Jeffrey Miller

Try to imagine Venezuelan president, Hugo Chavez, dressed up as a bishop — the head bishop — of his own state-sponsored church.

According to media reports coming out of Latin America, President Chavez is considering a proposal that would establish him as the high priest of his own form of evangelical Christianity, convert his cabinet members into bishops of a lower rank, and submit church activities to the civil and military power of his government.

It is still unclear who is behind the proposal. Publicly, it has taken the form of a petition by leaders of “Centro Cristiano de Salvación” (Christian Center of Salvation). The association claims to represent 17,000 evangelical churches and 5,000,000 Venezuelans. Their request is simple: make their denomination the country’s official religion, teach it in all public schools and pay the pastors from government coffers. In turn, they will make Chavez their head bishop and promise to submit absolutely to his authority.

If the reports are true and this happens I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for the American left to condemn this new theocracy. After all Chavez was able to consolidate power in the presidency by converting the bicameral National Assembly into a weakened unicameral legislature while still eliciting gushing praise. For many liberals the effects of Marxist leaders are similar to the sacrament of baptism, except all sins are remitted in the past and in the future.

Damon Linker has a piece in the current edition of The New Republic in which he questions Mitt Romney’s suitability for the Presidency of the United States based on his religious faith, which everyone knows by now is Mormonism. Linker even suggests that Mitt Romney’s recent election-year flip-flops on abortion, gay marriage, gays in the military, protections for gays against hiring discrimination, etc. etc. etc. may be faith driven. “Romney may have undergone an authentic religious rebirth during the last few years—a rebirth that has led him to embrace the fundamental tenets of his church more fully than ever before in his political career. If so, voters need to know it. And they need to think long and hard about the possible consequences of making such a man the president of the United States,” Linker writes.
[Via Patrick Hynes at Deal Hudson’s blog]

Looks like Damon Linker knows as much about Mormonism as he does about the impending theocracy. Mormons have no official teaching on abortion, though they do have one on caffeine. As to Romney’s flip-flopping I think it is easier to believe it is something endemic in Massachusetts. Sen. Kennedy was once pro-life and then of course there is the King of Flip-Flops Sen Kerry. Though then again political opportunism is not just native to Massachusetts.

Rich Leonardi reminds me of something I also found odd this month. On one my Catholic calendars put out by J.S. Palusch, Inc and specifically a calendar devoted to vocations – lists today as the first day of Kwanzaa. Now I of course decided to do the readings associated with St. Stephen instead while reading the Divine Office today. Funny my guide book does not have alternative readings for Kwanzaa, but happily Kathy Shaidle previously supplied some. This day of course deserves the treatment that Kathy Shaidle gave to it.

Twas the night before Kwanzaa
And all through the ‘hood,
Maulana Karenga was up to no good.

He’d tortured a woman and spent time in jail.
He needed a new scam that just wouldn’t fail.
("So what if I stuck some chick’s toe in a vice?
Nobody said revolution was nice!")

The Sixties were over. Now what would he do?
Why, he went back to school — so that’s "Dr." to you!
He once ordered shootouts at UCLA
Now he teaches Black Studies just miles away.

Then to top it all off, the good Doctor’s new plan
Was to get rid of Christmas and piss off The Man.

Karenga invented a fake holiday.
He called the thing Kwanza. "Hey, what’s that you say?

"You don’t get what’s ‘black’ about Maoist baloney?
You say that my festival’s totally phony?

"Who cares if corn isn’t an African crop?
Who cares if our harvest’s a month or two off?
Who cares if Swahili’s not our mother tongue?
A lie for The Cause never hurt anyone!

"Umoja! Ujima! Kujichagulia, too!
Collectivist crap never sounded so cool!
Those guilty white liberals — easy to fool.
Your kids will now celebrate Kwanzaa in school!"

And we heard him exclaim as he drove out of sight:
"Happy Kwanzaa to all, except if you’re white!"

A reader sent me a link to this good roundup at Vivificat concerning Call to Action and their response to the Vatican confirmation of their excommunication by Fabian Bruskewitz in the Diocese of Lincoln.

Since the post first came out one of CTA’s "deaconess" Ashley Reynolds
left a comment at Vivificat.

"I, Ashley, believe in our One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. I believe in Apostolic succession, the primacy of Peter, the Blessed Virgin, and the Creeds. I, Ashley, believe that women can image Christ, that homosexual love is good and holy, that Jesus lived nonviolence, and that Jesus did not cast out disciples and apostles who had doubts."

Jesus did not cast out those who doubted, though he did call them forward from their doubt. When Jesus and the Apostles were at sea in the storm and Jesus calmed the storm he did not praise them for having doubted. John Henry Cardinal Newman said "Ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt." There is also a great difference between a doubt and rejection of parts of the faith. Jesus not exactly have kind words for those who rejected his teachings. The Pharisees, Sadducees, and others were not exactly praised for doubting Jesus was the Messiah. When Jesus preached on the permanence of marriage, the Apostles did not reject his teaching – they wondered how it was possible since they did not yet have a full understanding of the graces in a sacramental marriage. CTA though does not doubt Jesus teaching on marriage – they outright reject it.

They also do not doubt Jesus’ teaching on marriage being between a man and a women, once again they outright reject it and call homosexual acts good and holy. It only makes sense that since they have no problems with homosexual acts that they also have no problem with contraception and also of course abortion. Yes social Justice means being able to kill the purely innocent in the womb. The slaughter of the innocents continue long past King Herod’s death.

In the most recent development:

Nicole Sotelo, codirector of national Call to Action, said her organization intends to mount a letter-writing campaign to Lincoln, Neb., Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz, with copies to Bishop William Skylstad, bishop of Spokane, Wash., and president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

The letters will protest Bruskewitz’s refusal to comply with the bishops’ conference policies on child abuse by clergy, she said. Asked about the timing of the campaign, just after an announcement that the Vatican has upheld the excommunication of the Lincoln chapter of Call to Action, she said it would counter Bruskewitz’s "attempts to silence" the organization. "Justice cannot be silenced," she said [Via Diogenes ]

When Bishop Bruskewitz first excommunicated the various groups he received national coverage and thousands of letter. He said at the time very few were negative and were overwhelmingly supportive of his action.

Dad29 replies to this action by saying:

OK. After CTA’s actual membership (all 78 of them, nationwide) writes their letters, then what?

Does anybody remember CTA’s 1996-1997 petition drive for the "We Are Church: A Catholic Referendum" petition. They strived for over a million signatures by placing their petitions throughout parishes nationwide and it included the typical progressive laundry list of how the Church must change to fit their agenda. It was also a total flop receiving what I remember to be around 80 thousand signatures. The only thing this letter writing campaign will be sure to produce is a hearty laugh by Bishop Bruskewitz and also not a few prayers for the members of CTA.

One of the megatrends that John Allen Jr. should be following in his new book is the continuing dying out of progressive orders and organizations. CTA, FutureChurch, and others will be holding their meetings in retirement homes in years to come. Progressive religious orders will continue to shrink while vibrant orders who faithfully embrace the teachings of the Church will continue to grow.

Case in point is Sister Joan Chittister, OSB who in her latest column actually compares the Church’s treatment of women to Sharia law – though they never explain the Church’s veneration of the Blessed Mother and all of the women saints. She also says such stupid things as:

After all, women are the majority race. If God doesn’t like girls, S/he certainly made a lot of them. And they’re beginning to figure it out.

Women are a separate race? As dumb as I am I though they were part of the human race. Or maybe she thinks women are actually from Venus. This type of stupidity leads her to use the term s/he in referring to God which I consider down right impolite. The Holy Spirit went to a lot of trouble inspiring the writers of the Old and the New Testament and how we are to address the most Holy Trinity, the relation among the three divine persons, and our relation to them; and to have it ditched in favor of some PC term is just plain dumb. If you ask someone to call you by your first name and they then call you by some other name instead would you thing this is right – yet this is exactly what they do.