I go many long months without ever thinking of Michael Voris and his fanatical contingent of radical Catholics, but then a long-time reader has to fill me in on what he’s been up to, and I watch another of his videos. Voris is getting crazier and more extremist all the time. He’s a one-issue religious loon, and that issue is abortion. He claims that racism, nuclear war, the death penalty…none of these add up to a body count like abortion, not even close
and that abortion is the great evil all the way back to the apostles
— really? The Bible doesn’t make much of a big deal about it — and that Catholics who oppose the death penalty, for instance, are wasting their time because the Bible is fine with executing criminals (like, you know, the big guy who gets murdered on a cross at the start of the New Testament?). He’s a Catholic who despises the Catholicism of the church and the Pope and all that.
He also despises the Democrats, the Party of Death, who are all Marxists, and is horrified that a whole quarter of US bishops are registered Democrats. Joe Biden? Marxist? That alone should make you realize we’re not listening to a guy playing with a whole deck. No, according to Voris, he’s not happy with a Catholic being elected to the presidency, because Biden is actually a heretical gay-marrying child-killer
. You see,
Biden and his party are evil, full stop. No Catholic, especially a member of the clergy, should be vague about this evil in the slightest. But if Biden captures the Catholic vote and goes on to win the White House, no doubt the champagne corks will be popping all over bishopland, but their partying will be short-lived. Marxists always kill those who got them to power. Regardless of how loyal they might have been on the path to power, thinking they would somehow be rewarded, their reward will be the wrong end of a gun barrel.
So get ready, everyone, Joe Biden is going to dispatch commie death squads to slaughter the Catholic church hierarchy.
I guess we do need to keep an eye on the fringe Catholics, who are taking paranoia to whole new levels.
If I may make a safe prediction: the churches, all of them, including the Catholic church, will do just fine under a Democratic government. They always do. Biden won’t lift a finger to support the separation of church and state.
Just once, I wish that the Democratic party would behave as radically as the loony right wing thinks it is.
I wonder if he knows catholic saints performed miraculous abortions or that the medieval church viewed it as a lesser sin than fornication.
http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/saints-once-did-abortions-it-was-a-lesser-sin-than-oral-sex-1.3466881%3fmode=amp
I wonder if the man has ever actually met a Marxist? I’d offer my services, but I don’t really want to meet him in any circumstances…
” The Bible doesn’t make much of a big deal about it . . .” Actually the only reference to abortion in the Bible – the entire thing, Old Testament and New — is in Numbers 5, which prescribes a ceremony for inducing abortion in the case of an unfaithful wife. Otherwise it doesn’t only not make much of a big deal about it, it doesn’t even mention it.
That’s a fact.
Shouldn’t we worry about that? Have we forgotten how Obama stole all our light bulbs and sent Granny to a FEMA camp? Er, uh, …
Mathman85 @1:
I’d agree with something like “half as radically”. Even Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nationa argued that providing common goods is a proper function of government in the special case when competition doesn’t work well (law enforcement and national defense come easily to mind), so that’s really old news. What some consider “radical” these days (I don’t) is that things like education, health care, and infrastructure are such common goods.
There are also the “social issues”, BLM and LBGTQ+ rights for example. I tend to be pretty liberal, or maybe I mean progressive, on those issues, principally because I don’t think that I’m anybody special and don’t insist that everybody be just like me. OK, maybe that’s “radical” these days.
Oops…“The Wealth of Nations”, but you knew that.
I’m almost certain Roe versus Wade will be overturned. The right wingnut xians have been working for that since 1973 when it was decided. There is blood in the water and the sharks are going berserk.
The option of expanding the US Supreme court doesn’t exist since the Democrats don’t control the Senate.
So, what happens next and how ugly will it be?
If a zygote in a person, then abortion is first degree murder, by their reasoning.
At least some states will start convicting women who get abortions of homicide with life sentences or execution as penalties. They already have introduced bills in their legislatures to do that.
What the religious extremists really want is power.
And nothing says power like creating piles of dead bodies or running Gulags for women.
There is another implied reference to abortion in the Bible. If you cause a woman to miscarry, you must pay a fine to the husband. Of course this assumes that the wife and children are the personal property of the husband, to do with as he wishes.
Keep in mind that God killed off all Job’s children in order to test his faith. Later, God did not bring the children back to life as he could have easily done, he instead let Job have new children.
One of the most bizarre aspects of these ultra-Catholics is the degree to which they despise the pope. Sorry, guys. If you sign up for a hierarchical religion which purports to have a doctrinally-infallible leader at the top, you don’t get to be more “faithful” than him. Catholics who are “more Catholic than the pope” are just nuts. They should start their own sect. Mark Twain commented about man and his One True Religion: “He is the only animal that has the True Religion–several of them.”
anthonybarcellos@9 I couldn’t agree more. They’re a splinter sect as far as I’m concerned.
Biden is the most Catholic president I’ve seen at his level in many years, whatever you want to make of it. If I were voting by cultural affinity (I’m not), then a guy who quotes “On Eagles Wings” in a speech is practicing a religion I used to belong to. I know the hymn well from when I used to go to mass and sung it myself. I have no trouble believing Biden shows up in the confessional booth on a regular basis and does all the other things observant Catholics do.
I don’t know what people like Amy Coney Barrett are doing swearing oaths to their sect members and making up a whole new bunch of unorthodox rituals. It sounds highly questionable. And as much as I thought Pope Benedict was the worst pope of my lifetime, I didn’t question his legitimacy. I like Pope Francis (but I find his superfans annoying). The pope is elected by cardinals. Full stop.
This is why I’m ignoring all the calls to be civil to all Trump supporters now. They are still going to call us “baby killers” no matter how nice we are to them. I’m not going to waste the effort.
When I was in Catholic prep school in the early 80s, obviously there was no question where Catholic doctrine stood on abortion, but a question like “Can a Catholic politician support Roe v. Wade?” was an abstraction like “Can a good Catholic work on designing nuclear weapons?” (And it is very hard to envision a use of a nuclear bomb that meets the doctrinal criteria of a just war) You could debate it right there in class. There was no litmus test. I think everything has been dumbed down since then.
Re: PaulBC @ #10…
Biden will be the only Catholic president we’ve had since the early 1960s…and it was more controversial then.
whheydt@13 Yeah, I meant “most Catholic politician“. Need more coffee. There are plenty of Catholics in US politics. Few wear their faith on their sleeve like Biden does. Biden is also pretty old, and I am not sure how many younger ones would carry a rosary. (My grandmother, born in 1900, used say rosaries* every day.) I am a non-believer, but as I said, the cultural affinity is there. I am pretty sure Biden is sincere about all of this.
*You can dismiss it as superstition to say a rote prayer, but it seems to me to fit with meditative practices found in many religions, including Eastern ones. It is just something she did, and I respect her for it.
To be successful a politician must be religious. To be effective, a politician must not be too religious.
@ 10 PaulBC
They’re a splinter sect as far as I’m concerned.
As someone who grew up in the Catholic Church I cannot agree more.
They appear to be a totally nutty cult that would have amazed L Ron Hubbard. I can see my father looking on and saying “They will come to their senses, eventually”.
He may have been wrong.
once not long ago being a catholic in politics nationally was some what controversial not so much today look at “The Court”
Having been educated cathoilc and been in those classes I came to understand that the rational for hierarchy was related to the admonishment to be humble pride is among the worst offenses. The problem with people like Voris is his total lack of any humility at all he is consumed by himself and what he believes.
My problem with belief and religion also stems from the authoritarian nature of religion it often comes into conflict with demonstrable reality and pushes it into superstition and none sense and therfore it can be dismissed as mostly irrelevant.
uncle frogy
I just stumbled across the concept of “Boltzmann brains’ coming into existence by random chance in infinite time. To have something to do, such a mind might simulate an entire virtual universe -rather like Lovecraft’s Azatoth. .
It would be fun to set up a church dedicated to this Boltzman brain , mostly praying that the simulation is never terminated.
And the whole thing would be tax-free, as well as more plausible than the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
Instead of boring bible texts the sacred books would be Lovecraft fanfic.
This follows a long tradition: The koran is fanfic based on apochryphal bible stories, the NT is fanfic based on OT, each successive layer of OT is fanfic based on older OT until you get back to the ninth century BC.
.
Once the church gets a bit of donations going, we can hire full-time authors like that British Howard fellow to churn out texts. Or maybe make Charles Stross a deal. A twisted version of the Mormon church where the books are fun to read!
I was raised Catholic and that is NOT the Catholicism I grew up with. Where the fork do these über-Catholics even come from?
WMDKitty — Survivor@19 I have heard of ultraconservative Catholics who opposed Vatican II and some continue to celebrate Latin mass for instance. I had never heard of charismatics like Amy Coney Barrett before–or I knew about the charismatic gifts but I did not realize people were that deep into it.
Actually, Biden is a little bit of a relief to me because he just so normal from a Catholic perspective anyway.
@9 anthonybarcellos
Presumably they also don’t believe where the bear defecates.
@12–
Only in the US. Australia has had two openly atheist prime ministers, and the churches suffered no infringements.
There’s a great line in Chris Ryder’s history of the Royal Ulster Constabulary where he describes the North Ireland Loyalists murdering RUC officers because they were trying to keep the peace instead of reflexively oppressing Catholics. Ryder asks at what point after they stop accepting the laws of the UK and the wishes of the Crown do they stop being “Loyalists.” Seems acutely relevant to arch-Catholics who refuse to accept papal decrees.
In Canada, the religion of the Prime Minister has rarely been an issue; I couldn’t even tell you what religion most of them professed.
One exception would be Paul Martin, who was definitely Catholic. We know this because back when he was leading the government that was working to legalize gay marriage, some of our ultra-Catholic types were saying he should be refused Mass until he stopped trying to push that sin on the country.
@ 23 chrislawson,
Loyalists are loyal to their mythologised view of ‘King Billy’s’ country, they have never been loyal to the UK etc. as it really is in the current day, see all sorts of things like NI exceptions for pretty much any progressive law you can think of.