Thanks for the history lesson on the Roman Catholic Church and Hitler. Wondering if you're still a practicing Catholic, Armando? I left when I got divorced and the scales fell from my eyes. I knew several of the pedophile priests in the Philadelphia area, and I just could never go back.
As I learned of the obscene child-abuse, I did earnestly ask my dear wife that we become Orthodox or Lutheran. I can be either without much twinge of conscience, and maintain my Eucharistic faith.
I still feel totally disillusioned in the Church and participate in the Eucharist but feel very, very alienated. Very alienated.
As a free agent (not married!!), I probably would become Jewish.
But as far as leaving the organization of the Roman Catholic for the Orthodox, Lutheran, or High-Church Anglican, in a heartbeat.
I am a lifelong Catholic, as there is a long tradition of skeptical philosophy and epistemology in the Catholic Church. I think of Erasmus of Rotterdam, and am heavily influenced by David Hume.
Armand, you gave a wonderfully thoughtful reply, as expected. My understanding (as we've discussed in the past), is that religion or ontological theory was born out of philosophy, and that the two parted ways permanently, not sure what century, but my recollection is 6th century? Anyway, most of the Catholic teachings or doctrines or indoctrination you mentioned above are very pagan. Yet, you found philosophical truth within Catholicism. Likewise, my alma mater, DePaul University, required courses in comparative religion, philosophy and other spiritual and social education. So I can understand how you were able to find religious organizations that do practice this deeper thinking, as opposed to pagan fear mongering. My upbringing was in the latter, until DePaul. So, all that to say, well done finding support within the Catholic church that meets your own brilliant mind.
Lorraine Evanoff: Dear good and generous and well-loved Friend, thank you for your gracious thoughts.
Currently, I have read Pierre Hadot, The Inner Citadel, which you (with considerable advantage over me, can read in its original French).
Pierre Hadot comments deeply on "The Inner Citadel" of our Mind from the reflections of Emperor Marcus Aurelius. (In preparation for Pierre Hadot, I had read M. Aurelius' reflections (in a fine, German translation).
I follow Paul Tillich and Rudolf Bultmann -- a Fundamentalist would receive them, really, as Atheist. Tillich and Bultmann reflect very much the secular universalism of the type of M. Aurelius.
As do I.
I am reading deeply in this, and I plan, in the long run, to write about Post-Christian Ethics in a Democratic Society, heavily influenced by Pierre Hadot, Epictetus, M. Aurelius, and my first love, Plato. Also Plotinus and Aristotle (metaphysics). Always at the top: David Hume.
But my thoughts are coming in order, and I want to be able to set this out in a way that a good-spirited reader would find joy in.
John D. Caputo (26 October 1940) is a Catholic philosopher (Villanova University; Syracuse University) who is very secular, post-Christian, and who comments a lot on Jacques Derrida and formerly on Martin Heidegger. (Heidegger hasn't done so well since the publication of his "Schwarze Hefte" (black notebooks), diaries Heidegger kept during the Third Reich, which reveal the deep hatred he harbored for Jews.
Brilliant sir. Thank you for the history and insights.
At the Naval War College, we were taught that Nationalism is always a form of racism and can be the death-knell to any democratic form of government. Pride of nation is one thing but Nationalism is a disease because it normalizes racism defined by a geographic boundary, language, or worse. Am I remembering the lesson improperly?
David Grenier and Patris: White, nationalist-racism is a core evil in America, and is spreading to Europe with Marine Le Pen in France, the AfD ("Alternative für Deutschland" -- Alternative for Germany) in Germany, and in Italy the Fratelli d'Italia and Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.
I completed Air War College. I admire you for finishing Naval War College. As a young Marine Judge Advocate, I attended Naval Justice School in Newport RI on the site of the Naval War College.
I got my diploma in 1990 from Dick Cheney when he was Secretary of Defense. He was seen as a lot of hot air back then. I was just an engineering Branch Head at that time, responsible for Navy conventional weapon fuzing R&D. Who knew where Dick Cheney would end up back then. Crazy stuff.
I was associate counsel, United States Naval Research Laboratory, responsible for the field labs near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi (40 minutes east of New Orleans) -- which researched physics in all disciplines of the oceans -- and Monterey, California (which researched physics in all disciplines of the atmosphere). The two small labs combined models into interactive physics predictions of forces interacting together from the atmosphere and ocean to produce environmental products for the naval fleet.
God, I loved my job, I L-O-V-E-D, just L-O-V-E-D my client, who returned my love.
I was very strict with statutes, but bent regulations as much the language would allow to accomplish the purposes of my client. Always within what the chain of command would allow. But, to enable my client to obtain sponsor funding, I would look, research, read carefully regulatory language, and push agreements that were within (barely) the outer stretches of the regulation. My stretches actually made the regulatory implementation MORE COMPLIANT WITH CONGRESSIONAL LEGISLATION AND THE LAW OF THE LAND.
I could give specific examples.
My boss hated me. I made GS-905-15, Step 10, because of Senior Executive clients who loved ME and intermediate bosses who would mitigate my boss's wrath.
The best part: My client was brilliant, personable, and HIGHLY ETHICAL. A solid ethical backbone.
God, I love my client, and I LOVE the Navy and the Sea Services.
And: I have a special love for the Air Force.
Even growing up, these were the boy's dream and his whole life.
I retired 2016, because with traveling for my wife's, Nancy's, ophthalmic health, I ran out of leave.
Who knows? Maybe at 76, I'd still be working for the client I love.
But retirement has brought me more time for philosophy, art, literature . . .
So, David: Where were you stationed to do R&D like my client?! How coincidental!
I was raised in a different kind of cult—the Southern Baptist religion. It’s a tribe bound by shame, where control over followers is as rigid as their beliefs.
Gloria Horton-Young: My mom and dad left the Catholic Church for Fundamentalism, as they drifted toward a right-wing ideology that absolutely matches today's Q-Anon. They were 60-years ahead of time, as if this were a virtue, for this was from 1958 forward.
As I left my folks in law school, I came back to the Catholic Church.
Part of my joy in irony is considering, Pius XII may have . . . er . . . been reticent during the Shoah, but the Baltimore Catechism made a nine-year-old boy feel bound for eons in Purgatory.
But you identify a chief concern.
Take, say, Conservative Judaism. If I were a free agent, and not married, I think I would turn towards Judaism (Conservative denomination) with its traditional Hebrew, the procession of the Torah, the prominence of debate, and the near absence of Dogma.
If you know about theology, I take very little literally.
I am in the spirit of David Hume and the heroic, Lutheran, anti-fascist Rudolf Bultmann, whose great program was "Entmythologisierung" -- De-Mythologizing. There was no literal resurrection, no heaven, no hell.
That doesn't NECESSARILY mean there is nothing.
But there is very little argument with the Atheist, and almost NO agreement with the Fundamentalist.
Gloria Horton-Young -- You DO stir the storm.
I wonder if you, like me, could admire the art of Jenifer R. Prince. In my view, her cartoon art with wlw themes takes generously after the truly great Roy Lichtenstein.
The work of Jenifer R. Prince (from Brazil, her love is with Natalia Dias).
Diane K24: Oh, it is so very sorrowful and obscene that Ivy League educated JD Vance turns the traditional anti-Semitic blood libel against highly cultured, decent, gentle Haitian immigrants.
The blood absolutely boils over that there is blood libel and "immigrants poison our blood."
When Kamala Harris, our Joyful Warrior, WINS on November 5th, our job continues to de-MAGA Texas, Alabama, Florida, and a broad swath of the Mid-South and Mid-West.
Our fight is never over.
But it surely will be a huge relief to see a great Kamala Harris spearhead a revival of the Middle Class and equity and dignity for the poor and all in this country.
You know, Diane, having lived through the Great Moral Movement of our time -- the Civil Rights Movement circa 1930-1970, it is obscene that a major political party thrives on white-nationalist-racism.
I experience deep and true sorrow at the hatred abroad. I look in disbelief and a determination to fight the good fight and "create good trouble" -- thanks to our well-loved, late John Lewis.
YOU are among those prominently involved in this goodness, and I love YOUR work!
Thanks, but you are my hero as you explain authoritatively the history & facts! Good trouble is the best kind. I hope that before I die, maga will be defeated or jailed. At least the election deniers and traitors!
Eloquently and passionately stated, Armand. I'm still finding it hard to believe that he-who-shall-not-be-named is using Mein Kampf as his election playbook--and getting away with it.
And I hear CNN interview so-called Independents, women and men. Women: "Well, you know, I don't know what programs Kamala Harris will design, because she isn't specific on showing us her detailed plans. She changed positions on fracking, so how can I know where she stands?" Or Men: "At least I know where Donald Trump stands. Kamala Harris changes her views, so I don't know . . ."
In a normal election, with two RESPONSIBLE candidates, this reflection would be in order.
But between a Warrior for Joy, Kamala Harris, who advocates for labor, the middle class, equality, equity, brotherhood, and dignity of each person . . .
Versus . . .
"He-who-shall-not-be-named . . . using Mein Kampf as his election playbook -- and getting away with it."
Well, it is major cognitive dissonance to see the disproportionality between a wonderful woman, our Joyful Warrior, bring SUBSTANCE against her (at BEST) Cartoon-Character-Opponent, and that ANYONE would reflect on anything else than: Let us TROUNCE insurrectionists, ELECT responsibility, and try to re-stabilize the Country to where we once again develop TWO RESPONSIBLE PARTIES, rather than ONLY ONE for Civil Rights, versus the other for Jim and Jane Crow and the Handmaiden.
Having one of two political parties abandon responsibility to the winds is very dangerous.
And many of these perverted leaders are products of the Ivy League.
That REALLY frosts me!
I expect much better from the Ivy League than that. Much better.
Liz Gauffreau: You are one of the favorite friends I develop on this platform. I share your Northern New England values (my Dad was born near Bar Harbor, ME, and I was born in coastal NH, but we moved to Long Beach California when I was just shy of 6) through the writings of Emily Dickinson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau . . .
These Transcendentalists represent some of the best in our culture, and I try to imbibe their spirit.
Consider the Church itself nationalist and the rest follows.
No religion wears laurels for accepting the death of Jews as other than an inconvenient piece of thousands of years of history keeping survival and ascendancy as their core goal. No then, not now, not ever.
Patris: The Church and major leaders have blood on their hands.
Sir Walter Scott idolized Richard Coeur de Leon, but history shows the Warrior to have been savage against Salah ad-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub (Westernized: Saladin), whereas Saladin fought with humanity and for the most part would be found in compliance with Hague/Geneva Laws of Warfare.
The Spanish Muslims had created an era of Enlightenment and Tolerance. The Muslims honored "People of the Book" -- what we would today call the "Abrahamic Religions".
When in 1492 the Catholic monarch expelled both the Muslims and the Jews, instituting the feared Inquisition, a period of terrible persecution began.
Once, in a synagogue, a friend told me that the Gospel of Luke is anti-Semitic and the source of pogroms.
Christianity in general, and Catholicism in particular, have blood on their hands.
Patris: "Greek" Orthodox is not a correct designation of this situation.
There of course is the Greek Orthodox Church.
But generally the Orthodox consider themselves to be of Patristic faith with national churches.
The Patriarch of Moscow is implicated heavily in the demonization of Ukrainians.
Which is ironic, because much of Ukraine is in the Orthodox Church, naturally of its own nation, or, loosely, the "Ukrainian" Orthodox.
The two are not different, but are national jurisdictions of the One Orthodox Church.
I don't know where the Greek patriarchs and bishops stand on the war in Ukraine. I would presume, subject to research, that the Greek Orthodox Church would favor the victims, some Catholic, many, many being Orthodox, and some, like Volodymyr
Zelensky being Jewish. The Greek Orthodox are within NATO, and I presume they are loosely in favor of Ukraine.
The Greeks face a unique situation. During the late '40s they faced a civil war, some of which involved cruel war crimes from Communists.
So, I haven't studied the Greek Orthodox response, but I have reason to believe they would usually be pro-Ukrainian, bearing in mind the Greek experience.
They are pro-Ukraine from what I’m told by those familiar with the current government in Athens. (Witness Greece permitting US military assistance via an air base on the Greek mainland.)(something significant given the shut down of the large U.S. airbase in the 1970s(?).
Familiar with the Greek civil war, the well armed guérilla forces fighting the Nazis during WW2, turning on each other post-war over the future of government in Greece (Britain sided with the royalists). Atrocities happened on both sides btw.
Patris: You and I remember the history the same way.
I LOVE your comments not only here but on the various Substack platforms where I have seen your comments appear.
I really do feel we have differences that complement each other and core values that unite us.
I feel that very strongly.
Friends like you keep me strong, because we are living in an age where the transformed blood libel against immigrants pains me to my liver and heart!
After Kamala Harris wins, we still have to fight against the racist right that create theocracy in Texas, Alabama and Florida.
Today, I read an article in the Washington Post that makes clear that the State of Oklahoma is not only requiring the teaching of "the Bible" in public schools (!!), but specifies, in effect, the Trump Bible.
Oklahoma is buying 55,000 Trump Bibles as part of the required curriculum in the state for Public Schools!!!
Here is an article about this small part of today's insanity with the racist-nationalist-right:
You and I are in accord on all of this - in amazement and disgust both, I think, Armand. Confronting the history we’ve witnessed, not as others conveniently wish it to be.
I cannot believe Oklahoma. Though even worse, I can believe it.
Thank you for the history of Pius XII, Armoando. I've heard about the controversy but I was raised Episcopalian so I haven't had the first hand relationship. I do, however, quibble with you about Milton Friedman, who declared that the corporation's only duty was to maximize profits for the shareholders, and Friedrich Hayek, who believed in the free market. As we've seen, money moves swiftly and efficiently in a free market but labor does not and labor in the U.S. has taken it in the neck. That said, I respect your views and opinions though we disagree.
Thanks for the history lesson on the Roman Catholic Church and Hitler. Wondering if you're still a practicing Catholic, Armando? I left when I got divorced and the scales fell from my eyes. I knew several of the pedophile priests in the Philadelphia area, and I just could never go back.
Ilona Goanos, Lifelong is lifelong.
I never knew any of these obscene child-abusers.
As I learned of the obscene child-abuse, I did earnestly ask my dear wife that we become Orthodox or Lutheran. I can be either without much twinge of conscience, and maintain my Eucharistic faith.
I still feel totally disillusioned in the Church and participate in the Eucharist but feel very, very alienated. Very alienated.
As a free agent (not married!!), I probably would become Jewish.
But as far as leaving the organization of the Roman Catholic for the Orthodox, Lutheran, or High-Church Anglican, in a heartbeat.
I am a lifelong Catholic, as there is a long tradition of skeptical philosophy and epistemology in the Catholic Church. I think of Erasmus of Rotterdam, and am heavily influenced by David Hume.
Lolo, I had the same question!
Armand, you gave a wonderfully thoughtful reply, as expected. My understanding (as we've discussed in the past), is that religion or ontological theory was born out of philosophy, and that the two parted ways permanently, not sure what century, but my recollection is 6th century? Anyway, most of the Catholic teachings or doctrines or indoctrination you mentioned above are very pagan. Yet, you found philosophical truth within Catholicism. Likewise, my alma mater, DePaul University, required courses in comparative religion, philosophy and other spiritual and social education. So I can understand how you were able to find religious organizations that do practice this deeper thinking, as opposed to pagan fear mongering. My upbringing was in the latter, until DePaul. So, all that to say, well done finding support within the Catholic church that meets your own brilliant mind.
Lorraine Evanoff: Dear good and generous and well-loved Friend, thank you for your gracious thoughts.
Currently, I have read Pierre Hadot, The Inner Citadel, which you (with considerable advantage over me, can read in its original French).
Pierre Hadot comments deeply on "The Inner Citadel" of our Mind from the reflections of Emperor Marcus Aurelius. (In preparation for Pierre Hadot, I had read M. Aurelius' reflections (in a fine, German translation).
I follow Paul Tillich and Rudolf Bultmann -- a Fundamentalist would receive them, really, as Atheist. Tillich and Bultmann reflect very much the secular universalism of the type of M. Aurelius.
As do I.
I am reading deeply in this, and I plan, in the long run, to write about Post-Christian Ethics in a Democratic Society, heavily influenced by Pierre Hadot, Epictetus, M. Aurelius, and my first love, Plato. Also Plotinus and Aristotle (metaphysics). Always at the top: David Hume.
But my thoughts are coming in order, and I want to be able to set this out in a way that a good-spirited reader would find joy in.
John D. Caputo (26 October 1940) is a Catholic philosopher (Villanova University; Syracuse University) who is very secular, post-Christian, and who comments a lot on Jacques Derrida and formerly on Martin Heidegger. (Heidegger hasn't done so well since the publication of his "Schwarze Hefte" (black notebooks), diaries Heidegger kept during the Third Reich, which reveal the deep hatred he harbored for Jews.
Thank you so very much!
Brilliant sir. Thank you for the history and insights.
At the Naval War College, we were taught that Nationalism is always a form of racism and can be the death-knell to any democratic form of government. Pride of nation is one thing but Nationalism is a disease because it normalizes racism defined by a geographic boundary, language, or worse. Am I remembering the lesson improperly?
David Grenier and Patris: White, nationalist-racism is a core evil in America, and is spreading to Europe with Marine Le Pen in France, the AfD ("Alternative für Deutschland" -- Alternative for Germany) in Germany, and in Italy the Fratelli d'Italia and Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.
I completed Air War College. I admire you for finishing Naval War College. As a young Marine Judge Advocate, I attended Naval Justice School in Newport RI on the site of the Naval War College.
I LOVE THE NAVY!
Armand,
I got my diploma in 1990 from Dick Cheney when he was Secretary of Defense. He was seen as a lot of hot air back then. I was just an engineering Branch Head at that time, responsible for Navy conventional weapon fuzing R&D. Who knew where Dick Cheney would end up back then. Crazy stuff.
David Grenier: Wow! What a coincidence.
I was associate counsel, United States Naval Research Laboratory, responsible for the field labs near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi (40 minutes east of New Orleans) -- which researched physics in all disciplines of the oceans -- and Monterey, California (which researched physics in all disciplines of the atmosphere). The two small labs combined models into interactive physics predictions of forces interacting together from the atmosphere and ocean to produce environmental products for the naval fleet.
God, I loved my job, I L-O-V-E-D, just L-O-V-E-D my client, who returned my love.
I was very strict with statutes, but bent regulations as much the language would allow to accomplish the purposes of my client. Always within what the chain of command would allow. But, to enable my client to obtain sponsor funding, I would look, research, read carefully regulatory language, and push agreements that were within (barely) the outer stretches of the regulation. My stretches actually made the regulatory implementation MORE COMPLIANT WITH CONGRESSIONAL LEGISLATION AND THE LAW OF THE LAND.
I could give specific examples.
My boss hated me. I made GS-905-15, Step 10, because of Senior Executive clients who loved ME and intermediate bosses who would mitigate my boss's wrath.
The best part: My client was brilliant, personable, and HIGHLY ETHICAL. A solid ethical backbone.
God, I love my client, and I LOVE the Navy and the Sea Services.
And: I have a special love for the Air Force.
Even growing up, these were the boy's dream and his whole life.
I retired 2016, because with traveling for my wife's, Nancy's, ophthalmic health, I ran out of leave.
Who knows? Maybe at 76, I'd still be working for the client I love.
But retirement has brought me more time for philosophy, art, literature . . .
So, David: Where were you stationed to do R&D like my client?! How coincidental!
Armond, you are so erudite. What an encyclopedia resides in your noggin.
No you’re not
I was raised in a different kind of cult—the Southern Baptist religion. It’s a tribe bound by shame, where control over followers is as rigid as their beliefs.
Gloria Horton-Young: My mom and dad left the Catholic Church for Fundamentalism, as they drifted toward a right-wing ideology that absolutely matches today's Q-Anon. They were 60-years ahead of time, as if this were a virtue, for this was from 1958 forward.
As I left my folks in law school, I came back to the Catholic Church.
Part of my joy in irony is considering, Pius XII may have . . . er . . . been reticent during the Shoah, but the Baltimore Catechism made a nine-year-old boy feel bound for eons in Purgatory.
But you identify a chief concern.
Take, say, Conservative Judaism. If I were a free agent, and not married, I think I would turn towards Judaism (Conservative denomination) with its traditional Hebrew, the procession of the Torah, the prominence of debate, and the near absence of Dogma.
If you know about theology, I take very little literally.
I am in the spirit of David Hume and the heroic, Lutheran, anti-fascist Rudolf Bultmann, whose great program was "Entmythologisierung" -- De-Mythologizing. There was no literal resurrection, no heaven, no hell.
That doesn't NECESSARILY mean there is nothing.
But there is very little argument with the Atheist, and almost NO agreement with the Fundamentalist.
Gloria Horton-Young -- You DO stir the storm.
I wonder if you, like me, could admire the art of Jenifer R. Prince. In my view, her cartoon art with wlw themes takes generously after the truly great Roy Lichtenstein.
The work of Jenifer R. Prince (from Brazil, her love is with Natalia Dias).
One can see the work of Jenifer R. Prince here:
https://www.instagram.com/jeniferrprince/
I am delighted by the innocence and beauty of her cartoon work and its resemblance to that of Roy Lichtenstein.
Her art and the cartoon-dialogue bring me cheer.
Excellent, Armand!
Diane K24: Oh, it is so very sorrowful and obscene that Ivy League educated JD Vance turns the traditional anti-Semitic blood libel against highly cultured, decent, gentle Haitian immigrants.
The blood absolutely boils over that there is blood libel and "immigrants poison our blood."
When Kamala Harris, our Joyful Warrior, WINS on November 5th, our job continues to de-MAGA Texas, Alabama, Florida, and a broad swath of the Mid-South and Mid-West.
Our fight is never over.
But it surely will be a huge relief to see a great Kamala Harris spearhead a revival of the Middle Class and equity and dignity for the poor and all in this country.
You know, Diane, having lived through the Great Moral Movement of our time -- the Civil Rights Movement circa 1930-1970, it is obscene that a major political party thrives on white-nationalist-racism.
I experience deep and true sorrow at the hatred abroad. I look in disbelief and a determination to fight the good fight and "create good trouble" -- thanks to our well-loved, late John Lewis.
YOU are among those prominently involved in this goodness, and I love YOUR work!
Thanks, but you are my hero as you explain authoritatively the history & facts! Good trouble is the best kind. I hope that before I die, maga will be defeated or jailed. At least the election deniers and traitors!
Eloquently and passionately stated, Armand. I'm still finding it hard to believe that he-who-shall-not-be-named is using Mein Kampf as his election playbook--and getting away with it.
Liz Gauffreau: Isn't THAT the case!
And I hear CNN interview so-called Independents, women and men. Women: "Well, you know, I don't know what programs Kamala Harris will design, because she isn't specific on showing us her detailed plans. She changed positions on fracking, so how can I know where she stands?" Or Men: "At least I know where Donald Trump stands. Kamala Harris changes her views, so I don't know . . ."
In a normal election, with two RESPONSIBLE candidates, this reflection would be in order.
But between a Warrior for Joy, Kamala Harris, who advocates for labor, the middle class, equality, equity, brotherhood, and dignity of each person . . .
Versus . . .
"He-who-shall-not-be-named . . . using Mein Kampf as his election playbook -- and getting away with it."
Well, it is major cognitive dissonance to see the disproportionality between a wonderful woman, our Joyful Warrior, bring SUBSTANCE against her (at BEST) Cartoon-Character-Opponent, and that ANYONE would reflect on anything else than: Let us TROUNCE insurrectionists, ELECT responsibility, and try to re-stabilize the Country to where we once again develop TWO RESPONSIBLE PARTIES, rather than ONLY ONE for Civil Rights, versus the other for Jim and Jane Crow and the Handmaiden.
Having one of two political parties abandon responsibility to the winds is very dangerous.
And many of these perverted leaders are products of the Ivy League.
That REALLY frosts me!
I expect much better from the Ivy League than that. Much better.
Liz Gauffreau: You are one of the favorite friends I develop on this platform. I share your Northern New England values (my Dad was born near Bar Harbor, ME, and I was born in coastal NH, but we moved to Long Beach California when I was just shy of 6) through the writings of Emily Dickinson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau . . .
These Transcendentalists represent some of the best in our culture, and I try to imbibe their spirit.
Love this Armando. All of this is good information to have and be able to pass on to those who have not considered the parallels with the past.
Chris Andrews: Said so kindly by an author whose work with poetic words and subtle humor I absolutely LOVE to read!
You are one of my favorites, near the top of the list!
😊
Consider the Church itself nationalist and the rest follows.
No religion wears laurels for accepting the death of Jews as other than an inconvenient piece of thousands of years of history keeping survival and ascendancy as their core goal. No then, not now, not ever.
Patris: The Church and major leaders have blood on their hands.
Sir Walter Scott idolized Richard Coeur de Leon, but history shows the Warrior to have been savage against Salah ad-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub (Westernized: Saladin), whereas Saladin fought with humanity and for the most part would be found in compliance with Hague/Geneva Laws of Warfare.
The Spanish Muslims had created an era of Enlightenment and Tolerance. The Muslims honored "People of the Book" -- what we would today call the "Abrahamic Religions".
When in 1492 the Catholic monarch expelled both the Muslims and the Jews, instituting the feared Inquisition, a period of terrible persecution began.
Once, in a synagogue, a friend told me that the Gospel of Luke is anti-Semitic and the source of pogroms.
Christianity in general, and Catholicism in particular, have blood on their hands.
Yes, and the Greek Orthodox Church as well.. up to and including the Russian church’s vile demonization of Ukrainians today.
Patris: "Greek" Orthodox is not a correct designation of this situation.
There of course is the Greek Orthodox Church.
But generally the Orthodox consider themselves to be of Patristic faith with national churches.
The Patriarch of Moscow is implicated heavily in the demonization of Ukrainians.
Which is ironic, because much of Ukraine is in the Orthodox Church, naturally of its own nation, or, loosely, the "Ukrainian" Orthodox.
The two are not different, but are national jurisdictions of the One Orthodox Church.
I don't know where the Greek patriarchs and bishops stand on the war in Ukraine. I would presume, subject to research, that the Greek Orthodox Church would favor the victims, some Catholic, many, many being Orthodox, and some, like Volodymyr
Zelensky being Jewish. The Greek Orthodox are within NATO, and I presume they are loosely in favor of Ukraine.
The Greeks face a unique situation. During the late '40s they faced a civil war, some of which involved cruel war crimes from Communists.
So, I haven't studied the Greek Orthodox response, but I have reason to believe they would usually be pro-Ukrainian, bearing in mind the Greek experience.
They are pro-Ukraine from what I’m told by those familiar with the current government in Athens. (Witness Greece permitting US military assistance via an air base on the Greek mainland.)(something significant given the shut down of the large U.S. airbase in the 1970s(?).
Familiar with the Greek civil war, the well armed guérilla forces fighting the Nazis during WW2, turning on each other post-war over the future of government in Greece (Britain sided with the royalists). Atrocities happened on both sides btw.
Patris: You and I remember the history the same way.
I LOVE your comments not only here but on the various Substack platforms where I have seen your comments appear.
I really do feel we have differences that complement each other and core values that unite us.
I feel that very strongly.
Friends like you keep me strong, because we are living in an age where the transformed blood libel against immigrants pains me to my liver and heart!
After Kamala Harris wins, we still have to fight against the racist right that create theocracy in Texas, Alabama and Florida.
Today, I read an article in the Washington Post that makes clear that the State of Oklahoma is not only requiring the teaching of "the Bible" in public schools (!!), but specifies, in effect, the Trump Bible.
Oklahoma is buying 55,000 Trump Bibles as part of the required curriculum in the state for Public Schools!!!
Here is an article about this small part of today's insanity with the racist-nationalist-right:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2024/10/04/oklahoma-schools-trump-bible/
You and I are in accord on all of this - in amazement and disgust both, I think, Armand. Confronting the history we’ve witnessed, not as others conveniently wish it to be.
I cannot believe Oklahoma. Though even worse, I can believe it.
Thank you for the history of Pius XII, Armoando. I've heard about the controversy but I was raised Episcopalian so I haven't had the first hand relationship. I do, however, quibble with you about Milton Friedman, who declared that the corporation's only duty was to maximize profits for the shareholders, and Friedrich Hayek, who believed in the free market. As we've seen, money moves swiftly and efficiently in a free market but labor does not and labor in the U.S. has taken it in the neck. That said, I respect your views and opinions though we disagree.