalism of the three monotheistic religions, which constitute the faith of many millions of believers in every continent, calls for a responsibility that goes well beyond the limits of the States of the region. The significance and value of Jerusalem are such as to surpass the interests of any single State or bilateral agreements between one State and others.

Furthermore, the international community has already dealt with the Jerusalem, question; for instance, UNESCO very recently made an important intervention with the aim of safeguarding the artistic and religious riches represented by Jerusalem as a whole, as the "common heritage of humanity."

THE UNITED NATIONS ORGANIZATION AND JERUSALEM

As early as its second session, the General Assembly of the United Nations approved on 29 November 1947 a resolution on Palestine of which the third part was devoted to Jerusalem. The resolution was confirmed in the next two sessions, on 11 December 1948 and 9 December 1949 while on 14 April 1950 the Trusteeship Council approved a "special statute" for the city on the basis of the Assembly's decisions. The solution proposed by the United Nations envisaged the setting up of a "corpus separatum" for "Jerusalem and the surrounding area," administered by the Trusteeship Council of the United Nations.

This "territorial internationalization" of Jerusalem was not of course put into effect, because in the 1948 conflict the Arab side occupied the eastern zone of the city and the Israeli side, the western. The position of the United Nations does not appear at least as yet to have been formally revoked. The General Assembly, as well as the Security Council, has repeatedly, beginning with the resolution of 4 July 1967, insisted on the invalidity of any measure to change the status of the city.

The Holy See considers the safeguarding of the Sacred and Universal character of Jerusalem to be of such primary importance as to require any Power that comes to exercise sovereignty over the Holy Land to assume the obligation, to the three religious confessions spread throughout the world, to protect not only the special character of the City, but also the rights connected, on the basis of an appropriate juridical system guaranteed by a higher international body. . . (Underscored emphasis added.)

While there is broad agreement between the United Nations and the papacy on the internationalization of Jerusalem with the Vatican playing a critical role, the "ecumenism of hate" has resolutely opposed it, with the Evangelical part of the alliance in the leadership. Roman Catholics tend to disagree with the Christian and Jewish Zionism which is the basis of Evangelical opposition.

The "ecumenism of hate" is not going away, and it is not reasonable to expect that it will, voluntarily or under pressure:

Culture war forever (October 25, 2020)

After four years of dialed-up-to-11 political engagement, does all that energy just evaporate? . . .

But perhaps most importantly, Trump made a lot of noise about extricating America from endless wars — instead, he’s left us embedded in a brand new one.

The Culture Wars are our new Forever War. They are all-encompassing and constant; there is nothing they do not touch. Books and movies, basketball courts and football fields, late night television and daytime talk shows, art museums and corporate offices. Somewhere in between the rise of woke capitalism, the fall of the girlboss, Melissa McCarthy’s Sean Spicer impression, and the deep-dive investigative reports on whether Star-Lord might be a secret Republican, the entire cultural landscape has become a battlefield. Unlike our actual military engagements, participation in this war is not optional. Everything is political, including being apolitical; if you’re not with us, you’re one of them.

Even before pandemic lockdowns, police violence and mass protests ramped tensions up to a fever pitch, the political capture of the national consciousness was already in the works. If Donald Trump’s campaign for the presidency ignited a spark of awareness, his election turned it into a wildfire. In place of frivolous trends, we now had haute-couture emblazoned with ‘Not My President’; institutions like Saturday Night Live and The Late Show stopped looking for laughs and went all-in on ‘clapter’ (perhaps understanding that the alternative was four years of nonstop anguished screaming.) Even now, with what appears to be the end of the Trump presidency looming ever closer, the entertainment landscape is pretty much Resistance cheerleading as far as the eye can see. (Underscored emphasis added.)

Under the circumstances there is no logical reason to suppose that this nation will ever return to peace and tranquillity. The die is cast: the nation and the world appear to be in the final stages of history.

The post-election responses of right-wing religious leaders to the defeat of Donald Trump provide clear indications of a continuing culture war driven by the "ecumenism of hate." This should not be surprising. The profile of this union of right-wing Roman Catholics and Evangelicals perfectly fits the Image to the Beast which ushers in the tyranny of Rev. 13:15-17. As already discussed, the fundamentalist Evangelicals in particular have a long history of commitment to a theocratic dictatorship, and Rome's history of persecution is well-known. The responses of the Evangelical leaders to Trump's defeat show that they have no inclination to give up on their goal of "Christian" supremacy:

Minister Prophesies Trump Comeback, Says 'God Hates' Biden Support of Equality Act, Abortion Rights

Christian "prophets" and ministers across the U.S. are following up on their nearly unanimous prophecies proclaiming President Donald Trump would "without question" win re-election. But with Joe Biden now named President-elect, church leaders are either apologizing or doubling down and predicting a Trump comeback led by the Supreme Court and Baby Boomers.

Several evangelical and Christian church leaders, including televangelist Pat Robertson, White House spiritual adviser Paula White and First Baptist Church Pastor Robert Jeffress, all made bold predictions about a sweeping Trump victory in the presidential election. Those hopes were dashed Saturday as nearly every major news outlet declared Biden the winner, prompting a scrambled effort among many so-called "prophets" to explain their glaring error in interpreting God.

Update: Bethel Church's Kris Vallotton has since deleted his Instagram apology for getting the election wrong. Followers accused him of caving to bipartisan election officials, every major news outlet and the vote count . . .

All of the self-proclaimed Christian leaders who prophesied Trump's win reiterated that their incorrect message doesn't mean they are "false prophets," urging their followers to "keep trust in the prophets."

Two Christian leaders who prophesied Trump victory on Election Day are responding in very separate ways. North Carolina-based "prophet," Jeremiah Johnson, is predicting Trump to reclaim victory as God exposes voter corruption in the coming months. He cites a vision he had from earlier this year in which Baby Boomers "lift Donald Trump up" and uphold his presidency as he'd predicted throughout 2020. Johnson wrote to his tens of thousands of followers Saturday that "God HATES" Biden's policies and Christian supporters of the Democrat should not mock his prophecy as "false" because they face punishment for "eternity."

On the other side of the country, California-based Bethel Church Pastor Kris Vallotton, apologized for "missing the prophecy" on Trump defeating Biden. The 11,000-member megachurch leader said he made a "major, major mistake" after correctly prophesying Trump would not be removed by impeachment earlier this year as well as Barack Obama's election in 2008. . .

Distraught followers of both prophets said they felt reassured "God's Word" would come true and Trump will prevail, with dozens of top comments citing Democrat support of abortion and the conservative-leaning Supreme Court as evidence of what's to come.

"While we wait until January to determine our next US President, observe the stunning blindness and hypocrisy in the body of Christ," Johnson wrote to his tens of thousands of followers. "Christians who voted for the shedding of innocent blood, the Equality Act, and anti Israel legislation (ALL things God HATES) are now picking up stones to persecute prophets who supposedly missed it," Johnson posted Saturday.

"Either a lying spirit has filled the mouths of numerous trusted prophetic voices in America or Donald J. Trump really has won the presidency and we are witnessing a diabolical and evil plan unfold to steal the election," Johnson wrote, saying "every legitimate prophet I know" is still predicting Trump to win by January. . .

Just days before the election, '700 Club' host Pat Robertson proclaimed Trump would "without question" defeat Biden. But he added that Trump's re-election would prompt assassination attempts, world war threats and ultimately the "End Times" of the world. (Underscored emphasis added.)

Note the denials by these religious leaders that they are "false prophets," which they actually are precisely as prophesied in Rev. 13. If they were not already so completely under the control of the lying spirits of Rev. 16:13-14 their apparent knowledge of this passage of Scripture might possibly bring them to repentance; but a legitimate judgment can be made by true Christians that they have so long grieved the Holy Spirit that they are now beyond any hope of redemption.

What the immediate future holds for America and the world remains to be seen. However, the prophetic Word provides clues, since Dan. 11:45 is yet to be brought to fulfillment. One clue is the politics of the Vatican on Jerusalem, and therefore the need to suppress Zionism. There is also evidence that President-elect Joe Biden already has an established relationship with Pope Francis, who is for the time being at enmity with the "ecumenism of hate." We need to be watching developments in Palestine carefully.

ADDENDUM

The "False Prophet" right-wing Evangelicals have long labored to achieve their goal of establishing a theocratic dictatorship in America and they will not give up. However, the present reality is beginning to penetrate their apostate minds. Pat Robertson, in the past "The First Prince of the Theocratic States of America," has changed his mind about Donald Trump's prospects of overturning the 2020 presidential election result:

Pat Robertson says Trump lives in 'alternate reality' and Biden will be president

Televangelist media mogul Pat Robertson acknowledged on Monday that President-elect Joe Biden won the election, in conflict with President Trump, who continues to fight the outcome of the election even after the Electoral College confirmed the results.

During an airing of “The 700 Club” on Monday, Robertson, who is considered a Trump ally, responded to reports that the Supreme Court had denied another attempt by the Trump campaign to invalidate votes in other states.

“I had prayed and hoped that there might be some better solution, but I don’t think — I think it’s all over,” Robertson said. “I think the Electoral College has spoken. I think the Biden corruption has not totally been brought to fruition, but it doesn’t seem to be affecting the Electoral College, and I don’t think the Supreme Court is going to move in to do anything.” . . .
Christian Broadcasting Network correspondent George Thomas later asked Robertson if he thought Trump should run again in 2024, as reports have suggested he has said to allies privately.

"I think it will be a mistake," said Robertson. "My money would be on Nikki Haley. I think she'd make a tremendous candidate for the Republican candidate. You know, with all his talent and the ability to raise money and grow large crowds, the president still lives in an alternate reality. He really does."

"People say, 'Well, he lies about this, that,' but, no, he isn't lying. To him, that's the truth," Robertson said, referring to Trump's claims of having the largest inauguration crowd, having the highest approval ratings and saving NBC with his show "The Apprentice," which Robertson said "really aren't true."

Though still praising Trump, Robertson said the president's behavior had been "erratic," making note of the officials he has fired in the weeks since Election Day.

"It would be well to say, 'You've had your day. It's time to move on,'" Robertson said, addressing Trump.

The effect of Robertson's desertion of Trump remains to b e seen. He wields much influence in the right-wing evangelical world. It is noteworthy that he appears to be inclined to anoint Nikki Haley as the political successor to Trump, which would be an intriguing choice after "Cyrus, the Chossen One."