RELIGIOUS DESPOTISM DESTROYING AMERICA'S FREEDOMS
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PART I: AMERICAN LIBERAL DEMOCRACY ON THE BRINK OF EXTINCTION
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PART IV: FACILITATING ABSOLUTE POWER AND CORRUPTION OF THE ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE
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This paper is intended to encourage alertness; not to cause despondency. The same prophetic word which predicts a triumph of evil in this world before the end promises that "the Lamb shall overcome" the kings who ultimately "give their power and strength unto the beast." Those "that are with Him are called, and chosen, and faithful." They have given "diligence to make [their] calling and election sure."
In this paper is presented convincing documentary evidence of deep-seated religio-political corruption of the Constitution and laws of America. This is on the verge of completely destroying the nation's liberal democracy with its guarantee of separation of Church and State and individual liberty. To retain clarity of perception in reading the passages quoted from articles and essays, attention must be drawn to two issues present in the political discourse. They provoke emotional reactions prejudicial to reasoned analysis of the threat to democracy and true religious liberty. These are abortion and LGBT rights. That this website is in strong Bible-based disagreement with the present position of the Seventh-day Adventist Church on abortion is clear. On the subject of LGBT rights Adventistlaymen.com is aligned with the Church, also on a biblical basis; but without taking a position on the transgender phenomenon, which is a complex issue. However, the Church's analysis may be completely correct. What is of critical importance is that the morality of LGBT lifestyles are in the spiritual realm of religion. Separation of Church and State as established by the US Constitution demands that the Churches leave these issues to the Civil Law. Under the Constitution, the State cannot legitimately impose religious laws on the nation, as is now being done by the "religious right" alliance of Roman Catholics and extremist catholicized Protestants. It is worthy of notice that the Roman Catholic Church actually does not base its opposition to abortion and LGBT rights on the Bible. On these issues, the Papacy is determined to impose its "Natural Law" ideology on the nation and the world.
The means applied to demolishing Democracy in America are multifaceted and prolific. They include money, money, money; secretive organizations like Opus Dei; and lies, lies, lies spewed by individual leaders (Trump) and numerous agencies of propaganda (Fox News chief among them). They are aimed at the citizenry and all levels of the three branches of government, especially in the administration of justice. The goal is absolute power, the power which corrupts absolutely, denying individual freedom and particularly religious liberty. The means outlined above are all controlled by one religious institution which has always been the enemy of American Liberal Democracy and the civil and religious liberties it guarantees. That institution is the Church of Rome. The Roman Catholic Church has successfully brought liberalism into disrepute by blaming it for all of society's moral decay. It should also be noted that disparaging criticism of "the Left" has been directed at liberalism - not socialism. The papacy has been open in its opposition to liberalism. Socialism has always been unpopular in America and therefore has not required the special attention of Rome.
PART I: AMERICAN LIBERAL DEMOCRACY ON THE BRINK OF EXTINCTION
PROPHECY MERGING INTO HISTORY SINCE 1980 HOW CORRUPTION OF THE AMERICAN ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE BEGAN IN EARNEST PROPHECY MERGING INTO HISTORY SINCE 1980
It is a remarkable fact which cannot be ignored that a religio-political movement emerged into full blossom in America in the very same year of completed fulfillment of a prophecy of the end by Jesus Christ Himself. This is heavily documented on this website. The following is a publication by Elder Wm. H. Grotheer which provides an exegesis of a prophecy found in Luke 21:24:
In this same setting, - the history of the city of Jerusalem - Jesus gave the sign that would mark the end of time. He declared:
Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled. (verse 24)
We need to take note of the words which Jesus used as recorded by Luke. First, one word in the text is translated two different ways. If not understood, it can limit our perception. The inhabitants of Jerusalem were to "be led away captive into all nations." The city was to "be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled." There was to be "upon the earth distress of nations." Each word emphasized, "nations," or "Gentiles," is the same word in the Greek - ta ethne (τὰ ἔθνη) - and means those nations other than Israel.
These Gentile nations were to tread down the city. Nineteen centuries of history should provide adequate proof of this fact - "first the Romans, then by the Arabs, next by different Christian nations during the Crusades, fourth by the Turks up to the end of the first world war, then by the British, and finally by the Jordanians." Then in the Six-Day War of June, 1967, a dramatic change took place. The Reader's Digest (March, 1975) in an article, "Jerusalem - Too Holy for Its Own Good," gave the story:
A stone wall, rising starkly in the Walled City, figures strongly in Israel's adamancy over not wanting to give up East Jerusalem. This is the Western Wall, a fragment of the ramport of a platform on which the First Temple of King Solomon and the Second Temple of King Herod stood. The Second Temple was destroyed by the Romans in A.D. 70, when the Jews were driven into diaspora, or dispersion. Throughout 19 centuries of diaspora, the wall, or the memory of it served as a spiritual beacon and a symbol of a lost homeland to Jews the world over. During that time, Passover and Yom Kippur services ended in the incantation in Hebrew: "Next year in Jerusalem."...
When the British withdrew from Palestine in 1948, and Jews and Arabs fought for the control of the state, the Jews managed to hold West Jerusalem... Yet, tantalizingly, the Western Wall remained just beyond reach. Jordan annexed East Jerusalem as well as the West Bank of the River Jordan, a territory that surrounds the city on three sides. For 19 years, a no-man's-land separated the two sectors, and Jordanians refused to allow Jews to worship at the Western Wall.
When war came again in 1967, Israel urged Jordan's King Hussein to stay out of it, promising, in return, not to attack Jordan. But, ... Hussein sent artillery shells crashing into West Jerusalem. Israeli soldiers counter-attacked, and poured into the Walled City. Their religious fervor was such that many headed directly for the Western Wall, where they paused to pray. For the first time in 19 centuries, the wall was under Jewish control. (p. 132)
The restoration of Old Jerusalem to Israeli control marked the fulfillment of the second part of Jesus' prophecy - "Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the nations until the times of the nations be fulfilled." It also was the sign which signaled the beginning of the end of time.
Secondly, we need to consider, how the word, "times" is used in Luke 21:24. The Greek word translated, "times," is kairos (καιρος ). The same word was used by Luke in quoting Jesus as He wept over Jerusalem, because they did not know "the time of [their] visitation" (Luke 19:44). Paul used the word when he wrote of the accepted time for salvation. (II Cor. 6:2) It is probationary time - not chronological time (χποος). Thus the fulfillment of "the times of the nations" means simply that the probationary time allotted to the nations as corporate bodies was closing.
Twenty times in his two New Testament books - the Gospel and Acts - Luke uses the Greek word, achri(s) (ἄχρι) translated in Luke 21:24 as "until." However, in this verse and in two others in Acts, he connects it with the Greek relative pronoun, (hou), (οὗ) making it an idiomatic expression. How is it to be understood? In Acts 27:31-34, we have recorded the story of Paul's shipwreck on the way to Rome. During the storm, the crew and passengers had eaten nothing. Now it appeared the boat was about to be dashed to pieces on the rocks of an unidentified shore. The text reads "And while the day was coming on, Paul besought them all to take meat." (v. 33). The word translated, "while" is the Greek, achri hou, as in Luke 21:24. It is obvious that it is used in Acts to cover that identifiable period of time between the first rays of light, and the full light of day.
How shall the idiom be understood in Luke 21:24? When Israel took control of Jerusalem in 1967, the government continued to function from Tel Aviv, On July 30, 1980, the Knesset passed a Basic Law: Jerusalem, Capital of Israel. This Law read in part: . . .
1, Jerusalem, complete and united, is the capital of Israel.
2. Jerusalem is the seat of the President of the State, the Knesset, the Government and the Supreme Court.
With this action, the prophecy of Jesus met complete fulfillment. During this brief definable period, 1967 to 1980, the probationary time allotted by God to the nations was closing.
Luke 21:24 provides the history of Seventh-day Adventist expositions of the prophecy, and Grotheer's conclusion of what its fulfillment means:
James Edson White, second son of James and Ellen White, entered the publishing work at the early age of 15. At the Review & Herald office he learned and mastered the printer's trade. Sensing the need of funds for missionary work and the profit that could be derived from the sale of Bible oriented books, White pushed forward the writing and sale of 12 books in all. Among them was The Coming King, which for years was the leading subscription book produced by Seventh-day Adventists for colporteurs (SDA Encyclopedia Vol. 11, p. 890). In the chapter on the "Destruction of Jerusalem," White tells of the terrible carnage inflicted by the Roman soldiers, and cites this as a fulfillment of Jesus' prophecy as given in the first part of Luke 21:24 - "they shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall be led away captive into all nations (τα εθνη)." Then he adds a closing paragraph to the chapter:
We also read that "Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles he fulfilled." This will be when the work of the gospel is finished" (p. 109, 1906 edition).
This is a declarative and definitive statement of how Luke 21:24 was understood. The book was published by the Review & Herald Publishing Association, and as noted above "was the leading subscription book produced by Seventh-day Adventists" for years. In other words, it is as official an interpretation as could possibly be given to Luke 21:24 apart from the General Conference in session.
Five years later, Edson's mother directed a letter to Dr. J. H. Kellogg which is filed as Letter 20, 1901 (Ms. Rel., #14, 1102, pp. 139-149). In this letter, after discussing general matters Ellen White declared Luke 21:24, in full context, to be "present truth," and "an object lesson." We discussed this letter in some detail in this year's January issue of WWN (pp. 6-7). She wrote:
Will not the people of God take heed? In the twenty-first chapter of Luke, Christ foretold what was to come upon Jerusalem; with it He connected the scenes which were to take place in the history of this world just prior to the coming of the Son of man in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory (p. 149).
When Christ comes in the clouds of heaven, "the work of the gospel" will have been "finished." Ellen White's letter to Kellogg would appear to be an endorsement of her son's position as given in The Coming King.
The history continues through the years 1915 (Bible Readings for the Home Circle,) 1949 (Bible Readings for the Home Circle revised,) 1952 (Bible Conference,) mid 20th century ("20th Century Bible Course,") and finally 1980 (Second Quarter Sabbath School Lesson and the special "Helps" book both authored by Dr. Jean Zurcher.) The following statement is taken from a passage quoted by Elder Grotheer:
I believe that the times of the Gentiles began in AD 34 when the prophetic seventy weeks that God set aside for the people of Israel ended. The baptism of the first "heathen" - the Ethiopian eunuch and the centurion Cornelius - as well as the conversion of Paul as an apostle to the Gentiles mark the beginning of these new times. And if I have understood the prediction of Jesus properly, this time will be "fulfilled" when Jerusalem will cease to "be trodden of the Gentiles." The fact that since 1967 Gentiles no longer have occupied Jerusalem means, therefore, that we are now living at the end of "the times of the Gentiles."
Jerusalem here constitutes the last sign by which the Lord shows us that the history of this world is coming to its climax and that the restoration of all things is at hand. And should God tarry once more in the fulfillment of His promise, we should understand that He "is longsuffering, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance" (2 Peter 3:9) (Christ of the Revelation) . . .
The Sign of the End Of Time (Excerpt from WWN 12(00) ends with a reasoned analysis of what fulfillment of the prophecy is telling us:
What is the Fulfilled Prophecy of Jesus Saying?
The very least that this fulfilled prophecy of Jesus is saying is that God is no longer restraining the power of Satan in his control of the nations of earth. Even though Satan declared that he possessed such power and could delegate it to whomever he chose (Luke 4:6), the book of Daniel draws the curtain aside and reveals that God "ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever He will" (Dan. 4:17). When kings and rulers resisted His purposes, Michael, to whom all earthly authority is given (I Cor.
We have not been left in doubt as to what Satan is seeking to accomplish. In the Revelation of Jesus Christ, the picture is drawn. "The spirits of devils go forth unto the kings of the earth and of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of the great day of God Almighty" (Rev. 16:14). But you respond, that is the sixth plague after the close of probation. No, it is the cause for the sixth plague, not the plague. Consider the first plague: a "grievous sore" on those who had received the mark of the beast (16:2). Was not the mark of the beast received prior to the close of probation? Just so, the sixth plague. Verse 12 describes the plague - the drying up of the great river
Note the use of this text in The Great Controversy, pp.561-62. Observe the context - "the last remnant of time."
The location of this gathering is given as a place in the Hebrew tongue, called "Har-Magedon" (
Even as the sanctuary "was the key which unlocked the mystery of the disappointment" in 1844 (See, Spirit of Prophecy, Vol. 4, p. 268), so also it gives a further understanding as to the significance of Jesus' prophecy as recorded in Luke 21:24. During the daily ministration, confession of sin, both individual and corporate was made in the court of the sanctuary. The distinct difference between these two ceremonies was where the blood of confession was placed. For the individual, the blood of his sacrifice was placed upon the horns of the Brazen Altar of the Court, while for a corporate sin, the blood of the sacrifice was placed on the horns of the Golden Altar of Incense in the
What Warning Has God Given? -- When God told Moses, the nature of the Coming One, that He would be a Prophet raised up in the midst of the Children of Israel like unto himself, and that He would put words into His mouth, He also sounded a warning:
And it shall come to pass, that whosoever will not hearken unto my words which he shall speak in my name, I will require it of him. (Deut. 18:19)
It was that Prophet who declared that "
Take heed to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting, and drunkenness, and the cares of this life, and so that day come upon you unawares. For as a snare shall it come on all them that dwell on the face of the whole earth. Watch ye therefore, and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of man. (Luke 21:34-36)
To the unbiased mind the exegesis of the prophecy is clear and valid. The course of history since 1967, and 1980 in particular, confirms the exegesis. The unfolding of current events has seen the first stirrings of increased papal activism to complete the Catholicization of America just prior to 1980. This activism swelled into a flood from that year:
FROM MORAL MAJORITY TO TEA PARTY
A POLITICAL ACTION PLAN GOES INTO HIGH GEAR
In the case against the Church of Rome for unleashing on the American nation religious fanatics who indulge in vociferous cant about religious freedom but scorn the essentials of individual liberty, the Roman Catholic hierarchy is indicted by the activities of its own clerics and authorized lay representatives. On the record is the Pastoral Plan of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops published in 1975. The following is quoted from Paragraph 28 of the Statement Issued by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops:
28. Accomplishment of this aspect of this Pastoral Plan will undoubtedly require well-planned and coordinated political action by citizens at the national, state, and local levels. This activity is not simply the responsibility of Catholics, nor should it be limited to Catholic groups or agencies. It calls for widespread cooperation and collaboration. As citizens of this democracy, we encourage the appropriate political action to achieve these legislative goals. As leaders of a religious institution in this society, we see a moral imperative for such political activity.
The Bishops then moved to achieve the "widespread cooperation and collaboration" and the "appropriate political action." Although the primary focus was on abortion, what followed was a broad onslaught of Roman Catholic ideology based on the papacy's Social Doctrine. (Cf. However heartfelt, opposition to abortion).
It would be a serious mistake to think that the Church of Rome suddenly burst on the American scene in 1975. In fact the presence and influence of the papacy in America was traced by Pope Leo XIII himself all the way back to Columbus' discovery of the continent (The Pope recognizes . . .) His reference to George Washington reveals a papal policy of cultivating cordial relations with the leaders of the nation. Why? The probable reason is that once the leaders are neutralized, Rome is free to propagandize the masses with her ideologies, and they become drunken with her wine,. This is what has happened in the United States of America (Cf. "Making America Catholic") Today there is not a single prominent voice in the nation that is speaking out against the religio-political influence and ambitions of Rome. To the contrary, leaders seek the counsel of the Vatican, [Nancy Pelosi - (There was in fact not only intervention on Capitol Hill . . .) and yield to the lobbying of Roman Catholic bishops (Barbara Bradley Hagerty then stated as follows . . .) Oblivious of the destructive influence of Rome, they praise the Pontiff and the papal hierarchy for their "moral" influence on the world. The President of the United States praises Pope Francis as "somebody who lives out the teachings of Christ" (President Obama is a fan of Pope Francis;) but the Bible does not lie. Here is the Divine viewpoint on the papacy.
(Cf. "Theocratic Dictatorship" - The Pastoral Plan bookmark.)
From the 1980s and surging into the present, the Church of Rome has advanced her campaign of tightening her grip on the body politic of America. Prophecy has been merging into history at an accelerating pace.
HOW CORRUPTION OF THE AMERICAN ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE BEGAN IN EARNEST
It is now a notorious fact to anyone who has been paying attention that the Republican Party has become the party of the Roman Catholic Church, or Party of God. This was a deliberate takeover by Rome. There appears to be general agreement that the effective date of the takeover was during the 1996 presidential campaign. However, Rome had maneuvered her way into the Republican Party, and exercised great influence over the presidencies of Ronald Reagan, Bush the elder, and Bush the younger. It was during these presidencies that the process of corrupting the judicial system of Amerce was launched and consolidated:
However, the bishops may have had even greater success in targeting the judicial branch. In the 12 years of the Reagan and Bush administrations, these two presidents appointed five Supreme Court Justices and 70% of all sitting judges in the federal court system. All were anti-abortion, another goal of the Plan.
The legislative branch has been more difficult for the bishops, although they did achieve sufficient influence in Congress to the extent that pro-choice Congressmen could not override a presidential veto of family planning bills. As long as the anti-family planning interests controlled the White House, as they did during the Reagan and Bush years, this was sufficient for the bishops’ purposes.
One of the more profound accomplishments of this Plan is the capture of the Republican Party by the Vatican. This accomplishment was vital to the bishops’ legislative agenda described in the Plan. In a July 28, 1994, Los Angeles Times wire service story, Jack Nelson describes the maneuvers of the Religious Right so that this takeover is all but an accomplished fact.
On September 11, 1995, Bill Moyers gives his assessment of the influence of the Religious Right in remarks titled Echoes of the Crusades: The Radical Religious Right’s Holy War on American Freedom: “They control the Republican party, the House of Representatives and the Senate._._._.” (Underscored emphasis added.)
Reagan and Bush the elder did not nominate Roman Catholics exclusively to the Supreme Court. The primary litmus test was conservatism. The statement above that all of the appointees were anti-abortion is not quite correct. The actions of the Justices were somewhat more complex. Bush's appointment of David Souter provides a glimpse behind the curtain.
Concerning this appointment Bush made an interesting statement:
George H. W. Bush Supreme Court candidates
Bush showed less interest in issues relating to the Supreme Court than other presidents before and after him.[9] Upon Souter's nomination, Bush made clear that he had no litmus test for court appointees. "You might just think that the whole nomination had something to do with abortion," Bush told reporters upon nominating Souter. "It's something much broader than that. I have too much respect for the Supreme Court for that."
Souter turned out to be an unreliable conservative, and ultimately sided consistently with the liberals. Nevertheless, he had been willing during one period to consider overturning Roe v. Wade.
The following passage also reveals the true character of Anthony Kennedy:
Initially, from 1990 to 1992, Souter leaned conservative. In his first year, he and Scalia voted alike close to 85% of the time; Souter voted with Kennedy and O'Connor about 97% of the time.[citation needed] The symbolic turning point came in two cases in 1992: Planned Parenthood v. Casey, in which the Court reaffirmed the essential holding in Roe v. Wade; and Lee v. Weisman, in which Souter voted against allowing prayer at a high school graduation ceremony. In Planned Parenthood v. Casey, Kennedy considered overturning Roe and upholding all the restrictions at issue in Casey. Souter considered upholding all the restrictions but still was uneasy about overturning Roe. After consulting with O'Connor, however, the three (who came to be known as the "troika") developed a joint opinion that upheld all the restrictions in Casey except for the mandatory notification of a husband while asserting the essential holding of Roe, that a right to an abortion is protected by the Constitution. (Underscored emphasis added.
Note Roman Catholic Anthony Kennedy's interest in overturning Roe v. Wade. The objective was clear; but the time was not ripe (it may now be ripe, with the present composition of the Court.) Bush more than compensated for his mistake in appointing Souter by the appointment of Clarence Thomas, who had first found favor with the Reagan administration. Thomas carefully concealed his convictions at the time of his nomination in 1991 (Clarence Thomas on Abortion.) After his appointment to the Court he revealed himself, and has grown increasingly more extremist. At the time of his nomination his anti-abortion credentials were established by his close relationship with Paul Weyrich. The following quotation is lengthy because of its significance:
The conservative activists who fought most fervently for Thomas’s confirmation are the people to whom Thomas is most grateful. And it is with them that he is attempting to redefine the role of the Justice; for, though he has spoken out only on rare occasions and in carefully chosen settings before specially selected audiences, he remains an important voice (and symbol) in the American conservative movement. Thomas believes that if the “new intolerance” is to be defeated—and if the liberal establishment that vilified him is ever to be called to account—the impetus will have to come from the New Right conservative movement, which has long been his political home.
In his effort, Thomas’s mentor has been Paul Weyrich, a Washington fixture known as a founding father of the New Right and as the man who helped coin the name for Reverend Jerry Falwell’s political organization, the Moral Majority. In nearly three decades in the capital, Weyrich has founded about a dozen organizations, including the Heritage and the Free Congress foundations, in the fight for what he calls “cultural conservatism”—an agenda that has anti-abortion and pro-school-prayer tenets as its bedrock. In the early days of the Reagan Administration, Weyrich’s causes also included the ill-fated effort to preserve tax breaks for racially segregated schools. Weyrich and Thomas met in the early eighties, while Thomas was chairman of the E.E.O.C. Though they remain good friends, Weyrich was cryptic in describing their relationship to me. “I see him fairly frequently,” he said. “We’ve been to each other’s homes.” Weyrich has watched and helped guide his friend’s ideological development over the years. “He has changed somewhat in his perspective,” Weyrich said. “He was very focused on economic issues, as many Reaganites were when they came into office. He now sees that the cultural focus is very valid. He’s said he thinks we were ahead of the curve.” . . .
Notwithstanding these rules, Thomas shows every sign of accelerating, rather than moderating, his political activity. On October 1st, the Friday before this year’s Supreme Court term begins, he is scheduled to make an appearance at the national convention of Concerned Women for America, in Washington. C.W.A., which was founded in 1979 by Beverly LaHaye, is one of the most outspoken conservative organizations in the nation—and one that strongly backed Thomas’s confirmation. It now claims six hundred thousand members, and lobbies in Washington and in state capitals for restrictive abortion laws and school prayer, and against homosexual rights and sex education. . .
As it turned out, the new Justice relied on one law clerk in particular—Christopher Landau, who had worked in the Bush Justice Department, then clerked for Thomas on the Court of Appeals, and then spent a year as a clerk for Justice Scalia. . .
According to the person familiar with the Thomas chambers, Landau was a member of the Federalist Society, a fraternal group of conservative lawyers, and he chose three other Federalist members as his fellow-clerks. (In a recent letter to this magazine, Landau denies being a Federalist member.) Word quickly went around the Supreme Court that this first group of four was probably the most conservative group ever assembled to work for a single Justice. The source also says that the group “considered it a compliment.” Consequently, disagreements among them—and with their boss—were rare. There was essentially no discussion in the Thomas chambers, this person says, of Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the most celebrated case of Thomas’s first term. In Casey, the Justices were asked to rule whether Roe v. Wade, the Court’s epochal 1973 decision establishing a woman’s right to choose abortion, should be overturned. In his confirmation hearings, Thomas had said, “I cannot remember personally engaging in” any discussions of Roe v. Wade. Since it was the most famous Supreme Court case of his generation, this statement drew widespread skepticism at the time. In any event, it appears clear that Thomas had made up his mind about the fate of Roe before he arrived on the Court; without even discussing the issue with his law clerks, he decided that the case should be overturned. “There was no point in talking about Casey,” the source says. “There was no doubt whatsoever on where he was coming out. There was no discussion at all.” Thomas joined Justice Scalia’s dissenting opinion, which urged that Roe be overturned. (Underscored emphasis added.)
Here can be seen the direct influence of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in the advancement of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court. He has acknowledged his Roman Catholicism with a fervor which, combined with his actions on the Court, reeks of ruthless fanaticism:
Supreme Court Justice: I Am ‘Unapologetically Catholic’
A Supreme Court justice is boldly proclaiming his Catholic faith.
On Saturday, Justice Clarence Thomas told the 39th graduating class of Christendom College in Front Royal, Virginia that the school "is a decidedly Catholic college, and I am decidedly and unapologetically Catholic."
"I have no doubt that this faith will do the same for each of you if you let it and perhaps even if you don't; it is not a tether," he continued. "But rather it is a guide, the way, the truth and the life." . . .
Thomas is also a Natural Law jurist, who believes the Constitution is based on transcendent principles that come from God, which find their highest civic expression in the Declaration of Independence, with its language about inalienable rights of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" bestowed on creatures by "their Creator."
Thomas' fanaticism reveals a determination to overrule any settled law of the land which differs from the Church of Rome's "Natural Law." So much for Stare Decisis ("Let the decision stand"). This has unsettled the administration of justice and undermined the rule of law in America.
Rome is adept at playing the long game. The fact is that she had made substantial gains during the Reagan-Bush years. The continued progress of her agenda became a settled certainty. The appointment during the Reagan-Bush years of five Supreme Court Justices (though not all Roman Catholics,) and 70% of all sitting judges in the federal court system was just the beginning. Rome' is never satisfied until she has achieved total control. As will be seen, Republican presidencies succeeding the Reagan-Bush years have brought about an irreversible domination of right-wing ideology-driven judges on the federal bench, and especially the Supreme Court. The path to fulfillment of Rev. 13:15-17 is wide open.
PART II: ROMAN CATHOLIC DOMINATED PRESIDENCIES OF AMERICA
RONALD W. REAGAN
GEORGE H. W. BUSHGEORGE W. BUSH
DONALD J. TRUMPTwo past presidential administrations in America have been dominated by Roman Catholics, as is also the present one, and this alarming fact has been exposed by respectable publications. Amazingly, none of the three presidents identify as Roman Catholic, which may be why the Catholicism of their presidencies has been unnoticed by the vast majority of Americans. The passivity of the body politic may also be an indication of how catholicized the nation had become. This is tragic, because Roman Catholic policies and governance have been destroying the unique liberal democracy of America which has guaranteed individual liberty for two and a half centuries. The Catholicization of the nation's governance is now on the verge of completing the destruction of American democracy.
The first of the three presidencies was the Reagan administration. In 1984 the first term of Ronald Reagan's presidency was nearing its completion. In that year Stephen D. Mumford, an American expert on fertility and population growth, published a book titled American Democracy and the Vatican: Population Growth and National Security. In March, 2012,, churchandstate.org.uk published a chapter from the book, in which the Reagan presidency was described as "the most Catholic administration in American history." Because of the staggering significance of the facts revealed in the chapter, copious quotations follow:-
Influence of the Catholic Hierarchy on U.S. Policy Making
Chapter 10: Influence of the Catholic Hierarchy on Government Policy
The Reagan administration is the most Catholic administration in American history. Yet few Americans are aware of this. Why all the secrecy? Why has this fact never been mentioned in the press, particularly in light of the Reagan agenda?
About 4 percent of Americans are of Irish Roman Catholic descent. Ronald Reagan’s father was and his brother is Roman Catholic. The president has never been very active in any faith; however, all but two of Reagan’s key appointees concerned with the national security/population growth control issues have been Irish Roman Catholics. They include: his three national security advisers, Allen, Clark, and McFarlane; CIA Director Casey; Secretary of State Haig; Health and Human Services Secretary Heckler; and Attorney-General Smith. One exception is Schultz, who is a Roman Catholic of German extraction; the other was Schweiker, not a Catholic.
What of other critical positions in the administration? At the cabinet level, other Catholics are Secretary of the Treasury Donald Regan and Secretary of Labor Raymond Donovan. Also, Reagan appointed Sandra Day O’Connor to the Supreme Court and Ann Gorsuch to the post of EPA administrator. Both are of Irish descent.
Since only 4 percent of Americans are Catholics of Irish descent, it would seem that this particular ethnic group is grossly overrepresented in the seats of power. The odds of this happening by chance are nil.
Making this disturbing is the makeup of the Church hierarchy. Although descendants of Irish immigrants to this country constitute only 20 percent of the nation’s Catholics, the roots of American Catholic bishops are mainly in Ireland. They are unquestionably the most politically aggressive element of the Church. Their ethnic group was strongly favored by the person who put the Reagan team together. My concern is that this person was not Mr. Reagan. What makes this arrangement so troubling are the marked similarities between the Reagan agenda and the Vatican agenda.
The Vatican Agenda vs. the Reagan Agenda
Few Americans realize that the Vatican and Reagan agendas are, despite minor disagreement, virtually identical. Let us look at the record.
Table 1 shows the Vatican and Reagan Administration positions on twenty-four of the most controversial issues of the past three years. It is difficult to find a single example of disagreement between them. The president has made no secret of the fact that he calls on the pope for guidance in the governing of America. In chapter four, I have quoted his incredible statement before the National Catholic Education Association in April 1982: “I am grateful for your help in shaping American policy to reflect God’s will…and I will look forward to further guidance from His Holiness Pope John Paul II during an audience I will have with him in June.”[1] After this one-hour private meeting at the Vatican on June 7, he said that the Catholic Church “pursues the same goals of peace, freedom, and humanity.” Reagan added that he wanted the U.S. government “to work closely with the Church in Latin America…to prevent the spread of repression and godless tyranny.” He also invited the pope to visit the United States again, saying, “There is a great need for such a visit.”[2] In May, they met in Alaska. In his March 8, 1983, speech before the National Association of Evangelicals, Reagan expressed himself in terms normally reserved for use by Catholic clergy: “I urge you to beware of the temptation…to ignore…the aggressive impulses of an evil empire, to…thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong, good and evil.”[3] During a speech to a group of conservatives on February 18, 1983, Reagan made the statement that the attempted assassination of the pope was “an assault on God.” Can it be that the president receives the words of the pope as if they were actually words or instructions direct from God?
On August 6, 1984, columnist Mary McGrory offered that Mr. Reagan comes on as more Catholic than the Pope:
Catholic issues seem to consume him…. Reagan’s motivation now seems to be his inability to tolerate the “oppression of the Church” to which the Pope has attested…. John Kennedy may be smiling somewhere at the sight of an American president wrapping himself in the arms of Holy Mother Church…. By contrast, Reagan is going out of his way to show that with him there is no separation of church and state. He wants it known that there is a direct line between him and the Pope, that he seeks counsel from the Vatican City. Reagan took the extraordinary step of inviting the Pope’s ambassador, Pio Laghi, to his Santa Barbara ranch for consultation on delicate foreign policy questions.[4] [emphasis added]
In a prepared address to an ecumenical prayer breakfast attended by twelve thousand religious leaders and delegates to the Republican National Convention, Mr. Reagan challenged the constitutional premise of separation of church and state. “The truth is, politics and morality are inseparable, and as morality’s foundation is religion, religion and politics are necessarily related.” A report on this speech stated that “his remarks put him squarely in the camp of the fundamentalist religious right,” implying that this is not consistent with the Vatican camp. However, the Reverend Virgil C. Blum, president and founder of the Milwaukee-based Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, endorsed Reagan’s church and state sentiments.[5]
The truth is that Mr. Reagan is just giving his blessing to a reality. The Vatican has for decades ignored the constitutional premise of separation of church and state though this situation has worsened since the publication of the Pastoral Plan for Prolife Activities in 1975. Columnist Mary McGrory, in an article on the unprecedented challenge to the archbishop of New York by Governor Mario Cuomo, frankly stated that for a Catholic politician to publicly oppose the wishes of an archbishop is political suicide. She pointed out that Cuomo is the first Catholic politician to pick a fight with a prelate and that “it is the conventional wisdom that no politician wins in a fight with the Catholic Church.” . . .
The Church and Divisiveness in America
Because the Catholic Church ignores the principle of separation of church and state, it is the most divisive force in America. The March 19, 1984, issue of U.S. News and World Report examined two secret Catholic elite religious societies in this country: the Knights of Malta with one thousand U.S. members who are prominent in government, business, or professional life and Opus Dei with three thousand members of widely varied backgrounds. The Knights of Malta organization dates back to the time of the Crusades; its members include some of our nation’s most prominent Catholics: CIA Director William Casey; William Wilson; Vernon Walters; Senators Denton and Domenici; Alexander Haig; William Sloan; and William F. Buckley, creator and leader of Young Americans for Freedom, from which a large proportion of the Reagan administration team were drawn. Because many Knights and recipients of the Order’s honors have worked in or around the CIA, critics sometimes suggest a link between the two. The CIA has been dominated by the Catholic hierarchy.
According to members, the order serves “as an international defender of the Church.”[7] In June of each year a ceremony is held in Rome for Knights of Malta which includes the “swearing of allegiance to the defense of the Holy Mother Church.”[8] Herein lies the problem for population growth control and its recognition as a national security issue. Population growth control seriously threatens the survival of the Vatican, as discussed in chapters one and four. Knights are committed to defending the Church. Only the most devout and obedient are invited to join the Knights and Opus Dei (which its detractors have compared to mind-controlling cults).[9] . . .
It is inevitable that the best interests of the Vatican and those of the United States are not always going to be the same. For this reason, no one can possibly swear complete allegiance to both and mean it. The acts and attitudes of the Knights of Malta in the Reagan administration seem to reflect this complete allegiance to the Catholic Church rather than to our country. (Underscored emphasis added.)
Of great significance is the fact that the current Chief Justice of the Supreme Court is also a member of the Knights of Malta. (Cf. The Knights of Malta must understand that they are a religious order – not a country.) He is also reported to be a member of Opus Dei:-
Opus Dei’s Influence on the U.S. Judiciary
Secrecy prevents certainty
Due to Opus Dei’s secrecy, we can only guess about non-disclosed membership. Some have done so anyway.
“It’s widely known that Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia, Samuel Alito, and Clarence Thomas belong to Opus Dei – and that Chief Justice John Roberts may also be a member,” stated Matthew Fox, a former priest, progressive theologian and author of more than 23 books. . .
When John Roberts was nominated for the Court, Opus Dei’s Austin Ruse said his fellow conservative Catholics could “breathe easy” and Leonard Leo “also assured conservative Catholics that Roberts will not follow the same path as Anthony Kennedy.” . . .
(Cf. The Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court And Their Faith.)
Stephen Mumford conclusively documented the fact that Ronald Reagan was an open protagonist for the Church of Rome. Strangely, this was not generally perceived at the time of his presidency.
In the case of Ronald Reagan's successor, George H. W. Bush, it is not easy to see a Roman Catholic connection. However, there are facts which show clearly that he did his part to advance the cause of Rome in America.
He appears to have favored the Roman Catholic ideology of Subsidiarity:
Support for decentralized authority and an active civil society are embedded in conservative orthodoxy, but they play too small a role in conservative governing. Despite rhetorical nods to the value of federalism, localism, and non-governmental bodies, leaders on the right haven't done nearly enough to energize communities or arrest the upward trajectory of power and money. . .
Bringing an energetic, productive form of decentralization to life will entail combining lessons from two extraordinary resources: the scholarship of Nobel laureate Friedrich Hayek and the concept of subsidiarity. Though the former emanates from the classical and Austrian schools of economics and the latter from a branch of communitarian Catholic social thought, both speak to the distribution of authority. Their complementarity is unexpected but illuminating. . .
Many of Hayek's insights have been translated into a kind of political lingua franca that bridges philosophy and law. In his "Let the People Rule" speech in 1975, Ronald Reagan lauded "the local fraternal lodge, the church congregation, the block club, the farm bureau." In 1988, George H. W. Bush spoke of our "nation of community, of thousands and tens of thousands of ethnic, religious, social, business, labor union, neighborhood, regional and other organizations, all of them varied, voluntary and unique." . . . (Underscored emphasis added)
On subsidiarity Reagan and Bush the Elder were on the same page.
Bush had two appointments to the Supreme Court. His first, David Souter, was a huge disappointment; yet the result was that he and Republican presidents following him adopted the practice of vetting their Supreme Court nominees to be absolutely sure of their ultra-conservative credentials, and that assurance came with Roman Catholic appointments:
George HW Bush was president for only 4 years, but he shaped the Supreme Court for decades
In his single term in the Oval Office, George H.W. Bush presided over the end of the Cold War and liberalized international trade, signing the North American Free Trade Agreement.
But Bush, who died Friday at 94, may have left his most enduring legacy on the Supreme Court, where he nominated two justices and paved the way for two more. . .
His first nominee was David Souter, who retired from the court in 2009. Souter surprised the country shortly into his tenure by siding with the court’s liberals, inspiring a conservative rallying cry — “No more Souters!” — that continues to shape the nomination process to this day.
Justice Clarence Thomas, Bush’s second nominee, is the longest-serving justice on the court and its most ardent conservative. The court’s most prolific author, Thomas has molded a generation of conservative legal scholarship. His former clerks hold top jobs in the Trump administration.
The court often proves to be where presidents leave their most lasting mark. That appears to be the case with Bush.
In the 25 years since he left office, the end of the Cold War gave rise to new tensions with Russia. NAFTA is on the chopping block, as protectionism gains steam. But Thomas remains on the court, and Souter’s legacy has all but ensured there will never be another justice like him. . .
In addition to his Supreme Court nominees, Bush also appointed two future justices to the federal bench: Justice Samuel Alito to the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and Justice Sonia Sotomayor to a U.S. District Court in New York.
He also appointed John Roberts to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, although Roberts was not confirmed. Bush’s son President George W. Bush later tapped Roberts to the position before nominating him chief justice, a positions he continues to hold.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, a liberal, was appointed to the Supreme Court by Barack Obama. It is unnecessary here to go into the complex politics that must have been involved in her successive appointments to the Federal courts. (Cf. Why Obama Picked Her; What They're Saying About Judge Sotomayor, 6-19-09.)
Notwithstanding the Souter and Sotomayor appointments, Bush the Elder did a creditable job of advancing the Catholicization of the Supreme Court, beginning with Clarence Thomas:
From Poverty to the Bench - Clarence Thomas
Judge Clarence Thomas, President Bush's choice to succeed Thurgood Marshall on the Supreme Court, has always been quick to tell his friends and colleagues about the grinding poverty into which he was born in coastal Georgia. . .
It was his opposition to preference programs for members of minority groups, friends say, that first brought him into the orbit of a small group of black conservatives who delighted in questioning the views of the traditional civil rights groups. Eventually he came to the attention of the Reagan Administration.
Principally because of his solid legal background and his views as a black opponent of affirmative action he has long been regarded as a hot prospect for the Republican Party, which he joined shortly after Ronald Reagan was elected President.
How Clarence Thomas came to the attention of the Reagan administration, and was subsequently rapidly advanced to the U.S. Supreme Court is an interesting history:
Three questions for Clarence Thomas
He wore a black beret and Army fatigues, warned people that a revolution was coming and memorized the speeches of Malcolm X.
"I now believed that the whole of American culture was irretrievably tainted by racism," he once said, describing his reaction to the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
On Tuesday, that same man helped dismantle a key provision of the Voting Rights Act, one of the pillars of the civil rights movement. If he had his way, he would bury another pillar: affirmative action.
There may seem to be a contradiction between the Clarence Thomas who was the angry campus radical in the 1960s and the conservative hero who sits on the U.S. Supreme Court today. But some legal observers say Thomas sees himself as a "prophetic civil rights leader" who is still fighting for the same cause -- a colorblind America. . .
Thomas first attracted public attention in the early 1980s when President Ronald Reagan asked him to lead the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which enforces federal discrimination laws. Thomas' opposition to affirmative action and criticisms of civil rights leaders during his tenure made headlines.
In 1990, President George H.W. Bush appointed Thomas to the powerful U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, a traditional steppingstone to the Supreme Court.
Would Thomas have risen so far so quickly had he not been black?
CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin doesn't think so. In a biting 2007 New Yorker magazine review of Thomas' memoir, Toobin wrote that Thomas had never tried a case or argued an appeal in any federal court and had never produced any scholarly work when he made the D.C. appeals court.
"Yale and Reagan treated him the same way, but he hates one and reveres the other," Toobin wrote. "Thomas never acknowledges, much less explains, the contradiction."
When Bush selected Thomas in 1991 to replace Thurgood Marshall, the court's first black justice, the questions about Thomas' qualifications intensified. Bush said he picked "the best qualified" nominee, but Thomas questioned that in his memoir, saying even he had doubts about Bush's "extravagant" claim.
"There was no way I could really know what the president and his aides had been thinking when they picked me," he wrote.
Thomas' defenders say his performance on the high court has removed any doubts about his qualifications. They call him the most consistent conservative on the court, a man who won't sacrifice his principles to eke out a short-term judicial victory. (Underscored emphasis added)
By his appointment of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court Bush the Elder made a huge contribution to the agenda of the Church of Rome.
The next Republican President of the United States after George H. W. Bush was his son George W. Bush. At the time of his election he was a member of the United Methodist Church and a professed "born-again Christian":
. . . George W. Bush credits his wife for bringing his life in order. Prior to marriage, he had several embarrassing episodes with alcohol. Soon after marrying Laura, he joined the United Methodist Church and became a born-again Christian. In 1981, the couple enjoyed the arrival of twin daughters, Barbara and Jenna. In 1986, Bush sold his struggling oil business to Harken Energy Corporation for stock and a seat on its board of directors. It was also at this time that he quit drinking and became deeply involved in his church. . .
Although he was a Protestant, the Roman Catholic bishops played a huge role in both George Bush's election in 2000 and his re-election in 2004:-
The 2000 Election Campaign:
Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston watched the Oct. 3 debate between presidential candidates Al Gore and George W. Bush, and he didn't like some of what he saw.
Writing in the diocesan newspaper The Pilot, the influential Roman Catholic prelate concluded his regular column with a blast at the Democratic nominee.
"How depressing," observed Law, "to hear the Vice President so explicitly on his pro-abortion position. He seems to have made his a one-issue party. Governor Bush, stating frankly his pro-life convictions, nonetheless acknowledged the complexity of the issue, the differences in viewpoint, and the fact that changes will not come overnight. Gore leaves little room for those who believe that the right to life is fundamental."
Law's salvo on behalf of Republican candidate Bush was just one example of a crusade by the Catholic hierarchy to forge its flock into a unified force at the polls this year. Using abortion as a litmus test, many bishops and priests issued forceful calls for the Catholic faithful to vote "pro-life" -- an appeal that translated either implicitly or explicitly into support for Bush and other Republican candidates.
While the news media focused its attention on the partisan posture of the Christian Coalition and some African-American churches, the political activities of the Roman Catholic Church, the nation's largest religious denomination, went little noticed.
Examples of hierarchical politicking abounded:
New York City: Archbishop Edward M. Egan issued an Oct. 29 pastoral letter urging Catholics to choose leaders who "share our commitment to the fundamental rights of the unborn." The letter, which was read in all churches in the Archdiocese of New York, came just nine days after a 45-minute private meeting between Bush and Egan at the archbishop's residence. This year, for the first time, Egan's Family Life/ Respect Life Office disseminated a "voter information pamphlet" that gave the stands of the presidential candidates and the candidates for the New York Senate seat on 11 issues. Of the four questions dealing with abortion, Bush was shown supporting the hierarchy's position, while Gore was shown opposing it.
Chicago: Cardinal Francis George advised his parishioners that "abortion is a defining issue" both morally and politically. Writing in his Oct. 1 column in the archdiocesan newspaper The Catholic New World, he compared the practice of abortion in the United States to that of the Roman Empire. "The sin is the same; the name of the empire has changed," he observed. Abortion "has become a defining position politically," he said, "not because of the Church but because of its use as a litmus test to screen candidates' acceptability for party approval."
New Orleans: The Clarion Herald, the official newspaper of the Archdiocese of New Orleans, editorialized that Catholics have a "serious obligation to vote according to moral principles and with a conscience formed in line with sound Catholic moral teaching." Focusing on the abortion issue, the Oct. 26 commentary quoted Bishop James Timlin of Scranton, Pa., who said, "I am a registered Democrat, but I can't in good conscience vote for people who are pro-abortion." The newspaper also noted that the presidential candidates "hold diametrically opposite views on this 'diabolical' evil."
Some Catholics in Louisiana complained that priests went over the line into partisan politics during Oct. 1 sermons. Brent Petit of the Thibodaux Central Labor Council said, "While I understand and agree with the respect life theme, it should not be an excuse to promote the Republican Party, nor to bash the Democrats....While it is a noble mission to oppose abortion, when [priests] use the pulpit to promote or oppose political candidates because of their parties' position on this issue, they have stepped over the line and are threatening the separation of church and state that is guaranteed in our Constitution."
Omaha: In September Archbishop Elden Curtiss blasted the Democratic Party for a platform plank on abortion that was "clearly anti-life and therefore anti-Catholic." Writing in the diocesan newspaper The Catholic Voice, he urged Catholics to "support those candidates who will protect human life in the womb."
Milwaukee: On the Sunday before Election Day, the Rev. Joseph Noonan urged his parishioners at Our Lady of the Rosary Church to remember the Catholic position on abortion when they vote. According to the Associated Press, Noonan suggested that ignoring that stand could lead to excommunication. "I'm not telling you who to vote for," he observed. "I'm telling you who you may not vote for. In cases where there is not a 100 percent pro-life candidate, you do not vote. How can you?"
Arlington, Va.: In perhaps the most over-the-top example of clerical arm-twisting, a priest in suburban Washington, D.C., threatened a parishioner with denial of communion for displaying Democratic bumper stickers on her car. The week before the election, Billie Ingrassia emerged from services at St. Agnes Catholic Church to find a letter on her windshield from the Rev. Thomas Vander Woude. The priest's missive condemned Ingrassia's "Vote Democratic" and "Democrats: Take Back the House" bumper stickers and wrote, "If you support the Democratic position of abortion then you have no business receiving Holy Communion since you placed yourself directly in opposition to this essential teaching of the Faith."
According to The Washington Post, Ingrassia, a 76-year-old whose eight children attended Catholic schools, said she and her husband oppose abortion, and thought "it was not real polite to badger an old lady like me."
Apparently frustrated by its inability to ban abortion and achieve other goals on the church's agenda, the Catholic hierarchy sharply ratcheted up its political activity during the 2000 elections. This year's escalated wave of political action stems from a decision at the bishops' 1998 conclave in Washington, D.C. By a 217-30 vote, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops adopted a 26-page resolution, crafted by Cardinal Law and allies, that makes banning abortion the top political priority of the church. . .
After Bush faced harsh criticism for appearing at anti-Catholic (and racist) Bob Jones University during the GOP primary last spring, Republican leaders moved swiftly to make amends. Republican National Committee Chairman Jim Nicholson activated an RNC Catholic Task Force to win Catholic votes for Bush.
According to The Philadelphia Inquirer, the effort was multi-faceted. During the Republican convention, the Task Force was assigned one of the prominent skyboxes in Philadelphia's First Union Center. The appearance there of Catholic priests in clerical garb gave the news media and the public the impression of a warm relationship between the party and the church.
Task Force Chairman Brian P. Tierney arranged for Philadelphia Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua to give the benediction on prime-time television the last night of the convention. The next day, Bevilacqua appeared with Bush and running mate Dick Cheney at a prayer breakfast in Center City that drew 700 religious and political leaders.
The Inquirer said Tierney, a Philadelphia advertising executive with close ties to the cardinal, also helped build a 2.5-million person list of church-going Catholics to target for Republican appeals. The Task Force reportedly spent $1.5 million on that project and other outreach to Catholics.
On the final weekend of the presidential election, Bush returned to Pennsylvania to campaign. During the visit, Bush and his wife Laura held a 10-minute private meeting with Bevilacqua at the chapel house of St. Luke the Evangelist Church in Glenside. Asked if he sought the cardinal's vote, Bush replied, "I asked for his prayers.". . .
Bevilacqua, one of the most right-wing and partisan prelates in the country, has harshly criticized members of the Supreme Court and other government officials for failing to adopt the church's position on abortion, sexuality, tax aid to religious schools and other church-state concerns.
In his Aug. 4 speech at the interfaith breakfast in Philadelphia, Bevilacqua blasted the separation of church and state, as Bush and others listened.
"If you study your history," he said, "you will learn that our Founding Fathers never intended that there be a high and impregnable wall of separation between state and religion." Calling for "productive collaboration" between church and state, he insisted the relationship should allow "their supporting hands to reach out to each other in time of need."
Bevilacqua said much the same thing to members of the U.S. Supreme Court during a special mass for judges in Washington, D.C., back in 1988. Condemning the wall of separation, he demanded that the high court "restore the vital relationship between the church and the state, between religion and law."
Concern about the Supreme Court is likely the key issue that moved the cardinal and other American prelates to anoint Bush this year. The Republican candidate has promised that his judicial appointments would be "strict constructionists," a term many interpreted to mean conservatives who will reverse decisions upholding abortion rights and church-state separation.
When asked about the high court, Bush named as his favorite justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. The bishops no doubt noted that these choices are both conservative Catholics who rail against abortion rights and support tax aid to religious schools and other ministries.
In addition, Bush supports voucher subsidies for parochial schools, as well as "charitable choice" aid to church social services. He has promised to set up an "Office of Faith-Based Action" to lend government assistance to religious programs. (The bishops apparently decided to ignore the Texas governor's enthusiastic enforcement of the death penalty, a glaring violation of the hierarchy's "pro-life" stance.). . . (Underscored emphasis added)
The 2004 Election Campaign:
Group of Bishops Using Influence to Oppose Kerry
For Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, the highest-ranking Roman Catholic prelate in Colorado, there is only one way for a faithful Catholic to vote in this presidential election, for President Bush and against Senator John Kerry.
"The church says abortion is a foundational issue," the archbishop explained to a group of Catholic college students gathered in a sports bar here in this swing state on Friday night. He stopped short of telling them whom to vote for, but he reminded them of Mr. Kerry's support for abortion rights. And he pointed out the potential impact his re-election could have on Roe v. Wade.
"Supreme Court cases can be overturned, right?" he asked.
Archbishop Chaput, who has never explicitly endorsed a candidate, is part of a group of bishops intent on throwing the weight of the church into the elections.
Galvanized by battles against same-sex marriage and stem cell research and alarmed at the prospect of a President Kerry -- who is Catholic but supports abortion rights -- these bishops and like-minded Catholic groups are blanketing churches with guides identifying abortion, gay marriage and the stem cell debate as among a handful of "non-negotiable issues". . .
The efforts of Archbishop Chaput and his allies are converging with a concerted drive for conservative Catholic voters by the Bush campaign. It has spent four years cultivating Catholic leaders, organizing more than 50,000 volunteers and hiring a corps of paid staff members to increase Catholic turnout. The campaign is pushing to break the traditional allegiance of Catholic voters to the Democratic Party, an affiliation that began to crumble with Ronald Reagan 24 years ago.
Catholics make up about a quarter of the electorate, and many conservative Catholics are concentrated in swing states, pollsters say. Conservatives organizers say they are working hard because the next president is quite likely to name at least one new Supreme Court justice. . .
But never before have so many bishops so explicitly warned Catholics so close to an election that to vote a certain way was to commit a sin.
Less than two weeks ago, Archbishop Raymond L. Burke of St. Louis issued just such a statement. Bishop Michael J. Sheridan of Colorado Springs and Archbishop John J. Myers of Newark have both recently declared that the obligation to oppose abortion outweighs any other issue.
In theological terms, these bishops and the voter guides argue that abortion and the destruction of embryos are categorically wrong under church doctrine. War and even the death penalty can in certain circumstances be justified. . .
Alexia Kelley, director for religious outreach for the Democratic National Committee, said Mr. Kerry's policies reflected overall Catholic teachings.
The Republican Party is betting that many observant Catholics will disagree. The National Catholic Reporter reported that on a visit to the pope this year Mr. Bush asked Vatican officials directly for help in lining up American bishops in support of conservative cultural issues.
For four years, the party has held weekly conference calls with a representative of the White House for prominent Catholic conservatives. To ramp up the Catholic campaign last summer, the party dispatched its chairman, Ed Gillespie, and a roster well-known Catholic Republicans on a speaking tour to Catholic groups throughout the swing states. . . (Underscored emphasis added)
Here it must be remarked that such open political activism by the Roman Catholic hierarchy marked an astonishing change from earlier times when the Protestant population of America was alert to the deadly menace of papal domination. (Cf. The fact that. . .) In 1960, Roman Catholic presidential candidate John F. Kennedy had to go out of his way to give assurances that he would not take orders from the pope. The obvious transformation in America became manifest suddenly, but was the result of over a century of Roman Catholic conditioning. (Cf. Making America Catholic.)
It is of great significance that the policy target of the Roman Catholic bishops in supporting George W. Bush's presidential campaigns was unequivocally contraception and abortion rights. This was not because of true concern about life in general, but a fierce defense of fundamental Roman Catholic dogma. There is a great deal of hypocrisy involved.
George W Bush wasted no time in implementing policies in conformity with the Church of Rome's Social Doctrine. Some of them are described in the following article:
Church, State And The Bush Administration
On Dec. 20, President-elect George W. Bush invited some 30 clergy and other religious leaders to the First Baptist Church in Austin to discuss his commitment to public funding of religious ministries. Though the meeting was closed to the public and press, participants acknowledged that Bush repeatedly emphasized a broad range of proposals that would create partnerships between church and state.
"This is not a political meeting," Bush told reporters before the formal discussion began. "This is a meeting to begin a dialogue about how to change people's lives." He added that he intends to focus attention on how the government "can encourage, as opposed to discourage, faith-based programs from performing their commonplace miracles of renewal."
Many of the clergy who spoke with Bush came away with the impression that the president-elect would help secure funding for their ministries.
The Rev. Virgilio Elizondo, a visiting professor at Notre Dame University and founder of the Mexican American Cultural Center in San Antonio, told the Catholic News Service that the session with Bush was "a breakthrough." Elizondo also noted his enthusiasm for a leader who "officially wants to encourage religious groups to help them do what they do."
Bishop Carlton Pearson, a Tulsa, Okla., minister who supported Bush during the campaign, was even more blunt about the practical effects of the president-elect's proposals.
"He's showing us the way to get around the paranoia of this whole idea of separation of church and state," Pearson said. "Nobody wants to be under control of the other but we do want to work and walk together."
Therein lies the problem as far as supporters of the Constitution are concerned. In a nation where the government must remain neutral on religious matters and funding for ministries is supposed to be derived voluntarily from believers instead of being mandated by the state, many Americans get more than a little nervous when the president starts offering clergy ways to "get around" the First Amendment.
For these reasons, Bush's clergy meeting which came just one week after Democrat Al Gore conceded raised eyebrows across the country. In fact, for those concerned with the separation of church and state, the meeting spoke volumes about the next president's priorities.
"It was alarming to me that one of Bush's first official actions as president-elect was an assault on the First Amendment," said Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. "This is a clear sign that the constitutional wall between religion and government is due to undergo sustained battering from the White House over the next four years.". . .
Charitable Choice/Office Of Faith-Based Action
While Bush's campaign was vague, and at times even evasive, about specific positions on many public policy issues, the Texas governor never vacillated on his enthusiastic support for "charitable choice."
Charitable choice originated with former-Sen. John Ashcroft (R-Mo.) during the drafting of the 1996 Welfare Reform Act. The concept changed existing law to permit taxpayer-financed social service funding of churches and other "pervasively sectarian" groups where religion permeates every aspect of the institution. . .
Religious School Vouchers
Bush's father, the former President George H. W. Bush, recognized the early political cries from the Religious Right and parochial school lobbies for public funding of private religious schools through vouchers. While the elder Bush even expressed some half-hearted support for vouchers in the early days of the movement, there was never a strong commitment to the issue.
The same cannot be said about George W., who by all accounts, is the strongest voucher supporter ever to occupy the White House. . .
Government-Endorsed School Prayer
As governor, Bush had relatively few opportunities to weigh in on prayer in public schools. But when he did, his position was in conflict with the separationist view of the Constitution and the Supreme Court.
In 1994, Bush announced that he fully supports a constitutional amendment that would allow school boards across the country to make their own policies about school prayer. . .
Ten Commandments and Civil Religion
Official state support for religious texts and mottos is another area of church-state law that has drawn support from the new president.
In June 1999, while campaigning in Virginia, reporters covering the presidential campaign asked Bush about his position on government endorsing the Ten Commandments. At the time, the issue was being debated in Congress as part of a larger bill on juvenile justice.
Bush said he, unlike the justices on the Supreme Court, did not oppose government officials posting the Ten Commandments in schools and government buildings. "I have no problem with the Ten Commandments posted on the walls of every public space." When asked which version of the Decalogue he would support, Bush replied, "The standard version. Surely we can agree as a society on a version that everyone can agree to."
Since there is no "standard" version, and different faith traditions translate and number the Commandments in different ways, Bush's answer made the candidate the subject of ridicule. More important than his theological ignorance, however, was the fact that his position on the issue reflected yet another example of Bush's opposition to church-state separation and Supreme Court precedent. (The Supreme Court ruled in 1980 that state support for the Ten Commandments violates the First Amendment.). . .
Bush And Separation
Bush was infrequently confronted with specific questions about his perspective on the First Amendment during the campaign, but reporters for U.S. News & World Report did attempt to pin him down on the issue of church-state separation during a December 1999 interview.
Bush was asked if he thought the nation had gone too far in promoting religious neutrality in government.
"Well, let me just say this," Bush responded. "I think we must maintain the balance of church and state. I think that's a really important principle." However, just before explaining the importance of funding religious ministries through charitable choice, he added, "It depends on the area that you're talking about."
That qualifier is telling when considering his overall record on the issue and his commitment to public policies that would undermine the constitutional principle.
"After reviewing Bush's record and hearing his plans for the next four years, his alleged support for the separation of church and state does little to ease my concerns," said AU's Lynn. "Rhetoric is one thing, reality is another. Our next president supports public funding of religion for social services and private religious schools, he's on record supporting a constitutional amendment on school prayer, he wants the Ten Commandments to be posted in all government buildings and he believes public schools should teach religion alongside science. In other words, he opposes most major Supreme Court rulings on church-state separation of the 20th century.
"Anyone who supports the First Amendment's religious freedoms has every reason to be alarmed," Lynn concluded. "We have our work cut out for us." (Underscored emphasis added)
George W. Bush's unwavering support for Charitable Choice was a revelation of his commitment to subsidiarity, one of the foundational principles of the Roman Catholic Social Doctrine. This is well stated by then Republican Senator Rick Santorum in a 1999 article:
Subsidiarity at Work: a Catholic's Vision of Social Policy
Is it possible to craft social legislation that is effective, but at the same time accommodates the obligations of human dignity? I believe it is and would like to discuss my efforts, through welfare reform and other targeted social, charitable, and educational reforms, to do so.
In 1996 , the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act was passed by Congress and signed by President Clinton. It dismantled one of the original, overarching federal assistance programs—Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC)—and replaced it with Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), a block grant program to the states. TANF gives enormous flexibility to states in determining how to use the block grant, while requiring states to place an increasing percentage of caseloads in work-related activities.
As ranking member of the Human Resources Subcommittee on the House Ways and Means Committee during the 103 rd Congress, I drafted the welfare reform bill because too few of our poorer citizens were becoming economically self-sufficient and too many were trapped in a cycle of poverty. The welfare system as it stood had failed in its "war on poverty;" a new direction had to be taken. Indeed, the voter profile of churchgoing Catholics, as discussed in the November 1998 issue of crisis ("the Mind of the Catholic Voter"), accurately captured my own approach to this issue. I was concerned about the poor and how our then-current welfare system had failed them, but I was neither reflexively anti-government nor economically laissez-faire. . .
Subsidiarity, solidarity, community, and faith: Precisely because individuals properly locate themselves in a "sphere of culture," welfare policy must recognize and accommodate that sphere, which includes, but extends beyond, the family. It includes what the pope calls "intermediate communities." We did not craft welfare reform to provide mere cash assistance. We crafted it to teach people about making choices and changing behavior. We crafted it as a more integrated approach to poverty and the poor. We crafted it with a commitment to reflecting a whole range of social-service providers and to the principle of subsidiarity. We believed, as the pope states so well in Centesimus Annus, that the welfare state, "by intervening directly and depriving society of its responsibility . . . leads to a loss of human energies and an . . . increase of public agencies which are dominated more by bureaucratic ways of thinking than concern for their clients."
A provision in the new welfare law called "Charitable Choice" is a good example of the application of subsidarity. By reflecting in our public policy the belief that needs are best understood and satisfied by people who are closest to them and who act as neighbors to those in need, we create a place in our public life for institutions that foster solidarity and community and offer a moral vision. Charitable Choice greatly expands the ability of states administering TANF through federal block grants to provide services to welfare recipients through contracts with charitable, religious, and private organizations. In addition, states can now also provide such services through vouchers or certificates. Federal welfare providers did not have this flexibility under AFDC. Simply stated, Charitable Choice places religious organizations on an equal, nondiscriminatory basis with other groups when states decide to contract with private institutions for welfare services.
Those of us who supported Charitable Choice believed that faith-based institutions, in particular, could effectively address the moral and spiritual dimension of poverty and could respond to that "deeper human need," which the public square neglects or stifles only at its own peril. . . (Underscored emphasis added)
There are many pages on this website which seek to focus attention on subsidiarity as evidence of the extent to which the Roman Catholic Social Doctrine has penetrated the body politic of America. One sometimes thinks that the subject causes the eyes of some readers to glaze over. Others may think that the principle of limited government is written into the Constitution, and subsidiarity is no different. There is a similarity, but constitutional limited government stops short of relieving the central federal government of any responsibility to provide welfare and health services for the individual citizen:
Subsidiarity, Federalism, and the Role of the State
The principle of subsidiarity—the belief that decision-making should occur at the lowest level appropriate to its purpose—is a staple of conservative thought. In fact, it is sometimes asserted that subsidiarity “is a bulwark of limited government and personal freedom.” In general, local control is usually preferable to a decision-making process based on larger political units, in which the responsible officials are far-removed from the affected population. Local government officials are typically more responsive to individual citizens than are federal officials; local decision-making enables regional preferences and variations in lieu of stultifying uniformity; and voters can more easily replace an unresponsive local elected official than his state or federal counterparts.
Subsidiarity and Federalism
The principle of subsidiarity seems to dovetail with our system of federalism, which preserves the states as the basic unit of government. Distant bureaucrats often ignore the wishes of the public they supposedly serve. Nevertheless, local control is not a talisman; abstract concepts can become complicated when applied to real-life situations. In Federalist No. 10, James Madison warned that factions would have greater influence in a smaller polity than a larger one, as anyone who has endured the pettiness of small towns or homeowners’ associations can attest. Cities with a small number of voters may also be subject to corruption. Moreover, there are many instances in which larger units of government are more suitable—even necessary—to discharge important public functions. The Constitution assigns certain tasks to the federal government for this reason. Accordingly, it is simplistic to contend that local control is always preferable. . . (Underscored emphasis added)
It is submitted that subsidiarity has needlessly caused unrelieved suffering for the economically deprived of America; and even for the more prosperous middle class who cannot afford the costs of a commercialized medical care system. Local control cannot remedy these inequalities, as we have pointed out in the past. (Cf. It will be noted that Roman Catholic "social order;" and While the Roman Catholics are having their argument.)
In any event, Rick Santorum recognized the catholicity of George W. Bush, as did others:-
George W. Bush, “closet Catholic”
Shortly after Pope Benedict XVI’s election in 2005, President Bush met with a small circle of advisers in the Oval Office. As some mentioned their own religious backgrounds, the president remarked that he had read one of the new pontiff’s books about faith and culture in Western Europe.
Save for one other soul, Bush was the only non-Catholic in the room. But his interest in the pope’s writings was no surprise to those around him. As the White House prepares to welcome Benedict on Tuesday, many in Bush’s inner circle expect the pontiff to find a kindred spirit in the president. Because if Bill Clinton can be called America’s first black president, some say, then George W. Bush could well be the nation’s first Catholic president.
This isn’t as strange a notion as it sounds. Yes, there was John F. Kennedy. But where Kennedy sought to divorce his religion from his office, Bush has welcomed Roman Catholic doctrine and teachings into the White House and based many important domestic policy decisions on them.
“I don’t think there’s any question about it,” says Rick Santorum, former U.S. senator from Pennsylvania and a devout Catholic, who was the first to give Bush the “Catholic president” label. “He’s certainly much more Catholic than Kennedy.”
Bush attends an Episcopal church in Washington and belongs to a Methodist church in Texas, and his political base is solidly evangelical. Yet this Protestant president has surrounded himself with Roman Catholic intellectuals, speechwriters, professors, priests, bishops and politicians. These Catholics — and thus Catholic social teaching — have for the past eight years been shaping Bush’s speeches, policies and legacy to a degree perhaps unprecedented in U.S. history.
“I used to say that there are more Catholics on President Bush’s speechwriting team than on any Notre Dame starting lineup in the past half-century,” said former Bush scribe — and Catholic — William McGurn.
Bush has also placed Catholics in prominent roles in the federal government and relied on Catholic tradition to make a public case for everything from his faith-based initiative to antiabortion legislation. He has wedded Catholic intellectualism with evangelical political savvy to forge a powerful electoral coalition.
“There is an awareness in the White House that the rich Catholic intellectual tradition is a resource for making the links between Christian faith, religiously grounded moral judgments and public policy,” says Richard John Neuhaus, a Catholic priest and editor of the journal First Things who has tutored Bush in the church’s social doctrines for nearly a decade. . .
Bush and his administration, by contrast, have had no such qualms about their Catholic connections. At times, they’ve even seemed to brandish them for political purposes. Even before he got to the White House, Bush and his political guru Karl Rove invited Catholic intellectuals to Texas to instruct the candidate on the church’s social teachings. In January 2001, Bush’s first public outing as president in the nation’s capital was a dinner with Washington’s then-archbishop, Theodore McCarrick. A few months later, Rove (an Episcopalian) asked former White House Catholic adviser Deal Hudson to find a priest to bless his West Wing office.
“There was a very self-conscious awareness that religious conservatives had brought Bush into the White House and that [the administration] wanted to do what they had been mandated to do,” says Hudson.
To conservative Catholics, that meant holding the line on same-sex marriage, euthanasia and embryonic stem cell research, and working to limit abortion in the United States and abroad while nominating judges who would eventually outlaw it. To make the case, Bush has often borrowed Pope John Paul II’s mantra of promoting a “culture of life.” Many Catholics close to him believe that the approximately 300 judges he has seated on the federal bench — most notably Catholics John Roberts and Samuel Alito on the Supreme Court — may yet be his greatest legacy.
Bush also used Catholic doctrine and rhetoric to push his faith-based initiative, a movement to open federal funding to grass-roots religious groups that provide social services to their communities. Much of that initiative is based on the Catholic principle of “subsidiarity” — the idea that local people are in the best position to solve local problems. “The president probably knows absolutely nothing about the Catholic catechism, but he’s very familiar with the principle of subsidiarity,” said H. James Towey, former director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives who is now the president of a Catholic college in southwestern Pennsylvania. “It’s the sense that the government is not the savior and that problems like poverty have spiritual roots.”
Moreover, people close to Bush say that he has professed a not-so-secret admiration for the church’s discipline and is personally attracted to the breadth and unity of its teachings. A New York priest who has befriended the president said that Bush respects the way Catholicism starts at the foundation — with the notion that the papacy is willed by God and that the pope is Peter’s successor. “I think what fascinates him about Catholicism is its historical plausibility,” says this priest. “He does appreciate the systematic theology of the church, its intellectual cogency and stability.” The priest also says that Bush “is not unaware of how evangelicalism — by comparison with Catholicism — may seem more limited both theologically and historically.”
Former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson, another evangelical with an affinity for Catholic teaching, says that the key to understanding Bush’s domestic policy is to view it through the lens of Rome. Others go a step further.
Paul Weyrich, an architect of the religious right, detects in Bush shades of former British prime minister Tony Blair, who converted to Catholicism last year. “I think he is a secret believer,” Weyrich says of Bush. Similarly, John DiIulio, Bush’s first director of faith-based initiatives, has called the president a “closet Catholic.” And he was only half-kidding. . . (Underscored emphasis added.)
Here we have the portrait of a president and a presidency completely captive to the papacy. It is no wonder that Elder Wm. H. Grotheer and Adventistlaymen's Foundation clearly perceived the formation of the Image to the Beast.
The reader will have noted the statement in the above quotation that "Many Catholics close to him believe that the approximately 300 judges he has seated on the federal bench — most notably Catholics John Roberts and Samuel Alito on the Supreme Court — may yet be his greatest legacy." By means of Bush's Supreme Court appointments the Roman Catholics for the first time achieved a majority on the Court. That Roe v. Wade was not swiftly overturned is purely a matter of waiting for the opportune time politically, with an unwavering hard right Roman Catholic majority on the bench (remember the Kennedy and O'Connor swing voting record.)
While the lower federal courts have played an important role in paving the way to that unwavering hard right majority, the Supreme Court alone has the power to overturn established law and change the Constitution by re-interpretation. Therefore the Church of Rome has relentlessly targeted the highest constitutional court in the land for control by Roman Catholic ideologues.
The success of the George W. Bush administration in creating a hard right-wing majority on the Supreme Court is evidenced by the blatant hypocrisy and deceit of John Roberts and Samuel Alito in their judgments involving Roman Catholic ideology.
The Roberts Court, Stare Decisis, and the Future of Constitutional Law
In this lecture, I hope to offer some interesting-perhaps even provocative-thoughts about the United States Supreme Court. I intend, at least in part, to express vexation, disappointment, and frustration. I trust I will succeed, at least in expressing my own annoyance at the current state of the law.
In law school, we teach that the law is a ruthlessly rational discipline, devoid of emotion. That is a lie, but a useful one. We lie to our students because, in order for them to learn to "think like lawyers, "they must develop the capacity to argue with cool, clear, and calculating reason. They must learn to put their emotions aside and to use their powers of unsentimental, hard-edged, razor-steel reasoning to sharpen, define, and illuminate their arguments and analyses.
We law professors are right to employ this little deceit, because without the capacity to reason in a brutally analytical manner, a lawyer is of no use to anyone. But, truth be known, the law is not only about hard-edged, analytical, pure-bred logic. It is also quite fundamentally about values, and although in law school we underscore the power of reason, we secretly hope that our students will never forget that the irresponsibility [sic] as lawyers is to use the power of reason to further certain values-the values of liberty, dignity, justice, and equality.
Properly understood, of course, these are neither liberal nor conservative values. They are, rather, our constitutional values-freedom of speech, freedom of religion, the right to due process of law, freedom from cruel and unusual punishment, the right to equal protection of the laws, and so on.' These are the values to which all lawyers should be committed. Our responsibility as lawyers is to preserve and protect those values, and to do so with passion but always in a way that is intellectually candid, analytically rigorous, and closely reasoned.
The first part of my thesis this afternoon is this: The current majority of the Supreme Court, and particularly Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, are failing not only to preserve and protect fundamental constitutional values but also to fulfill their judicial responsibilities in a manner that is analytically rigorous, closely reasoned, and intellectually candid. These are strong words. This is not a talk for the faint-of-heart.
At the core of my thesis is the principle of stare decisis. The doctrine of precedent is, of course, central to our legal system. It is based not on the assumption that prior judges are smarter than their successors but on the need for consistency, efficiency, predictability, and the need not to overpoliticize the judicial process and thereby undermine its credibility. . .
But, despite the subtleties inherent in the use of precedent, underlying it must be a commitment to judicial integrity. It is the responsibility of the judge faithfully to apply precedent, to explain his or her reasoning in an honest and forthright manner, to acknowledge the difficulties when they arise, and to explain and to justify any departures from precedent. That is at the very heart of the judicial craft, and it is the very essence of a principled system of law.
In their Senate confirmation hearings, John Roberts and Samuel Alito cast themselves as first-rate lawyers committed to the rule of law and, especially, to the principle of stare decisis.' Roberts assured the Senate that judges must 'be bound down by [strict] rules and precedents.""' He explained that the Framers of the United States Constitution "appreciated the role of precedent in promoting evenhandedness, predictability, stability," and "integrity in the judicial process." Although acknowledging that it is sometimes necessary for judges to reconsider precedents, he emphasized that this should be reserved for exceptional circumstances, where a decision has proved clearly "unworkable" over time. ' "[A] sound judicial philosophy" he reasoned, must recognize that judges work "within a system of rules developed over the years by other judges equally striving to live up to the judicial oath."'
Similarly, Samuel Alito testified that stare decisis is "a fundamental part of our legal system."'8 He maintained that this principle "limits the power of the judiciary" and ensures that judges will "respect the judgments and the wisdom that are embodied in prior judicial decisions."9 Stare decisis, he added, is "not an inexorable command," but there is a "presumption that courts are going to follow prior precedents."
It is hardly surprising that Roberts and Alito would pay such homage to stare decisis in their confirmation hearings. Stare decisis is a bedrock principle of the rule of law. No nominee who expressed disdain for the principle would ever be confirmed.
Based largely on his quite convincing statements about the rule of law in his confirmation hearings, I publicly supported the confirmation of John Roberts. I wrote, in an opinion piece in the Chicago Tribune, that "Roberts is too good a lawyer, too good a craftsman, to embrace ... a disingenuous approach to constitutional interpretation. Everything about him suggests a principled, pragmatic justice who will act cautiously and with a healthy respect for precedent." Those are words I am now, sadly, quite prepared to eat.
Disappointingly, it is apparent to me that John Roberts's and Samuel Alito's actions during the 2006 Term speak much louder than their words to Congress. In case after case, Roberts and Alito abandoned the principle of stare decisis, and did so in a particularly insidious manner, indeed, in a manner that brought forth the scorn not only of the so-called "liberals" on the Court, but even of Justices Scalia and Thomas.
Their technique, . . . is to purport to respect a precedent while in fact cynically interpreting it into oblivion. Every first-year law student knows the tactic: "Appellant argues that Smith v Jones governs the case before us. But Smith v Jones arose out of an event that occurred on Main Street. The event in this case occurred on State Street. We do not overrule Smith v Jones, but we limit it to events that occur on Main Street." Although this is a parody of the technique of distinguishing a precedent, it captures the spirit of the Roberts/Alito concept of the judicial craft.
Let me offer five concrete examples. First, in Gonzales v Carhart the Court, in a five-to-four decision, upheld the constitutionality of a federal law prohibiting so-called "partial birth abortions," even though the Court had held a virtually identical state law unconstitutional seven years earlier. As Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg rightly observed in dissent, the majority, which included Justices Roberts, Alito, Scalia, Kennedy, and Thomas, offered no principled basis for ignoring the earlier decision. The only relevant difference was that Alito had replaced O'Connor.
Second, in Federal Election Commission v Wisconsin Right to Life, Inc., the same five-Justice majority held unconstitutional as applied a provision of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act that limited political expenditures by corporations, even though the Court had upheld the exact same provision only four years earlier. As Justice David Souter quite accurately observed in dissent, Chief Justice Roberts's opinion offered no principled basis for distinguishing the earlier decision.
Third, in Hein v Freedom from Religion Foundation, Inc., the same five-Justice majority, in an opinion by Justice Alito, held that individual taxpayers had no standing to challenge the constitutionality of the Bush Administration's program of faith-based initiatives as violative of the Establishment Clause," even though the Court had held some forty years ago that taxpayers do have standing to challenge federal expenditures on precisely these grounds.' As Justice Souter rightly observed in dissent, Alito's argument that the earlier decision was distinguishable because it involved a challenge to a Legislative rather than an Executive Branch program had no basis "in either logic or precedent." . . .
In these circumstances, Roberts and Alito had a responsibility either to comply with the law or, as Scalia and Thomas argued, to overrule the precedent and take responsibility for their decision. What they did instead was not sloppy or careless, it was dishonest. Why would they do this? . . .
The sad truth is that Roberts and Alito seem to have been driven by nothing more than their own desire to reach results they personally prefer: they do not like abortion, they don't like speech that mocks Jesus, they don't like laws that regulate corporate speech, they don't like affirmative action, and they do like faith-based initiatives. If ever such phrases as "result-oriented" and "ideologically driven" ring true, it is in the conduct of Justices Roberts and Alito during the 2006 Term. It was among the most disheartening judicial performances I have ever witnessed. . .
In the media, we constantly read about how "closely divided" the Court is and about how many cases are decided by a vote of five-to-four. There are, according to the media, the "conservative" Justices-Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, and Alito; the "liberal" Justices-Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer; and Justice Kennedy-the "man in the middle." The impression created by such accounts is that this is an "evenly balanced" Court. This is a fallacy and a dangerous one at that. . .
The current Supreme Court is not "balanced" in any meaningful sense of that term. It is, in fact, an extremely conservative Court-more conservative than any group of nine Justices who have sat together in living memory. Here are some ways of testing this proposition:-
-Seven of the current nine Justices were appointed by Republican presidents.
-Twelve of the fourteen most recent Supreme Court appointments have been made by Republican presidents.
-Four of the current Justices are more conservative than any other Justice who has served on the Court in living memory.
-The so-called "swing vote" on the Court has moved to the right every single time it has shifted over the past forty years, from Stewart to Powell to O'Connor to Kennedy.
-As Justice Stevens recently observed, every Justice who has been appointed in the past forty years was more conservative than the Justice he or she replaced.
-If we regard Warren, Douglas, Brennan, and Marshall as the model of a "liberal" Justice, then there is no one within even hailing distance of a "liberal" Justice on the current Supreme Court.
In fact, the current Court consists of five conservative Justices, four of whom are very conservative, and four moderate Justices, one of whom, Ginsburg, is moderately liberal. As Justice Stevens recently observed, it is only the presence of so many very conservative Justices that makes the moderate Justices appear liberal. But, this is merely an illusion. . . (Underscored emphasis added)
It is hoped that the reader has not skipped over what is admittedly a long quotation from the lecture of Law Professor Geoffrey R. Stone. It is a devastating exposé of what the Church of Rome has wrought on the American judicial system through Republican presidents, although Professor Stone has not openly identified "the Beast." The Roman Catholic ideological commitment of Justices Roberts and Alito in their biased and dishonest judgments is glaringly evident.
Of the greatest concern to lovers of liberty of conscience is the separation of Church and State which is guaranteed by the Constitution. This is methodically being undermined to the point of collapse by the Roman Catholic justices of the Supreme Court. Proof of this is abundant in printed publications. The following is but one of numerous analyses:
The Roberts Court and the Separation of Church and State.
Separation of Church and State was one of the fundamental principles undergirding the new nation envisioned by the framers of the U.S. Constitution. Neither “God” nor any synonym for it appears anywhere in the Constitution. Article VI forbids any religious test “as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.” And even before granting the freedoms of speech, the press, assembly, and petition, the First Amendment states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Taken together, the “Establishment Clause” and the “Free Exercise Clause” of the First Amendment impose a delicate, dual obligation upon government, under which Congress can neither empower religion nor restrict it. But now this cornerstone of American government is under siege, its foundation threatened by an agenda-driven Supreme Court.
The Establishment Clause
The phrase “separation of church and state” derives from a letter by President Jefferson in 1802 where he wrote: “Erecting the wall of separation between church and state…is absolutely essential in a free society.” The wellspring of American anti-establishment thinking, however, was Jefferson’s successor, James Madison—the principal drafter of the Bill of Rights. He believed the attempt to “employ religion as an engine of good citizenship” to be “an unhallowed perversion of the means of salvation.”
With Madison’s writings as its polestar, the Supreme Court has long interpreted the Establishment Clause as barring laws that favor one religion over another, or even religion in general over secularism. Government cannot declare any single religion to be the “true” religion; it cannot cede civil power to religious bodies; it cannot fund religious education directly or discriminate between religions in the distribution of funds. The Court has overturned numerous laws that violate the Establishment Clause, like those mandating bible reading, prayer, or the teaching of creationism in public schools. So important is the Clause that in the landmark 1986 case Flast v. Cohen, the Warren Court facilitated its enforcement with a remarkable and unique sanction: it ruled that every taxpayer has legal standing to challenge, as a violation of the Establishment Clause, the appropriation of congressional funds to finance religious instruction in schools. . .
The “No Agenda” Roberts Court
No such timidity inhibits the Roberts Court. Its rulings suggest a “pro-church” bias, and have enfeebled and muddied the meaning of the Establishment Clause. In the 2007 Hein v. Freedom from Religion Foundation case, the Court denied the taxpayer’s right to challenge government expenditures funding the Bush administration’s “faith-based initiatives.” In the 2011 Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization v. Winn case, the Court similarly denied Arizona taxpayers the right to challenge, under the Establishment Clause, tax credits for tuition payments to a parochial school. Both cases were 5–4 split decisions. In both cases, the Flast precedent granting taxpayer standing to sue was marginalized and implicitly overturned.
At other times, however, the Court has shown timidity in applying the Establishment Clause. In the 2004 Elk Grove Unified School District v. Newdow case, for example, the federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held that the words “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance commonly recited in public schools violated the Clause. On appeal, the Supreme Court reversed the Ninth Circuit on purely procedural grounds. . .
No such timidity inhibits the Roberts Court. Its rulings suggest a “pro-church” bias, and have enfeebled and muddied the meaning of the Establishment Clause. In the 2007 Hein v. Freedom from Religion Foundation case, the Court denied the taxpayer’s right to challenge government expenditures funding the Bush administration’s “faith-based initiatives.” In the 2011 Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization v. Winn case, the Court similarly denied Arizona taxpayers the right to challenge, under the Establishment Clause, tax credits for tuition payments to a parochial school. Both cases were 5–4 split decisions. In both cases, the Flast precedent granting taxpayer standing to sue was marginalized and implicitly overturned. . .
“Stealth Overruling”
Another touchstone by which to assess, if not measure, the results-orientation of a Supreme Court is the degree of agreement within the Court. In a 2006 interview shortly after his appointment, Roberts expressed his goal that the Court converge around narrow, unanimous opinions. In order to avoid the opposite result, 5–4 ideologically polarized opinions, he would try to persuade his colleagues to embrace narrow, minimalist opinions. Yet in the term following that promise, a full one-third of the Court’s decisions were 5–4, the highest percentage in a decade. . .
In response to this distinct lack of consensus, legal analysts have noted that Roberts has made far-reaching decisions appear less so. His method: the majority and plurality opinions (which are assigned by Roberts) often change or reconceive precedents without formally overturning them. The Court’s treatment of the Flast precedent illustrates the practice. New York University law professor Barry Friedman has called this “stealth overruling.” In response, both Roberts’s liberal and conservative colleagues on the Court have accused him of “faux judicial restraint”—overturning precedent in fact but not in words. One could argue that the Warren Court demonstrated greater courage of its convictions with its more transparent activism. (Underscored emphasis added)
(Cf. Federal judge says Chief Justice John Roberts is 'undermining democracy)
The foregoing overview of the consequences of the George W. Bush appointments to the Supreme Court confirm the catholicity of his administration and demonstrate the irreparable damage to the rule of law by the politicization of the Court. Bush completed the foundation of a politicized and corrupt administration of justice in the United States of America.
In 2006, roughly midway in George W. Bush's second term, a symposium was held at the Catholic University of St. Thomas, Houston, Texas. Prof. Michael J. Gerhardt, an expert on constitutional law, separation of powers, and the legislative process, made a presentation on the constitutional legitimacy of the recently established Roman Catholic majority on the Supreme Court. His reasoned analysis leads to the logical conclusion that it was unconstitutional:
WHY THE CATHOLIC MAJORITY ON THE SUPREME COURT MAY BE UNCONSTITUTIONAL
I agree with my fellow participants in this Symposium that the fact that the current Supreme Court has five Catholics—the most it has ever had at one time—is a positive, significant achievement for Catholics in the United States; however, I must otherwise dissent. . . These developments are encouraging and noteworthy, but they hardly tell the whole story of how, or why, we have a Catholic majority on the Roberts Court. We know, as Sheldon Goldman explains, that presidents Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush had specific political objectives in making their respective Supreme Court appointments;' however, the critical question is whether the criteria these presidents used to implement their objectives included the nominees' conformity with particular religious beliefs or traditions.
In this Article, I examine two ways in which our national leaders may have damaged the rule of law in the course of appointing the current Catholic majority on the Roberts Court. First, in their zeal to control the Court through their appointments, our national political leaders may have demonstrated (perhaps unintentionally) a regrettable lack of faith in the rule of law. Their approach to selecting justices possibly evinced an apparent agreement with most political scientists who believe that justices do not follow the law, that law in the form of precedents does not constrain justices from either directly voting their policy preferences or manipulating precedent to maximize their personal or political preferences. Presidents Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush—and many Republican senators in 2005-2006—wanted to do what other previous leaders had failed to do: end liberal judicial activism, do away with the Supreme Court precedents they did not like, and transform the federal courts, particularly the Supreme Court, into consistent, if not enduring, conservative bastions. To achieve those objectives, they could not depend on the law to constrain justices to interpret the Constitution as they preferred. To the contrary, the people in charge of selecting Supreme Court nominees had to find justices who would rigidly adhere to their ideological preferences, and thus perform consistently with the expectations of the dominant social science models of the Court. Fulfilling the expectations of the nominating presidents came at the expense of our longstanding commitment to—and faith in—the principle that ours is a government of laws and not of people, even if those people had the right kinds of ideological (or religious) commitments. Insisting that the maintenance of a government of laws depends on appointing people with the right kinds of ideological commitments sacrifices another principle on which our faith in our system as a government of laws in turn depends, a principle which I call the golden rule of constitutional law: on the Supreme Court, justices recognize that they must treat others' precedents as they would like their precedents—the ones with which they approve—to be treated. Those who purport to speak truth to power must assess the possible damage done to the rule of law and the golden rule of constitutional law by the repeated insistence that ideology matters more than law.
A second, serious problem with the process through which we acquired a Catholic majority on the Court may have been that some, if not all, of the appointments which made it possible may have been unconstitutional. The selections of at least some of these justices may have been unconstitutional—possibly violating Article VI's express prohibition of religious tests for federal office, the Fifth Amendment's Due Process Clause, or the First Amendment's prohibition against the stablishment of religion—because they might have been deliberately based in part on the nominees' religious convictions. The possible ensuing violations are all the more unfortunate because it would have been easy to assemble a Catholic majority on the Court without sacrificing some of our constitutional commitments. . . (Underscored emphasis added.)
The case is overwhelming that the George W. Bush administration was saturated by Roman Catholicism. The well-documented books, articles and reports, which establish that fact are too numerous to be quoted here. Their contents provide a view of Roman Catholic ideological domination of America which is the surest indication of how Rev. 13 (last Part) is rapidly being fulfilled. The religio-political world is menacing and ominous. It is pointing to the period of intense persecution which must be endured before the glorious day of Christ's Second Coming.
Unmitigated evil has been unleashed on the nation by the current presidential administration. In Donald Trump there entered upon the scene as the next Republican president after George W. Bush an incorrigible personality, devoid of morality and benevolence, a criminal, and moronic to boot.
As proof of how low the Evangelical Right has sunk into biblical illiteracy and intellectual deficiency, they are Trump's loudest supporters. They are also the unwitting tools of the Roman Catholic hierarchy. In Facts of Faith, Christian Edwardson makes these comments on Rev. 13:
The prophet continues: "He spake as a dragon." ... A nation speaks through its laws. This prophetic statement, therefore, reveals that a great change in policy is to come over our beloved country. The "dragon" is a symbol of pagan Rome, that persecuted the early Christians during the first three centuries. ...
This prophecy also reveals what influence will be brought to bear upon our lawmakers and people to produce this sad change. We have already seen that "the first beast" of Revelation 13:1-10 represents the Papacy, and by reading the eleventh and twelfth verses we see that the effort of the lamblike beast will be to cause "the earth and them that dwell therein to worship the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed." That is: The whole trend is Romeward, therefore it must be Rome that is working in disguise to bring about such a trend. (p.239)
The Papacy was formed by a union of church and state, which resulted in the persecution of dissenters. An "image," or "likeness" to the Papacy in America would be a union of church and state, or a co-operation between them, as in the days of papal Rome. And, seeing it is to be "an image to the beast," it cannot be the beast itself, but must be an effort started among Protestants, who desire the aid of the state to enforce some of their dogmas. (p.302) (Underscored emphasis added.)
This was the perception of Edwardson in the 1940s, based on the prophetic Word and his extensive research on the objectives of Rome and her activities in America.
The Church of Rome has always been the puppetmaster, until recent decades in the shadows; but increasingly in the open since the USCCB's "Pastoral Plan." of 1975.
There was mixed reaction in the Vatican to the election of Donald Trump (MIXED VATICAN REACTION.) In the United States there is credible evidence that right-wing Catholics have been the power behind the throne (RIGHT WING SUPREMACY.)
There is so much on the record about Donald Trump's assaults on democracy and the liberty of conscience guaranteed by the separation of church and state that this paper can only scratch the surface. Indeed, Trump is so "in your face" that only those who are willfully blind can fail to see the menacing course of events. The following is a sampling of what has been published about this odious character. (There is a paucity of leading publications such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and many others, because they all now restrict online reading to subscribers, except for some archived articles.):-
The following article is cited first because of the many internal hyperlinks to documentation which ranges from liberal Roman Catholic to conservative Republican. The publication is "progressive," which is regarded as left of liberal. The Church of Rome is hostile towards liberalism and its leftward tilt in progressivism. Seemingly oblivious of the religious liberty implications, liberalism and progressivism also tend to raise the hackles of conservative Seventh-day Adventists, many of whom are habitual Republican voters. There comes to mind the firestorm Elder Grotheer faced after publication of "The Forming of the Image To the Beast Is It Now Accomplished?" Complaints ranged from accusations of "political spin" to the promotion of "secular liberalism," all consistent with the influence of Roman Catholic propaganda. In any event, the following article with its internal hyperlinks contains assessments of Donald Trump's character from liberal to conservative perspectives that are worthy of serious consideration. By the way, liberal Roman Catholics are strangely loyal to an institution which is fundamentally the enemy of the very ideals which they hold dear:
Why Trump Is Different than Reagan, Either Bush, Dole, McCain, or Romney—He’s Evil
If we look at Republican candidates for president over the last forty years, we find one significant difference between Donald Trump and his party’s predecessors. Despite all of his forerunners’ failings, it would be a mistake to label any of them as evil. Mistaken or misguided at times? Yes. But evil? No. Even progressive leftists should admit that occasionally, and sometimes more than occasionally, the six pre-Trump Republican candidates displayed moments of basic human decency.
A few definitions of evil are “profoundly immoral and wicked” and “something that brings sorrow, trouble, or destruction.” Doesn’t that fit Trump?
Several months ago, Michael Sean Winters, who “covers the nexus of religion and politics” for the National Catholic Reporter, wrote of “the seven deadly sins of Donald Trump.” One after another, the author ticks them off—greed, lust, gluttony, sloth, envy, wrath, and pride—and comments, “What we see with President Donald Trump and his cast of sycophants and co-conspirators . . . is a rare thing: All seven deadly sins on display at once.”
Winters observes that “greed has long been a motivating factor in Trump’s life.” Since becoming president he has added greed and lust for power to his long-time pursuit of money and fame and his lust for women—the author just mentions in passing “that horrible tape,” where Trump (in 2005) stated he was able to grab women “by the [*****].” And no mention is made of the some 23 women who since the 1980s have accused Trump of various types of sexual misbehavior including rape. “The evidence of gluttony is an extension of his greed and lust for power: He not only wants power, he can’t get enough of it. Never enough money. Never enough women. Never enough wives. Like all gluttons, he leaves a mess in his wake.” Sloth? “As president, he famously can’t be bothered reading his briefing papers,” and as of late October, 2019, President “Trump had 224 golf outings.” Regarding all his mentions and put-downs of President Obama, “it must be envy.” As for wrath, Winters predicted “we will see more and more wrath in the coming months.” And sure enough we did in early February, at the 68th annual National Prayer Breakfast (see below) and with the firing of two men who testified against him in impeachment hearings. Finally, we come to pride, “the deadliest of the seven deadly sins.” “What astounds, really, is that Trump’s pride is the pride of the con man. He is proud of his ability to make people think he is a man of abilities when he really is a man of few gifts beyond those we associate with showmanship.”
In earlier articles (see, e.g., this one of mid-2016), I have criticized Trump for his colossal egotism and lack of humility, a virtue that Winters identifies as pride’s opposite. Many others concerned with ethics have also commented on it, as conservative columnist David Brooks did in 2016 when he wrote that Trump’s “vast narcissism makes him a closed fortress. He doesn’t know what he doesn’t know and he’s uninterested in finding out. He insults the office Abraham Lincoln once occupied by running for it with less preparation than most of us would undertake to buy a sofa.” . . .
Conservative Trump critics Michael Gerson and Peter Wehner also wrote a book on morality entitled City of Man: Religion and Politics in a New Era (2010).In February 2019, Gerson delivered a requested sermon in Washington’s National Cathedral. Wehner remains a Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
More recently Gerson wrote the essay “Trump’s politicization of the National Prayer Breakfast is unholy and immoral.” Trump used" a prayer meeting to attack and defame his enemies,” and “again displayed a remarkable ability to corrupt, distort and discredit every institution he touches,” Gerson observed. Now, after the Senate impeachment trial, Trump “is seized by rage and resentment,” and “feels unchecked and uncheckable.” Gerson also warned that Trump has “tremendous power,” and “we are reaching a very dangerous moment in our national life.” . . .
Columnist Ross Douthat is still one more conservative religious critic of Trump. Author of a critical study of Pope Francis, Douthat has had this to say about our president: he is a “debauched pagan in the White House,” and he is clearly impaired, gravely deficient somewhere at the intersection of reason and judgment and conscience and self-control.”
Among writers who are less conservative than Brooks, Gerson, Wehner, and Douthat, comments about Trump’s evilness is even more widespread. To take just one example, we have Ed Simon, a HNN contributing editor. In an earlier article on Trump’s “religion,” I quoted Simon, “If the [Biblical] anti-Christ is supposed to be a manipulative, powerful, smooth-talking demagogue with the ability to sever people from their most deeply held beliefs who would be a better candidate than the seemingly indestructible Trump?”
All of the above comments indicating Trump’s evils do not exhaust the list, and just a few should be amplified upon or added. 1) He is a colossal liar. As The Washington Post stated, “Three years after taking the oath of office, President Trump has made more than 16,200 false or misleading claims.” 2) He lacks empathy and compassion. For example, in late 2015, he mocked a journalist’s physical disability. 3) His boastful remarks about himself are examples of delusional pride—e.g., “in my great and unmatched wisdom,” and “I have a great relationship with the blacks.” 4) Although it’s no easy job to identify Trump’s worst sin, his greatest may be what he is doing to our environment.
Any article dealing with Trump’s evil must contend with the overwhelming support he receives from Evangelicals. Why this is so and why they are wrong is dealt with by Wehner’s essay mentioned above. . . (Internal hyperlinks in the original; underscored emphasis added.)
It is ironic that Michael Gerson served in the George W. Bush administration which paved the way for the likes of a Donald Trump, who is upheld by the right-wing Roman Catholic-Evangelical alliance to which he contributed.
The sanctification of Donald Trump
‘Only God could deliver such a savior to our nation,’ campaign manager Brad Parscale says, echoing recent comments from other top aides.
For his closest advisers, President Donald Trump is a godsend — literally.
Trump’s campaign manager says the president was sent by God to save the country. The White House press secretary thinks God wanted Trump to be president. And the secretary of State believes it’s possible that Trump is on a holy mission to protect the Jewish people from the threat of Iran.
Forget the allegations of extramarital affairs, the nonstop Twitter insults and the efforts to close the southern border to migrants. Trump’s allies insist that his presidency is divinely inspired.
“There has never been and probably never will be a movement like this again,” Brad Parscale, the president’s campaign manager, wrote Tuesday morning on Twitter. “Only God could deliver such a savior to our nation, and only God could allow me to help. God bless America!” . . .
The president, who doesn’t regularly attend church services, has emerged as an unlikely ally of the evangelical right, building close relationships with influential conservative religious figures. The White House screened an anti-abortion movie earlier this month, part of a broader strategy to energize evangelical voters ahead of the 2020 elections by amplifying false claims about late-term abortions.
But for observers of American history and advocates for the separation of church and state, the assertions that Trump’s presidency is endorsed by God are alarming. . .
Timothy Naftali, a presidential historian, said, “What these political lieutenants are saying to the faithful is that, 'You have no choice; God has told you how you must vote.'
“Republican administrations historically have talked about individual rights, the autonomy of the individual, preventing government from dictating political choice," he said. "By bringing the sacred into politics, they are actually imposing a view onto his followers and depriving them of a freedom of choice.” . . . (Underscored emphasis added.)
Opinion: Why Trump appeals to so many Catholics and evangelicals
Even a sinner can be God’s instrument in the battle against the secular state
To this day, there are many people who would like to put religion back into the center of public and political life. This is presumably what U.S. Attorney General William Barr, a deeply conservative Catholic, meant when he denounced “secularists” for launching an “assault on religion and traditional values.”
Prejudice against Catholics as enemies of liberty and potential traitors (because of their spiritual allegiance to Rome) also died hard.
In 1821, John Adams wondered whether “a free government [can] possibly exist with a Catholic religion.”
Anglo-American freedom and democracy was traditionally associated with rugged Protestant individualism; Catholics were believed to be reactionary slaves to an ecclesiastical hierarchy. Individualistic Protestants were free-thinking, industrious, and devoted to making the best of themselves (materially, as much as spiritually), whereas Catholics were backward and not infrequently lazy. . .he strident views of a U.S. attorney general are not the only sign that times have changed significantly.
Only one Supreme Court justice is a Protestant (Neil Gorsuch), and even he was raised Catholic. Three justices are Jewish. The other five are Catholics (some with ties to Opus Dei, a secretive organization that began to flourish in fascist Spain in the 1930s).
The other historic change, which began in the latter half of the 20th century, is evangelical Christians’ political alignment with conservative Catholics.
For a long time, American Protestants were happy to live with a constitution that shielded their religious lives from state intervention. Spiritually neutral governments could be ceded the public sphere, as long as they left religious believers alone.
This changed after the Civil Rights movements in the 1960s, which alarmed many white Christians, especially in the southern states. Today, evangelicals, like Catholic conservatives, are among President Donald Trump’s most ardent supporters. They, too, believe that family and faith are under siege from liberals and secularists.
Even a sinner can be God’s instrument
To both groups, the fact that Trump is not known to be religious, and that his life has been anything but a model of traditional Christian morality, is irrelevant. . . (Underscored emphasis added.)
That the Ronald Reagan administration was swarming with Roman Catholic advisors is a well-established fact. That the George W. Bush administration was openly dominated by Roman Catholics has been heavily documented. However, Bush had to maintain a delicate balance between them and the Evangelicals in the newly emergent Religious Right alliance:
Now, in the Trump administration it is the Evangelicals who are swarming all over the White House and the Oval Office; but they are now so melded with Roman Catholicism that this is the dominant influence. The Evangelicals serve as proxies of convenience:-
Photo surfaces of evangelical pastors laying hands on Trump in the Oval Office
The Year The Religious Right Moved Into The White House December 19, 2017
Brian Houston, Christian worship leaders pray for Trump, visit Oval Office
"Evangelical leaders" meeting with Trump at White HouseThe evidence is overwhelming that the Evangelicals are fronting for Rome, although not in lockstep with all of the aims of the papacy. First the evidence of the Evangelicals as proxy for the Church of Rome and her Social Doctrine:
President Trump's campaign is increasing its efforts to court Catholic voters with a new campaign coalition, Catholics for Trump, by focusing on the president's support for such issues as religious freedom and opposition to abortion.
The coalition, which was set to launch in Milwaukee next week, seeks to rally Catholics behind the Trump administration's vision of "the common good," as it relates to Catholic teaching on social issues that right-leaning Catholics have long championed. The launch event has been postponed because of fears of a coronavirus outbreak, and a campaign spokesperson told the Washington Examiner it has not yet been rescheduled.
Pandemics notwithstanding, many Catholic leaders say they are excited to throw their support behind Trump in 2020. That mood is much different than in 2016, when many Catholics supported Trump, "despite a big question mark in their minds," said Frank Pavone, national director of Priests for Life who served on Trump’s Catholic Advisory Group in 2016. Pavone became a controversial figure directly before the 2016 election, when he delivered a sermon about abortion while after placing what he claimed was an aborted baby on an altar.
"They weren't quite sure what they were going to get," Pavone said. "What they were more sure about is what they would not be getting by rejecting Hillary. Now, however, the question mark has changed into an exclamation point."
For Pavone, who is expected to help lead Catholics for Trump, that exclamation point is Trump's expressive support for the anti-abortion movement, manifested most recently in his speech at the 2020 March for Life — the first such presidential in-person appearance at the anti-abortion rally. Other exclamation points include Trump’s Supreme Court appointments and his Cabinet member picks, which include a number of practicing Catholics, White House counsel Pat Cipollone and Attorney General William Barr among them.
Appointments such as Barr, as well as the possibility of a conservative majority on the Supreme Court, are part of what should drive Catholics to Trump, Pavone said, adding that these are the ways Trump has proven that he is friendly to “the Catholic vision of things.”
Brian Burch, president of CatholicVote.org, an organization supporting Trump, but officially unaffiliated with the campaign coalition, extended that endorsement.
"This is the most Catholic administration we've had in American history, both at a policy level and at a personnel level," he told the Washington Examiner, citing Trump’s support for the “sanctity of life, the family as the foundational social unit, and the necessity of religious liberty.”
Barr, in particular, has pleased Catholics supporting Trump. Under him, the Department of Justice seeks to defend religious freedom "zealously," officials told reporters during a Monday press briefing. Since Barr assumed his post in February 2019, the Justice Department has filed statements of interest in many cases involving Catholic and otherwise religious institutions over religious liberty issues. . .
Barr has also stirred controversy in his speeches, speaking out against the "militant" and "growing ascendancy of secularism and the doctrine of moral relativism" last year at the University of Notre Dame. Barr delivered a similar speech in February at the National Religious Broadcasters Convention in Tennessee. He is also set to speak at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast at the end of March, where he will receive an award for his "long history of dedicated public service and his commitment to the defense of the vulnerable and religious liberty."
The Trump administration has only earned such plaudits from Catholic leaders after several years. Early in the 2016 campaign, Trump had faced serious opposition from many Catholic leaders, especially after he called Pope Francis "disgraceful" for questioning his stance on border security. CatholicVote.org was skeptical and opposed him during the primaries, pointing to his lack of “clear guiding principles, and a history of unpredictability.” The group was one of the many that called upon Trump to step down after the Access Hollywood tapes leaks in October showed Trump making lewd comments about women.
"If Donald Trump is unwilling to step aside, the Republican National Committee must act soon out of basic decency and self-preservation," the organization wrote at the time.
But once elected, Trump’s presidency proved encouraging, and CatholicVote.org warmed to him. Even before Catholics for Trump was announced, CatholicVote.org already was organizing, along with the nonprofit Knights of Columbus, to register and inform voters about their choices in November. . .
But even with these obstacles, the Trump campaign’s outreach efforts to Catholics in 2020 is much more organized than its push in 2016, which, in the beginning, was nonexistent. That changed, however, when Deal Hudson, the director of Catholic Outreach for George W. Bush’s 2000 and 2004 campaigns, convinced the Trump campaign to begin courting Catholic voters in 2016 through a series of tweets and meetings with Catholic leaders.
Once Trump secured the nomination, the campaign organized a Catholic Advisory Committee, including Pavone, former Sen. Rick Santorum, and Matt Schlapp, chairman of the American Conservative Union. The group promised to steer Trump on religious liberty, abortion, and Supreme Court issues. (Underscored emphasis added.)
The reader will note the underscored passages; and particularly what is stated about Bill Barr, Attorney-General of the United States charged with the administration of justice. There is more about this man as a corrupter of justice and the law later in this paper.
Members of the Catholic hierarchy in America at the highest level have also expressed their support for the re-election of Donald Trump:
Trump says he’s ‘best president in history of the Church’ in call with Catholic leaders
President Donald Trump identified himself as the “best [president] in the history of the Catholic Church” in a conference call for Catholic leaders and educators Saturday, where he warned that issues at stake in the upcoming presidential election, particularly on abortion and religious liberty, “have never been more important for the Church.”
Trump also pledged support for Catholic schools in light of the global coronavirus pandemic.
In an audio recording of the meeting obtained by Crux, the president repeatedly emphasized his support for the pro-life movement and school choice, attempting to paint a stark contrast between his administration and what a Democratic presidency could mean for Catholics.
Crux was told by two participants that over 600 people were on the call, including Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York, Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston, Archbishop Jose Gomez of Los Angeles and president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), Bishop Michael C. Barber of Oakland, chair of the USCCB committee of Catholic Education, as well as the superintendents of Catholic schools for Los Angeles and Denver, among others. . .
Yet the president’s most frequented theme in his opening remarks was that of his commitment to pro-life cause, saying that it has “been at a level that no other president has seen before, according to everybody.”. . .
He also referenced his support for the Mexico City policy, which prevents federal funding for NGO’s that provide abortion related services. The policy was instituted by President Ronald Reagan and has been reinstated by every Republican president since 1984. (On the call, however, the president erroneously stated that Reagan was the last to sign it.)
He also highlighted his opposition to the Johnson Amendment, which prevents tax exempt institutions from endorsing or opposing political candidates. He described it as “very viscous,” adding that “I got rid of it so you can express your views very strongly.”
Following approximately 15 minutes of opening remarks, the president also took questions a pre-selected pool of participants before opening it up to others on the call.
Dolan was the first to speak, whom the president hailed as a “great gentleman” and a “great friend of mine,” adding that he respects what the cardinal “asks for.”
The New York cardinal said he was “honored to be the lead-off batter, and the feelings are mutual sir,” noting that the two had been on the phone often in recent months and joking that the cardinal’s 90-year-old mom in Missouri says “I call you more than I call her.”Dolan praised the support of DeVos, Carson, and special counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway as “champions” and “cherished allies in our passion for our beloved schools.”
The cardinal focused on education, saying that it concerns “parental rights, educational justice, and civil rights of our kids” and thanked the president for his “courageous insistence that the nonprofits, faith communities, and our schools be included” in the recent stimulus package.
He warned, however, that current funding toward schools is only guaranteed through this academic year and that many Catholic schools around the country are “really scared” about September, saying that tuition assistance for parents to continue to send their children to Catholic schools was greatly needed.
“Never has the outlook financially looked more bleak, but perhaps never has the outlook looked more promising given the energetic commitment that your administration has to our schools,” Dolan told the president. “We need you more than ever.” (Underscored emphasis added.)
Here we see in the statement of Cardinal Dolan naked acknowledgement of an intimate relationship with Donald Trump, and also a fervent cry for federal financial aid to Roman Catholic schools, multiplying the violations of the constitutional separation of Church and State. Note the spotlight shone on the influence of DeVos, Carson, and Conway. (Cf. BEN CARSON - PSEUDO SEVENTH-DAY ADVENTIST.)
However, not all Catholics are in agreement with the Church's leaders, who have come under severe criticism. The dissidents see a capitulation of the Church to the Republican Party and Donald Trump. In reality Trump is evidence of the Republican Party's now decades long capitulation to Rome. The following article is valuable for some of what it exposes:
Editorial: Dolan delivers the church to Trump and the GOP
The capitulation is complete.
Without a whimper from any of his fellow bishops, the cardinal archbishop of New York has inextricably linked the Catholic Church in the United States to the Republican Party and, particularly, President Donald Trump.
It was bad enough that Cardinals Timothy Dolan of New York and Sean O'Malley of Boston, joined by Los Angeles Archbishop José Gomez, currently also president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, participated in Trump's phone version of a campaign rally on April 25. With hundreds of others on the call, including Catholic educators, the bishops were once again masterfully manipulated. They previously gave Trump certain campaign footage when they delivered Catholics to his speech at the March for Life rally in Washington early in the year.
Now Trump will have Dolan's language from the call, telling everyone that he considers himself a "great friend" of Trump, for whom he expressed mutual admiration as "a great gentleman." The cardinal went on to say that he was "honored" to lead off the comments on the call.
The whole cringe-worthy exchange (yes, Trump did self-describe as "the best" president "in the history of the Catholic church") was made worse the next day when Dolan provided more campaign footage from inside St. Patrick's Cathedral in announcing that the president was "worshiping with us," purportedly livestreaming the Mass at the White House.
Friendships have existed in the past between U.S. presidents and princes of the church. How those affected the church's involvement in politics and policy, negatively or positively, differed from one circumstance to another. But it is rare, if not unprecedented, that the church's leadership apparatus would be co-opted to the degree seen in the case of Trump.
Certainly, it is without precedent that the leadership would cozy up so cravenly to a president whose most consistent attribute is an uncontrollable propensity for lying, continuously and about everything. He is dangerously disconnected from reality and is defined by characteristics that normally are condemned from pulpits.
In People of Hope, a book-length conversation Dolan conducted with journalist John L. Allen Jr. published in 2012, a chapter is devoted to politics in which the cardinal concedes that there is an understandable perception that the U.S. bishops are in a "de facto," in the questioner's words, alliance with the Republican Party.
The reality, Dolan contends, is more complex. "My experience is that we bishops are actually fairly scrupulous in wanting to avoid any partisan flavor."
One might reasonably conclude today that such scrupulosity has gone out the window. For Dolan and his fellow episcopal travelers, the all-consuming issue is abortion. That tops the agenda in any political consideration. Allen asked: "Are you saying that the perception of being in bed with the Republicans, or the political Right, is the PR price that has to be paid for taking a strong stance on abortion?"
"Yes, that's exactly right," Dolan answered.
Unfortunately, the bishops have paid a much higher price than poor public relations in their political strategy the past four decades. Abortion is a serious subject that they've turned into a political volleyball in a game with no winners except the groups on the extremes of the issue who cash in every four years, sustaining careers and an endless debate.
In one interesting concession to reality, Dolan notes during the conversation that no less a conservative hero than the late Jesuit theologian and cardinal, Avery Dulles, often asked whether a legal ban on abortion could be enforced, noting that Thomas Aquinas advised against pursuing unenforceable law.
That is a reasonable question, particularly in the current context. NCR has always held up the efficacy of church teaching on life issues, especially as embodied in Cardinal Joseph Bernardin's consistent ethic of life. At the same time, we have regularly and strongly objected to what the bishops were doing in the public square regarding the issue of abortion because the strategy has proven most effective in dividing the Catholic community and turning the institutional church into a partisan enterprise. . .
It is quite a stretch to take the role of moral absolutist on the matter of abortion when you've demonstrated a capacity to engage in a degree of relativism that is truly breathtaking when dealing with horrible abuse of children. Their own behavior over decades of covering up abuse puts the lie to the sanctimonious posturing about the absolute dignity of every person.
This unholy alliance with Trump, coupled with the GOP stacking of the Supreme Court, may get the bishops the abortion ban they so covet, but it will not end the debate. They may even get the federal money they desperately need to extend the fading life of Catholic schools. But all of it will have been purchased at the expense of a whole range of other life and justice issues.
It will have been purchased in concert with a president whose primary modus operandi is that of a bully devoid of empathy or concern for the common good. If one actually believes Trump's current gushing about Catholic schools and the right to life, Dolan might also be offered a great deal on a bridge somewhere in the vicinity of the cathedral.
It need not be this way. The bishops themselves, in the conclusion to "Faithful Citizenship," describe a different approach. It is worth repeating the points here:
"The Church is involved in the political process but is not partisan. The Church cannot champion any candidate or party."
"The Church is engaged in the political process but should not be used. We welcome dialogue with political leaders and candidates; we seek to engage and persuade public officials. Events and photo ops cannot substitute for serious dialogue."
"The Church is principled but not ideological."
The Catholic bishops' uncritical alliance with Republicans and Trump obliterates those principles and allows Catholics to dismiss the document as lacking any serious intent.
The alliance also further distances the church from any leverage it might otherwise possess on a host of issues on the Catholic social justice agenda deeply affecting life of the vulnerable and marginalized, as well as from any hope of brokering modifications to abortion on demand with Democrats.
The Catholic voice, capable of a priceless contribution to the public conversation, has been sold for cheap to political hucksters. (Underscored emphasis added.)
It is ironic that Roman Catholic publications such as Crux and the National Catholic Reporter are acknowledging the intricate connection of their hierarchy with the Republicans and Donald Trump. The latter's editorial excoriates the Bishops' support of both the party and the President, and exposes the hypocrisy of their implacable so-called "pro-life" campaign. Corporate Seventh-day Adventist Church leaders, where is your support for separation of church and state?! Where are your warnings against assenting to the deadly dogma of the immortality of the soul, and against the Beast and its Image - the False Prophet?!
The Roman Catholic leaders participation in the telephone call with Trump has stirred widespread criticism in the Catholic world as evidenced in the following report:-
Cardinal Dolan defends himself after letter criticizing him for Trump call
More than 1,000 Catholics have signed an open letter in protest of Cardinal Timothy Dolan’s phone call with President Donald Trump and a follow-up interview on Fox News, labeling the president as “not pro-life.”
“Your recent phone call with President Trump and appearance on Fox News sends a message that Catholic leaders have aligned themselves with a president who tears apart immigrant families, denies climate change, stokes racial division and supports economic policies that hurt the poor,” they wrote in the letter which was published on Friday with the names of the signatories.
“Please speak truth to power and refrain from giving even the appearance that bishops have their hands on the scales in this election,” it continued. . .
Clearly the Roman Catholic laity are not in lockstep with the hierarchy. However, this is primarily a family disagreement. Liberals and conservatives alike are still devoted to Mother Church. Furthermore, there can never be a pontiff committed to freedom of conscience and individual liberty. Moreover, there is amply documented evidence that "liberal" Pope Francis is engaged in a Machiavellian relationship with Vladmir Putin of Russia (Cf. Why the Pope ❤ Putin.) (Exploration of how this impacts the unfolding of end-time prophecies has to be postponed to a later time.) It is also probable that the Pope has reached an accommodation with Trump.
Donald Trump is having a profound impact on the federal courts. His nominees for the federal bench are dominantly members of the Federalist Society, about which there is more information in PART III of this paper, together with details of the Society's corrupting and menacing influence on the judicial system.
PART III: UNRESTRAINED LAWLESSNESS UNDER CLAIM OF LEGALITY
LEGITIMATION OF UNRELENTING LAWLESSNESS IN ACTION LAWLESS TRUMP
THE SPIRITUAL DIMENSIONLEGITIMATION OF UNRELENTING LAWLESSNESS IN ACTION
After over three years in the presidency of the United States, Donald Trump has acquired a well-earned reputation for lawlessness, much of it under what is a spurious claim of unitary executive powers:-
How Justice Scalia paved the way for Trump’s assault on the rule of law
Three words: “the unitary executive.”
The past couple of weeks began a new phase for the Trump administration and, potentially, for the institution of the presidency.
Emboldened by his acquittal in a majority-Republican Senate, President Trump spent the past week firing officials who testified against him in impeachment proceedings — part of a rash of retaliation that my colleague Zack Beauchamp labeled “Trump’s purge.”
Then Trump sent a tweet denouncing the Justice Department’s suggestion that Roger Stone, a Trump ally convicted of making false statements, obstruction, and witness tampering, should receive a stiff sentence of seven to nine years. The Justice Department swiftly changed its recommendation, over the apparent protest of four career prosecutors who withdrew from the case. At least one of these prosecutors appears to have resigned entirely from the DOJ.
Attorney General William Barr, for what it’s worth, claims that “the president has never asked me to do anything in a criminal case.” But Trump credited his attorney general for the swift turnaround in the Stone case. . .
The Justice Department’s swift compliance with Trump’s wishes was widely condemned by DOJ alumni, who spoke of why it is important that the nation’s prosecutorial arm retain a degree of independence from its political leader. As Joyce White Vance, a former United States attorney, wrote in Time, if Trump “can corrupt the criminal justice system for the benefit of his friends, there is no reason he cannot also use it to retaliate against those he views as enemies.”
In this sense, the Justice Department is fundamentally different from other federal agencies. While those agencies can wield tremendous power over federal policy, DOJ is tasked with the awesome power to prosecute crimes — and with it, the power to ruin the lives of a president’s political enemies.
For Barr, however, the idea that the Justice Department would be subservient to the president isn’t simply acceptable; it is a constitutional necessity. (Although Barr has also claimed he would not bring a criminal investigation solely because the president wished to investigate a “political opponent.”)
Last November, Barr spoke to the conservative Federalist Society’s annual lawyers convention. His speech focused on the proper role of the presidency, and on the theory of the “unitary executive.” As Barr described that theory, which he enthusiastically supports, every power exercised by the executive branch “must be exercised under the President’s supervision.”
That no one in the executive branch should be independent of the president, and that such independence is in fact constitutionally illegitimate, is one of the core beliefs pushed by conservative legal groups such as the Federalist Society.
More than three decades ago, in Morrison v. Olson (1988), Justice Antonin Scalia published a lonely dissent articulating this theory of the unitary executive. Though no other justice joined Scalia’s opinion in 1988, the Morrison dissent gained a cult following in subsequent years. That cult now includes some of the most powerful people in the country — including Barr and several current members of the Supreme Court.
Indeed, the Supreme Court will hear a case early next month that could make Scalia’s theory of the unitary executive the law of the land. . . (Underscored emphasis added.)
The right-wing Roman Catholic majority on the Supreme Court may be poised to rule in favor of the unitary executive theory. The sword of Damocles hangs over the weakened liberal democratic constraints on dictatorial governance in America. Government of the people, by the people, for the people is perishing from the earth, with no hope of a new birth of freedom. Here the bad relations between the papacy under Pius IX and the United States during the Civil War is meaningful when considered with the fact that Pope Francis used the very same lectern used by Abraham Lincoln for his Gettysburg address for his speech in front of Independence Hall, Philadelphia, in 2015. It is reasonable to consider what message the Pope intended to convey: an improbable "new birth of freedom" by a reconciliation between liberal democracy and the papacy, or the triumph of liberty-stifling Rome?
The Catholic publication Crux provides an informative history of the confrontational relationship between the United States and Rome at the time of the Civil War and its aftermath:
The lowest point in U.S.-Vatican relations will be hard to beat
When a United States president seen as an arch-conservative meets a pope seen as a darling of the left, people could be forgiven for wondering if U.S.-Vatican relations are on their way to a new low point.
Will Donald Trump and Pope Francis even be able to find any sort of common ground? (Hint: Yes.)
But even if Trump storms out of the Apostolic Palace with a scowl on his face and Francis refuses the traditional exchange of gifts, it will be nowhere near the lowest point in the relationship.
For that, you would need a civil war, a presidential assassination, as well as complete incomprehension of the other’s worldview: You would have to go back over 150 years, during the reign of Pope Pius IX.
Pius, like Francis, began his pontifical career as a reformer, although the Vatican was a hugely different affair at the time. The pope was still an absolute monarch in his domain, but instead of ruling 110 acres with a population measured in the hundreds, Pius ruled the Papal States, which stretched through central Italy and had a population of over 3 million, ranging from south of Rome to Bologna in the north.
Pius was elected as a liberal, and started a slow reform, much like his 21st century successor. However, in Pius’s case, the reform was not considered good enough by liberals, and they drove him from Rome during the 1848 Revolution.
After his return, behind a French army, Pius gave up on his liberalizing program, and developed a strong suspicion of republics and democracy.
The revolutions of 1848 were largely supported from afar by Americans - and this attitude was strengthened by the thousands of people arriving in the U.S. who had fled after they were suppressed. . .
At the time, Vatican documents also often spoke out against such treasured American ideals as freedom of speech, freedom of worship, self-government, while extolling the virtues of monarchy and the aristocracy; more fuel for the fire of anti-Catholic sentiment. . .
Then came the U.S. Civil War.
Pius had reasons not to favor the United States. In 1837, Ralph Waldo Emerson had labeled the first skirmish of the American Revolution the “shot heard round the world,” and in 1848, Pius had heard the echo of this shot, and not liked the sound.
Pius had also lost most of his temporal holdings in 1860, when after the 1859 Austro-Sardinian War, the Sardinian monarchy had annexed the central Italian states, including all the Papal States. . .
One of the first nations to recognize this newly proclaimed “Kingdom of Italy,” was the United States. Add to this the fact Abraham Lincoln offered Italian revolutionary Giuseppe Garibaldi the rank of Major General in the Union Army, although he refused unless Lincoln offered to make him commander-in-chief of all his armies.
In 1863, Confederate leader Jefferson Davis sent Pius a letter thanking him for offers of prayers for peace he had given to the Catholic population in New Orleans. When the pope wrote back, addressing his missive to “Illustrious and Hon. Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America, Richmond,” it caused outrage in the United States, especially since the contents of the letter implied the Confederacy was more interested in peace than the Union.
Vatican diplomats assured Washington the address was not an act of recognition of the rebel government, just an act of courtesy; but the damage had been done.
Pius also sent Davis a signed photo of himself after the war when the former Confederate ruler was imprisoned. . .
Yet the most damaging event for the relations between the two sides was the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, and the discovery a large number of the plotters were Catholics. . .
The conspirators met in Surratt’s home, although John pulled out of the plot when it was changed from kidnapping to murder.
It was his escape from justice which involved the Vatican. . .
The younger Surratt escaped to Canada, where he was hidden by a priest. Smuggled out of the country to England, Surratt was then given shelter in a Catholic Church in Liverpool.
And then he went to Rome and joined the pope’s army. . .
When Pius was informed a suspected conspirator in the assassination of Lincoln was in his army, he was horrified and ordered his arrest.
But Surratt escaped, and was helped out of Italy by Garibaldi’s army, which was surrounding Rome.
The Italian nationalist thought helping Surratt would further poison the relationship between Pius and the United States, and he was right.
The United States Congress - angered over the letter to Davis and Surratt’s service in the pope’s army - passed a law in 1867 banning any future funding for United States diplomatic missions to the Vatican, a law which was on the books until the 1980s. . .
Pius died in 1878, having been a “prisoner of the Vatican” since 1870, when the Kingdom of Italy finally conquered Rome.
The New York Times, in its obituary, said his pontificate removed “the last vestige of popular or democratic government…from the Catholic Church.” . . . (Underscored emphasis added.)
As to the dominance of the right-wing Roman Catholic majority on the Supreme Court, the federal courts at the district and appellate levels until recently have been making the right constitutional decisions, many of which were then overturned at the ultimate Supreme Court level. There is now justifiable fear that the Supreme Court will legitimize the unitary executive theory. Meanwhile, the Trump administration continues to rack up a record of unbridled lawlessness.
The corrosive effect of this undemocratic theory of a unitary executive is alarmingly evident in the brazen claims made by Trump, and the acquiescence of the Republican Senate:
Article 2" began trending on Twitter on Tuesday afternoon after President Donald Trump falsely claimed the Constitution clause grants him the power to "do whatever" he wants as president.
During his address at a Turning Point USA conference in Washington, D.C. earlier today, Trump declared to a crowd of young conservatives: "Then I have an Article 2, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president."
The inaccurate statement came after he attacked former special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. It was not the first time the president has made the claim. In June, Trump told ABC News: "Article 2 allows me to do whatever I want. Article 2 would have allowed me to fire [Mueller]."
Although the loosely-defined "Article 2" is interpreted by some as granting the chief executive broad authority, the section also provides for a president's removal from office via "impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors." The latter offers an explicit check on the president's authority and actions, which negates Trump's claims that he has the "right to do whatever" while in office. . .
Donald Trump was not lying (this time). He CAN do whatever he wants
Opinion: On paper, and according to the Constitution, Trump is dead wrong. But in the real world, with this Congress ...
President Donald Trump was incorrect last week when he said he can do whatever he wants as president, but he was not lying.
The legal experts and constitutional scholars and critics filled social media and the TV networks after Trump told a room filled with teenagers and young adults at the Turning Point USA Teen Student Action Summit in Washington, D.C., that the Constitution gives him “the right to do whatever I want as president.”
On paper, and according to the Constitution, Trump is dead wrong. Article II of the Constitution grants the president “executive powers,” but it also describes the authority of Congress to remove the president from office "via impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors."
So, from a strictly legal, constitutional point of view, Trump was shamefully inaccurate when he told the young people, "Then, I have an Article II, where I have to the right to do whatever I want as president.”
But he was not lying.
Congress may have the power to remove the president but Trump knows that no matter what he does, this particular Congress – the Senate, anyway – will not hold him to account.
No matter what.
Donald Trump's claim of absolute power is absolutely unconstitutional, and his matching actions are abundantly lawless.
Because of the enabling actions of the Republican Party and the Supreme Court, the extinction of democracy which was unimaginable except by the light of Bible prophecy now looms over the American nation. The following was published as early as October 23, 2016:
Trump’s Shock Troops and Mainstream Enablers
Does the corrosion of American democracy mimic the Weimar conditions that launched Hitler to power?
There is a Weimar quality to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign that is corroding the fabric of American democracy. He, of course, did not create this corroding element, but merely exploited and accelerated it.
Donald Trump, a first-class opportunist (plus hypocrite, master cynic and narcissist extraordinaire) — simply considers himself too smart to pass up such a mega-marketing opportunity for himself.
A latter-day Weimar?
The real Weimar Germany was a place of misery and fatalism. That is, in all likelihood, the only reason someone like Hitler was eventually able to find a path to power. In the United States today, there are pockets of misery and fatalism — but nowhere near the same degree as in Germany’s Weimar.
In a political sense, that is false comfort: The United States doesn’t actually have to be Weimar Germany — if enough people merely believe it to be.
Trump has a loud and fanatical base of support that is far from a majority, but it is sufficiently sizeable to cause substantial social chaos. . .
Beginning softly
Hitler did not gain power by pledging to enact the mass extermination of “undesirables” like the Jews, gays, Seventh Day Adventists, Socialists, et al.
No, Hitler simply promised to “make Germany great again” by providing “Bread and Work” and repudiating its humiliations at the hands of foreign powers. The parallels to Trump here are breathtaking.
Those parallels include that the German “establishment” did not take Hitler seriously as a threat – until it was too late. Hitler was both a charmer and a bad boy with enormous prurient appeal. The parallel is, once again, breathtaking. . .
Supreme Court to the rescue? Not likely
One must at least hope that, at that pivotal moment, the U.S. constitutional safeguards would assert themselves.
However, the Roberts Supreme Court – supposedly dedicated to judicial restraint — has a troubling record of interpreting law liberally in order to achieve the reactionary outcomes his former majority desired. . . (Underscored emphasis added.)
It is startling to see Seventh-day Adventists included in the list of "undesirables." A search of author Stephan Richter's biography reveals no Seventh-day Adventist affiliation. Nevertheless, he is absolutely correct that a Seventh-day Adventist remnant is going to be targeted. Richter is apparently aware of SDA eschatology.
Donald Trump so far has been getting away with extraordinary presidential acts of lawlessness:
Trump's lawless thuggery is corrupting justice in America
Intimidating whistleblowers, politicizing law enforcement, protecting rogue military officers and criminal sheriffs – the pattern is depressingly clear
As the Senate moves to an impeachment trial and America slouches into this election year, the rule of law is center stage.
Yet Donald Trump is substituting lawless thuggery for impartial justice.
The biggest immediate news is the president’s killing of Qassem Suleimani. The act brings America to the brink of an illegal war with Iran without any congressional approval, in direct violation of Congress’s war-making authority under the Constitution.
But other presidents have disregarded Congress’s war-making power, too. What makes Trump unique is the overall pattern. Almost wherever you look, he has shown utter disdain for law. Consider Trump’s outing of the person who blew the whistle on his phone call to the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy – tweeting just after Christmas a link to a Washington Examiner article headlined with the presumed whistleblower’s name, then retweeting a supporter who named the presumed whistleblower.
Even before outing the whistleblower, Trump had whipped his followers into a lather by calling the whistleblower a “spy”, guilty of “treason”.
The outing not only imperils the whistleblower’s safety. It violates the purpose of the Whistleblower Act, which is to protect people who alert authorities that government officials are violating the law.
It’s on this deeper level that Trump’s lawlessness is most corrosive. From now on, anyone aware of illegality on the part of a government official, including a president, will think twice before sounding the alarm. . .
Similarly, Trump’s ongoing intrusions into the justice department (DoJ) and the FBI aren’t just efforts to derail investigations of his wrongdoing. They’re attacks on the system of impartial justice itself.
Trump’s attorney general, William Barr, is supposed to be responsible to the American people. Instead he’s become Trump’s advocate. Barr even advised the White House not to turn over the whistleblower complaint to Congress.
After misleading the public on the contents of Robert Mueller’s report, Barr bowed to Trump’s demand that the department look into the origin of the FBI investigation that had led to the Mueller report.
And now, after the DoJ’s own inspector general has found that the FBI had plenty of evidence to start its Russia inquiry – more than 100 contacts between members of the Trump campaign and Russian agents during the 2016 campaign – Barr refuses to be bound by the findings, and has appointed a prosecutor to launch yet another inquiry into the origins of the Russia investigation.
The deeper systemic corrosion: from now on, attorneys general won’t be presumed to be administering impartial justice, and the findings of special counsels and inspectors general will have less finality and legitimacy.
Barr is part of Trump’s private goon squad, along with Rudy Giuliani, chief enabler Mick Mulvaney and Trump’s resident white supremacist, Stephen Miller.
Giuliani is using the authority of the presidency to mount a rogue foreign policy designed to keep Trump in power. It’s double lawlessness: Giuliani is bending the law and he’s accountable to no one. . .
You see the pattern: whistleblowers intimidated, the justice department politicized, findings of special counsels and inspectors general distorted or ignored, foreign policy made by a private citizen unaccountable to anybody, rogue military officers and rogue sheriffs pardoned.
Each instance is disturbing on its own. Viewed as a whole, Trump’s lawlessness is systematically corrupting justice in the US. (Underscored emphasis added.)
Trump's latest crime spree: With pandemic as cover, he's going for epic corruption
Trump knows he's in trouble, and wants to fire everybody who might stop him looting the place before November
Donald Trump is on a search-and-destroy mission to remove anyone who might get in the way of him committing more crimes or using the federal government as a personal piggybank for himself and his friends. And he's using the coronavirus pandemic as a cover, knowing that both the media and Congress are too busy dealing with the crisis to prioritize Trump's obsession with maximizing his level of criminality and corruption.
Last week, with the media preoccupied with rising death tolls and exploding unemployment figures, Trump fired Michael Atkinson, the inspector general for intelligence services, as a clear cut act of revenge against Atkinson for reporting the original Ukraine whistleblower complaint to Congress last summer. That complaint, of course, exposed Trump's criminal conspiracy to blackmail Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky into a phony investigation of former Vice President Joe Biden, who is now certain to be Trump's Democratic opponent in the 2020 election. (Bernie Sanders officially suspended his campaign on Wednesday.) The result was Trump's impeachment by the House of Representatives, which should have led to his removal from office — if Senate Republicans weren't willing to sign off on any crime he wishes to commit.
Trump described Atkinson as "not a big Trump fan, I can tell you," as if that justified firing an inspector general who fulfilled his legal responsibility to report a president's potentially criminal actions to Congress.
On Tuesday, Trump removed another inspector general, Glenn Fine, who oversees the Defense Department. Fine was originally set to chair the committee that oversees how the $2 trillion in coronavirus relief funds will be disbursed. Trump would like to replace him with Jason Abend, a Customs and Border Protection official. This move, coupled with reports that Trump is appointing Brian Miller, one of his personal lawyers — who has publicly sneered at the idea that Congress should have the power to hold the executive branch accountable— as the special inspector general overseeing stimulus spending should make the president's intentions clear. . . (Underscored emphasis added.)
Banana Republic or Legalistic Lawlessness?
There was never any mystery about Donald Trump’s ignorance of the Constitution or his disdain for the rule of law. He has made it clear again and again that he views the presidency—when he holds it, that is—as nothing less than an autocracy, where he has the “absolute right” to do anything that strikes his fancy.
As far back as June 2016, I wrote a column here on Verdict warning that Trump’s candidacy foretold “the Beginning of the End of Constitutional Democracy in the U.S.” I soon followed that up with a column arguing that even a Trump loss in that election (which at that time seemed all but certain) would not end the constitutional threat, because Republicans—even those who had not yet bent the knee to Trump—hated the Democrats so much that they were willing to do anything to hold power.
We would do well to recall, moreover, that all of this was before Republicans rolled over on the Access Hollywood tape, Trump’s threat not to accept losing the 2016 election, Charlottesville, the Muslim ban, the Kavanaugh nomination, the fake state of emergency to divert funds to build a border wall, and the ten crimes that Robert Mueller laid out in his report (which was anything but an exoneration).
Oh, and of course, it was long before Republicans decided that coercing an ally to make up politically useful falsehoods about Joe Biden—and then completely obstructing Congress’s investigation—was just fine, and that hearing witnesses in an impeachment trial was too much of a bother. (Underscored emphasis added.)
“Lawlessness Normalized”: What Acquitting Donald Trump Means
Watching the Republican-led U.S. Senate cave to our lawless president, Donald Trump, and assure him acquittal in his impeachment trial, was worse than watching a slow-moving train wreck. It was like watching a slow-moving suicide.
The suicide of the rule of law — a sine qua non of our American experiment.
After weeks of fact-finding by the House impeachment inquiry, and after days of opening arguments and Senators’ questioning in the Senate trial — all focused on Trump’s extortionate “favor” put to a foreign power (Ukraine): the quid pro quo of dirt on a re-election rival for badly-needed military aid — the question became: Would the Senate defy Trump and vote to call for witnesses and documents — both of which Trump debarred in the House inquiry — in order to conduct a proper trial?
Additionally, Trump’s former national security advisor John Bolton was waving his arms wildly, declaring his readiness to testify about Trump’s “pressure campaign” on Ukraine — a first-hand witness who could satisfy the Republicans’ dismissal of the Democrats’ case as all based on hearsay. (Bolton’s forthcoming book is titled “The Room Where It Happened.”) That Bolton refused to testify earlier in the House, even threatening to sue, the Democrats could let pass, if he testified in the Senate.
But no, the Republicans could not allow it. With the exception of two profiles in courage — Maine’s Susan Collins and Utah’s Mitt Romney — the Senate voted against ensuring a proper trial, falling in party line: 51 to 49. “World’s greatest deliberative body”? Not.
This is far more than lamentation about partisan loss; this is foreboding. Foreboding about institutional collapse, for one. With the Senate caving to our lawless president, how can the Senate cite Trump’s forthcoming lawlessness (and it will come), when it just surrendered, without much of a defense, its principal check — the impeachment option? What happens now to Senate oversight, or to its investigative function, or even to its legitimacy as a branch co-equal to the executive?
But what really is foreboding is this: Our lawless president, once “acquitted” (the scare-quotes indicate faux acquittal), can and will operate without any guardrails at all — legal, institutional, moral. We are now at the mercy of Trump’s gut, his whims, his spite and his furies. We truly are in uncharted waters, without map or compass. . . (Underscored emphasis added.)
In looking back at the 2016 presidential campaign, it is almost impossible to find statements and actions of the Roman Catholic bishops in support of candidate Trump. This is a departure from their activities during the 2000 and 2004 campaigns in open support of George W. Bush. However, there are Roman Catholics who perceived that priests did indeed advocate voting for Trump:
Some Catholics say politics were prevalent in parishes ahead of election
The numbers are in and a majority of Catholic voters backed the winner of Tuesday’s election, Donald J. Trump. Helping drive up those numbers, some Catholics say, were clergy and parish leaders who spent the weeks running up to the election offering support for the Republican nominee.
Perhaps the most high-profile case came in mid-October from St. Kevin’s Church in Warwick, R.I., where local media reported that the Rev. Robert L. Marciano gave a homily in which he said Hillary Clinton and Democratic leaders “hate Catholics.” . . .
While Father Marciano’s words may have been especially heated, he wasn’t alone when it came to introducing politics at the pulpit in the weeks leading up to the presidential election.
Don Powell, a Catholic in the Diocese of Orange, Calif., told America that he heard homilies on the two Sundays before the election that sounded to him like endorsements for Mr. Trump.
“The priest told us that the abortion issue superseded other issues like immigrants’ rights” and that Catholics “should never vote for a pro-choice candidate,” Mr. Powell wrote in an email. . .
Mr. Powell’s experience isn’t unique.
A Catholic in the Archdiocese of Detroit, Stephen McKenney, said that a deacon at his church preached last Sunday that Catholics voting in the election should be concerned with only five issues, all related to life and marriage.
The deacon, Mr. McKenney recalled, said that just one candidate aligns with the church on those issues and that many of his priest friends were “voting for him”—a clear reference to Mr. Trump. . .
Elsewhere, letters and voting guides were published in church bulletins ahead of Tuesday’s vote.
For example, a letter written by Bishop William Murphy of Rockville Centre, which comprises Long Island, was published in bulletins and read at Mass.
Some believe that Bishop Murphy implied in the letter that Catholics could not vote for Mrs. Clinton or her running mate, Tim Kaine, a practicing Catholic who supports abortion rights but personally accepts church teaching on abortion. . .
In the end, some of the pro-Trump politicking may have worked. Mr. Trump did well Tuesday with Catholics overall, winning the backing of 52 percent of Catholic voters, a group President Barack Obama won in 2008 and 2012. Among white voters, support was even greater for the president-elect. Six in 10 white Catholics supported him, while just 26 percent of Hispanic Catholics voted for him.
Now that the election is over, some bishops, like such as Archbishop Joseph Kurtz, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, are calling for unity. (Underscored emphasis added.)
The Bishops apparently did not openly support Trump, and probably had reservations about him because of the immigration issue and his open clash with Pope Francis. However, the anti-abortion movement created and fostered by the Bishops clearly paved the way for Trump's election victory in 2016 and the hierarchy is now paving the way for his re-election. This is all in furtherance of overturning the existing settled law on abortion, in itself a lawless objective, to impose the Roman Catholic dogma of the immortality of the soul on the nation. Note the following statement of Leo XIII in his encyclical Libertas:
4. As the Catholic Church declares in the strongest terms the simplicity, spirituality, and immortality of the soul, so with unequalled constancy and publicity she ever also asserts its freedom. These truths she has always taught, and has sustained them as a dogma of faith, and whensoever heretics or innovators have attacked the liberty of man, the Church has defended it and protected this noble possession from destruction. History bears witness to the energy with which she met the fury of the Manichaeans and others like them; and the earnestness with which in later years she defended human liberty at the Council of Trent, and against the followers of Jansenius, is known to all. At no time, and in no place, has she held truce with fatalism. (Original italics; underscored emphasis added.)
The reader will note the doublespeak about "freedom" of the soul, "the liberty of man," and "human liberty at the Council of Trent." Liberty of conscience for the individual??
From the perspective of Bible prophecy Donald Trump's lawlessness is not simply that of a wicked man. He is the product of a spiritual combination foretold by the Apostle Paul in II Thessalonians 2:1-10:
Concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered to him, we ask you, brothers, not to become easily unsettled or alarmed by some prophecy, report or letter supposed to have come from us, saying that the day of the Lord has already come. Don’t let anyone deceive you in any way, for that day will not come until the rebellion occurs and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the man doomed to destruction. He will oppose and will exalt himself over everything that is called God or is worshipped, so that he sets himself up in God’s temple, proclaiming himself to be God. Don’t you remember that when I was with you I used to tell you these things? And now you know what is holding him back, so that he may be revealed at the proper time. For the secret power of lawlessness is already at work; but the one who now holds it back will continue to do so till he is taken out of the way. And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will overthrow with the breath of his mouth and destroy by the splendor of his coming. The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with the work of Satan displayed in all kinds of counterfeit miracles, signs and wonders, and in every sort of evil that deceives those who are perishing. They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie and so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness.(NIV; underscored italics added.)
Trump could not have won the presidency but by the combination of the papal Beast, "the lawless one," and those in the Protestant world deluded by their departure from the Truth into forming the image of the Beast. All are under the control of the one who "abode not in the truth" (John 8:44,) for Rev. 13:2 reveals that it is Satan (Rev. 12:9) who gives the Beast "his power, and his seat, and great authority."
Clearly empowered by the Beast and the False Prophet politically, in the spiritual realm his lawlessness also identifies him with the Beast.
As of June 1, 2020, Donald Trump's use of raw, unconstitutional, military power against righteous public protests over the murder of George Floyd has caused alarm to military and political leaders alike about his assault on the nation's democracy.
PART IV: FACILITATING ABSOLUTE POWER AND CORRUPTION OF THE ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE
OPUS DEI AND POPE FRANCIS EXPOSED
LEONARD LEO AND THE FEDERALIST SOCIETYWILLIAM BARR
MITCH MCCONNELLThe agencies of the Roman Catholic hierarchy that are pitted against the Constitution of the United States, written to guarantee the separation of church and state, freedom of conscience, and individual liberty, are far too many to be mentioned in this paper. Standing out among individuals and organizations now working feverishly to consolidate absolute power over the nation and the corruption of the constitutional administration of justice are the following:-
OPUS DEI AND POPE FRANCIS EXPOSED
Critically important information has been published that among the Roman Catholic secret societies Opus Dei is in the ascendancy at the Vatican under Pope Francis. Also, according to the report Opus dei "at the top is a secret society of international bankers, financiers, businessmen and their supporters." This would explain much about the wide influence exercised by the society over the body politic. The following report is exceedingly important. Lengthy passages are therefore quoted:
Opus Dei Influence Rises to the Top in the Vatican
Opus Dei, an official institution of the Catholic Church, at the top is a secret society of international bankers, financiers, businessmen and their supporters. Their goal is the same as other plutocrats – unbridled power – except they use the influence of the Catholic Church and its worldwide network of institutions exempt from both taxes and financial reporting requirements to advance rightwing parties and governments.
A year after Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s elevation as head of the Church and his many appointments, the dust has settled. Three cardinals have emerged as the most powerful in this papacy; all have close ties to Opus Dei. Two now control all Vatican finance.
Still the most exhaustively researched book written about “The Work” as it is referred to by its members, Their Kingdom Come (1997, 2006) by Robert Hutchison, a Canadian financial journalist, traces the growth of Opus Dei financial power “by all available means” – deception, dirty tricks, even “physical muscle” like poisonings which mimic heart attacks. “What gives Opus Dei its importance is the influence it wields and also that it deploys its immense financial resources…Opus Dei knows very well that money rules the world,” Javier Sainz Moreno, professor of Law at Madrid University, told Hutchison. One of their goals was to control the Vatican’s wealth, now closer than ever to being realized.
Like many religious cults, the members at the bottom are sincere believers that Opus Dei is the path for personal holiness. Many are “numeraries,” men and women vowed to celibacy who live in communal residences and hand over their earnings to the organization. This creates workers totally dedicated to their assigned tasks, assures a steady stream of revenue and makes it difficult for members to leave. “Supernumeraries” are married and live independently but are still required to make large contributions and send their children to Opus Dei schools if available. At all levels, the names of the lay members are secret unless self-disclosed. Opus Dei also has an order of publicly identified priests and prelates.
Opus Dei’s only “charity” is founding schools, mostly business schools and student centers at the world’s leading universities to train and recruit a continuous supply of professionals dedicated to Opus Dei/Catholic goals. Opus Dei is “significantly connected to 479 universities and high schools,” according to journalist Michael Walsh based on a confidential report submitted to the Vatican in 1979. . .
Probably Opus Dei’s largest financial institution is Banco Santander S.A., “the largest bank in the Eurozone by market value and one of the largest banks in the world in terms of market capitalization.” Santander funds Opus Dei schools. “Santander’s interest in higher education is a deep interest, long term, because we understand that at the university are studying the leaders who will run the country in the future,” explained a company official.
“Opus Dei pursues the Vatican’s agenda through the presence of its members in secular governments and institutions and through a vast array of academic, medical, and grassroots pursuits. Its constant effort to increase its presence in civil institutions of power is supported by growth in the organization as a whole….Their work in the public sphere breaches the church-state division that is fundamental to modern democracy,” wrote Gordon Urquhart author of The Pope’s Armada: Unlocking the Secrets of Mysterious and Powerful New Sects in the Church (1995).
“It’s widely known that Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia, Samuel Alito, and Clarence Thomas belong to Opus Dei – and that Chief Justice John Roberts may also be a member,” stated Matthew Fox, a former priest, progressive theologian and author of more than 23 books.
“They’re in the CIA, the FBI,” said Fox. “Daniel Ellsberg recently told me that some of the ranking commanders of our military are also Opus Dei,” Fox stated in another interview. Veteran investigative reporter Seymour Hersh made a similar observation. “Hersh stated that Gen. Stanley McChrystal, Vice Admiral William McRaven and others in the Joint Special Operations Command (the group responsible for the assassination of Osama Bin Laden) were members of the Knights of Malta and Opus Dei. ‘They see themselves as protecting [Christians] from the Muslims….And this is their function.’ Hersh added that members of these societies have developed a secret set of insignias that represent ‘the whole notion that this is a culture war between religions.’” . . .
Robert P. George, a Princeton University professor closely associated with Opus Dei, changed the landscape of U.S. politics. Neocon politico Deal Hudson stated that “If there really is a vast, right-wing conspiracy, its leaders probably meet in George’s basement.” Referred to by the New York Times as “the country’s most influential conservative Christian thinker,” it was George’s study conducted in the late 1990s showing that allegiance to the Republican Party depended not so much on religious affiliation as the frequency of church attendance which Karl Rove used to direct support for George W. Bush into pulpits, church bulletins, parking lot pamphlets and mailing lists taken from parish rosters. . .
After a year of concentrated activity to make sure his assets are better managed and under his control, including the creation of four commissions, the hiring of six international consulting firms which service the plutocracy together with appointments of trusted allies, Pope Francis established the Secretariat of the Economy this past Feb. 24.
He appointed Australian Cardinal George Pell as its head reporting directly to him. With “authority over all economic and administrative activities within the Holy See and the Vatican City State,” this makes Pell de facto manager of the entire Roman Curia since he holds the purse strings.
After becoming an archbishop, Pell invited Opus Dei to establish themselves in Melbourne and then Sydney. Under Pell’s patronage, “Opus Dei’s star is on the rise, it is said, and that of others – including other more established groups within the Church – is sinking,” Sydney Morning Herald’s religious affairs columnist wrote in January 2002. This reporter saw “signs of a new elitism….a clerical culture is being encouraged in which there is a highly select ‘in’ crowd around Pell.”
Pell has maintained a close relationship with Australia’s conservative PM, Tony Abbott, and his party for decades. Days before Pope Bergoglio appointed Pell on April 13, 2013, to his “G8” group of cardinals who would advise the pope on “governing the Church,” Pell attended a “Gala Dinner” celebrating the Melbourne-based Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) an “ultraconservative think tank.” Rupert Murdoch was guest of honor and Abbott the keynote speaker. (Murdoch was awarded a papal knighthood by Pope John Paul II for “promoting the interests of society, the Church and the Holy See.”) . . .
Along with the Secretariat of the Economy, the pope also created a new Council for the Economy which “will consider policies and practices and to prepare and analyze reports on the economic-administrative activities of the Holy See.” This council is comprised of eight prelates and seven laymen “reflecting various parts of the world.” As we have seen a year after the pope named his G8 “from the five continents of the world” only those close to Opus Dei have advanced in power; the rest have hardly been heard from since. Tokenism is becoming evident in all of Bergoglio’s group appointments. By all accounts, all power rests firmly in the pope and those close to him.
The Council for the Economy will be coordinated by Cardinal Reinhard Marx, another member of Bergoglio’s G8. Marx was the invited speaker for 300 guests of Opus Dei at a meeting held in the Deutsche Bank, Germany’s central bank. He has presided at Masses celebrating Opus Dei’s founder, Josemaria Escrivá, and visits the Opus Dei center for university students in Munich.
The Work is said to be very powerful in Germany’s financial capital of Frankfurt. Der Speigel observed that “There is hardly a German bishop who does not regard the organization with favor.” . . .
Pope Bergoglio has verbally attacked the global economic system as based on a “god called money,” and has urged international financiers to break down “the barriers of individualism and the slavery of profit at all cost.” Yet again and again, Bergoglio has appointed those who labor for the plutocracy to manage his own wealth. Widely reported as “cleaning up” Vatican finances, the pope has never appointed any forensic accountants or other specialists from any law enforcement or government regulatory agency whose expertise is curbing unethical/illegal finance to advise him about the notoriously dishonest Vatican finances. The seven laymen on the Council for the Economy reflect this. . .
Kudos to former Fox News correspondent and member of Opus Dei, Gregory Burke, Vatican senior communications adviser for brilliantly manipulating the news. Burke said during an interview with the Washington Post, “I would love to bring some Roger Ailes into this job,” but Burke has been doing just fine. What was the most prominent headline about the Church in the past two weeks after Obama meeting the pope and the formation of a sex abuse commission? “Pope Francis Removes German ‘Bishop of Bling.’” (Underscored emphasis added.)
It always stretched credulity to believe that the current Roman Pontiff is a liberal opposed to, or even divorced from, the right-wing Bishops in America who are in alliance with the Evangelicals in the theocratic grab for power. The above report gives the lie to the image of a kind and compassionate Pope, deeply committed to the relief of poverty and suffering. If he harbors Opus Dei at the highest levels of the Vatican government, he must also support the work of the society in America. It is inconceivable that he spurns the power wielded by Opus Dei in the United States:
Opus Dei’s Influence Is Felt in All of Washington’s Corridors of Power
The Opus Dei Catholic Information Center’s “members and leaders continue to have an outsize impact on policy and politics. It is the conservative spiritual and intellectual center … and its influence is felt in all of Washington’s corridors of power,” stated the Washington Post. . .
Opus Dei’s influence is enormous in the U.S. judiciary.
“The center’s board includes Leonard Leo, executive vice president of the Federalist Society, which helped shepherd the Supreme Court nominations of Brett M. Kavanaugh and Neil M. Gorsuch. White House counsel Pat Cipollone is a former board member, as is William P. Barr, who served as attorney general under President George H.W. Bush and is now President Trump’s nominee for the same position.” Barr, a “committed Catholic,” was highly recommended by Leonard Leo.
The U.S. judiciary has been shaped not only through Leo’s control over Trump’s judicial appointments but also by the Judicial Crisis Network (JCN) directed by Leo and run by Carrie Severino, a former law clerk for supreme court justice Clarence Thomas.
The JCN is a 501(c)(4) organization, meaning its donors are secret. “It has spent millions across the country to influence the elections of judges and attorneys general as well as judicial appointment and confirmation processes.”
“Leo’s efforts to ensure that Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito were confirmed engaged the dark money spending power of JCN. In 2005 and 2006, Leo and the Federalist Society worked with JCN to coordinate radio and online ads as well as on grassroots efforts to support the confirmation of the right-wing justices.
To block the appointment of Barack Obama’s choice, Merrick Garland, and support the confirmation of Justice Gorsuch, Leo helped coordinate the JCN’s expenditure of $17 million. The campaign was highly effective in allowing Gorsuch, the Federalist Society’s pick, to take the place many thought rightly belonged to Merrick Garland.” . . .
“Opus Dei pursues the Vatican’s agenda through the presence of its members in secular governments and institutions and through a vast array of academic, medical, and grassroots pursuits. Its constant effort [is] to increase its presence in civil institutions of power. [T]heir work in the public sphere breaches the church-state division that is fundamental to modern democracy,” noted Gordon Urquhart, author of The Pope’s Armada: Unlocking the Secrets of Mysterious and Powerful New Sects in the Church (1995).
“Opus Dei uses the Catholic Church for its own ends which are money and power …. Its members form a transnational elite. They seek to colonize the summits of power. They work with stealth – ‘holy discretion’ – and practice ‘divine deception,’” Robert Hutchison wrote in the introduction to his book, Their Kingdom Come: Inside the Secret World of Opus Dei. . .
Vatican Connection
That Newt Gingrich is close to Opus Dei helps explain Trump’s appointment of Callista Gingrich as U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican. (Newt’s three marriages would have raised eyebrows in the Vatican diplomatic corps even though the first two were annulled when he became Catholic and married Callista.)
Newt was an early and constant supporter of Trump. He provides Pope Francis with direct access to Trump. For Trump, he has trusted emissary in a diplomatic corps described as a “prime listening post” in global affairs.
Trump attended Callista’s swearing in ceremony in October 2017. . .
The necessity for “economic” officers is less obvious. The pope is also head of a global network that can act as a conduit for “dark money” thanks to “religious” exemptions granting the Church monetary secrecy in the world’s financial centers. That is a magnate for Opus Dei to maintain power inside the Catholic Church.
Pope Francis has made sure that the Vatican retains its expertise and capacity in this regard. He has hired and appointed vulture capitalists and Opus Dei members and associates to manage his assets. And now he has an American ambassador and embassy staff as allies.
Again Pope Francis' connection to Opus Dei is readily apparent. He has successfully hidden behind "plausible deniability, and the Roman Catholic propaganda machine has shielded him by promoting a genial and kind portrait of the man. However, as Pope he is very much "the man of sin" and "the lawless one." The Word of God does not lie!
The UK website churchandstate.org.uk/ is a goldmine of information for Seventh-day Adventists who are carefully watching prophetic religious liberty developments. Note this report: Trump praises Catholic archbishop who urges him to fight ‘deep state’ protests (Cf. ‘Bling Bishop’ a classic case of Vatican’s ‘Ironic Employment Division’.)
LEONARD LEO AND THE FEDERALIST SOCIETY
Leonard Leo
The Secrets of Leonard Leo, the Man Behind Trump’s Supreme Court Pick
A Catholic fundamentalist who controls a network of right-wing groups funded by dark money has put three justices on the court. He’s about to get a fourth.
When President Donald Trump nominates a justice to the Supreme Court on Monday night, he will be carrying out the agenda of a small, secretive network of extremely conservative Catholic activists already responsible for placing three justices (Alito, Roberts, and Gorsuch) on the high court.
And yet few people know who they are—until now.
At the center of the network is Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society, the association of legal professionals that has been the pipeline for nearly all of Trump’s judicial nominees. (Leo is on leave from the Federalist Society to personally assist Trump in picking a replacement for Justice Anthony Kennedy.) His formal title is executive vice president, but that role belies Leo’s influence.
Directly or through surrogates, he has placed dozens of life-tenure judges on the federal bench; effectively controls the Judicial Crisis Network, which led the opposition to President Obama’s high court nominee, Judge Merrick Garland; he heavily influences the Becket Fund law firm that represented Hobby Lobby in its successful challenge of contraception; and now supervises admissions and hires at the George Mason Law School, newly renamed in memory of Justice Antonin Scalia.
“Leonard Leo was a visionary,” said Tom Carter, who served as Leo’s media relations director when he was chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), in an exclusive interview with The Daily Beast. “He figured out twenty years ago that conservatives had lost the culture war. Abortion, gay rights, contraception—conservatives didn’t have a chance if public opinion prevailed. So they needed to stack the courts.”
Amazingly, said Carter, Leo has succeeded in this mission with few people taking notice.
“The Christian right has been written about a lot, but hardly anyone talks about the Catholic right,” Carter said. “Four Supreme Court justices—they’re more successful than anybody: the NRA, the Israel lobby, Big Pharma, no one else has had that kind of impact.”
Catholic Fundamentalist
Leo is a member of the secretive, extremely conservative Knights of Malta, a Catholic order founded in the 12th century that functions as a quasi-independent sovereign nation with its own diplomatic corps (separate from the Vatican), United Nations status, and a tremendous amount of money and land. . .
The reader will recall the prominent personalities in the Reagan cabinet who were members of the Knights of Malta, and the indisputable fact that Chief Justice John Roberts is also a member. Catholic fundamentalism is at work in making the Supreme Court the instrument of religious ideology.
Executive vice president, Federalist Society
Trump’s court architect
If all goes according to plan, Leonard Leo will be able to take credit for something no president has accomplished for decades: installing four Supreme Court justices. Both of President Donald Trump’s nominees come directly from a list Leo compiled. They join John Roberts and Samuel Alito, also shepherded by Leo, and dozens of lower court federal judges across the country.
As executive vice president of the Federalist Society, Leo has been the quiet architect of a pivotal shift to the right throughout the federal judiciary. . . Today, under Leo’s leadership, the group’s roughly 70,000 members represent a vast web of conservative legal power.
Leo first met Trump in March 2016 at the law offices of the firm Jones Day, near the Capitol. Fellow Federalist Don McGahn, then a partner at the firm and now White House counsel, had invited Leo to help hone the candidate’s message on federal judges. Trump, with his extramarital dalliances, Big Mac appetite and apparent lack of religious faith, couldn’t have stood in starker contrast to Leo, a devout Roman Catholic who attends daily Mass, has met three popes, and lives with his large family and wife of nearly 30 years in a brick home in the suburbs of Washington. He and his Federalists are sophisticated legal thinkers who embrace a deeply conservative philosophy, unlike the temperamental commander in chief. Yet the two men hit it off that March day, and Leo came away convinced Trump was serious about remaking the federal courts.
“Did I vote for him? Hell, yes,” Leo said in an interview. “When he makes a promise on policy issues, he keeps it. So, in that respect, it’s not hard for me. In terms of his own personal life, it’s not my place to judge.”
Out of that meeting came the idea for “the list,” the now-famous inventory of potential high-court candidates that reassured evangelical voters—and some establishment conservatives—at a crucial moment in Trump’s campaign. As the lawyerly Leo puts it, “The president helped himself win the election” when he said he would use the list Leo compiled.
"The No Religious Test Clause of the United States Constitution is a clause within Article VI, Clause 3. By its plain terms, no federal officeholder or employee can be required to adhere to or accept any particular religion or doctrine as a prerequisite to holding a federal office or a federal government job,") (No Religious Test Clause - Wikipedia.) By the actions of Roman Catholic fundamentalists, the composition of the highest constitutional court in the land is in violation of the Constitution.
Trump’s Judge Whisperer Promised to Take Our Laws Back to the 1930s
Last week, the Washington Post published a profile of Federalist Society Executive Vice President Leonard Leo, focusing in part on a speech he gave to the Council for National Policy in which he warmly predicted the Supreme Court would soon return to the pre–New Deal era of “limited, constitutional government.” Leo believes, in other words, that the court’s view of the Constitution was better off 85 years ago than it is today. . .
Last week, the Washington Post published a profile of Federalist Society Executive Vice President Leonard Leo, focusing in part on a speech he gave to the Council for National Policy in which he warmly predicted the Supreme Court would soon return to the pre–New Deal era of “limited, constitutional government.” Leo believes, in other words, that the court’s view of the Constitution was better off 85 years ago than it is today. . .
“This is really, I think, at least in recent memory, a newfound embrace of limited constitutional government in our country. I don’t think this has really happened since probably before the New Deal.” . . . The outlawing of segregation is settled law in our country, and nobody would dare dream of returning to those antiquated judicial interpretations, you might say? Several of Trump’s judicial nominees have conspicuously, outrageously, refused to say whether they thought Brown v. Board of Education, which ended legal school segregation in 1954, was correctly decided.
In the 1930s, through a combination of discriminatory literacy tests, poll taxes, “good character” requirements, and straight-up violence, less than 1 percent of black people in the Deep South—where they represented more than a third of the population—were registered to vote. . . Discriminatory voting practices of this sort weren’t banned until the 1965 Voting Rights Act, the most significant provision of which was gutted six years ago in an opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts (whom Leo also helped elevate to the court).
In the 1930s, women had no constitutional right to equality. They could legally be kept off juries, given different work hours, paid less money, and imprisoned for using birth control. It would be another four decades before the Supreme Court struck down even a single law for discriminating against women. Kavanaugh and Gorsuch—again, both products of Leo’s vetting—recently dissented from the court’s temporary blocking of a Louisiana law that would have left the entire state with just a single doctor able to perform abortions.
In the first half of the 20th century, the police could beat confessions out of arrestees. Poor defendants had no right to a lawyer. Evidence could be illegally seized and used in prosecutions. In 1944, for example, South Carolina executed a 14-year-old black boy named George Stinney for the murders of two white girls. He was questioned alone, without his parents or a lawyer present, and convicted by an all-white jury after a two-hour trial and 10 minutes of deliberation. He wasn’t allowed to appeal. He had to sit on books to fit into the headpiece of the electric chair. Only in 2014, 70 years too late, did a circuit court judge vacate the 14-year-old Stinney’s murder conviction. The Stinney case tells you all you need to know about criminal justice in the age Leo wants to bring back.
The 1930s was of course the decade of the Great Depression, when unemployment hit 25 percent and most Americans lived in poverty. The post–New Deal court decisions Leo wishes to repudiate are the ones that gave the government the power to enact minimum wage laws, to create unemployment insurance and Social Security, to provide health insurance to the aged and destitute, and to give workers collective bargaining rights. In the 1930s, those too old to work and too poor not to could often expect a quick but painful death. This is the human toll of “limited government.”
All of the talk of "limited government" by Roman Catholic fundamentalists is intended to confuse. America's constitutional "limited government" is clear in what it promises:
Guiding Principles of the Constitution (HA)
Over the years, the Constitution has acquired an almost sacred status for Americans. Part of the reason for that is its durability: the Constitution has survived, with relatively few changes, for more than two centuries. It ensures stability and continuity in American political life. Furthermore, it has come to represent who we are as a people and a nation. It symbolizes our collective values in a way that most Americans—no matter what their political views—are able to embrace.
Establishing a Limited Government
The framers’ main goal in crafting the Constitution was to create a system of limited government. They knew that absolute power often leads to the abuse of rights. On the other hand, they also knew that a lack of governmental power could result in chaos and instability. The framers tried to make sure that religious As James Madison wrote in The Federalist No. 51, “You must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place to oblige it to control itself.” The limited government envisioned in the Constitution is based on six guiding principles: (1) popular sovereignty, (2) the rule of law, (3) separation of powers and checks and balances, (4) federalism, (5) an independent judiciary, and (6) individual rights.
Roman Catholic absolutism is the antithesis of the above "six guiding principles," and the use of the term "limited government" as the objective of Rome is a colossal fraud. The Roman Catholic fundamentalists are referring to the papacy's Natural Law concept of Subsidiarity.
The anti-abortion conservative quietly guiding Trump's supreme court pick
Leonard Leo, who is advising Trump on his nominee, is a mild-mannered Republican who has become one of the Washington’s most influential people
. . .Leo, a 53-year-old father of six, appears in the media as the mild-mannered public face of a strident campaign to reshape the American judiciary. It is a mission that has spanned several administrations, driven by Leo and fellow devout Catholics, and bankrolled with tens of millions of dollars from unidentified conservative donors. More than a decade ago, it helped secure George W Bush’s confirmation of Justice Samuel Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts.
“No one has been more dedicated to the enterprise of building a supreme court that will overturn Roe v Wade than the Federalist Society’s Leonard Leo,” Ed Whelan, a conservative legal activist and commentator, said in 2016.
Working more behind the scenes is Ann Corkery, a Washington lawyer and fundraiser, who in the 1990s said she was a member of Opus Dei, the hardline Catholic order. Corkery defended the group’s practice of self-flagellation. “People don’t understand sacrifice, the whole idea of why anyone would inflict pain, because the modern notion is to avoid suffering,” she said. Corkery did not respond to emailed questions.
Leo and his wife, Sally, have themselves donated money to a Washington-area school that states its “orientation and spiritual formation are entrusted to Opus Dei”, which has not previously been reported. Leo did not respond to calls and a spokesman did not respond to emailed questions.
Brian Finnerty, a spokesman for Opus Dei in the US, said in an email that the group adheres to the church’s view that “abortion is always wrong”. He said: “The US bishops have been clear that Roe has been a great tragedy for this country, and that the decision should be overturned.” . . .
"Devout Catholics," "tens of millions of dollars from unidentified conservative donors," "Opus Dei, the hardline Catholic order," all of these descriptive terms speak volumes.
The Federalist Society
The following essay includes essential information about the Heritage Foundation which exposes the activist function of the Federalist Society:
Serving God and Mammon: The Rise and Influence of the Heritage Foundation and the Federalist Society
The Creation Project excavates Western history using the conceptual tools of complexity science. The contemporary story that foregrounds this archeological dig emphasizes the philosophical and political influence in the past five decades of a reactionary slice of American Catholicism. In this period, the ideas, organizations, and personalities of impresarios ranging from Antonin Scalia to Robert George to Leonard Leo to Steve Bannon have driven wedge politics and moved the political landscape decisively to the right.
This focus on “radical traditionalist” undercurrents of conservative American politics allows us to explore interesting, important, relevant, and hitherto underreported themes that inflect the conservative crusade to claim control of federal courts for the next 30 years. These themes include:
the intellectual and organizational background to the political success of Culture War Catholics;
the political influence of leading conservative Catholic intellectuals who use philosophies of natural law to frame their perspectives on politics and society; and
the political meaning of the originalist and textualist philosophies of the Federalist Society and of the conservative judges whom they have worked to promote to the federal bench.
The effect of these undercurrents have been to shift American jurisprudence from a historically dominant “New England Protestant” legal culture based on traditions of English common law, commitments to legal precedent, and philosophies of positive law and legal realism to an emergent Catholic jurisprudence based on Thomist natural law and a Constitutional fundamentalism derived from the sacred text assumptions of revealed religion.
The two most important bridge institutions of this shift toward a Catholic jurisprudence are The Heritage Foundation and The Federalist Society . . .
During the 1970s and 1980s (as Jane Mayer and others have written), super-wealthy American businessmen, such as Charles Koch, who were deeply concerned about the direction of American politics and the corrosive effect upon their interests and values of liberal higher education and media establishments, began to systematically funnel vast amounts of money into foundations and think tanks explicitly designed to influence public opinion, public policy, and public morals. While much of this wealth funded libertarian public policy organizations like the Cato Institute, contributors also generously funded development, within the foundation/think tank world, of a neo-Thomist faith-based philosophy designed to spiritually moor the conservative political insurgency.
The Heritage Foundation and the Federalist Society are two of the most influential policy institutes to benefit from these infusions. Both organizations internalize and propagate the baseline precepts of Culture War Catholicism, and both have arguably become institutional foundations of Republican Party power no less significant than Fox News, and perhaps more dangerous because gilded with the sheen of academic respectability. . .
The Heritage Foundation
The Heritage Foundation was established in 1973 with early financial support from Joseph Coors. and under the leadership, initially, of Paul Weyrich, who was also a founder of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and the Moral Majority. Weyrich, who also espoused Dominionism (think Sharia Law for Christians) was generally a hot piece of work functioning, in many respects, as his generation’s Steve Bannon.
Edwin Feulner served as president of the Heritage Foundation for 36 years (from 1977-2013), before briefly returning to this role following the ouster of Jim DeMint). Feulner’s specific organizational and tactical innovation marked a departure from the traditional approach of more “unbiased” and technocratically oriented think tanks such as the Brookings Institution.
Feulner imagined Heritage as both an ideas and advocacy organization, built not to respond after the fact to political and policy developments, but instead to proactively and aggressively shape and influence these developments in relation to philosophically grounded conservative commitments to free enterprise, limited government, individual liberty (including what has become known as “religious liberty”), a vague notion of “traditional” American values, and a strong national defense. Weyrich, and Feulner, both raised as Catholics (as was Coors), also infused their organization with a tough-minded, patristic edge deeply informed by the timeless truths associated with Biblical revelation, canon law, papal teachings, and natural law philosophy.
Heritage cares about political and moral philosophy, with large collections of reports and statements about the founders, conservatism, and progressivism. Heritage cares about religion, as a foundation for freedom, democracy, and civilization. Heritage also cares about laws and policies concerning education, sexuality, gender, conception, contraception, marriage, children, and the family, all of which Heritage views through the lens of religious liberty and an expansive definition of the First Amendment.
In other words, the Heritage Foundation cares about a host of matters that are of bedrock concern to the more conservative, flame-throwing wing of the Catholic Church hierarchy (those, like “St. Louis” Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke, who are more tuned to the Steve Bannon frequency) and that it addresses in rigorously neo-Thomistic philosophical language which one almost never encounters in other policy research environments (see lectures on natural law from Diarmuid O’Scannlain, Ryan Anderson, David Forte, and Russell Kirk).
With a narrower and more exclusively legal and constitutional focus, the Federalist Society in many respects operates as a junior partner of the Heritage Foundation on matter of legal and judicial policy and advocacy. The Society was founded in the early 1982 as a seedbed for nurturing conservative legal principles among students at otherwise “liberal” law schools.
Early supporters included Attorney General Edwin Meese, Solicitor-General Robert Bork, and Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who became the organization’s beloved godfather until his death in 2016. The Federalist Society’s membership has also included Supreme Court justices John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and literally every Trump nominee to the federal bench. Of course, Scalia, Roberts, Alito, Thomas, and Kavanaugh are (or were) all practicing Catholics, while Gorsuch was raised devoutly Catholic. Robert Bork converted to Catholicism in 1987 at the age of 76.
The Federalist Society’s Executive Vice President, Leonard Leo, is a devout Catholic who served three terms on the U.S. International Committee on Religious Freedom and performed outreach and strategy roles for the Catholic Church in U.S. political campaigns. Leo shepherded the Supreme Court Senate confirmations of John Roberts and Samuel Alito. Leo also closely guided the process that selected Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh to fill the vacant seats of Antonin Scalia and Anthony Kennedy. Grandson of a Brooks Brothers vice-president, Leo is, as Jeffrey Toobin writes, the bella figura of the legal conservative movement, well-accoutered and unflappable. As Toobin also notes, Leonard Leo’s life “has been shaped as much by Catholicism as by conservatism.” . . .
While the overt influence of the traditional menu of Christian religion, sex, and family issues may be less pronounced in the education and advocacy work of the Federalist Society, the organization’s legal focus makes it an ideal vehicle for representing these values in the courtroom and in other public venues concerned with legal philosophy and jurisprudence. . .
The passages quoted above are a scathing indictment of the role of fundamentalist Roman Catholicism in imposing papal doctrines on the nation and dismantling the constitutional separation of church and state. The primary culprits are the USCCB leadership and extremist Roman Catholics; not the Evangelicals as a body who are delusional dupes. Among elected Republicans are ideological soul mates of the Catholic fundamentalists and others who seek power by undemocratic means.
The Federalist Society Just Proved It’s All In for Trump
Last week, the Federalist Society held its annual lawyers’ convention in D.C. For three days, conservative and libertarian attorneys flitted between panels, hearing debates about hot-button legal topics. But the main events were two black-tie dinners: one on Thursday night featuring Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and another on Friday night featuring Attorney General William Barr. Both evenings transformed from intellectual salons into campaign rallies for the Republican Party and Donald Trump. And both further demonstrated a fact that any reasonable observer should already know: The Federalist Society is a fundamentally partisan organization that uses academic debate to conceal its crucial role in the GOP’s judicial nomination machine—and, by extension, Trump’s presidency. . .
This is the Federalist Society that was on display during McConnell and Barr’s speeches last week. We saw a rare public glimpse of it during McConnell’s address, when he bragged that “we have flipped the 2nd Circuit, the 3rd Circuit, and we will flip the 11th Circuit.” The crowd applauded as McConnell described the courts in raw partisan terms: He “flipped” these courts by confirming more Republican appointees, creating a majority of judges nominated by GOP presidents. And why wouldn’t this throng of Federalist Society foot soldiers respond with gratitude? Chief Justice John Roberts may say there are no “Obama judges or Trump judges.” But this crowd knew the truth: The more “Trump judges” McConnell pushes onto the bench, the more likely it is that the courts will rule for the GOP.
McConnell’s speech, however, was downright discreet when compared with Barr’s barnburner the next night. The attorney general’s utterly deranged speech presented a theory of executive authority tailor-made for Trump, describing the president as a monarch who has been unlawfully restrained by courts and Congress. Barr bashed Democrats in overtly partisan terms, accusing them of launching “a war to cripple” Trump’s presidency “by any means necessary.” He charged Democrats with an “unprecedented abuse” of the Senate’s ability to block judges, having apparently slept through the Merrick Garland blockade. And he dismissed Congress’ oversight of the executive as “constant harassment,” concluding that “it is the left that is engaged in the systematic shredding of norms and the undermining of the rule of law.”
Barr’s speech received continual applause and standing ovations throughout his address. The leaders of the Federalist Society had gathered in that room to celebrate their success under the current administration. And Barr delivered the rallying cry they craved: He defended Trump’s lawlessness by reframing the president as a victim of Democratic excess, using constitutional tools to make the executive branch great again.
This kind of grievance-mongering is deeply rooted in the Federalist Society’s ethos. The group launched in 1982 to combat the perceived liberal bias in law schools at the time, and many members still view themselves as a disadvantaged minority. Federalist Society leaders have demanded greater “intellectual diversity” on law school faculties—that is, affirmative action for conservative scholars. But the group is far from an underdog today; it is, rather, a dominating force in the federal judiciary. And that is largely because of Leonard Leo, co-chairman and executive vice president of the Federalist Society.
Those who are committed to the Constitution and the rule of law must be alarmed by the outrageous, but accurate, boasts of Senate Majority leader McConnell as reported above. There is more to be included in this paper on the role of the Republican Senate in the erosion of democratic governance and the administration of justice in conformity with the Constitution.
Standing out at present as a powerful corrupter of the rule of law is William Barr, appointed as Attorney-General of the United States of America, now substituting as Attorney-General of the Donald Trump administration. His name has appeared in quotations earlier in this paper.
A review of earlier quotations in the section on Donald Trump's lawlessness is relevant to consideration of Barr's actions which are consciously designed to destroy America's liberal democracy: Barr, in particular; For Barr, however; Trump’s attorney general, William Barr.
Barr's theocratic agenda is exposed in the following article:
Trump’s attorney general wants god’s moral order enforced by government
As the nation lurches closer towards being ruled by a tyrannical dictator with unwavering support from the Republican Party, the American people are ignoring an even greater threat to their waning secular democracy – rule by tyrannical theocrats.
The rise of theocrats in powerful positions of authority is particularly disconcerting because not only was America created as a secular nation with a secular Constitution, but because the theocrats running the federal government represent a very small minority of the population. And now Trump has given that vicious minority what they elected him to do in the first place; another radical Christian extremist, William Barr, in a powerful federal government position.
J. Beauregard Sessions was a legitimate threat to America’s secular government as Trump’s attorney general, but his theocratic aspirations paled in comparison to Trump’s latest theocratic cabinet member – a conservative Catholic malcontent who is unlikely to ever defend the U.S. Constitution because it is a secular document. It is noteworthy that Sessions only stated that, according to his mind, the separation of church and state in the Constitution is a concept that is unconstitutional. However, his replacement ardently believes that America’s government is duty-bound to enforce god’s laws because there is no place for secularism.
In a 1995 essay, Barr expressed the extremist Christian view that “American government should not be secular;” secularism is an abomination in Barr’s theocratic mind despite the law of the land is unmistakably secular. Furthermore, Barr contends America’s government is supposed to be imposing “a transcendent moral order with objective standards of right and wrong that flows from God’s eternal law;” eternal law best dictated by the Vatican and taught in public schools at taxpayer’s expense.
It is true that as attorney general William Barr will defend Trump’s criminality and corruption; it is one of the only reasons Trump nominated him. However, the real danger to the nation is Barr’s belief that the government’s primary function should be defending and enforcing his god’s moral edicts while ardently opposing any legislative branch effort to make secular laws according to the secular Constitution. . .
Barr epitomizes the typical extremist religious fanatic by blaming everything from crime to divorce to sexually transmitted diseases on what he alleges is “the federal government’s non-stop attacks on traditional religious values.” In fact, he joins no small number of Republican evangelical extremists who demand that taxpayers fund religious instruction, specifically Catholic religious instruction, in public schools. Barr, as a matter of fact, has called for the United States government to subsidize Catholic education and categorically called for federal legislation to promote Vatican edicts to “restrain sexual immorality;” an explicit reference to his religion’s ban on homosexuality, extramarital sex, and “artificial” birth control. Don’t believe it?
In an address to “The Governor’s Conference on Juvenile Crime, Drugs and Gangs,” Barr condemned the idea of adhering to the U.S. Constitution’s mandated separation of church and state in the public education system. The theocrat said:
“This moral lobotomy of public schools has been based on extremist notions of separation of church and state or on theories of moral relativism which reject the notion that there are standards of rights or wrong to which the community can demand adherence.”
Barr also penned an article in The Catholic Lawyer where he complained vehemently about what he asserted was “the rise of secularism;” something he claims is anathema to a nation he believes should be ruled by theocrats. Barr attempted to give an answer to “the challenge of representing Catholic institutions as authorities” on what is considered right and wrong, or morally acceptable in a secular nation. In discussing what Barr termed was “The Breakdown of Traditional Morality,” the new attorney general complained thus:
“We live in an increasingly militant, secular age… As part of this philosophy, we see a growing hostility toward religion, particularly Catholicism. This form of bigotry has always been fashionable in the United States. There are, today, even greater efforts to marginalize or ‘ghettoize’ orthodox religion…”
Barr is also a bigot when it comes to people who respect the Constitution’s separation of church and state in providing equal rights for all Americans whether theocrats agree or not. Barr’s belief that government is bound to enforce Vatican dictates is what drives his assertion that, for example, equal rights laws demanding that colleges treat homosexual groups like any other student group is inherently wrong.
He claims treating LGBTQ people like everyone else is detrimental because:
“[Equality] dissolves any form of moral consensus in society. There can be no consensus based on moral views in the country, only enforced neutrality.”
It is noteworthy that what Barr considers “enforced neutrality” is what most Americans understand is the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee of equal rights for all Americans. If this country was not plagued with religious extremists, bigots, misogynists, and hate-driven conservatives there would never be a need to “enforce neutrality,” or protect all Americans’ equal rights guaranteed according to secular law. There is no such thing as equality in Barr’s theocratic mind and the idea of the government not enforcing the privilege and superiority the religious right has enjoyed for too long is abominable, and now he wields federal government authority to right that abomination. . .
It is too bad that Barr’s religious mind incites him to believe the federal government’s job is enforcing his religion’s concept of “morality,” and that the purposely-conceived “secular” law of the land is “militant” and “hostile toward religion, particularly Catholicism.” If any American believes Barr will defend the Constitution, or equal rights, or freedom from religious imposition, they are deluded beyond belief. As the religious right’s attorney general, Barr will be the de facto enforcement arm of the evangelical extremists and aid in implementing all of the horrors a theocratic dictatorship entails – beginning with an increased government assault on women.
For an idea of how an avowed anti-choice theocrat leading the Justice Department will be the enforcement arm of the evangelical extremist cult, consider Trump’s latest evangelical edict forbidding medical professionals from giving women medical options the religious right and Vatican oppose.
Trump and Pence issued a gag order banning the term “abortion” as a woman’s option to carrying an unwanted pregnancy to term. The order will certainly face lawsuits, but instead of defending a medical professional’s ability to practice medicine, or exercise their freedom of speech, the theocratic-led DOJ will defend the religious right’s assault on women and medical professionals’ free speech because such speech is opposed by evangelicals. Trump’s latest theocratic edict was, by the way, a direct result of the evangelical right’s strict adherence to Vatican dictates banning women’s bodily autonomy and self-determination regarding reproduction.
There is no good outcome going forward with an avowed theocrat serving as the nation’s top law enforcement official. This is particularly true since Barr has made no secret that he considers the secular government “militant” and “bigoted” for not promoting “god’s eternal laws” of right and wrong. The very inconvenient truth for Americans is that long after Trump and Barr are out of power, the theocratic authorities will continue unimpeded because Trump has dutifully created a hard-line conservative judiciary specifically to ensure that America as a secular nation is, for all intents and purposes, coming to an end after resisting theocracy for over two centuries. (Underscored emphasis added.)
Federal Judge Blasts William Barr For Distorting Mueller Report
The judge questioned whether the attorney general tried to “create a one-sided narrative” that benefited President Donald Trump.
A federal judge appointed by President George W. Bush laid into Attorney General William Barr’s “lack of candor” in a court opinion on Thursday, accusing the nation’s chief law enforcement official of producing a “distorted” summary of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 election.
U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton, in an opinion issued in the course of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by BuzzFeed, questioned whether Barr intended to create a “one-sided narrative” that would benefit President Donald Trump.
“The speed by which Attorney General Barr released to the public the summary of Special Counsel Mueller’s principal conclusions, coupled with the fact that Attorney General Barr failed to provide a thorough representation of the findings set forth in the Mueller Report, causes the Court to question whether Attorney General Barr’s intent was to create a one-sided narrative about the Mueller Report — a narrative that is clearly in some respects substantively at odds with the redacted version of the Mueller Report,” Walton wrote.
Barr released a summary of the Mueller report before its public release that mischaracterized the report’s findings in a manner that helped Trump. Mueller complained to Barr that his summary “did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance” of Mueller’s full report, but the report shaped public opinion on the findings of the Mueller investigation for weeks.
Walton also criticized Barr for holding a press conference ahead of the report’s release last April, saying he could not “reconcile certain public representations made by Attorney General Barr with the findings” of the Mueller report . . .
Walton said that Barr’s credibility issues led him to the conclusion that he needed to review the unredacted report himself to provide “independent verification in light of Attorney General Barr’s conduct and misleading public statements about the findings in the Mueller Report.”
How Bill Barr Deceitfully Rewrites History to Give Trump What He Craves
The AG plays footsie with “Obamagate” and helps Moscow.
Bill Barr is at it again. Donald Trump’s attorney general is trying to depict himself as a nonpartisan, just-doing-my-job law enforcement official, even as he ruthlessly and relentlessly pursues a political agenda designed to rewrite history and save his boss.
Barr has spent over a year crusading to discredit the Trump-Russia investigation and nullify Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe. In recent weeks, his Justice Department has moved to limit the sentencing for Roger Stone, the longtime Trump confidant convicted of lying to Congress in the Russia probe, and attempted to drop entirely the case against Michael Flynn, Trump’s first national security adviser who had already pleaded guilty of lying to the FBI. Barr has repeatedly voiced suspicions about the origins of the FBI’s Russia investigation—providing support to Trump and other conspiracy theorists who claim it was all a set-up engineered by a supposed Deep State to thwart Trump. He has assigned John Durham, the US attorney for Connecticut, to investigate the investigation and pressed governments overseas for information to bolster Trump’s crackpot claim that the Russia inquiry was a hoax. Barr has waged bureaucratic warfare to discredit a probe that confirmed Russia attacked the 2016 election to help Trump and that landed top Trump lieutenants in the slammer. The big goal: to erase this double-taint on Trump’s presidency, for that is what Trump desperately craves. (Barr’s stance also has the effect of drawing attention from the fact that Russia, according to top intelligence officials, is back for a repeat performance and intervening in the 2020 election.)
Barr conducts this deceitful game slyly, playing footsie with “Obamagate”—the undefined term Trump tosses about to suggest, without evidence, that President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden spied on him and his campaign and used the FBI to mount a phony investigation of his campaign’s contacts with Russia. (A recent FBI inspector general’s report, which criticized the FBI for one aspect of this investigation, concluded that the bureau’s probe had not been politically motivated.) Barr’s statements and actions have fueled the right’s paranoid fantasy that the real scandal is the Russia investigation itself, not the Russian attack, the Trump campaign’s false denials of Russian involvement, or the interactions between Trump’s circle and Russia during the 2016 election. Yet as Barr enables and empowers this nonsense, he is endeavoring to come across [as] reasonable. . . (Underscored emphasis added.)
Bill Barr exudes a certain ghoulish presence in photographs. This is brought into stark relief in the following report;
Attorney General William Barr Is Willing to Destroy the Rule of Law for the Trump Administration
From the outset, the independence and integrity of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has been in rapid decay under the Trump administration. Early in his presidency, Trump berated then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, accusing him of political “disloyalty,” for Sessions’ decision to recuse himself from the Mueller investigation. Later, after pushing Sessions out, he installed an acting attorney general, Matthew Whitaker, who was widely seen as a partisan actor willing to be an “attack dog” for Trump. This appointment was done without confirmation from the Senate, invoking serious constitutional concerns.
Since taking the helm of the department, Attorney General William Barr has become an active accomplice in the Trump administration’s efforts to politicize the DOJ. When armed protestors stormed the Michigan state legislature to protest public health orders, for example, Barr was largely quiet—a stark contrast to his willingness to quickly denounce the Black Lives Matter protests occurring throughout the country as “hijacked” by far-left extremists without providing evidence to back up his claim. In fact, despite the vulnerable state of the country amidst the coronavirus epidemic, Barr appears to be ramping up the partisan nature of the DOJ.
These actions provide a dangerous illustration of the lengths that Barr may be willing to go.
Dropping criminal charges against a Trump ally
Most recently and dramatically, Barr’s DOJ moved to drop the criminal charges against Michael Flynn—Trump’s first national security adviser and political ally. . .
The DOJ’s actions regarding Flynn were foreshadowed well in advance. DOJ political appointees overruled career DOJ attorney’s recommended sentencing for another former Trump political aide—Roger Stone. That interference came after Trump publicly urged the Department to act in such a manner as well.
The lack of oversight at the DOJ
Each federal agency has a watchdog, officially known as an inspector general (IG,) responsible for investigating and reporting on serious allegations of wrongdoing within their agency. But despite evidence of clear impropriety conducted by Trump officials at the DOJ—and in marked contrast to other agency IGs—there have been no major findings released on the Trump administration.
DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz has confoundingly prioritized issuing reports on right-wing conspiracy theories related to the Obama administration. . . Unfortunately, for the time being, Horowitz appears to be falling in line with Barr’s desire to shield the Trump administration from any meaningful oversight. Former DOJ attorneys and staff from both Democratic and Republican administrations wrote an open letter to try to explain the seriousness of Barr’s abuse of power . . .
Supporting far-right conservative activists over public health
Just days after Trump specifically ramped up attacks on Democratic governors for their public health orders aimed at ending the spread of COVID-19, Barr announced that the DOJ would formally begin reviewing and challenging state public health orders.
During the pandemic, the idea of flouting public health measures and protesting “stay-at-home” orders has become linked with support for the Trump administration itself. . . On May 24, the president went so far as to ignore public health experts and demand that governors allow churches reopen. . .
This legal strategy is a continuation of long-standing efforts to twist the meaning of “religious liberty” in order to give far-right ideologies special legal standing. . . Even as the coronavirus crisis took hold, Barr hosted “religious liberty” workshops that, according to some career DOJ attorneys, promoted ways to enable discrimination against LGBTQ people. Thankfully, though efforts continue, the Supreme Court recently rejected a request by one California church to block the enforcement of the state’s public health order.
The first suit, however, that Barr’s department moved to support after the new policy’s announcement arose out of Virginia and underscores the ideology motivating these legal requests. It is being argued by Liberty Counsel—a far-right group that the Southern Poverty Law Center identifies as “legal organization advocating for anti-LGBT discrimination under the guise of religious liberty.” The head of that organization and former Liberty University president, Mat Staver, is a notable Trump supporter who has claimed the media has sided with Satan to attack the president.
In reaction to the DOJ filing a statement in support of the suit, Staver announced he was “very pleased” by Barr’s involvement in the case.
Seeking to hold American citizens in detention indefinitely
Finally, given what these actions suggest regarding Barr’s willingness to use the might of the Department of Justice to support Trump’s political allies, it is important to keep in mind that the DOJ has recently requested emergency powers from Congress.
While Congress did not give in to Barr’s request, the scope of what the attorney general sought was sweeping. Under the proposal, the DOJ would have been able to petition individual judges at the district court level to indefinitely suspend certain court proceedings—effectively, giving the department wide latitude to significantly delay certain arrested individuals’ ability to appear in court.
Conservative activists on the judiciary
While the requested emergency powers would have relied on judicial cooperation to execute, Barr would likely have been able to find support among the many ideologically driven federal judges the Trump administration has installed—including some who went directly from the White House to the bench. At both the district level, where the policy would be first implemented, and at the appellate level, where any challenge to the policy surely would have been eventually heard, far-right judicial activists have an increasing hold on the bench.
Trump outpaces any other modern president in terms of the number of judicial appointments made at this point in their respective administrations, with 1 in every 4 appellate judge being a Trump nominee.Such a policy would have allowed for the Sixth Amendment, which guarantees a “speedy and public trial,” to be circumvented. Furthermore, the proposed policy appeared to give Barr’s department near-total discretion in eliminating these core constitutional protections.
The executive director of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, Norman L. Reimer, called Barr’s request “absolutely terrifying” and something that “should not happen in a democracy.”
Conclusion
Barr’s recent actions demonstrate his loyalty and adherence to the president’s personal interests as well as his brazenness while furthering those interests. As the pandemic continues, there are likely to be increasing threats to Americans’ rights and safety that the DOJ will play a role in responding to. Currently, however, there is little to indicate that Attorney General Barr will be willing to prioritize the protection of ordinary people over the protection of the Trump administration. (Underscored emphasis added.)
We may justifiably disapprove of the LGBT cultural revolution; but denial of their individual civil liberties is ominous. Note Mat Staver's claim that the media has sided with Satan to attack the president. The day is rapidly approaching when those who refuse to bow the knee to Baal will also be accused of siding with Satan.
Bill Barr, warrior for theocracy: Why didn't we know this until now?
The attorney general has gradually revealed his terrifying agenda: Who knew, and why was this concealed so long?
It has long been an article of faith (no pun intended) among some on the left that the culture war was simply a cynical tool of the conservative movement to fool the rubes into voting against their economic interests. In this reading, right-wing leaders had no intention of ever following through on culture-war issues. They would string the voters along forever, promising to deliver on abortion or gay rights or guns but never really getting the job done, the assumption being that they could keep the conservative base's intensity at full throttle if those voters believed they were on the cusp of getting their agenda passed. Meanwhile, as the marks were distracted by endless culture-war skirmishes, the big money conservatives would pass laws that benefited themselves and harmed their own voters.
As it happens, it did indeed go down that way. The conservative movement benefactors made out like bandits while Republican voters got screwed economically. But the notion that the rich men in charge would never have to deliver on their culture-war promises was always wrong. Eventually, they would have to pay the piper.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell signaled that they were ready when he withheld the Supreme Court nomination of Merrick Garland during Barack Obama’s last year and then confirmed the Federalist Society’s darling, true blue social conservative Neil Gorsuch, as soon as Donald Trump took office. Evangelical leaders rushed to Brett Kavanaugh’s defense when he was under fire for his decadent youthful behavior and was accused of sexual assault during the confirmation hearings because they had been assured he would hew to the party line. Kavanaugh's threats to take revenge on all who opposed him probably reassured the religious right that he would vote the right way on the cases they care about.
McConnell’s Job No. 1 was to get a Supreme Court majority that would protect the interests of the wealthy and ensure the government didn’t burden business with inconvenient regulations. But he also made sure he got justices who would give the social conservatives what they had been demanding. The lower courts are now packed with the most far-right extremists he could find.
This week 38 U.S. senators and 168 House members filed an amicus brief in an abortion case the Supreme Court is hearing, urging it to "reconsider" Roe v. Wade as well as Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which barred states from placing an undue burden on access to abortions. They are ready to reward the religious right for their years of loyalty. If the Supreme Court overturns Roe, I have a feeling any cracks in the Republican coalition will miraculously mend right up. . .
William Barr, the attorney general of the United States, has also served on the board of the Catholic Information Center, although Opus Dei has officially denied that he is a member. Just as the political and media establishment conveniently overlooked Barr's long-term commitment to the "unitary executive theory" in its most extreme form, they didn’t seem to know that he was even more committed to far-right social conservatism. It wasn’t until Barr gave a speech at Notre Dame last October that everyone finally understood to what degree he is a religious crusader.
In that speech he said many things, blaming “secularists” for causing immense pain and suffering and “moral chaos.” He suggested that “the law is being used as a battering ram to break down traditional moral values and to establish moral relativism as a new orthodoxy” and went on to detail how he was counteracting that as attorney general. His views are what Katherine Stewart and Caroline Fredrickson identified in a New York Times op-ed as "religious nationalism," which basically implies either a theocratic state or a single-religion state.
Barr made his beliefs explicit:
Judeo-Christian moral standards are the ultimate utilitarian rules for human conduct and religion helps frame moral culture within society that instills and reinforces moral discipline. The fact is that no secular creed has emerged capable of performing the role of religion.
Apparently the law and the Constitution are just wallpaper, which is an unusual thing for a U.S. attorney general to imply.
As Stewart and Fredrickson point out, this explains why Barr is so willing to lie and cover for the libertine Trump:
Within this ideological framework, the ends justify the means. In this light, Mr. Barr’s hyperpartisanship is the symptom, not the malady. At Christian nationalist gatherings and strategy meetings, the Democratic Party and its supporters are routinely described as “demonic” and associated with “rulers of the darkness.” If you know that society is under dire existential threat from secularists, and you know that they have all found a home in the other party, every conceivable compromise with principles, every ethical breach, every back-room deal is not only justifiable but imperative. And as the vicious reaction to Christianity Today’s anti-Trump editorial demonstrates, any break with this partisan alignment will be instantly denounced as heresy.
Bill Barr may be the most unvetted attorney general in history, which is strange since he had served as AG under George H.W. Bush and was well known in DC circles. How could he have been confirmed as the nation's top law enforcement official when nobody knew that he was a far-right religious extremist on a mission to use the law and the executive power to enforce a moral code? How many others like him are buried within the Trump administration, protecting this licentious president in order to Make America Christian Again?
The author of the article is not alone among objective writers in describing current events as "terrifying." (Cf. "Such a policy would have allowed" above.) They see the handwriting on the wall for this nation. Can Seventh-day Adventists who have been beguiled into continuing to vote Republican since 1980 still be awakened out of spiritual apathy, or even worse - the delusion that the theocratic movement is of God?
Mitch McConnell has been somewhat of an enigma, with no clear direct connection to the theocratic movement. The author of the article may have a valid insight into his primary motivation. However, it should be observed that "conservative movement benefactors" are substantially identified with Roman Catholicism. In fact it was predicted by Roman Catholic activists that they would benefit from the Supreme Court decision in the Citizen's United case.
Interestingly, Mitch McConnell, Majority Leader of the Republican controlled Senate, and Leonard Leo, Executive Vice President of the Federalist Society, have both repeatedly been described as "owlish," and this description is evident from examination of their photographs. The following are examples of many such descriptions:
"The crafty, owlish-looking McConnell has battled Reid for years - as much over rules and procedures as over Obamacare and other critical legislative issues. The bickering continued Tuesday, when the two sides argued over whether Reid had given the Republicans a fair shot at amending a bill to restore unemployment benefits for 1.4 million long-term unemployed." (Get Ready for One-Party Rule If GOP Wins the Senate)
"An owlish 52-year-old lawyer and operative, Leo is the executive vice president of the Federalist Society . . ." (Inside Trump’s Judicial Takeover.)
Owls are beneficial predators of the night. The depredations in darkness of McConnell and Leo have already laid waste to essential founding principles of the American nation.
McConnell's speech to the Federalist Society boasted of his work in creating a right-wing judiciary intended to demolish:
(1) the Limited Government envisioned by the Founding Fathers. Note that they "knew that absolute power often leads to the abuse of rights;" and "the limited government envisioned in the Constitution is based on six guiding principles: (1) popular sovereignty, (2) the rule of law, (3) separation of powers and checks and balances, (4) federalism, (5) an independent judiciary, and (6) individual rights." Absolute power is clearly the quest of Mitch McConnell, and he has already violated all of the six principles of Limited Government, (federalism perhaps excepted.)
(2) The No Religious Test Clause of the Constitution which preceded the First Amendment. This was already in a precarious condition bordering on extinction by the time of the George W. Bush presidency. Its demise at the Supreme Court level is now complete beyond resuscitation under the Senate leadership of Mitch McConnell. He is now feverishly working to accomplish the same purpose at the federal Appeals and District courts level.
3) The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. The No Agenda Roberts Court has been chipping away methodically at the Establishment Clause. Anti-abortion cases have not been considered under this clause. Roe v. Wade was decided under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment right to privacy. The decision might more appropriately have been made under the Establishment Clause:
Abortion Politics and the Decline of the Separation of Church and State: The Southern Baptist Case
ABORTION AND CHURCH-STATE POLITICS IN THE SBC
During the process of the SBC’s transition from moderate leadership to conservative leadership and from support for separation to support for accommodation, the denomination also experienced an important shift in its position on abortion. While the SBC was promoting church-state separation, it maintained a qualified defense of pro-choice abortion rights. From 1971–1979, the Convention passed six resolutions supporting, at least somewhat, pro-choice rights for American women. A 1971 resolution called for "Southern Baptists to work for legislation that will allow the possibility of abortion under such conditions as rape, incest, clear evidence of severe fetal deformity, and carefully ascertained evidence of the likelihood of damage to the emotional, mental, and physical health of the mother”(Resolution on Abortion1971). This was the strongest pro-choice resolution the convention ever passed. Its succeeding resolutions endorsed a culture of protecting life, encouraged efforts to reduce abortion, and opposed the wanton use of abortion, while still allowing for some abortions. In the 1970s, Southern Baptists lacked consensus on abortion, but they were becoming more pro-life. Still, a large percentage assumed that the effort to outlaw abortion was particularly a Catholic issue (Hankins2002).
In 1980, though, there was a decisive shift in the SBC’s position on abortion. The 1980 resolution unequivocally declared the SBC’s opposition to "abortion on demand” and “the use of tax money or public, tax-supported medical facilities for selfish, non-therapeutic abortion.” It closed with a clear statement of the Convention’s wishes, stating, "We favor appropriate legislation and/or a constitutional amendment prohibiting abortion except to save the life of the mother” (Resolution on Abortion 1980). In every resolution on abortion since 1980, the SBC has taken a firm pro-life stance. . .
During this change in the SBC, its positions on abortion and church-state relations shifted in important ways. My argument is that the concurrence of these shifts is not coincidental. The relationship between these two issues is also more explicit than a broad culture war battle occurring within American society and the denomination (Hankins 2002; Hunter 1991). In the SBC, abortion politics played an important role in promoting its shift away from the separation of church and state. The BJC’s version of the separation of church and state did not commingle well with pro-life advocacy and the political and theological conservatism of Southern Baptists. . .
Much of pro-life Southern Baptists 'disdain for the BJC begins with James E. Wood, Jr., the executive director of the BJC from 1972–1980. Early in his tenure, Wood supported abortion rights. In order to avoid a territorial conflict with the CLC, which was charged with advocating on social issues, he couched pro-choice advocacy in terms of promoting religious liberty for those who favored abortion and the promotion of the separation of church and state in the face of the potential establishment of religious beliefs (Perry 1996). Utilizing Free Exercise and Establishment Clause arguments to oppose pro-life policies was not unique to Wood and the BJC of the 1970s. These arguments were frequent among strict separationist lobbies and Mainline Protestant groups. Before the Supreme Court, evidence of this first appears in an amicus curiae brief submitted by the American Ethical Union, American Jewish Congress, Episcopal Diocese of New York, United Methodist Church, and others in Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton (1973). (Underscored emphasis added.)
The evidence is clear that the shift in the Southern Baptists' position on abortion was concurrent with a shift on church-state relations.
The significance of the repeated mention of the prophetic year 1980 in the context of an undermining of the separation of church and state has already been established in this paper. That year marked the political beginnings of an increasingly intense assault on the Establishment Clause in the abortion controversy as well as other areas of constitutional law. While this process preceded Mitch McConnell's tenure as Majority Leader of the Republican Senate, he has greatly accelerated it by judicial appointments to the federal courts.
Seventh-day Adventists have a particular and critically important reason to object to "pro-life" laws being imposed on the nation - the essential repudiation of the dogma of the immortality of the soul.
Evidence is lacking that Mitch McConnell is identified with the theocratic movement, which is unabashedly distorting the Constitution in order to destroy it and institute a "Christian" dictatorship. In fact, there is evidence that McConnell is not an ideologue, but a ruthless opportunist, lusting only for power:
Mitch McConnell’s shameless pursuit of power, explained
Jane Mayer on how McConnell exemplifies the GOP’s “cult of winning.”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is a nihilist.
More than any other politician in recent memory, his life is a monument to self-dealing and partisan hackery.
His devotion to winning at all costs, to ensuring there are no limits on private money in politics, to bending the rules and shunning public opinion, has done incalculable damage to constitutional norms in the US. As my colleague Andrew Prokop noted back in 2017, McConnell has almost singlehandedly broken the Senate — and with it, American politics.
New Yorker writer Jane Mayer is the latest to take a deep dive into the life and mind of McConnell. In a lengthy profile for the April 20, 2020 issue, Mayer documents McConnell’s capitulations to President Donald Trump and tries to explain what’s motivating them — or at least what people who know McConnell think is motivating him.
Her answer is familiar: power. It’s the only thing McConnell appears to want, and there’s no ideology behind it, no real worldview, no purpose. . .
What a cynical existence! What a destructive force in the history of America!
Donald Trump has done less to destroy democratic norms than Mitch McConnell
The Senate majority leader has been around Washington long enough and is smart enough to know precisely what he’s doing to our country for his party.
No one should be surprised that Mitch McConnell has promised that any potential 2020 Trump Supreme Court nominee will not get the Merrick Garland treatment — i.e., be held up until after the presidential race is decided. While McConnell and his Republican colleagues have tried to frame their 2016 obstructionism on Garland's nomination and prospective 2020 decision in various forms of Senate tradition, he has, in this instance, been more-than-normally forthright: Supreme Court nominations are all about partisan politics, nothing more, nothing less.
In that, McConnell is the living, breathing, calculating face of everything that is wrong with our current politics. To the extent to which our system has become dysfunctional, McConnell is the single chief architect of that sclerosis. President Donald Trump is a dangerous, blundering wrecking ball, but McConnell was undermining the system well before (and is likely to outlast) him. . .
The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank once wrote that McConnell’s tombstone should include the inscription: “He broke America.” He has been called the “gravedigger of American democracy,” “destroyer of norms” and “the true villain of some of the ugliest moments in this period of U.S. history.” And those are understatements.
McConnell, at least, has been around long enough and is smart enough to know precisely what it is he’s doing. Trump seemingly doesn’t understand our system or a president's place in history beyond his desire to get his way. It's hard to see that as worse than McConnell's deliberate effort to destroy that which he cannot control.
Jane Mayer described McConnell as a nihilist. A nihilist is defined as "a person who believes that life is meaningless and rejects all religious and moral principles" (Lexico.com.) The term is aptly applied to McConnell:
Senate GOP leader relishes role as ‘Grim Reaper’
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell calls himself the Grim Reaper — the one who holds the scythe leading to the chamber where the desires of Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s House majority go to die.
It is a role that can bring a pursed smile to his face. This week, he had many reasons to.
The Republican leader halted Democrats’ effort to add more migrant protections to a border funding package and stopped senators from limiting President Donald Trump’s ability to respond militarily in Iran.
By week’s end, the typically understated Kentuckian was emoting over his unexpected star turn at the Democratic presidential debates as the candidates decried his prowess to mercilessly wield the power of ‘no.’
A little quiz: Who won the Democratic presidential debate?” he asked the crowd at a gathering of religious conservatives.
“I did!” he exclaimed. “I dominated the Democratic debate last night.”
Rarely has a political figure pinned his fortunes on accomplishing so little. McConnell has made a career out of stopping things — first Barack Obama’s agenda (underscored by his unsuccessful vow to make him a “one-term” president), now Pelosi’s — taking pride in what has come to be known as the Senate graveyard.
Imagine the Majority Leader of the Senate relishing his reputation for killing all legislation from the House of Representatives - and it is all done with a visible smirk!
So this is how liberty dies — with a hideous, utterly shameless smirk on the face of arguably the most cynical political leader in American history, as the warriors in his political tribe cackle with laughter.
The end came Tuesday in about the most out-of-the-way venue you could imagine: a chamber of commerce luncheon in Paducah, Ky., where Mitch McConnell — the 77-year-old son of bluegrass country, now one of America’s three most powerful politicians as Senate majority leader — was finally asked a question that’s long been on people’s minds, about how he might handle an unexpected Supreme Court vacancy if one occurs during the 2020 presidential election.
It was in 2016, you surely remember, that Justice Antonin Scalia died suddenly and McConnell wouldn’t even allow then-President Barack Obama’s nominee, a thoroughly decent federal appeals court judge named Merrick Garland, to get a hearing. This wasn’t, McConnell insisted at the time, what it looked like — denying Obama his constitutional power to fill a vacancy that was never questioned for the 42 (cough, cough ... white) presidents who came before him, and a naked power play to make sure pro-business judges set our laws for the next 40 years.
No, the Senate leader told us, this was about the highest democratic principles, that "[t]he American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice,” while also claiming political precedents that didn’t really exist. Three years later, McConnell is now telling us that the people’s voice is only audible when it’s Republican voters looking to replace a Democratic POTUS. . .
“Oh, we’d fill it,” McConnell said Tuesday, unable to suppress his laughter that quickly spread through a room of Kentuckians who also see the lighter side of 21st-century neo-fascism. He prattled on for a minute or two about the importance of a permanent wall of judges which, in his words, “cannot be undone.” . . .(Underscored emphasis and red font added.)
Here is where the nation now stands. Even if the democratic candidate wins the 2020 presidential election. There is already a permanent wall of judges which "cannot be undone."
PART V: THEOCRATS BRANDISH MAILED FIST
VIOLENCE AGAINST PEACEFUL DEMONSTRATORS EVILS OF LUST FOR DOMINATING POWER As hundreds of thousands Americans of all ethnicities protested across the nation against the callous murder of George Floyd at the hands of the police, the true spirit controlling the religious right Christian Supremacists was revealed by their current leader.
VIOLENCE AGAINST PEACEFUL DEMONSTRATORS
‘Outraged’: Trump faces condemnation for clearing protesters, threatening military force
Meanwhile, local and state leaders objected to the commander in chief’s push to deploy troops to their communities.
President Donald Trump faced withering criticism in the hours after spurring a violent incursion against apparently peaceful protesters for the purposes of staging a political photo opportunity — provoking rebukes Tuesday from local and state executives, congressional lawmakers, faith leaders and even foreign governments over the extraordinary show of force amid converging national crises.
Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser revealed officials within her office were “very shocked and, quite frankly, outraged” by the aggressive dispersal of crowds demonstrating outside the White House on Monday evening, facilitated by police officers and National Guard troops firing rubber bullets and deploying flash-bang grenades.
The mayor insisted no officers with the Metropolitan Police Department were involved in the effort to force protesters from Lafayette Square and the surrounding area. The park was cleared nearly an hour before Washington’s 7 p.m. curfew was to go into effect in order to open a path for Trump, top White House aides and senior administration officials to venture across the street to the historic St. John’s Episcopal Church.
“At no time did we think it was appropriate that people who had not violated the curfew or anything else receive that treatment,” Bowser told CNN, saying she could not comment on “what made the federal authorities think it was appropriate to clear the way for that purpose.”
Prominent members of the Christian clergy in the United States similarly condemned Trump’s decision to then pose with a Bible outside the so-called Church of the Presidents, which had been partly damaged by a basement fire during protests during the weekend.
The president hoisted the holy book “as if it were spiritual validation and justification for a message that is antithetical to the teachings of Jesus and to the God of justice,” the Right Rev. Mariann Edgar Budde, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, told ABC News. . .
Ahead of Trump’s scheduled visit Tuesday to the Saint John Paul II National Shrine, Washington Archbishop Wilton Gregory called it “baffling and reprehensible that any Catholic facility would allow itself to be so egregiously misused and manipulated in a fashion that violates our religious principles.”
The late pope, Gregory said in his statement, “was an ardent defender of the rights and dignity of human beings,” and “certainly would not condone the use of tear gas and other deterrents to silence, scatter or intimidate them for a photo opportunity in front of a place of worship and peace.”
The president has repeatedly advocated for a reinforced law enforcement presence, including the deployment of the National Guard, in states to quash the increasingly volatile protests that have spread across the country since George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man, died in Minneapolis police custody last week.
Trump encouraged America’s governors on a teleconference Monday to “dominate” cities ravaged by lootings and riots, and threatened later that evening at the White House to call on the military to put an end to the nationwide wave of racial unrest if state and local officials refused to activate the National Guard. . . (Underscored emphasis added.)
During his presidency Donald Trump has consistently exhibited despotic inclinations in his statements and actions; none more so than during the George Floyd demonstrations. The silence of his supporters and enablers in elective office has, with virtually no exceptions, been deafening. Not so high-ranking retired military officers, who are sensitive to the armed forces becoming involved in domestic politics:
James Mattis condemns Trump’s handling of George Floyd protests
In an extraordinary statement, the former defence secretary accused the president of abusing his executive authority with Monday’s publicity stunt
Donald Trump’s first defence secretary, James Mattis, has delivered a blistering condemnation of the president, accusing him of abusing executive authority in his response to the recent wave of anti-racism protests that have convulsed cities across the US, and calling for him for to be held accountable.
Mattis’s broadside breaks a near silence from the ex-marine general since he resigned in December 2018. He expressed outrage at the militarisation of the administration’s response to mass protests over the police killing of George Floyd.
“I have watched this week’s unfolding events, angry and appalled,” he said.His statement, published by the Atlantic magazine, came on a day of confusion and discord in the Trump administration over the role of the military. Mattis’s successor as defence secretary, Mark Esper, had contradicted Trump over the president’s threatened invocation of the 1807 Insurrection Act to deploy active duty troops on US streets.
Esper had ordered elite airborne troops, flown to the Washington outskirts on Monday, back to their bases on Wednesday, but then reversed that order hours later after a visit to the White House.
The defence secretary had also sought to distance himself from a presidential publicity stunt on Monday, in which Trump had protesters cleared from Lafayette Park, a public area in front of the White House, so that he could be photographed outside a church that had been partially burned the previous day.
In his statement on Wednesday evening, Mattis said: “Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people – does not even pretend to try. Instead he tries to divide us. We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership.”
The former defence secretary added: “We know that we are better than the abuse of executive authority that we witnessed in Lafayette Park. We must reject and hold accountable those in office who would make a mockery of our constitution.”
Mattis recalled the distinction between US forces and the Nazis fighting on the Normandy beaches in 1944. The Nazi slogan was “Divide and conquer” while the American response was “In union there is strength”. . .Any attempt to use active-duty troops, as opposed to the national guard which has already been widely deployed, threatens to split the US military, which is one of the country’s most diverse institutions.
Mattis reflected what is reported to be a widely held view in the armed services, in arguing the protesters were standing up for the constitutional principle of equality under the law, and should be universally supported.
“We must not be distracted by a small number of lawbreakers,” he said. “The protests are defined by tens of thousands of people of conscience who are insisting that we live up to our values.
“When I joined the military, some 50 years ago, I swore an oath to support and defend the constitution,” Mattis wrote. “Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the constitutional rights of their fellow citizens – much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief, with military leadership standing alongside.
“Militarising our response, as we witnessed in Washington DC, sets up a conflict – a false conflict – between the military and civilian society,” he added.
Mattis’s statement comes a day after a former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Mike Mullen, expressed his own renunciation of the handling of the protests, reflecting deep unease among many serving officers.
Mullen said he was “sickened” by the photo op at the church.
“Too many foreign and domestic policy choices have become militarised; too many military missions have become politicised,” Mullen wrote, also in the Atlantic. “This is not the time for stunts. This is the time for leadership.”
Initially Trump appeared to have the support of the Defense Secretary and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who accompanied him on his visit to St. John’s Episcopal Church. Both of them have since backpedalled; but their initial compliance with Trump's autocratic action is an ill omen of the future:
Perils for Pentagon as Trump threatens to militarize response to civil unrest
“Battlespace” was the word Defense Secretary Mark Esper used to describe protest sites in the United States. The top U.S. general reinforced that image by appearing in downtown Washington in camouflage during a Monday evening crackdown.
Helicopters that could easily be mistaken for active duty U.S. military ones staged show-of-force maneuvers in Washington above people protesting the killing of George Floyd, an unarmed black man, at the hands of a white police officer in Minneapolis.
As President Donald Trump increasingly turns to militaristic rhetoric at a time of national upheaval, the U.S. military appears to be playing a supporting role - alarming current and former officials who see danger to the U.S. armed forces, one of America’s most revered and well funded institutions.
“America is not a battleground. Our fellow citizens are not the enemy,” Martin Dempsey, the retired four-star general who served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, wrote on Twitter.
A current military official, speaking on condition of anonymity, voiced concern about the lasting damage that would come from using the military as a “political prop.” . . .
For Trump’s critics, the Republican president’s reliance on the military in domestic endeavors risks making the armed forces, which are meant to be apolitical, appear aligned with Trump’s political agenda. He has previously employed the military to help stem illegal immigration and used defense funding to build his border wall.
But drawing the military into his response (here) to the sometimes violent civil unrest that broke out in Minneapolis last week and spread to dozens of cities, is particularly problematic.
At the core of the discomfort is a single idea: The military was designed to protect the United States from foreign adversaries and uphold a constitution that explicitly protects the rights of citizens to protest peacefully.
Even the head of the National Guard acknowledged that responding to domestic crises makes his troops uneasy. So far, more than 20,000 National Guard members have been called up to assist local law enforcement with protests around the country. . .
Esper and General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, accompanied Trump on Monday as he posed at a church near the White House while holding a Bible after law enforcement officers used teargas and rubber bullets to clear the area of peaceful protesters.
Trump had just delivered a speech condemning “acts of domestic terror” and saying the United States was in the grips of professional anarchists, violent mobs, arsonists, looters, criminals and others. . .
James Miller, a former Pentagon official who sits on the Defense Science Board, said he was resigning from the board after seeing the peaceful protesters being cleared by tear gas and rubber bullets before a curfew on Monday and Esper’s accompanying Trump to the church.
“You may not have been able to stop President Trump from directing this appalling use of force, but you could have chosen to oppose it,” Miller said in his letter of resignation, which he published in the Washington Post.
Kori Schake, of the conservative American Enterprise Institute and an expert on U.S. civilian-military relations, said Esper and Milley need to be held to account for their “shocking” decision to appear in that setting.
“They made choices. They could have said, Mr. President, I think it would send a bad signal for me to do this,” Schake said.
Alice Friend, a former Pentagon official, said Esper and Milley, by using terms like battlespace, were blurring the lines between American citizens in the United States and enemies in war zones. . .
Trump on Monday threatened to send active duty U.S. troops to stamp out the civil unrest gripping several cities. . .
The top Republican on the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee, Mac Thornberry, said discussions about the Insurrection Act could easily make U.S. troops “political pawns.”
His Democratic counterpart and chair of the committee, Adam Smith, said he called on Esper and Milley to testify.
“I remain gravely concerned about President Trump’s seemingly autocratic rule and how it affects the judgment of our military leadership,” Smith said.
“The fate of our democracy depends on how we navigate this time of crisis.” (Underscored emphasis added.)
Not surprisingly, Attorney-General William Barr supports the use of military forces to suppress the nationwide protests:
America's top cop is a rightwing culture warrior who hates disorder. What could go wrong?
William Barr forged his worldview fighting protesters in the 1960s. Now he’s masterminding the US government’s crackdown on unrest
Maybe the 1960s never ended. Police, protesters and rioters once again fill our rage-filled streets and television screens. Amid a pandemic that has already claimed over 100,000 lives, a cultural divide that burst into flames more than a half-century ago is back – and burning furiously.
Earlier this week, Donald Trump seemed to morph into Richard Nixon, America’s self-proclaimed “law and order” president who resigned in disgrace. The cameras rolled as a Bible-brandishing president threatened to send US troops into America’s cities. As Trump stood in front of an Episcopal church near the White House, teargas canisters and flash-bang grenades exploded nearby.
In his inaugural address in 2017, Trump vowed to restore what he characterized as American greatness, strength, and safety. In William Barr, the US attorney general, Trump has a powerful and determined partner. It was Barr who personally ordered military police to clear peaceful protesters from around the White House, and Barr who is reportedly advocating an intense “flood the zone” show of authority. “The president sees Barr as the ‘bad cop’ he can unleash if states and cities don’t get their act together,” an administration official told the Daily Beast.
Both men aim to turn back the clock to a time when everyone “knew their place”. But where Trump has been a bumbling, self-interested and ideologically erratic leader – a weak man’s strongman – Barr is smart, dedicated and disciplined. He understands how to wield power and holds a consistent worldview. He’s an aggressive advocate for executive power and the police – who happens to be America’s top law enforcement officer at the same time as unrest roils the country.
“Barr is vastly more intelligent than Donald Trump,” Stuart Gerson, a former colleague of Barr’s, recently told the New York Times Magazine. “What Trump gives Bill Barr is a canvas upon which to paint. Bill has longstanding views about how society should be organized, which can now be manifested and acted upon to a degree that they never could have before.” . . .
In the New York Times, Gerson, Barr’s former justice department colleague, characterized Barr as “hierarchical” and “authoritarian” in outlook, committed to the premise that “a top-down ordering of society will produce a more moral society”.
In speeches, Barr, a traditionalist Catholic, has railed against “militant secularists”, who seek “to mitigate the social costs of personal misconduct and irresponsibility”.
That Bill Barr is a culture warrior on a mission is widely documented. Consider the significance of this in light of his identification of the enemy to be vanquished. The following is a brilliant essay which analyzes Barr's world view and brings into focus the terminal malady now facing the nation. For full comprehension a reading of the entire article is recommended:
Bill Barr’s Invisible Crusade with headlined satiric portrait of Bill Barr, Grand Inquisitor
Trump’s attorney general sees himself as a grand cultural inquisitor.
. . .
When nationwide protests and unrest broke out after George Floyd’s killing by Minneapolis police officers, Barr led the charge to suppress them in Washington. He ordered federal police to remove peaceful demonstrators by force from a park in front of the White House, shortly before Trump walked across it for a photo op at a nearby church. Armed men in unmarked riot gear soon appeared on D.C. streets, refusing to identify themselves to reporters. The Bureau of Prisons later confirmed that some of them were members of its riot-control teams. And while Barr blamed antifa for “instigating and participating in the violent activity,” FBI intelligence reports found no evidence that they were responsible. . .
Barr makes no secret of this worldview. Last October, he delivered a high-profile address on the subject to an audience of students and faculty at the University of Notre Dame’s law school. Such appearances are common for prominent federal officials—but Barr wasn’t talking about the main challenges of his job, or the finer points of the separation of powers in the daily business of the Trump administration. Instead, like a prophet emerging from the wilderness, he delivered an indictment of modern America’s approach to religion.
“This is not decay; it is organized destruction,” he warned in a toneless voice at odds with the substance of his preachments. “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. These instruments are used not only to affirmatively promote secular orthodoxy, but also drown out and silence opposing voices, and to attack viciously and hold up to ridicule any dissenters.” . . .
Tellingly, Barr only circled back to the question of the proper aims of federal law enforcement as an extension of this broader culture-war crusade. “Finally, as lawyers, we should be particularly active in the struggle that is being waged against religion on the legal plane,” he said. “We must be vigilant to resist efforts by the forces of secularization to drive religious viewpoints from the public square and to impinge upon the free exercise of our faith.” Barr pledged that as long as he was attorney general, the Justice Department “will be at the forefront of this effort, ready to fight for the most cherished of our liberties: the freedom to live according to our faith.”
Barr’s career fuses two of the most powerful movements on the American right. Like many in the conservative legal movement, he reads the Constitution as a fixed document whose meaning cannot stray far from what the Framers set down in Philadelphia in 1787. But he also draws upon a traditionalist strain in the Catholic faith that rejects any distinction between spiritual life and public life. “We are being pushed steadily off the battlefield, or have been for the last few decades,” he wrote in a 1995 article for The Catholic Lawyer. “Occasionally, we are jabbing back and poking back as we backpedal off the field. What is our larger strategy for preserving the Church and seeing it prevail? How will we get back on the battlefield? How are we going to see the Church transform the world for the better?” . . .
He rejected legislative attempts to shield officials from being fired by the president, require regular updates on internal agency deliberations, and mandate that members of some commissions be chosen by congressional leaders. Barr even argued in one part that it would be unconstitutional for Congress to prohibit the executive branch from “soliciting funds or material assistance from foreign governments (including any instrumentality or agency thereof), foreign persons, or United States persons” so long as it could be justified as “furthering any military, foreign policy, or intelligence activity” whatsoever. “No limitations on the President’s authority to discuss certain issues with foreign governments, or to recommend or concur in courses of action taken by other nations, should be sanctioned,” Barr instructed.
It’s worth pausing to note just how radically American government would be transformed if this vision of untrammeled executive power were to take hold. Congress could no longer prohibit members of a single party from dominating the Federal Election Commission. The 9/11 Commission would have had no power to compel testimony or documents unless George W. Bush had appointed each of its members. The Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors would fear dismissal unless they manipulated monetary policy to suit a president’s whims in an election year. The Iran-Contra affair under Reagan and the Ukraine scandal under Trump would be deemed unambiguously lawful. . .
Along the way, Barr has articulated a paternalistic and sectarian vision for the American political and constitutional order. It would be unfair to describe him as a monarchist, or a fascist, or a theocrat. But he has developed a distinctly counter-democratic civic theology of sorts, drawing upon his own traditionalist Catholic faith and his unusual reading of the Constitution. Having raided the armory of classical liberalism for rhetorical weapons, Barr now stands ready to impose his worldview upon the nation.
In a February speech to the National Religious Broadcasters’ annual convention, Barr framed the turbulence of modern American politics as a binary clash between “two fundamentally different visions of the individual and his relationship to the state.” One of those visions is liberal democracy, which “limits government and gives priority to preserving personal liberty,” he explained. “In the ancient Greek tradition, the state was a positive moral agency whose purpose was to define for men what was good and make them so,” Barr said. “Augustinian Christianity sharply departed from that conception. It saw the state as a necessary evil, with the limited function of keeping the peace here on earth.”
Barr’s invocation of Saint Augustine carried a particular rhetorical meaning for his audience. The fifth-century North African theologian lived and wrote as the western half of the Roman Empire entered its terminal phase. Some citizens in the Mediterranean world blamed the rise of Christianity—and the concurrent abandonment of traditional Roman religious practices—for hastening the empire’s collapse. Augustine wrote The City of God to defend the Christian faith from its pagan attackers. . .
One key plank of the Barr doctrine is the notion that American conservatism in its Reaganite guise is the guiding model for governing American life. Any proposed policy deviations from it—a more lenient approach toward criminal sentencing, say, or any measure to expand the social welfare state—are inconsistent with Barr’s version of Christian morality. In this rigid scheme of intellectual conflict, deeper ideological differences are not only wrong as a matter of policy and morality; they also pose a fundamental threat to Americans’ liberties and freedoms as Barr understands them.
Such efforts to safeguard against the threat of “totalitarian” democracy might come across as, well, undemocratic. But since spiritual affiliations precede democratic obligations in Barr’s legal theology, the highest civic priority is not so much to expand the reach of democratic self-rule as to guard vigilantly against secular misrule. If the people decide to adopt a policy agenda that does not comport with his worldview, it’s because they’ve been seduced away from the righteous path. . .
At Notre Dame, Barr also asserted that only members of the Christian faith possess the moral rectitude for American democracy. When the Founders referred to America’s experiment in self-government, Barr explained, they were describing “the capacity of each individual to restrain and govern themselves,” not elections or legislatures. “In short, in the Framers’ view, free government was only suitable and sustainable for a religious people—a people who recognized that there was a transcendent moral order antecedent to both the state and man-made law and who had the discipline to control themselves according to those enduring principles,” he argued. (Underscored emphasis added.)
The author states that "It would be unfair to describe him as a monarchist, or a fascist, or a theocrat." However it may be fair to describe Bill Barr, there can be no doubt about his Roman Catholic orthodoxy.
EVILS OF LUST FOR DOMINATING POWER
Pope Francis and the USCCB published statements denouncing racism and expressing understanding of the George Floyd demonstrations and unrest (Pope Francis Prays For George Floyd, Decries 'The Sin Of Racism'; Statement of U.S. Bishops’ President on George Floyd and the Protests in American Cities.) By contrast, the actions of Donald Trump co-ordinated by Bill Barr were applauded by the Religious Right Evangelicals, (with only the apparent exception of Pat Robertson):
Trump faith advisers say the president did the right thing by visiting church
Informal evangelical Christian advisers to President Donald Trump have long championed religious freedom as a key issue that should be embraced by the administration, often arguing passionately against government infringement on religious activities.
That’s why some have framed the president’s recent (June 1) photo-op in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church, in which he held aloft a Bible for cameras, as an expression of support for religious freedom.
“(Trump) walked FOR the protection of the right of peaceful protest,” Johnnie Moore, who helped organize the Trump campaign’s evangelical advisory board in 2016 and now serves as a commissioner for the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, said in an email to Religion News Service. “He walked AGAINST the violent anarchists and looters who were disrupting those peaceful protests and dishonoring the memory of George Floyd.”
Other evangelical supporters of the president such as Franklin Graham and Texas pastor Robert Jeffress have also praised Trump’s walk to St. John’s, calling it an “important statement” and “absolutely correct.”
Moore and others have less to say about what happened before the president’s visit to the church — when police working with the federal government forced hundreds of demonstrators away from Lafayette Square and expelled clergy from church property.
An Episcopal priest and a seminarian say they were passing out water to demonstrators from the grounds of St. John’s as part of an effort organized by the Episcopal Diocese of Washington when they were forced off church grounds as law enforcement broke up the protest. They said police used shields and pepper-based irritants — which the CDC says are also referred to as tear gas — that left them coughing and tending to swollen, red, tear-stained eyes. . .
Trump administration officials have offered conflicting accounts as to why Lafayette Square was cleared. Initial reports from the White House alleged the expulsion was to enforce a 7 p.m. curfew in Washington, but Barr later claimed that the operation was part of an existing plan to expand the security perimeter around the White House and alleged that there were violent protesters. The attorney general also insisted that there was “no correlation” between Trump’s visit to the church and the decision to clear the park and defiantly claimed officials did not use tear gas. . .
Ralph Reed, the founder of the Faith and Freedom Coalition who describes himself as a friend of Trump, dismissed the idea that expelling clergy from church property is a religious freedom issue.
“Under normal circumstances, I do not favor law enforcement asking clergy to leave a house of worship,” he said in an email. “In this case an historic church had been targeted by rioters for arson and destruction the previous night, and the DC Metropolitan Police were clearing a security perimeter in an area where there had been ongoing violence. There is nothing unusual about individuals being asked to leave a secure area.” . . .
Requests for comment extended to Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr. and pastors Jeffress, Jack Graham and Jentezen Franklin were not returned. A spokesperson for Franklin Graham said the pastor and stalwart Trump supporter was traveling and unable to respond. (Underscored emphasis added.)
The Christians Who Loved Trump’s Stunt
The president’s photo op outside St. John’s Church was emblematic of his appeal to the religious right.
He wielded the Bible like a foreign object, awkwardly adjusting his grip as though trying to get comfortable. He examined its cover. He held it up over his right shoulder like a crossing guard presenting a stop sign. He did not open it.
“Is that your Bible?” a reporter asked.
“It’s a Bible,” the president replied.
Even by the standards of Donald Trump’s religious photo ops, the dissonance was striking. Moments earlier, he had stood in the Rose Garden and threatened to unleash the military on unruly protesters. He used terms such as anarchy and domestic terror, and vowed to “dominate the streets.” To clear the way for his planned post-speech trip to St. John’s Church, police fired tear gas and rubber bullets into a crowd of peaceful demonstrators.
A few hours after the dystopian spectacle, I spoke on the phone with Robert Jeffress, a Dallas megachurch pastor and indefatigable Trump ally. He sounded almost gleeful.
“I thought it was completely appropriate for the president to stand in front of that church,” Jeffress told me. “And by holding up the Bible, he was showing us that it teaches that, yes, God hates racism, it’s despicable—but God also hates lawlessness.”
“So,” he added, “I’m happy.”
In many ways, the president’s stunt last night—with its mix of shallow credal signaling and brutish force—was emblematic of his appeal to the religious right. As I’ve written before, most white conservative Christians don’t want piety from this president; they want power. In Trump, they see a champion who will restore them to their rightful place at the center of American life, while using his terrible swift sword to punish their enemies.
This dynamic was on vivid display throughout the night. Even as cities across the country once again spiraled into chaos, prominent conservative evangelicals cheered Trump’s performance on Twitter.
“I don’t know about you but I’ll take a president with a Bible in his hand in front of a church over far left violent radicals setting a church on fire any day of the week,” wrote David Brody, a news anchor at the Christian Broadcasting Network. . .
“I will never forget seeing [Trump] slowly & in-total-command walk … across Lafayette Square to St. John’s Church defying those who aim to derail our national healing by spreading fear, hate & anarchy,” wrote Johnnie Moore, the president of the Congress of Christian Leaders.
In an email to me, Ralph Reed, the chairman of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, heaped praise on Trump for his visit: “His presence sent the twin message that our streets and cities do not belong to rioters and domestic terrorists, and that the ultimate answer to what ails our country can be found in the repentance, redemption, and forgiveness of the Christian faith.”
Andrew Whitehead, a sociologist at Clemson University, has argued that Trump’s religious base can best be understood through the lens of Christian nationalism. In his research, Whitehead has found that white Protestants who believe most strongly that Christianity should hold a privileged place in America’s public square are more likely than others to agree with statements such as “We must crack down on troublemakers to save our moral standards and keep law and order” and “Police officers shoot blacks more often because they are more violent than whites.”
Whitehead told me in an interview that Christian nationalism is often not really about theology (and thus can’t be ascribed to all conservative churchgoers): “It’s about identity, enforcing hierarchy, and order.”
That Trump’s religious posturing has little to do with religion has long been a matter of conventional wisdom (see: Corinthians, Two); fewer have grasped the extent to which that’s true of Trump’s “religious” base as well. . . (Underscored emphasis added.)
Author McKay Coppins associates the personalities named in his report with "Christian nationalism." He identifies what motivates them: “It’s about identity, enforcing hierarchy, and order.” The term "Christian nationalism" is interchangeable with "Dominionism." It is a vicious, deceptive movement masquerading as a harmless restoration of true Christianity, and it is at or near the pinnacle of its power:
How Christian Nationalism Moved from the Fringe to the White House
Katherine Stewart’s The Power Worshippers exposes the Christian right’s attempts to revise history and create an American theocracy.
The movement’s zealots—including First Baptist Church of Dallas pastor and Trump insider Robert Jeffress—insist, despite history, that the United States was founded as a Christian nation. Going further, they claim the country has fallen and must realign with their fundamentalist version of the faith to thrive again. They dismiss the principle of church-state separation as secular oppression and assert that God wants them to have dominion (another name for the movement is dominionism) over every aspect of culture, society, and government. They would use that power to infuse governance with their theology; bias the courts to solidify their privilege; enforce patriarchal, heteronormative gender and sexual ideology; promote creationism and otherwise denigrate science; eradicate the public school system; and end abortion.
Stewart’s chapter on the history of Christian nationalism is particularly well done, revealing the unsavory past of a movement that presents itself as morally superior. She traces the current Christian right’s origins from reactionary, 19th century pro-slavery theologians to modern incarnations such as R.J. Rushdoony, the creator of a version of religious nationalism he called Christian Reconstruction. Rushdoony’s message influenced presidential candidate Ronald Reagan’s 1980 address to religious activists in Dallas, a milestone in his campaign. Months later, Stewart reports, Rushdoony visited Reagan in the White House to lobby for churches to remain tax exempt even when they operated whites-only private schools. . .
The Christian nationalist political machine is so influential, and its adherents so impassioned, that its rise can seem inevitable.
The following article focuses on the dominance of Christian Dominionism in the contemporary Republican Party:
God and government: Christian Dominionism and the GOP (April 10,2015.)
As a nation, our attention has been captured by the ominous threat of ISIS extremism and its vicious enforcement of Islamic Sharia law. Meanwhile, few have taken notice of the stealth movement of Christian Dominionism, or Christian Reconstructionism, taking root inside the Republican Party.
In simple terms, Dominionism proposes that Christians have the God-given right to rule all earthly institutions. In other words, Christian Sharia law. Originating among some of America’s most radical theocrats, like Rousas John Rushdoony, Gary North and David Chilton, it has long had an influence on the Religious Right’s education and political organizing.
It is not surprising that Ted Cruz, a prime example of Dominionism, chose to announce his run for the presidency of the United States at Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University. Cruz’s father says his son will bring the world to the “end of times” and was born to this purpose.
The goals of Dominionism are reducing the federal government in size and power, having churches assume responsibility for welfare and education and having the U.S. Constitution conform to biblical law. Specifically, Dominionism says:
▪ The use of the death penalty should be greatly expanded to include adultery, blasphemy, heresy, homosexual behavior, idolatry, prostitution and to those who perform abortions.
▪ The only valid legislation, social theory, spiritual beliefs and economic theories should be derived from the Bible.
▪ Income taxes should be eliminated. (No Internal Revenue Service!)
How have such radical religious concepts been able to impact the fringes of the Republican Party and find some degree of acceptance within the core of the GOP?
In the 1970s, the Republican political strategist Paul Weyrich founded the Heritage Foundation and used it to begin the process of targeting conservative Christian churches to engage them with the Republican Party.
In 1979, Weyrich coined the term Moral Majority, which was championed by the television evangelist Jerry Falwell, who was successful in rallying millions of voters for the Republican cause.
In August 1980 in Dallas, Texas, Weyrich said, “We are now talking about Christianizing America in a political context.”
Following the demise of the Moral Majority, the 1990s witnessed the birth of the Christian Coalition of America, led by Christian evangelist Pat Robertson. During the 2000 presidential campaign of George W. Bush, called God’s man for America by some, the Christian Coalition of America distributed 70 million voter guides to conservative churches throughout the United States. All this was accomplished under the leadership of executive director Ralph Reed. . .
Today within the Republican Party, there are those who seek to distort the true meaning of the separation of church and state as an effort to secularize our nation. Calls for declaring the United States a Christian nation and making Christianity the official religion of America are moving forward at the state and national levels. (Underscored emphasis added.)
Here we enter into a labyrinth of secrecy, intrigue, and conspiracy, which exposes hypocrisy and crocodile tears on the part of all involved in the drive for theocracy, from Pat Robertson to the Vatican. The name Ralph Reed stands out in this context.
The following article reveals volumes about Reed, including two statements to the news media in which he confessed to the stealth tactics of the Christian Coalition:
Read press accounts from the Coalition's early history, and you find that, when he spoke to the press, Reed would use the same language he had used a decade earlier at College Republicans. In 1991, in a quote that has been hung around his neck ever since, he bragged to Norfolk's Virginian-Pilot: "I want to be invisible. I do guerrilla warfare. I paint my face and travel at night. You don't know it's over until you're in a body bag." In 1992 he told the Los Angeles Times: "It's like guerrilla warfare. If you reveal your location, all it does is allow your opponent to improve his artillery bearings. It's better to move quietly, with stealth, under cover of night." . . .
Reed used the collection of tools he had learned organizing students in the 1980s to build a home in the Republican party for religious conservatives. The party, and American politics, were changed irrevocably. Though the Coalition's membership reached its high point in 1996, the group's political apogee came, of course, in 1994, with the election of the Republican congressional majority. (Underscored emphasis added.)
Reed's language of military stealth and aggressive conquest betrayed the true nature of the Christian Coalition's agenda. This was just a continuation of the plan of aggression and conquest by the Christian Supremacist movement that was born before the Coalition was conceived. Among a number of sources of the facts, details were published in the writings of Katherine Yurica. Her online publication titled the Yurica Report no longer exists; but her stature and the value of her research can be estimated by a Google search of her name. Facts exposed by the Yurica Report are quoted in several articles on this website, one of which is US SUPREME COURT CONTINUES CHIPPING AWAY AT SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE. Some of the sinister details of the Christian Supremacists' plan of action are revealed at the bookmark "In the same essay, under the section heading . . ." The following is a sampling of the frightening details of the secretive, satanic plan:
The years 1982-1986 marked the period Pat Robertson and radio and televangelists urgently broadcast appeals that rallied Christian followers to accept a new political religion that would turn millions of Christians into an army of political operatives. It was the period when the militant church raised itself from centuries of sleep and once again eyed power. . .
It was and is a political scheme to take over the government of the United States and then turn that government into an aggressor nation that will forcibly establish the United States as the ruling empire of the twenty-first century. It is subversive, seditious, secretive, and dangerous. . .
Journalist Frederick Clarkson, who has written extensively on the subject, warned in 1994 that Dominionism “seeks to replace democracy with a theocratic elite that would govern by imposing their interpretation of ‘Biblical Law.’” He described the ulterior motive of Dominionism is to eliminate “…labor unions, civil rights laws, and public schools.” Clarkson then describes the creation of new classes of citizens:
“Women would be generally relegated to hearth and home. Insufficiently Christian men would be denied citizenship, perhaps executed. So severe is this theocracy that it would extend capital punishment [to] blasphemy, heresy, adultery, and homosexuality.”
Today, Dominionists hide their agenda and have resorted to stealth; one investigator who has engaged in internet exchanges with people who identify themselves as religious conservatives said, “They cut and run if I mention the word ‘Dominionism.’” Joan Bokaer, the Director of Theocracy Watch, a project of the Center for Religion, Ethics and Social Policy at Cornell University wrote, “In March 1986, I was on a speaking tour in Iowa and received a copy of the following memo [Pat] Robertson had distributed to the Iowa Republican County Caucus titled, “How to Participate in a Political Party.” It read:
“Rule the world for God.
“Give the impression that you are there to work for the party, not push an ideology.
“Hide your strength.
“Don’t flaunt your Christianity.
“Christians need to take leadership positions. Party officers control political parties and so it is very important that mature Christians have a majority of leadership positions whenever possible, God willing.”
Dominionists have gained extensive control of the Republican Party and the apparatus of government throughout the United States; they continue to operate secretly. Their agenda to undermine all government social programs that assist the poor, the sick, and the elderly is ingeniously disguised under false labels that confuse voters. Nevertheless, as we shall see, Dominionism maintains the necessity of laissez-faire economics, requiring that people “look to God and not to government for help.” . . . (Underscored emphasis added.)
The last sentence above will be recognized as Subsidiarity, a central principle of the Roman Catholic Social Doctrine. Here the labyrinthine nature of the Christian Supremacist agenda comes into focus. Why is Subsidiarity a part of what appears on the surface to be exclusively an extremist Protestant Evangelical movement?
The Vatican has in effect acknowledged the fact that Dominionism is embraced by a coalition of Catholics and Protestants in the process of stating a case against "fundamentalism." Note that the following report is in a Roman Catholic publication, hence the criticism that the article in the Jesuit magazine does not say enough about "religious liberty":
Vatican speaks out against fundamentalism, again
The Vatican continues to make its case against Christian and Catholic fundamentalism. La Civiltà Cattolica, a Jesuit magazine with ties to the Vatican, published a lengthy article on the genesis and effects of fundamentalism in the United States. One of the article's co-authors, Jesuit Fr. Antonio Spadaro, is a close confidant of Pope Francis.
Spadaro provides some of the historical development of fundamentalism in this country going back to the early 1900s. More importantly, he describes some of the effects of what has become the religious right in our country, and how it has influenced Presidents Reagan, Bush and now Trump.
First of all, there is the focus on the last book of the Bible, Revelation. If one sees the end of the world as one of the most compelling tenets of our faith, it changes in a dramatic fashion how one views the world. War and major weather disturbances (climate change) are signs that the end is coming soon. Even the creation of conflict can be seen as a positive effort to help bring about the last days. . .
Additionally, there is the notion of dominionism. The book of Genesis grants man dominion over creation. Public norms are to be subjected to religious morals. The article notes that there is little difference between some of Christian fundamentalism and Islamic fundamentalism. The goal for Christian fundamentalists is to create a theocracy where the state submits to the Bible.
Although the article does not say enough about religious freedom in my estimation, it does say we must avoid a defense of the notion of total freedom, which appears to be a direct challenge to the secularity of the state. It becomes easier to see why fundamentalist Christians believe their freedom of religion is threatened when others who disagree also possess freedom. They see their position as true and therefore others who believe differently have no rights. Many Catholic Bishops in the United States seem to hold a similar position.
Finally, Spadaro speaks of how the religious right and conservative Catholics have formed a united front on issues they hold in common. These issues include abortion, same-sex marriage and other matters considered moral or tied to values. Their strange ecumenism, as Spadaro calls it, leads to a xenophobia and Islamophobia that tends to promote hate, deportations and the building of walls rather than bridges.
The fundamentalist plan is to set up a kingdom of the divine here on earth. While those Protestants and Catholics who embrace this concept may differ on how they understand it, they both subscribe to an ideology of conquest. They see the recent election as a spiritual war in which divine intervention may have been involved.
Some who reject Spadaro's thesis say he speaks about people who don't exist. No known Catholic holds all of these specific views. Of course, every individual has their own set of beliefs, but such an argument misses the point of Spadaro's analysis. He is speaking about forces at work that have led to certain joint efforts. Republicans and the religious right are working together to achieve certain ideological goals that coincide with their religious beliefs. Catholics have been working with the religious right to achieve certain common moral objectives. (Underscored emphasis added.)
The sentence "Many Catholic Bishops in the United States seem to hold a similar position," is a blatant attempt at "plausible deniability," designed to separate the Vatican from the American Bishops. However, the position of Roman Catholics, enshrined in dogma, is precisely the same: they believe that "their freedom of religion is threatened when others who disagree also possess freedom." Moreover, the report admits that the subject magazine article "does say we must avoid a defense of the notion of total freedom." The term "total freedom" is demonstrably not a reference to unlawful license, but to the freedoms of liberal democracy that we hold dear.
This article exposes the complicated relationship between the Church of Rome and Dominionism. She does not agree with all of its principles and objectives; but there is nevertheless a commonality of purpose. Her Bishops in America and their lay activists not only find themselves in harmony with the goal of Christian supremacy - they have fostered it by their alliance with the extremist Evangelicals and the takeover of the Republican Party. It is an unholy alliance.
It is an unholy alliance above all because of the religio-political choice of allegiance to the "lawless one," and the rejection of the Truth of God. Their lust for power and intent to coerce and persecute when it is attained reveals the spirit of the dragon which gave the "lawless one" "his power, and his seat, and great authority."
In human terms, although exhibiting the "strong delusion" of 2 Thess. 2:11-12, the words and actions of this alliance also reveal conscious hypocrisy. As a result of the George Floyd demonstrations, there were condemnations of racism:-
By Pope Francis and the USCCB;
By Pat Robertson:
"Robertson also spoke out about racism, saying "we are one" and "God made us all."
"We've got to love each other, we just got to do that," Robertson said. "We are all one race, and we need to love each other." ('You just don't do that, Mr. President')" (Televangelist Pat Robertson condemns Trump's 'law and order' response to protests)
By Robert Jeffress, strong supporter of Donald Trump.
All belie the fact that the Roman Catholic-Evangelical alliance was sealed by a compact to preserve racism.
Research by a sociologist at Clemson University identified racism with Christian nationalism. History has borne this out.
The lust for power is evil. That evil begets evil is a truism - a self-evident truth. Roman Catholicism and extremist Evangelicalism are a combination of evil, and nothing but the evils of lawlessness and cruelty can follow from it. The combination has targeted the Constitution and settled laws of the United States of America for destruction. Revelation 13 predicted their success for a season. We see it happening before our very eyes, and the worst is yet to come; but those who refuse to accept the Mark of the Beast are promised escape from the judgment of God which will follow.
