It also shows the short-sightedness of the "scholars" in the administration. Sure, the Avignon Papacy did occur, that's historical fact.
It's also a historical fact that the Catholic Church is an actually ancient power broker in the world still and they have been around for much, much longer than the United States. The Church is actually quite good at playing the long game (and I say that as someone raised firmly Protestant).
I saw a headline in NYT today saying this current historical situation is the United States "Suez Crisis" moment. Hard to disagree and hard to see how America recovers from this. I don't feel the pinch will come in the next few years but by 2036 I think the US will wonder what happened.
Also...I don't think a fast-follow conflict in Cuba right after this Iran affair is going to do much good, but that seems like where their appetite is going next.
I was watching a video by Man carrying thing about Iran war, (he makes skit about things which are still good) and he mentioned the Cuba thing.
I am being 100% serious right now, I thought that it was just a joke of the skit. Are we actually being serious right now of America doing a conflict with Cuba?
After the Iran war where now Iran gets to tax the Strait of Hormuz, something it previously didn't do.
As Non-American, where is my say in all of this, heck, where is the say of every american in all of this. Nearly all the americans I know/talk to is disappointed themselves in all of this. You have got to be joking about yet another conflict.
I find it hilarious that one of the conditions of the ceasefire is that the straight opens. It was open prior to the war. Great negotiation. Wow.
The US administration and military look like fools.
I asked someone after the 9/11 attacks about the possibility of the USA invading Iran and even back then I got a "lol no that's nuts the USA would have its arse handed to it" kind of answer. Better phrased, but basically that.
Sadly, I think the answer is yes. Iran might put a brief damper / brake on the timeline but the current US administration seems intent on seizing the moment and pushing out the Castro government once and for all. It's "beef" that goes a long way back, if you look up the history of Cuba, even how Fidel Castro first came to power was under the banner of pushing out that era's US-backed administration. And Cuba had been a point of major US economic interests as well so the USA was not happy to see the rise of the Communists in their backyard.
EDIT: you mentioned you're a non-American and the Americans you talk to are all upset/disappointed. If you're European especially, the Americans you're most likely to interact with are well-educated and liberal. There are parts of the country that are firmly pro-Trump, where it's completely out of the norm to have liberal / European-style values.
This is Mark Rubio*, and only Rubio. This admin is all about letting the people who helped put it together each have their turn at using the US as the vehicle for their personal grievances and profits. No part of this admin cares about the United States of America or its history. It's simply a tool for them, they won't have to deal with the fallout from trading it in for generational wealth that puts them above it.
*The NYT has many pieces on this
Just another day.
They keep pushing and pushing until the unthinkable is the new normal.
POTUS F' bombing on Easter? Sure, why not.
Reminded me of this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hSEwy8ZORc (Herbert Moon blames the Jewish British Catholic Homosexual elite for the undead plague.)
[1] https://chatgpt.com/share/69d7e794-aa7c-832d-a0ec-5afa21aff4...
focus: {url}
Analyze the article and provide a brief summary. Then analyze the topic across the political spectrum, from The Nation to National Review. Bring in Financial Times and WSJ coverage as well, include The Economist also.
Analyze coverage of the topic from domestic US news sources and then international news sources.
Consider finally what is outside the Overton window on the topic.
Your chatgpt results are so much different than mine. Are you using thinking on the newest model on a paid account? Do you have a strong personalization prompt enabled?
> According to his sources, Colby’s team picked apart the pope’s January state-of-the-world address line by line and read it as a hostile message aimed directly at the administration.
So "calculated" maybe, but only because AI could come up with the answer, I have serious doubts that many of these people possess more than basic literacy much less the ability to come up with something like this. Or some CIA analyst who hates their job came up with this to mock their bosses.
They can be both stupid and unhinged. The power they wield is worth taking seriously but that doesn't necessitate pretending that these are serious people
They are also immune to embarrassment.
A lot of religious people are extremely knowledgeable about historical stuff related to their religions.
They might draw the absolutely worst conclusions from their historical knowledge and have incredibly biased takes but they’ve actually read and discussed these things which is more than you can say for your average person.
It ultimately comes from their personal identify being so intricately tied to the religious organization that they are a part of — on some level they view these historical events as their own personal history as they identify as a ‘evangelical Christian’ or ‘orthodox Jew’ more than they view themselves as a person named Dave who has a family and stuff.
At the end of the day it’s all just more Hatfield and McCoys or tribal warfare over a goat that was killed centuries ago bullshit.
There are subtleties to this particular pissing match that aren't immediately obvious. The Vatican is starting to rein in the Opus Dei cult-within-a-cult. After John Paul II canonized its founder in 2002 on shaky grounds, later Popes have started to think that maybe they went a little too far. Meanwhile, Opus Dei has focused on gaining more secular influence in government (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jul/26/kevi...).
Do you remember the tariffs list debacle? One line of thought is that AI generated that fiasco.
https://m.economictimes.com/news/international/us/did-donald...
We also read Genesis in English classes (from a literary perspective).
Any history major with interest in medieval Europe, yes, any middle schooler? No way.
Let’s not give that same person more credit than they deserve. I’m sure they came preprepared with some LLM derived threats for when they didn’t get what they wanted from the Vatican.
> Every lifelong Catholic I've ever met is like "I think we're supposed to give this food to poor people" and every adult convert is like "the Archon of Constantinople's epistle on the Pentacostine rites of the eucharist clearly states women shouldn't have driver's licenses."
The third type of convert, though, joins because they like the structure. They like the gravitas. They like the moral absolutes. They like the patriarchal hierarchy that doesn't let women lead. They sign up and immediately declare that Vatican 2 was a terrible mistake and that all of the popes since then have been illegitimate. JD Vance didn't join because he loved their soup kitchens.
OCA is the second-largest jurisdiction (distantly, behind the greeks) in the US and most of its parishes could be described as "english language russian orthodox" though they are not ultimately under the patriarch of moscow. Which is close enough to what most nonorthodox mean when they say russian orthodox. The jurisdictional situation is a mess but since the churches are all in communion with each other individuals are free to not care about it and most exercise that freedom.
I knew a guy in highschool, he was adopted from Russia by a Russian-Jewish family. He was raised Jewish. Somewhere after highschool he got dragged into dark spots of the internet. Him and a close friend of his converted to Eastern Orthodox and began dropping constant Nazi dog whistles. Explicit anti-semitism. Both were in the military, one was an Army Ranger. Their posts were reported to LE but nothing came of it.
I'm confident the Ranger would kill for fun if given the chance, and any evidence of his war crimes would be covered up.
Knew a totally different Orthodox convert. He converted in college, went to school for political science. Sucked on his cross necklace and told my sister she'd be going to hell. She thankfully broke up with him.
The Orthodox church attracts some real cretins in my experience.
By "attracts", I was insinuating people not already in the church, aka converts.
I am deeply skeptical of all converts to Catholicism and I speculate that the alt-right spaces online painted a picture of conversion as going back to the foundation of the Western civilization, or at least its idealized white nationalist picture.
Please, write US-American. These people are not coming from any other place.
Want to make a religious leader/adult mad as a kid? Ask them why we aren't doing more for the poor like Jesus would do. Source: Me as a kid. I didn't ask in a snotty way, genuinely asked and got rebuked for it.
I often feel as if I follow the Bible closer than a number of, ostensibly, "religious" people.
What's the quote? Something like "I like your Christ, I do not like his followers"? I'm probably butchering it.
I was raised in the church, I internalized the teachings and methodologies, however voting for people who try to do those things is met with scorn. Most "religious" people would rather vote for the person talking about how much they love the Bible (or <insert holy book here>) rather than the people actually doing things inline with the Bible.
"Feed the poor... unless it will raise my taxes"
The common phrasing is "I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ."
Snopes says it is unproven as a quote from Gandhi. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/did-gandhi-say-this-about-...
But false quotes get passed around a lot because people agree with them. I also happen to agree with this particular one.
They obsess over the law, doctrine, and history of the Catholic church. Invoking events from millennia prior, and despite converting to Catholicism by choice, will denounce the Pope for being woke or what have you, insisting it's not the true Catholic church.
It's extremely bizarre and counterintuitive. Why convert to the branch of Christianity with the elected god-king if you don't want to listen to the elected god-king?
Can you give some examples of this?
Recent news articles have indicated an increase in church attendance. This makes sense: we have lost our moral compass... Specifically in the USA... And people are searching for a new direction.
> America, Colby and his colleagues told the cardinal, has the military power to do whatever it wants in the world. The Catholic Church had better take its side.
> As tempers rose, an unidentified U.S. official reached for a fourteenth-century weapon and invoked the Avignon Papacy, the period when the French Crown used military force to bend the bishop of Rome to its will.
I'm also not 100% sure what they mean with "invoked the Avignon Papacy", a bit like saying "Invoked the Second World War", it was an event/time period as far as I know, not something you "invoke" exactly. But even mentioning it makes it pretty clear what they're hinting at to be honest.
1: to call forth or up: such as
a: to bring to mind or recollection
b: to cite especially with approval or for support[^1] https://biblehub.com/q/Why_were_temple_items_taken_to_Babylo...
[^2] Francesca Stavrakopoulou. "God, an anatomy".
Putin already owns one, and King Charles III is one. C'mon, everybody is doing it!
You can be christian and not like the pope.
But to catholics, the pope is the terrestrial embodiment of the holy spirit, and as such considered infaillible. Not recognizing the pope as such is incompatible with catholicism.
Papacy is a core part of catholicism, it's not a "pick and choose buffet".
This is a common misconception. The pope is only considered as speaking infallibly by the Catholic Church when speaking ex cathedra on matter of faith and morals. This is very rare and is considered to only have happened twice in history.
The Church certainly disagrees with you, teaching that the visible Church is the ordinary means of salvation and full communion with Christ. (see the Precepts, CCC ~846–848)
I come from a Protestant background, so I view Catholicism as just Protestants with a pope. What does it mean to be catholic but without a pope?
Catholics owe the Pope religious submission of intellect and will to his authentic magisterium (teaching authority) on faith and morals, even when not speaking infallibly (Lumen Gentium 25; CCC 892; Code of Canon Law, can. 752). This is a respectful adherence and presumption in favor of what he teaches officially as Pope. This does not extend to his personal opinions, private theological views, prudential judgments (e.g., on politics, economics, or administrative decisions), or liking him as a person or agreeing with everything he says or does in a non-magisterial capacity.
I don’t think you can? You know how that worked out? It’s the OG ‘No Kings’.
Jokes aside, there are only a couple in my area and they are ripe with tribalism and hard to approach. Appreciate your recommendation, though.
And it turns out they don’t have the power to do what they like. The US is terrifying, but it’s military looks weaker.
And the ease with which Trump is manipulated by those with skills in that area is horrifying. Eg Netanyahu, Putin.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karaj_B1_bridge_attack
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...
The history of American diplomacy is mostly of an iron fist wearing a thin glove. This administration removes the glove. It is in line with the transparency of the Department of War v. Defense. Consensus is the label they put on the package of sausages to save face.
Appeals to “transparency” are just an attempt to distract from worse outcomes.
The fatal flaw of this administration is that they care more about looks than substance. They would rather look tough and lose than look meek and win. It doesn’t even occur to them that it is possible to win while looking meek.
The good side of US diplomacy was one of the most positive forces in the world. Trump fully dismantled that. Not just the US aid work, but also the Pax Americana that really limited the scale of war in the world.
There were horrible missteps at the same time. The US wasn’t all good. Maybe it wasn’t even net good. But there was a significant good side, and its dismantling isn’t a small thing in the world.
I fully agree that only Congress can change the official title of the Department of Defense to Department of War, but the vast majority of Americans are so authority-slavish that they just accept the administration wiping its ass with the Constitution.
probably just a mix-up re: "war" department
In any case, perhaps we will soon see the return of Catholic persecution in the U.S. due to "conflicting" loyalties between Pope and country...
https://xcancel.com/BrianBurchUSA/status/2042307511504519366
I'm going to put this in the "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof" bin.
>According to his sources, Colby’s team picked apart the pope’s January state-of-the-world address line by line and read it as a hostile message aimed directly at the administration.
>What enraged them most was Leo’s declaration that “a diplomacy that promotes dialogue and seeks consensus among all parties is being replaced by a diplomacy based on force.”
they then proceed to insinuate use of force.
Other news publications are trying to get the full story: https://x.com/jdflynn/status/2042076430406672829?s=46&t=u6IW...
I wouldn't put anything past the current admin, but I don't know what the US could stand to gain from directly antagonizing the Vatican.
I don't like being a part of the reactionary 'orange man bad' crew, but this is really shockingly bizarre. It's not the kind of behaviour you expect from a real leader of a real superpower. And it does make you think - perhaps there's something to be said about the USA not being nearly the power that it once was, and maybe this is what it looks like after you crest the apex of power.
Can the DOD do this? This seems more like the purview of State.
Any exec branch dept can communicate directly with foreign diplomats, and ambassadors are accredited to the USA as a whole, not exclusively to State
Fair enough, but summoning an ambassador is not a regular form of communication, and well out of the purview of DOD.
At this point I don't think anything other than the church retains the ability to present a coherent moral or metaphysical intellectual framework to people who care about that kind of thing.
I would be very surprised if the united states is not majority catholic in ~100 years
More likely he would just assert that the Pope isn't actually the Pope, and thus any excommunications are void, and his supporters would roll with it. Some of them already believe this. Any words, true or false, which make them feel better to believe. That's religion, right? He is their true religion.
https://soldiersangels.org/the-diversity-of-our-service-memb...
History is why catholics are at 20%. Which is a significant force and a dangerous game to alienate them.
The past which the 'make america great again' people want to take us back to absolutely loathed Catholics, something I don't think modern Catholics realize.
The colony of Maryland was originally intended to be a safe place for Catholics, and the first chance the Puritans got, they revolted, invaded, burned the Catholic churches down and persecuted their worshippers. The US was explicitly not founded on religious tolerance, it was founded on freedom to persecute Catholics.
https://www.americamagazine.org/arts-culture/2024/05/07/cbc-...
The past that MAGA refers to is imaginary. It's "the good old days", whatever that evokes in any individual, with however selective that individual's memory is or however incomplete that individual's knowledge of history is.
It's like the Brexit referendum - Britons voted on "the status quo is bad, would you like something better than the status quo?" and a slim majority of them voted yes. They didn't agree on exactly how things should be negotiated to be better, just that they could imagine something better than the current state.
Seems a bit broken to claim that something that happened in 1689 when it was a colony, as you explicitly note, is fundamental to the founding of the nation a century later.
“The deepest bias in the history of the American people,” according to Arthur Schlesinger. “The most luxuriant, tenacious tradition of paranoiac agitation in American history,” said John Higham.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/12/america-histor...
I say this as an American Catholic who went to Catholic schools until college and knows full well about Catholic discrimination in US history. Protestants have discriminated against other protestants, everyone has discriminated against LDS, LDS has discriminated against everyone else, everyone has discriminated against Jews, Catholics have discriminated against <insert your choice of target here>, etc. These facts don't make up founding motives just because they are true.
The current supreme court has 6 catholic justices, with 2 appointed by trump. 2 of them rubber stamp everything trump does (alito and thomas), and most of the others support him more often than not (rogers, coney-barrett, kavanaugh). Only sotomayor opposes him frequently.
If you covertly (or not) want to oppress a religion why stack the highest court in the country with people from said religion?
Pentagon To Host Good Friday Service Just For Protestants, Not Catholics
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/news-live-updates_n_69ca6616e...
That’s why anyone that believes in separation of religion and state should tell these folks anytime they push for Christianity in schools, just tell them: ok but it needs to be the true Christianity- Jehovah Witnesses- then they will shut up. They hate Jehovah witnesses, then Mormons, then Catholics, …
I have Mormon family that thinks that they're welcome in the Evangelical tent (they'll even visit the Ark Experience!), but Evangelicals hate Mormons just like they hate gays, liberals, trans people, atheists, etc. It's just that Mormons (for now) vote the way that Evangelicals want.
In fact, they weren't fleeing persecution at all! They were living in the (relatively) religiously tolerant Netherlands. They left the Netherlands because they weren't succeeding in business there. They came to North America essentially as economic migrants.
Now we're fast tracking the Rapture.
Assuming that doesn't work out for them, who are they going to follow when the Chosen One doesn't get a 3rd term?
How does this land with them?
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdrg8zkz8d0o
Trump is the real pope obviously.
The pope has cancelled his visit to the U.S. because of this incident and Vance is investigating it.
> It's ok to ask how to read an article or to help other users by sharing a workaround. But please do this without going on about paywalls. Focus on the content.
I am earnestly curious to read a recounting of what was said by the Trump official.
If the people ruling the US nowadays ever read the Bible they would likely reject the word of Jesus as woke bullshit. And if they do read the book, they likely only care about the bits related to the end of the world, and are hellbent (hah) in speeding it up.
I‘m pretty sure the god they often mentioned would see that differently.
Not that anybody really believed they are true believers and just hypocrites.
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a socialist ...[0]
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
What this feels is just an escalation. There are some devout catholics who might've voted for Trump and his antics, perhaps feeling for a christian identity.
I definitely feel like there was something similar to that poem where they first came for W,X and Y people and people didn't speak out now its Z people and no one is left to speak.
It's easy within humanity to hate a particular outside group and sometimes that becomes the basis of the inside group. I wish to say that Humanity has multiple problems, we can try to make a better world by co-operation and hope that we learn from this dark chapter in history from the last year or two.
I don't wish to blame anyone because blaming leads to nowhere, Sadly, we haven't learn from the past atrocities thus we are within the present but I just hope that with open-ness we can learn from the past, we can learn from the present and I hope that we can only leave a better future for the next generation to come.
It's hard to give hope right now in reality but I hope to give others what I am lacking right now myself at times. all these things are truly for petty reasons. I expect better from humanity but perhaps this is an weird form of equilibrium but we are humans and we can think for ourselves and change things and build a better future for all of us hopefully.
We can do better, and I hope so that we will. Have a nice day to all.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_They_Came (The poem continues but I am trimming it for context of this message)
Pete Hegseth's beliefs aren't even unusual for much of the country, he just isn't canny enough to play the game his predecessors did and not say the quiet part out loud.