Every Mother Gives Birth To A Son In Hope Of Having Grandchildren…
“Now I only see one thing – people are dying…
Is it worth all these orphans, widows,
cripples and mountains of the dead…?
Every mother gives birth to a son in the hope of having grandchildren
in old age. And for her, her Vanya or Magomed –
it doesn’t matter – he’s the best.
There’s no need to interrupt this natural life with bullets or shrapnel.”
Alexander Vostrodymov, a Russian Orthodox priest
from a village near Moscow
For simplicity’s sake, let’s go with tradition and accept the following as the words of the elderly, yet wise, King Solomon (c 970-931 BC), put to music in the late 1950s by folk singer and political activist Pete Seeger, and made popular by The Byrds in 1965:
To everything there is a season,
A time for every purpose under heaven:
A time to be born and a time to die;
A time to plant and a time to pluck what is planted;
A time to kill and a time to heal….
Ecclesiastes 3: 1-3
Almost three thousand years after Solomon, there’s
Football, Hockey, Basketball and Baseball seasons.
Summer, Fall, Winter, Spring.
Tornado, Forest Fire, Blizzard and Tropical Storms seasons.
And, now, The Season of Hate, ushered in and loudly proclaimed by a Republican legislator who opened a Michigan Senate session with a “prayer” for school children “under attack” from “forces that desire things for them other than what their parents would have them see and hear and know.”
After three senators walked out in protest during the “invocation” and in a spirit of pseudo-outrage or desperate-to-win her primary election, the same lawmaker issued a fundraising email, specifically naming a Democrat from another district and claiming the state’s Democrats are “Progressive social media trolls… who are outraged they can’t teach, can’t groom and sexualize kindergartners or that 9-year-olds are responsible for slavery… These are the people we are up against… groomers outraged by my invocation.”
In 1992, almost a decade before The Boston Globe history-making “Spotlight Investigation: Abuse in the Catholic Church,” New Orleans-based reporter Jason Berry blew the lid off the issue of the sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests and religious. Now, thirty years later, the once-highest-ranking member of the American Catholic clergy – the former cardinal-archbishop of Washington, D.C., has been booted from the priesthood and ordered to a life of penance and no thinking Catholic will deny the horror and unspeakable pain inflicted by some priests and the bishops who failed to take action against them.
In almost every international pilgrimage since his 2013 election, Pope Francis has met with victims and issued public apologies. He’s also demonstrated an unprecedented pastoral kindness to members of the LGBTQ community. Nonetheless, Pope Francis and the Catholic Church still have a long way to go in fully accepting the LGBTQ community and establishing a pastoral theology that reflects the insights of Twenty-first Century Science and Medicine. The Church’s sin is the Church’s shame and a cause of pain for the People of God.
Despite Francis’s shortcomings and because of his concerns for migrants, the environment, and the rights of the poor, the Season of Hate is wallpapered with a vocabulary of fear: “Grooming… pedophilia…Nazis… illegal immigrant… rapists… socialist…communist… Rothschilds… right to life… globalism… fascism… abortion… CRS… George Soros… radical Islam” and the entire lexicon of “stolen election” and “voter fraud.” And let’s not forget the infamous “woke” – whatever that means.
Just days after the Michigan brouhaha, a member the House of Representative from Georgia went full-scale anti-Pope Francis and anti-centuries-of-Catholic-social-teaching, accusing American Catholic bishops of “destroying” the United States by advocating for policies that support migrants and refugees.
In late April, the Georgia representative gave an extended interview Church Militant, a Michigan-based 501(c)4 “Christian” organization, known as “Real Catholic TV” until, in December 2011, the Archdiocese of Detroit declared “it does not regard them as being authorized to use the word ‘Catholic’ to identify or promote their public activities.”
In June 2020, Church Militant released a video in which CM founder Michael Voris repeatedly referred to Archbishop Wilton Gregory, the first African American Archbishop of Washington, as “African Queen” and “Marxist.” CM regularly questions the legitimacy of the pontificate of Pope Francis, whom it frequently refers to by his surname, and calls for his resignation. The CM Web site has dismissed climate change as a hoax, called the Black Lives Matter movement “the new fascism” and called modern day Judaism a “man-made religion” and Islam “the most misogynistic, racist, religiously bigoted and murderously violent supremacist ideology on the face of the earth.”
When Voris asserted that the American Catholic bishops have taken “enormous sums of money” from the federal government and taxpayers to assist in “illegal refuge immigration, some refugee resettlement also, but the vast bulk of the money they’ve taken over the years is to essentially skirt around the U.S. immigration laws,” the Georgia representative responded:
“What it is is [sic] Satan is controlling the Church. The Church is not doing its job and it is not adhering to the teachings of Christ and it is not adhering to what the Word of God says we’re supposed to do and how we’re supposed to live. And what they are doing by saying ‘Oh, we are supposed to take care of these migrants and love one another, we have to love these people and love one another.’ But their definition of love one another means destroying our laws, means completely perverting what our Constitution says. It means taking unreal advantage of the American tax payer and it means pushing a globalist policy on the American people and forcing America to become something that we are not supposed to be. Loving one another means is is [sic] the true meaning of loving one another is [sic] and loving others means that you also [sic] that you also uphold the laws, you have to uphold the rules and you say No. There are times that you say No. And here’s America handing over billions and billions in foreign aid to where? These countries where these people are coming from like Guatemala, Mexico. Like we can go through the whole list. Our dollars, our American dollars just [sic] they like fly out the window and fly down there to those countries while here’s what we should be doing: we should hold those countries accountable.
“I’m sorry, Guatemala. You’re not getting a check this year because you sent X number of thousands and tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands and millions of people to illegally invade our country as if they are an army. They may not have guns but they are the numbers of a regiment of an army. We won’t be able to send you your foreign aid until you bring your people back and use your interest in foreign aid use this money to help your people because that’s what this money is designed [The sentence was not completed.] And the bishops, the bishops of Catholic relief charities and services [using air quotes] they should be all in support of that. They should be in support of United States politicians holding these other countries accountable for all the American taxpayer dollars that fly into their country. So, if the bishops were truly reading the Bible and truly preaching the Word of God to their flock [Voris interrupted to add ‘and not covering up sex abuse.’] And not covering up child sex abuse and pedophilia, yes that would be loving one another, would have the true meaning and not the perversion and the twisted lie that they are making it to be.”
When a self-appointed defender-of-all-things-Catholic (that he agrees with) issued a public rebuke, the Georgia representative - married in 1995 and the parent of three children, “rebaptized” in 2011 in an evangelical megachurch network based in Alpharetta, and (apparently) at one time brazenly public about her extramarital affairs with a tantric sex guru and a fitness gym manager – responded by noting her Roman Catholic bona fides in an extended screed:
“I myself, baptized and married in the Catholic Church, left because I would not submit the spiritual and physical livelihood of my children to these monsters…
“It’s the church leadership I was referring to when I invoked the Devil. The bishops know that…Just so we’re clear, bishops, when I said ‘controlled by Satan,’ I wasn’t talking about the Catholic Church. I was talking about you.
“The Catholic Church must throw out these monsters instead of lecturing the people its own bishops have driven away… I love God and I love Jesus Christ. Is the same true of the scheming bureaucrats in miters who preach the Gospel while turning a blind eye to the abuse of innocents… America’s Catholic bishops are some of the worst in the world…
“The bishops are busy destroying our nation using taxpayer money to advocate for the illegal invasion across our borders. They dress up Democrat vandalism and lawlessness as somehow “religious,” which perhaps explains their distaste for me….”
Let’s get one thing clear: The history of the Church – of all churches and religions – is replete with causes for guilt and shame. But this is a member of congress who proclaims Muslims don’t belong in government, 9/11 was an inside job, the Parkland and Sandy Hook school shootings were staged, and government officials with whom she disagrees should be shot. This is a member of Congress who lacks the credibility to lecture anyone on morality.
We are profoundly serious when we write “The American political discourse owes a debt of gratitude to this Georgia politician who once queried (no pun intended), “Could [a laser beam or light beam coming down to Earth] cause a [California forest] fire? Hmmmm, I don’t know. I hope not!”
Theological theodicity places the source of evil in nature, the soul or fate and argues for the absolute goodness of God in light of the world’s evils. This approach to all things vindicates God as infinitely and completely good and sustains and deepens faith. Political theodicity locates all of the world’s evils outside one’s own party, group or leader and permanently attributes all evils to one’s opponents; it can be a lie or self-deception; it is definitely politically useful because it makes the enemy “the enemy of God and my political positions, beliefs and even my self-serving political lies.” Political theodicity is independent of Truth.
Vladimir Gundyaev, a.k.a. Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, head of the Russian Orthodox Church, has mastered political theodicity:
“We do not want to fight anyone. Russia has never attacked anyone.
It’s surprising when a great and powerful country did not attack anyone;
it has only been defending its borders.”
May 1, 2022
Kirill has joined hands with Vladimir Putin in calling the invasion of Ukraine “the path of defending the fatherland” and espousing the doctrine of “Russkiv mir” – the “Russian world” – arguing that Russia, Ukraine and Belarus are one united civilization resulting the from the 10th Century baptism of the Slavic tribes in Kyiv – a theory to justify Russian aggression and control over lands dominated during the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. Kirill, who has been spotted sporting a gold $30,000 Breguet watch, once praised Putin as a “miracle of God.”
In 2018, The Russian Times reported that a former residence of Russia’s imperial family was being renovated for the patriarch. Located outside of St. Petersburg, the renovations were expected to cost in excess of $43 million and will occupy the equivalent of 14 typical three-bedroom homes - complete with smart home technology, a private chapel, library, pool halls and elevator.
Kirill is Putin’s wingman – spouting diatribes replete with nationalism, faith, conservative values, homophobic rants and claims that the West is attempting to destroy Russia because it rejects gay pride parades. Kirill practices a self-serving political theodicity.
It’s the Season of Hate. The words are the same. Only the language is different.