One of the great parts in the article on how to manufacture consent for war using celebrities and humanitarian calls:
Central to the CIA’s use of Catholicism was a man named Tom Dooley. Though the name is largely obscure today, in 1961 he placed third in Gallup’s “Most Esteemed” man in the world poll. Dooley was a Navy doctor who provided care for South Vietnamese refugees fleeing the chaos after the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu in 1954. His 1956 best seller Deliver Us from Evil, as well as countless articles and media appearances afterward, “justified American intervention in Vietnam and presented Vietnamese Catholics as sympathetic subjects.” He was a central-casting missionary, and the persecuted Vietnamese were precisely the kinds of people Christ charged Catholics to serve. But he was writing CIA-sponsored propaganda to build domestic support for Vietnam, and his stories weren’t “strictly speaking, true.”
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And the Edward Snowden of the CIA of that era Philip Agee:
But the Tlatelolco student massacre in Mexico City in 1968, in which he felt the CIA was complicit, was his Damascene moment. Agee had begun to immerse himself in the leftist Catholic liberation theology movement sweeping Latin America: “I became the servant of the capitalism I rejected. I became one of its secret policemen. The CIA, after all, is nothing more than the secret police of American capitalism.”
Agee didn’t just quit. He moved to Cuba for a time to do “research,” and then, from his residence in the United Kingdom, wrote and published Inside the Company (1975), one of the first books by a former officer to air the CIA’s dirty laundry. But, controversially, he went further: in the book, Agee actually revealed the names of hundreds of active CIA officers and agents. “One way to neutralize the CIA’s support to repression,” he wrote at the time, “is to expose its officers so that their presence in foreign countries becomes untenable.”
You always justify it with something the people you need to support you deeply believe.
For instance, in Brazil, we went through a coup and elected a fascist because most people really believe the previous two governments were corrupt and would implement a communist dictatorship given time.
The fact they are not measurably more or less corrupt than their predecessors, that they formed a coalition with Center-right parties in order to govern, and that their platform is timidly social democratic were, and continue to be, largely ignored.
To the point that now, after more than 600 thousand avoidable deaths, unprecedented unemployment, countless corruption scandals directly connected to him, and the worst economic crisis since the 90’s, only 58% support his impeachment.
Nope. The left heavily relies on government to deliver equality.
Catholicism argues for allegiance to Christ through the Holy Roman Church not some earthly authority. It’s pretty clear that’s taken to heart when you look at the system that is the Catholic Church. I mean the pope has his own country?
"Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's"
Catholicism is all about “working with what you have”. Abide by the earthly rules of your government, but your obligation to god is separate.
I was responding to the “leaning left”. I would argue the Church is more than happy to govern but they certainly don’t do it in the same flavor as leftists.
> But these things only hold personal spiritual/ redemptive value if done voluntarily.
If you voluntarily elect a government that will make it into law or work toward its establishment, your redemption is assured, because you did it voluntarily.
In this case, the end being the eradication of poverty and all its ills, wouldn't be a noble goal we could all work towards?
And, even if it never becomes codified as law, if it just become a universal social norm, to not work for the accumulation of resources and power, but instead to work for your own and other's betterment, wouldn't that goal be fulfilled?
No, you're just rephrasing "the ends justifies the means", except the with added moral superiority of "I'm voting so that makes use of force ok".
'Voluntarily' supporting mandatory laws misses the entire point: that individual acts matter and sacrifice for others matters.
Especially when voting for tax schemes that might cost you very little because they're sold as "only taxing those that can afford it" or "the 1%" or whatever.
>If you voluntarily elect a government that will make it into law or work toward its establishment, your redemption is assured, because you did it voluntarily.0
This varies heavily by parish and region. Cincinnati's archdiocese, because of a shortage of priests, is in the process of consolidating a large number of parishes that were mostly created for ethnic reasons, and the philosophical/political differences are causing a ton of friction.
I'm not inclined to agree. If you look at the policy positions the Catholic Church officially promotes, they tend to be a mishmash of "left-leaning" positions on some issues (labor rights, immigration reform, abolition of capital punishment), "right-leaning" positions on others (abortion, euthanasia, LGBT rights). Trying to paint Catholicism as being in some essential sense more "left-leaning" than "right-leaning" (or vice versa) seems to require either ignoring the details of the views the Catholic Church publicly favours, or else choosing to view some of those issues as more important than others. It is worth noting that (generally speaking) Catholics are not actually required to agree with the Catholic Church's official positions on public policy questions, they are (mostly) advisory recommendations, not binding doctrine; but that fact is a further blow to the idea that Catholicism is essentially "left-leaning" or "right-leaning".
Catholicism (and Christianity more broadly) is close to 2000 years old, whereas the concepts of "left" and "right" are less than 250 years old, originating in the French Revolution. Both terms represent alliances of political positions on rather disparate topics, and many of those linkages may be more due to accidents of history than any essential connection. The precise mix of positions that make up the "left" or the "right" varies from country to country, and changes over time. The terms are useful as a rough approximation in describing the politics of some countries in particular: I think the hard two party system of the US encourages "left-vs-right" thinking, although that still ignores the internal contradictions within both alliances. Many other countries, especially those with softer two party systems, multiparty systems, and/or greater cultural diversity, politics can be more multi-dimensional, and "left-vs-right" often appears less useful; and the difference between "left-wing" and "right-wing" authoritarian regimes appears to be more style than substance, rendering the distinction rather useless in large parts of the world. When you take this broader historical view of "left-vs-right", it seems unsurprising that the labels perform poorly when applied to a religious tradition which is approximately 8 times older than those labels themselves are.
There exists many Christian sects that disagree. Usually they’re evangelical in nature. The argument I’ve heard is that a Christian only answers to the authority of Christ but Catholics answer to the pope
> The argument I’ve heard is that a Christian only answers to the authority of Christ but Catholics answer to the pope
That's a really nonsensical argument. Most non-Catholic churches have authorities – Bishops, Conventions, whatever – just because they don't accept the authority of the Pope doesn't mean they don't accept have other ecclesial authorities which they do accept.
Also, Eastern Orthodox theologians–and even some Protestant theologians–have said they accept the Pope's authority in principle, but they cannot accept it in practice because the Popes have abused their power and given themselves far more power than they were ever meant to have – but, in principle, if the Catholic Church turned over a new leaf, and adopted a much more limited view of papal power, and if their other theological disputes with Catholicism could be satisfactorily resolved – then they'd be able to go back to accepting the Pope's authority, not just in principle, but in practice too.
>> The argument I’ve heard is that a Christian only answers to the authority of Christ but Catholics answer to the pope
I believe the Catholic response to that would be that before Christ returned to heaven he created a church, and he gave that church the authority to preach, to teach, and the forgive sins. It exists the continue Christ's mission on earth.
Christ then selected Peter to be the leader of the church and granted him authority over all the faithful ("I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.")
At this moment Christ instituted the office of the Papacy.
Whoever holds this office has authority over the universal church. This authority does not come from the man who holds the office but comes directly from Christ himself.
The Pope is not above Christ, the Pope answers to the authority of Christ. The Pope is just a man like anyone else.
So to summarize, why do Catholics answer to the Pope? Because that's what Christ wanted.
The four "marks" of the Church that are listed in the Nicene Creed are that it is one, holy, catholic (that is, universal), and apostolic. The hierarchy of bishops and the Pope (the Bishop of Rome) are the apostolic part; Catholics consider them the successors of the apostles.
>Every religion teaches the same basic social principles in some way or another.
This is often repeated, seldom examined up close. It's true only in the vaguest sense, that "be good" is a common theme and that there are some overlaps in what constitutes good.
You usually need to get into the esoteric theology to find modern notions of equality in traditional religions. Many religions actually teach the opposite: "know your place".
You equate those values with the systemic regulation of them.
Id argue that Christianity is inherently conservative. Christianity finds the root cause of the imperfection of our world (and the systems it contains) in original sin. One doesn’t endlessly seek an answer for why systems eventually fail or bad things happen, because one recognizes that ultimately everything in this world suffers imperfection. For progressivism, original sin is open-ended, thereby allowing for any particular powerful entity to control what is considered the source of evil.
The Christian, by embracing the absurd belief of original sin, recognizes that ultimately even formal thought becomes informal. His belief protects him from the hubris of thinking that he has the power to fix what cannot ever be fixed. The progressive, by definition, must always be seeking a way “forward”, and in doing so tends to believe in other, more harmful absurd beliefs.
Many political groups (Catholic Church among them) have used Christianism to ascend and maintain power, bending it to their purposes, but that doesn't make them strict followers of what Jesus taught his disciples.
> It’s really hard to be a Catholic, or a Christian, and not lean left.
I would be careful here. You are operating under a very peculiar view of left/right (not a very accurate view in my estimation). Left/right are generally labels of little value apart from particular time and place.
> at the core of Christian faith lies the notion of equality
Equality only as persons or in dignity, yes, but Christianity/Catholicism is anything but egalitarian. The distribution of qualities, both inherent and cultivated, is unequal. As Chesterton wrote IIRC, this latter sort of egalitarianism is the equality of envy and cutting down. Whereas an envious elitist may try to outdo his opponent, the egalitarian will deny or cut him down. Those are pride and envy, both mortal sins and therefore surefire ways to temporal disorder and the eternal self-destruction known as Hell.
> forgiveness and understanding the other
The coupling of these two seems to suggest that what is forgiven is understandable or resolved by understanding. But that is not true forgiveness. If someone were to wrong me in some grievous way, out of ill will, I should feel the proportionate degree of anger. Just as wrath, inordinate anger, is a defect, so is an absence of proportional anger. Anger moves us toward justice and its absence at times when it is needed encourages the continuation of evil since the trespasser is never sent a clear signal that his actions are evil. We forgive not because "it's okay", but because what has been done isn't! We want the contrition of the trespasser. And forgiveness does not rule out the need for justice. We may show mercy, but that is left to prudential judgement. Charity is totally subject to the truth. To quote St. Pius X, the "primary duty of charity does not lie in toleration of false ideas".
> as well as loving everyone, even those who do not reciprocate.
Love here is the love of willing the objective good of the other, not the sentimental ersatz variety commonly espoused today that rests on feelings. What is an enemy? Someone who is ill willed. We do not love him in any human way. We love him for his sake as an act of charity, for his conversion and repentance. Man's ultimate fulfillment is to know and love God, the supreme and inexhaustible cause, cause of causes. Good brings us into better alignment with that infinite and highest of goods, evil takes us away (though we are incapable of reconciling ourselves to that highest good on our own, hence the sacraments and grace).
You might find this post more informative than what I have written[0]. But to sum things us: Christianity/Catholicism is anything but the Church of Being A Nice Fellow. The military language (spiritual warfare, spiritual combat, the Church Militant here on earth, talk of spiritual battle in St. Michael's Prayer) in the Tradition are not a mistake. You just have to understand what the battle is all about. Read the New Testament and you don't get a picture of a Nice Jesus, only a charitable one. Nice people don't tell others that if they keep heading where they're heading, living in the way they're living, they'll not only end up miserable, but they'll end up in Hell. Nice people don't throw money changers out of the temple. Nice people don't speak truth to power. No, only loving people do that.
> You are operating under a very peculiar view of left/right
I am using the most current views - for instance, in the US, the "left" (there is no such thing as socialists in the US mainstream politics, or even a "proper" left) wants everyone to have healthcare, regardless of how much they can pay. The very far left of the US political spectrum are mild social democrats and Keynesians.
> Whereas an envious elitist may try to outdo his opponent, the egalitarian will deny or cut him down.
While neither of them is going to Heaven, that doesn't undo the notion that Jesus told people to get rid of all their worldly possessions, give the money to the poor, and join him.
> suggest that what is forgiven is understandable or resolved by understanding.
Not at all. One should understand and accept the other even when there are irreconcilable differences, for God made both and both deserve love.
> Christianity/Catholicism is anything but the Church of Being A Nice Fellow.
It has been used for purposes completely opposite to what Jesus taught, by fallible humans.
I am sure there are many other examples on both sides. Similar to other religions. Some claim it is difficult to be Zionist or Shia Muslim and not lean left for example (counter to the common stereotype).
Just manufacture consent for a "culture war." This is the notion that the left is attacking religion and religious values. It has provided pivotal support for right wing candidates in the US over the past 50 years.
Like I said before, unless they follow the ideas set forth by Jesus, they calling themselves Christian does not make them any more Christian than I calling myself a fish because I can swim.
Honestly, I think it’s fair enough to say ‘no true Scotsman’ is an invalid analogy to something that does have codified laws, teachings and commandments…
(Of course, following the laws, teachings and commandments is not the point of biblical Christianity (the idea being that it is impossible to in humanity’s current state), but Christians should want to, and strive towards being better at it, while being honest about their shortcomings!)
Catholicism is thoroughly codified, and much of the letter of the law would be considered right-wing; left-leaning philosophy within the Church relies on vague "spirit of Vatican II" arguments and appeals for a fundamental return to what is presented as a Christ-like life, but that doesn't sit well with "This is not 'Nam--there are rules" Catholics.
Unless they turn the other cheek, love their neighbors as they love themselves, and sell all their worldly possessions and give their money to the poor, I'd disagree.
>Right now we have a Pope who I do not agree with. His philosophy is flawed and not anything I agree with.
I'm assuming you're American, because otherwise I find it hard to believe that anyone could thing the philosophy that comes right out of the gospels as "flawed".
This is a serious question: Is there anything he's said that was not already taught in the gospels?
Papal infallibility does not mean that every word that comes out of his mouth is true. It means that he can not bind the faithful to believe error. So when he officially exercises his power and declares that something must be believed by all the faithful then he will be divinely protected from teaching error.
Papal statements that would be regarded as infallible are also made incredibly rarely...I think the most recent one was to affirm Mary's Immaculate Conception. Catholics are free to criticize the Pope as much as they can criticize any other king.
Funny, your words above this speak contrary to this. Where is your Love for people who can't be treated because hospitals are overwhelmed? There is strong suspicion that due to this covid caused equal amount of deaths as a nasty side effect (undiagnosed heart attacks, strokes, cancers, hugely delayed surgeries etc.)
There ain't no Truth in your words, simple scientific fact.
And as for Freedom, its just about you and likeminded people. You clearly don't care about containing virus and thus giving freedom to everybody. Well the rest of us beg to differ.
With all due respect, people with an inferior immune system to the mean of the herd should choose what works for them, this might mean an injection of some sort. This is their FREEDOM TO injection.
All I'm asking for is FREEDOM FROM authority telling my people to inject or be LOCK OUT while everyone else comes out of LOCK DOWN into our new dystopia where TRUTH is hard to swallow so people don't look for it.
Even though you show a strong contrast to my position:
The vaccine mandate isn't taking away the livelyhood of a single person. Go get the vaccine for free and stop putting yourself and everyone around you in mortal danger.
The vaccine absolutely, definitely, without a single doubt in the mind of any sane person, does stop the spread of contagion. To claim otherwise is a direct and clear lie. By repeating this, you are lying. As far as I can gather, christians are not allowed to do so.
That's absurd. You have no idea my circumstances or anyone who is loosing a job, you are putting people in mortal danger with your authoritarian wrong think.
No, you are putting people in mortal danger. Do not try to "no you" this. You, specifically, are putting people at risk of actually dying. You are being massively reckless, and acting extremely un-christian since you are spreading lies about it.
Fake news, unvacinated people pose no inherent dangers.
A person with the sars-cov-2 contagion spreads the virus.
Unfortunately both vacinated and unvacinated people are at risk of contracting & spreading sars-cov-2, we have a staggering number of break through cases, even in highly vacinated areas.
I am not a mortal danger to myself or anyone becuase I dont have sars-cov-2. this is the 5th endemic Corona virus.
I AM healthy and strong.
not sick, not unclean, not unhygenic, not uncaring, not part of the untouchable caste, I will not obey.
people with the virus spread the virus, not any arbitrary list that the government keeps on injection status or religion.
If you have a valid medical reason not to vaccinate, then you are exempt from the mandate. Otherwise, you put yourself and every person you interact with in danger, in special those who can't vaccinate for valid medical reasons. Right now, a large part of the hospital resources dedicated to COVID are being used on non-vaccinated, taking those resources away from others who don't have COVID but still need a hospital
Fake news, unvacinated people pose no inherent danger to anyone.
A person with the sars-cov-2 contagion spreads the virus.
Unfortunately both vacinated and unvacinated people are at risk of contracting spreading sars-cov-2, we have a staggering number of break through cases, even in highly vacinated areas.
I am not a mortal danger to myself or anyone becuase I dont have the virus. this is the 5th endemic Corona virus.
I AM healthy and strong.
not sick, not unclean, not unhygenic, not uncaring, not part of the untouchable caste, I will not obey.
people with the virus spread the virus, not any arbitrary list that the government keeps on injection status or religion.
> people with the virus spread the virus, not any arbitrary list that the government keeps on injection status or religion.
The virus doesn’t sent you an email to let you know you have it. Many people have it and spread it without even knowing. The best way to fight against that is through vaccination. The rest of your comment reads like you doing mental gymnastics to justify the stance you already dug in on months ago.
> Right now, a large part of the hospital resources dedicated to COVID are being used on non-vaccinated, taking those resources away from others who don't have COVID but still need a hospital
This is the crux and the part of the argument they will never engage with. The unvaccinated make up the vast majority of those hospitalized, and the resources those people are consuming don't come from nowhere.
Has anybody here tried to use medical services in America this year for non-COVID reasons? Medical staff are overworked. Clerical staff are tired and making mistakes. The quality of medical care has dropped, and it's the fault of the unvaccinated, full stop.
Well, be specific! What snake oil am I peddling? What magic claims do I have? "Vaccines work," and more specifically, "people who take the vaccine do not get as sick or spread the disease as much" are straight up _observations._
There's a difference between "vaccines work," and the vaccine specifically developed for COVID works. Most of us who are skeptical of the second statement are not skeptical of the first. The snake oil is in the discourse.
No, I said that we can simply and directly observe that those who receive the COVID vaccine ALMOST UNIVERSALLY do not wind up requiring hospitalization for COVID. This is "sky is blue" stuff.
> Some 72 per cent of all patients in ICU since late June had an underlying condition. Between April and August, there were 193 Covid-19 deaths. Of the 178 patients whose vaccination status was known, 30 were at least 14 days after receiving the final dose of vaccine.
...
> “The rise in vaccinated patients in hospital is not a surprise as more and more people have been vaccinated,” said HSE chief clinical officer Dr Colm Henry.
> Whereas in January up to 50 people ended up in hospital for every 1,000 Covid-19 cases, now fewer than 20 hospitalisations occur for the same number of cases.
> “But for the vaccination programme, hospitals would have been overwhelmed,” Dr Henry said.
I ask you again: where is the snake oil? And I'll tell you: your emotional attachment to being right and being proud of your bullshit-detection-kit is making you prone to a type ii error here. Reject the null hypothesis. The COVID vaccine obviously, patently, visibly, openly works. Take your tools of skepticism and apply them somewhere that isn't equivalent to parking in a fire lane during a fire.
Wittgenstein's ruler: Unless you have confidence in the ruler’s reliability, if you use a ruler to measure a table you may also be using the table to measure the ruler. The less you trust the ruler’s reliability, the more information you are getting about the ruler and the less about the table.
There are too many political, economic, and social incentives involved in propagating this new vaccine to say anything about it with the least bit of certainty. The fact that so many are presenting such an uncertain topic with such certainty itself carries a signal.
The only thing that will solve this uncertainty is time.
> There are too many political, economic, and social incentives involved in propagating this new vaccine to say anything about it with the least bit of certainty.
Show your work. The argument, as you have made it, could apply to the CDC saying you shouldn't take lead supplements. You don't know who's pulling the strings of the CDC, therefore lead is good for you actually? You aren't pointing to anything contradicting the mountain of openly available evidence contradicting your position.
>In 2021, people are forced from employment over authoritarian (and bad) vaccine mandate, created in secret in 2021 by so-called leftists
Is Joe Biden really a 'leftist'? He supports the private ownership of capital. I think most in the US would describe him as a liberal, and most self-identified leftists would describe him with unkindness.
>Is Joe Biden really a 'leftist'? I think most in the US would describe him as a liberal, and most self-identified leftists would describe him with profanity.
In American political discourse, any member of the Democratic Party is considered a "leftist' regardless of their beliefs or policies. You're correct that actual self-identified leftists (at least the ones I'm aware of) hate him. But remember that 'leftist' is used more often than not as a pejorative and dog-whistle for "radical Marxist" in the US than a descriptive political label outside of leftist circles.
'Leftist: A person belonging to the political left and usually identifying with the radical, anti capitalist, or revolutionary sectors of left politics. Includes anarchists, marxists, communists, socialists, and all other explicitly radical left ideologies.'
There are absolutely conservative commentators who describe all Democratic Party voters as 'leftists', just as there are left-leaning commentators who describe all Republicans as 'fascists', but these descriptions are commonly understood to be hyperbole. I think when using words like 'leftist' among non-American company, we can agree that the current Presidential adminstration doesn't fit that label. Compare the current White House policy agenda to that of Germany's political party Die Linke, translated as "The Left":
>I think when using words like 'leftist' among non-American company, we can agree that the current Presidential adminstration doesn't fit that label.
Absolutely. But the US doesn't really have a true Left in its political spectrum, it has a far right and center right, represented by the Republicans and Democrats respectively, so the scale is skewed. Also, hyperbole seems to be dominating the discourse at the moment, and not just from the commentariat. Everyone I know who would describe themselves as Conservative or Republican considers Biden a leftist.
> But remember that 'leftist' is used more often than not as a pejorative and dog-whistle for "radical Marxist" in the US than a descriptive political label outside of leftist circles.
As seen from anywhere else, the US right now has a center-right party, with a handful of timid socdem members (the Democrats) and a far-right (Republicans), along with some other marginal movements.
Right now some people in the US would call Keynes a communist, or "radical Marxist", to use the dog-whistle you mentioned.
Reads like something from the Know Nothing party[1]. Lots of broad characterizations without much support and several internal contradictions, referring to Catholics of different political persuasions..What exactly is the thesis other than a strong anti-Catholicism? . While the article is ostensibly about the CIA, the swipe at the Supreme court at the end gives his biases away.The fact simply is that Catholics of various political persuasions from JFK to John Brennan to Scalia became more prominent in American government as the descendants of poor Irish, Italian, and German Catholics became better educated. Do we really want to descend back to the days when a group of a certain ethnic or religious persuasion can be targeted as a secret cabal of conspirators behind every door?
The author is a professor at a Catholic university, likely making them Catholic, and I never got the feeling the point of the piece was to be anti-Catholic. It seemed to criticize the CIA's co-opting of Catholicism, with even the Supreme Court bit being more about attacking the right-wing shift of Catholicism than Catholicism itself.
Perhaps I misread his sentiment but the Catholic call outs are hard to justify otherwise. I don't know Mr. Barnhisel's religion but it's not at all a good assumption that since he teaches at a Catholic college that he is in fact Catholic, or if Catholic identifying, is faithful to its essential teachings. . Many if not most professors in large US Catholic colleges are not Catholic. Hires are made without regard to religion particularly outside of the theology and philosophy departments.
And why not ? Most major US Catholic colleges have long-ago (at least since 1960s) abandoned any attempt to teach, explain, defend, or even in some cases, tolerate Catholicism, nor the practice of its theological or moral teachings except in a cafeteria style manner to support left-wing causes which may or may not be in line with Catholic teaching. [1][2]
My experiences are limited to the one I attended, but I'd say most of the Humanities professors were Catholic. An English professor at a Catholic university writing about Catholicism is probably Catholic, or at least unlikely to be anti-Catholic. Particularly one that uses a phrase like "Damascene moment."
That’s deeply ahistorical, given that early Protestantism had scarcely more tolerance for diversity of thought than the Catholicism of the same period did. In the Reformation period (1517-1555 or 1648, depending on one’s periodisation choices), the majority of both Protestants and Catholics agreed that the government had the right to impose one version of Christianity on the population and prohibit (with force, even capital punishment) any competing versions of it (to say nothing of non-Christian religions or non-religion), their chief disagreement was over which version of Christianity the state should so impose, whether Catholicism or some version of Protestantism – and Protestants often displayed as much intolerance for competing versions of Protestantism as Catholics and Protestants displayed for each other. Whereas today, both the Catholic Church and the vast majority of Protestant churches officially agree that religious freedom is an important value that every government ought to respect. And how they both got from rejecting religious freedom to embracing it is a complicated story, but I think one should avoid overly simplistic versions of it (such as ones in which all the heroes are Protestant and all the villains are Catholic)
You are right, but it doesn't change the fact that without Revolution and Reformation, the Catholic Church would simply be too powerful for any change to take place.
I think even this response is ahistorical. If you study the actual history of the papacy in the Middle Ages – the Great Western Schism, the "Babylonian Captivity" of the Avignon Papacy, King Philip IV of France's murder of Pope Boniface VIII, the power claimed (and even exercised more than once) of the Holy Roman Emperors to forcibly remove Popes from office, the disturbing mess of the 10th century saeculum obscurum, in which the papacy was basically the plaything of a powerful Roman noble family, and interestingly two women (Theodora and her daughter Marozia) acted as the real power behind the papal throne – it turns out the Catholic Church went through repeated periods of great weakness, in which Pope after Pope found out that all these elaborate theological doctrines on papal power don't mean much when Kings and Emperors have armies much larger than yours, and if you upset the wrong people they'll have you murdered, and then they'll bribe and threaten the Cardinals to make sure they elect a successor more to their liking. At many points the mediaeval Catholic Church was actually weaker than it would be in the Reformation period. I'd argue that all the bickering over religious doctrines which the Reformation produced, had the unintended result of making the Catholic Church stronger – in those parts of Europe which remained majority Catholic – than it had been before.
It’s still beside the point. Yes, there were times where the Church has been weaker. However, during that period its influence wasn’t so harmful, so it didn’t matter.
Also, doctrines aren’t particularly important; it’s only a set of glorified fairy tales, irrelevant to all but some of its followers. What does matter was breaking its ideological monopoly, without which the humanism could never take off.
"At this point, as again in the mid-11th century, we come across elections in which problems of harmonising historical criteria and those of theology and canon law make it impossible to decide clearly which side possessed the legitimacy whose factual existence guarantees the unbroken lawful succession of the successors of Saint Peter. The uncertainty that in some cases results has made it advisable to abandon the assignation of successive numbers in the list of the popes."
That is allegedly the official position - one must have faith in an unbroken line of Popes back to St. Peter, but practically speaking even the official compilers of The List of Popes aren't sure which to include.
I heard Agee talk (not a lecture) to students for an hour at a college in 1987. Far from hyperbolic, he was a decent, square-shooter personality. I distinctly recall his saying (paraphrase) that 'they are planning to turn the US into another Latin America'. I remember that because it kept explaining a lot of what was going on. And still does.
Edit: A response to 'Drop of Treason' in Covert Action (May 25, 2021)
This article doesn’t provide much substance, other than listing directors that were Catholic and a rouge Agent who also happened to be Catholic. I was expecting a revelation but sadly this just seems like a clickbait title at worst, and a brief history of leadership affiliations at best.
It's a book review, and the title references the subject of the books. If one book gets more attention than the other you can probably conclude that it was the more interesting one.
The Catholicism in this piece seems tacked-on; it has much more to do with the Philip Agee phenomenon, and with criticism (no doubt well founded) of the CIA's Cold War role as an instigator of war. Agee, ironically, was turned in part by his experience of the oppression of Catholic liberation theologists in Central America.
>its flawed understanding of Catholicism led to some of its greatest debacles, including the failure to see the rise of Islamic fundamentalism.
Daily reminder: the CIA directly and intentionally funded and fomented the rise of islamic fundamentalism in order to counter Soviet interests in Afghanistan through the Mujaheddin in 1976.
And the CIA weaponizes religion for it's purposes including using Uyghur extremists or Isis members. One of the experts on that is the retired Graham Fuller:
Graham Fuller's daughter used to be married to the uncle of the Boston marathon bombers and he had arranged their visas as well as the visa for the wanted "Islamic" fundamentalist cleric Gulen, who is the spiritual leader of the CIA's Islam and Enes Kanter.
> Daily reminder: the CIA directly and intentionally funded and fomented the rise of islamic fundamentalism in order to counter Soviet interests in Afghanistan through the Mujaheddin in 1976
That seems incomplete enough to be a misleading statement. Ghost Wars (Steve Coll) is as authoritative and well-sourced treatment as I've found.
It lays out the imperative as "confront the Soviets in Afghanistan." To that end, the State Department and CIA continually bickered over who to best fund and arm in Afghanistan.
Add in the added complexity that most funding was run through the Pakistani ISI, but paid for by the Saudis and Gulf states, all of whom generally had no compunctions and/or outright preference for Islamic fundamentalists (Pakistan due to India, Saudis due to portions of the royal family).
And on top of that, you had a constant realpolitik (arm who will fight, and who our allies will support) vs ideological (arm who believes more in democracy) debate going on. Generally speaking, the Islamists were willing the right, but the moderates tended to find reasons to avoid committing their forces, despite being paid to do exactly that.
So an accurate statement would be "the CIA helped funnel Saudi money to Afghani mujahideen, with Pakistan's ISI steering large portions of that towards Islamist groups, a practice which the US generally knew about but saw no way around."
You do know that all the mujahideen were Islamists, right? We are talking about Afghanistan.
The Mujahid group that was the least Islamist was led by the heir of a religious order and structured as such.
The OP's assertion are fully accurate. The CIA knowingly funded and fomented the rise of Islamic fundamentalism.
It is incorrect the relationship was fully indirect. The CIA directly met with militant Islamic fundamentalist groups, including inviting leaders to the USA, and directly funding them :
We can quibble over the meaning of Islamist, but there's an obvious gradient in goals and methods between (to use examples) Massoud, Hekmatyar, and Omar.
And the primary reason the CIA met directly with groups was to cut the ISI out of the picture and give them more direct control over to whom and how aid was provided.
The CIA still met with some of the more extreme groups. The reason they wanted to cut the ISI out was to maximize their interests.
If you read the sources I linked, you will see that the CIA directly met with and financed Haqqani, which was one of the most extreme and who went on to be instrumental in the founding of Al Qaeda by greatly assisting Bin Laden in Afghanistan and allying with him.
That is to say, unequivocally, the CIA directly funded and abetted the rise of Islamist fundamentalism.
Didn't the CIA fund Haqqani because his group was one of the more effective at attacking the Soviets?
My impression was that effectively, their decision at the time was: (a) fund moderate elements who weren't gung-ho about actually risking their forces to kill Soviets vs (b) fund religious extremists who were a more militarily effective option.
And even given that calculus, they still spread the money around (or even skewed it towards moderates), because even at the time they were uncomfortable going all-in on someone who took his orders from God.
As I said, the most moderate faction of the mujahideen was literally a religious order. They all believed to be taking their orders from God in one way or another, and even the most moderate ones were organized around religion.
The CIA only ever directly financed the more extreme elements that I know of. The more moderate ones, ironically, got all of their funding through Pakistan, though Pakistan gave more to the extremists.
If the CIA gave them more money because they wore more effective, it doesn't change the fact that they directly fomented the rise of Islamic fundamentalism.
The Saudis and Gulf states are told to pay and match the CIA or else..... Their heads will roll otherwise. Those colonies are used as ATMs for the national security state and the forced purchase of junk military gear, in addition to ensuring the petro dollar remains intact.
Fully agree. To add to the list of "religious" mischief the CIA is involved with, let's take a look at the Tibetan situation and the current Dalai Lama:
Are you joking? Russian spies are killing people right now. Former «Vympel», now «Alpha», entered Ukraine recently, and they started to collect money for their covert operation by murdering of innocent families. They are trying to kill me since 2008, because I searched/found their agent «24». USSR starved to death 7 million adults (number accepted by RF State Duma on 02.04.2008) and 23 million children (still not accepted by RF).
His comment is accurate. The comment he was replying to was about nukes, not all of the state.
23 million is the loss of expect natality, not dead children. It's people that weren't born.
As with all famine as atrocities narratives, I wonder if you apply this standard fairly. Is every poor country that had a famine responsible or only those whose economic system you don't agree with? In that case isn't the West responsible for 2 million deaths every year by forcing Africa to adopt an economic system that leads to starvation? Of course you will say no but to me these are equivalent. It turns out there are no good guys
If you're really being hunted by the FSB then I am sorry that Russia is doing this to you. I suggest that you would not post about it here as this forum is monitored and this information would be identifying to the FSB. I truly wish you the best of luck.
The actual number of victims in 1932-1934 is the top secret of RF. If you know actual number and can prove that, you should be already assassinated by RF, like many other historians, e.g. recently killed this year Vladimir Schukin[0].
The earliest intact document suggests that there was 81 million of Ukrainians before Holodomor and 31 million after.
Nationality for 20 million ethnic Ukrainians was forcefully changed from Ukrainian to Russian (direct evidence of that filmed in 199x, when victims were still alive, and is available at YouTube[1]). 7 million adults starved to death (official number by RF[2]), 23 million children were dead also, but nobody counted them back then. 30 millions of Holodomor victims are hidden as victims of WWW2 («total» number of WWW2 victims raised from 12 million to 42 million).
Famine and starvation is not equal to mass murdering by starvation. You are trying to downplay the murder to just «a death».
I'm sorry but I cannot take your opinion over that of historians which, after the fall of the USSR and access to the archives, saw the general consensus shift away from murder - instead it was found that the incompetence of party officials was even greater than one could have imagined.
The assertion that Schukin was assasinated by the Russian Federation is unsupported. I cannot find any non-Ukrainian media that supports this thesis and I can find many that don't from third countries that are unfavourable to Russia. Therefore I conclude that the theory of assassination by a violent anti-semite is the most likely. I doubt that the Ukrainian prosecution would shy from suggesting a Russian assassination if they thought so.
I don't doubt that the nationality of Ukrainians was changed to Russians. A lot of persecution of Ukrainians happened, which is a historical fact. The question is whether the famine was intended or if it was a mistake, and it seems clear that this was not the case. Then the question becomes if it was murder on the side of the Soviet government not to redistribute food, which it would have been if they had known the extent of the famine, but as we know now the corruption and incompetence was so high that it is wholly believable that they actually thought the situation was far from as bad as it was. From then on the immigration bans make sense and so does the maintenance of exports.
Now was this on the the absolute fault of the Soviet government? Yes, it is. But so is every single famine from 1900 onwards. If you consider it to be murder, so is every single other famine since the invention of fertilizer. I only ask that one is consistent.
> instead it was found that the incompetence of party officials was even greater than one could have imagined.
If the famine was indeed due to sheer incompetence, it could be argued that they were victims of the revolution that set up that incredibly incompetent government.
Again, do you extend that argument to every single government that has a famine or mass casualty event due to incompetence? You can, as I said, but do you do so?
> I'm sorry but I cannot take your opinion over that of historians which, after the fall of the USSR and access to the archives, saw the general consensus shift away from murder - instead it was found that the incompetence of party officials was even greater than one could have imagined.
It's reads like joke. You are completely incompetent, right? Can you murder just 1 million of people and cover it for decades? What level of incompetence is required for that? Can you kill 1 million by mistake?
Communists party has a goal: kill bourgeoisie as class. Why you are trying to label the MAIN GOAL of communists party as "incompetence" or "mistake"?
Leaders of USSR created secret police, to watch transition of USSR from bourgeoisie past to communist future. Secret police found that majority of Ukrainians prefer freedom and free market, so Politbureau decided to eliminate Ukrainians as traitor nation, like many other nations. They created a plan and then performed it.
> The assertion that Schukin was assasinated by the Russian Federation is unsupported.
Yeah, nor passport nor business card were left by killer to help us. Same situation was with his science director: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mykola_Shytyuk , and many other scientists. Maybe, it's martians. What you think?
> On the other hand CIA handled instigators killed far in excess of 45,000 people during the 'cold' war.
It doesn't look like a comment about nukes. It's more like "OMG, CIA killed 45,000 enemies during the war!" It's CIA job to kill mad Russians to protect USA. What's wrong with that?
> I suggest that you would not post about it here as this forum is monitored and this information would be identifying to the FSB.
Killing Russians did not protect the USA from nukes, because the USSR didn't use the nukes. Read the comment in it's context.
>They know that I know.
It doesn't matter. Any comment you make online that can be linked to your identity will bite you in the ass in ways you cannot even begin to imagine. I also have personal experience in that domain.
> They definitely understood it, and they also understood that the USSR had 45,000 nuclear weapons pointed at your backyard.
And USSR understood that immediately after WWII end, USA planned to finish what Nazis started. Using also nuclear bombs which USSR didn't have at the time.
This article seems to be coming from 5 directions at once and I genuinely fail to bring it all together. I see a huge enumeration of various catholic laypeople. Do these people represent the supernatural Catholic Church, the Vatican or the magisterium? And who are these “right-wing bishops appointed by Popes John Paul II and Benedict”? Are there many of these or just a few? What is their exact relationship to the CIA, if any? And how does Trump (following a peculiar “prosperity gospel”) fit into all of this? What is the relation to the Second Vatican Council? What is the connection between a Church Council and the CIA? Does being conservative in liturgical and theological issues make you a political right winger? Is it related to being “impervious to facts”? Could we replace “Catholic Church” with “Hollywood” or “shoe industry” and get a similar article? Help me out here.
It's interesting how some political personalities massively outlive their actual political careers. Here in the UK Thatcher's ghost still haunts many political discussions even in the present day on both the right and left, I suspect Trump will take a similarly long time to fade away into the background noise of both his supporters and detractors.
This is one of the reasons I'm not a fan of personality politics and the increasingly presidential style of leadership in the UK. A person's ideas are what's important, and personality politics distracts people from the ideas in favour of what's effectively celebrity gossip.
> This is one of the reasons I'm not a fan of personality politics and the increasingly presidential style of leadership in the UK. A person's ideas are what's important, and personality politics distracts people from the ideas in favour of what's effectively celebrity gossip.
That's why Johnson is doing it, and it's hugely effective.
His strategy is definitely very media-centric rather than ideology-centric which in my opinion is really dangerous because it gives undue power to the likes of potentially malovelent actors, traditionally this would be press moguls like Rupert Murdoch but increasingly this means social media companies too. You can trust an ideologue to follow their ideology even off the edge of a cliff but someone buffeted about on the winds of short-term popularity is unpredictable and prone to making bad choices on the basis of "we must do something rather than nothing or we'll lose popularity => x is something => let's do x quickly and skip the checks and balances".
Populism and media-centric politics is a Faustian pact in my opinion, the baying crowd that got you into power can easily turn on you in a heartbeat. Just look at Blair, once the people's champion and now his name is less than dirt among the very "Mondeo Men" he once courted to get into power. I'm not sure how we can make democracy less personality-based and more principle-based, but I think less centralised traditional and social media industries would be a good start.
He's a media man who has a second job as PM, not the other way round, and the conservative party has little will of its own other than what the rightwing press tell it to do.
Blair has a personal relationship with Rupert Murdoch, which he rode to power: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-14785501 - and an even more personal relationship with his wife Wendi Deng.
Several cherry picked members of the CIA and the more general US government all happen to belong to the largest single religion in the US. What a surprise.
A: Analytics indicates a clear interest in health and toothpaste, do we have anybody working on that?
B: Not at the moment but we could have C write something.
C: What about toothpaste and health?
B sighs: Now that is YOUR job, isn't it?
C: Ok, but do we know something new about toothpaste, have you seen any new study or ...
B: Find the damn studies! If there aren't any just suggest we don't really know how healthy it is, find something about the fluoride industry, there must be some dirt in there.
C: So you want me to suggest it isn't healthy?
B: Of course not! Just make sound like it's complicated.
C: Sorry B, I really need some help with this, I have no idea how to title it or introduce it since I don't know where I should be going with this.
A: Analytics still show a big interest in big T, surely big T brushes his teeth, doesn't he?
It's very interesting how religious organizations behaved over the course of the 20th century with respect to the rise of communism and fascism and the post WWII Cold War.
One of the more interesting episodes revolves around the Spanish Civil War, involving Franco and the Catholic Church and its strange little subgroup, Opus Dei. That story remains shrouded in mystery (the whole Franco-Pius-Hitler-Mussolini connection is probably why, see "Hitler's Pope" by John Cornwell, 1999).
Other investigations have revealed the following [1]:
> Since World War II, the CIA has:
> Subsidized a Catholic lay organization that served as the political slugging arm of the pope and the Vatican throughout the Cold War;
> Penetrated the American section of one of the wealthiest and most powerful Vatican orders;
> Passed money to a large number of priests and bishops — some of whom became witting agents in CIA covert operations;
> Employed undercover operatives to lobby members of the Curia (the Vatican government) and spy on liberal churchmen on the pope’s staff who challenged the political assumptions of the United States;
> Prepared intelligence briefings that accurately predicted the rise of liberation theology; and
> Collaborated with right-wing Catholic groups to counter the actions of progressive clerics in Latin America.
[1] Mother Jones 1983 Martin A. Lee "The CIA and the Vatican’s Intelligence Apparatus"
This all foreshadows (and is concurrent with) the CIA's dalliance with violent Islamic groups as a counter to the Godless Commies, from involvement with the Muslim Brotherhood as an anti-Nasser force in Egypt (1950s) onwards, most notably in Afghanistan in the 1980s, but it's a common theme. It's a pretty sordid history, with disastrous consequences (i.e. 9/11 etc.).
The adjective "extreme" is being thrown around a little readily these days. I would save it for those who carry out organized, intentionally violent attacks to achieve their goals, and not those who read pro life news.
Her willingness to be used by the kings of the earth is mentioned in Revelations but that relationship ends disastrous: "And the ten horns that you saw and the wild beast, these will hate the prostitute and will make her devastated and naked, and they will eat up her flesh and completely burn her with fire." ( Rev. 17:16 )
I can’t help but feel like this article (and a lot of articles written these days) feel like they’re building up to something but end up finishing abruptly and not really going anywhere. Kind of like a TV show that wants to hook viewers, but the writers don’t know where to take it after season 1.
This article felt pretty consistent to me, but I wonder if you aren't looking at it in term of a call to action, some practical advice, or trying to reach a simple conclusion.
I feel these kind of articles are harder to sell (we step outside of the fact based approach, right into beliefs and opinions). There is also the issue of most of these call to action and opinions getting buried pretty fast by virtue of ours current media system, as more often than not the conclusion is pretty brutal and disturbing to a majority of people.
That's because it completely leaves out the guerrilla in the room and instead spends the entire article discussing the mouse behind the radiator and the fly in the trash can.
Seems odd to talk about the early and pre-CIA (OSS) without mentioning one its most influential academic writers who is on almost every university syllabus today, and whose work essentially founded the movements that produced everything from Alinsky to intersectionality by studying and adapting the soviet and other european methods, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Marcuse
Trumpism was a reaction to perceived cultural nihilism, which the CIA has earned popular credit for producing in its role as the O.G. american "deep state." Catholicism has always been state religion, so the base rate of anyone in govt being Catholic was already pretty high in those earlier years and I'd probably not attribute much to it. If you wanted to look at peculiar religious influence on the U.S. intelligence community, I've been told by other contractors that Mormonism has an unusual representation cluster though.
However, the interesting bit of Catholicism that lends itself to an organization like the CIA would be the Jesuits, who have been the butt of conspiracy theories since their founding, but also run an old network of elite schools and are considered the Vatican brain trust.
The Jesuits were the targets of the CIA during the Cold War; they're the ones the death squads went after, for preaching liberation.
I don't know what Alinsky or "intersectionality" has to do with any of this. You didn't need the Soviets, or Marcuse, to get Alinsky's Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council, which predates not just the CIA but the OSS.
It could be, but it really depends on what level of meta one is laughing at.
If nothing else, he was defined by fixed, persistent, and permanent beliefs in direct reaction to progress and that's what supporters followed. There are some other comments on this thread that go into the weeds, but the essential point I was making was that the article missed the opportunity to provide a key insight about the cultural influence of the CIA by choosing to focus on rightist bugbears like Bannon instead of the one guy who planted the seeds of subversion in the minds of every campus activist of the last 50 years.
I'm saying the virus that that escaped from a weapons lab and derailed western civilization wasn't covid, it was Marcuse.
But just like every other kind of control mechanism it is easier in the present to focus on the visible symptoms than on the root cause, and some individuals are a bit of both. Bannon and Stone serve(d) as lightning rods but there were a lot more people active than just those two though much less visible.
The OSS and later the CIA did more damage to the world through their meddling than we will be able to fix in several generations, and it isn't over yet. I'm not quite clear on whether they really believed their motivations were pure or if they were just very cynical in the way they went about their business. They have set the stage for confrontations for many years to come, and that's the world over, not just in the United States.
The problem is that the world now needs a stable United States, one that is able to project power across the globe in a predictable and efficient manner. You can't have a policeman on the block for years and then suddenly have them abscond and leave a power vacuum. Such changes should be made gradual, not suddenly or chaos will ensue, there are a multitude of wanna-be dictators waiting in the wings to take over should the United States stumble or fall.
And I wished I would be confident that they would not fall but right now looking out across the next 25 years or so I would not put better than even money on that not happening, way too many things that should not have happened have already happened.
>However, the interesting bit of Catholicism that lends itself to an organization like the CIA would be the Jesuits, who have been the butt of conspiracy theories since their founding, but also run an old network of elite schools and are considered the Vatican brain trust.
You seriously link wikipedia, that simply sides with the numbers of those angered by Chick attempting to convert some of their own, as an authoritative source on Chick Tracts?
To answer your question, obviously the ultimate authority on Popery would be Popes themselves. That link serves as a quick refresher on a) why Jesuits are the butt of so many conspiracy theories b) why they are "the interesting bit of Catholicism", for most content there is somehow related to them. Albeit one could also argue that clearly they aren't the only interesting bit, for all of it isn't related to them.
Edit: There's actually a category dedicated to Jesuits, but it has surprisingly few articles, presumably because they decided to give Alberto Rivera his own category. So multiple categories treat them nevertheless.
Central to the CIA’s use of Catholicism was a man named Tom Dooley. Though the name is largely obscure today, in 1961 he placed third in Gallup’s “Most Esteemed” man in the world poll. Dooley was a Navy doctor who provided care for South Vietnamese refugees fleeing the chaos after the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu in 1954. His 1956 best seller Deliver Us from Evil, as well as countless articles and media appearances afterward, “justified American intervention in Vietnam and presented Vietnamese Catholics as sympathetic subjects.” He was a central-casting missionary, and the persecuted Vietnamese were precisely the kinds of people Christ charged Catholics to serve. But he was writing CIA-sponsored propaganda to build domestic support for Vietnam, and his stories weren’t “strictly speaking, true.”
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And the Edward Snowden of the CIA of that era Philip Agee:
But the Tlatelolco student massacre in Mexico City in 1968, in which he felt the CIA was complicit, was his Damascene moment. Agee had begun to immerse himself in the leftist Catholic liberation theology movement sweeping Latin America: “I became the servant of the capitalism I rejected. I became one of its secret policemen. The CIA, after all, is nothing more than the secret police of American capitalism.”
Agee didn’t just quit. He moved to Cuba for a time to do “research,” and then, from his residence in the United Kingdom, wrote and published Inside the Company (1975), one of the first books by a former officer to air the CIA’s dirty laundry. But, controversially, he went further: in the book, Agee actually revealed the names of hundreds of active CIA officers and agents. “One way to neutralize the CIA’s support to repression,” he wrote at the time, “is to expose its officers so that their presence in foreign countries becomes untenable.”