The World to Come

EXCERPT:

"His Holiness allowed the Vatican diplomatic corps which were protected by diplomatic immunity to carry messages between the Allied Powers. Vatican Information Services also sent over 5 million messages for soldiers. For Jews fleeing Nazi occupied territory, the Vatican assisted them with financial resources as well as necessary paperwork. During the Nazi occupation of Rome (September, 1943 to June, 1944), Pius XII helped to raise the Gestapo’s demand of 50 kilos of gold from the Jewish community for “their safety.” Unfortunately, the payment did not prevent the eventual round-up of Jews. However, of the 9,500 Jews in Rome, the Nazis only captured 1,259; the rest were hidden safely in churches, monasteries, convents, and the Vatican itself.

He hid 3,000 Jews at his summer residence, Castle Gandolfo, and recruited 400 for his Swiss guards. He also lifted cloister restrictions, allowing religious houses to offer refuge for Jews. He allowed the issuance of false baptismal certificates to Jews. These deeds do not even include the general relief efforts and distribution of food coordinated by the Vatican for the city of Rome. Pinchas Lapide, a former senior Israeli government official, has proven with documentation from the Yad Vashem archives that papal relief and rescue programs saved at least 860,000 Jewish lives– more than any other agency or government, independently or together."

The whole article:

http://catholicstraightanswers.com/...-role-in-saving-the-jews-during-world-war-ii/

 

Silly is as silly does, eh?

 

Nobody wants open borders or to turn the US into a third world country. Preposterous.

 

Do not expect rational behavior from politicians in office. The whole wall thing is political theater demonstrating how irrelevant the government has become.

 

The dollar will be replaced by the ruble? The peso?

 

The Democratic Party wants to keep the status quo on immigration, which is essentially an open border policy that will harm us. You can see the results already with the American infant mortality rates; they are higher than they should be due to the presence of 22 million illegals.

 

Baseball cards.

 

You do invent your own strawmen.

 

You said no one wants open borders or to turn the U.S. into a third world country.

This is what the Democratic Party is giving us. I wish they were more interested in defending the U.S., but they are not.

 

Is a little sickening to see how much they long for the collapse of America. No doubt they imagine some socialist nirvana rising from the ruble.

 

All this talk about "open borders" and no one mentions or realize it's "one way borders" that are being encouraged. I can not set up a business in Mexico, or a household without paying thru the nose. We cannot go to most countries in the Middle East and do the same..
They have socialist systems.. the way it works in Mexico is, if you have friends in government you can ignore many of the petty regulations, if not, be ready to pay every petty official that comes with their hand out.

 

I am sorry but you're clarification is no mitigation of the sheer arrogance of the very American exceptionalism that it shouts. "Most nations" means nothing. Your nation is no more generous (indeed the source I posted says you are LESS generous) than other advanced industrial countries.

What is more, the numbers show that charity is a poor substitute for proper socialised medicine systems like France, Germany and Australia where world class medicine is accessible to ordinary people in a way that Americans can only dream of. The US system has worse outcomes and far higher costs for its health system (including that operated by charities) than other advanced industrial countries. It's a classic example of billionaire populists ripping off the people and telling them that the snake oil that they reselling them is the best that money can buy. It's an obscene lie. Research it and you will see. No Western European would trade his healthcare system for an American one.

As to the role of the Catholic Church, this institution plays a global role in hospitals and schools and has many different forms of relationship with the private and public sectors in Australia, Britain, France etc... there's nothing American about that. There is also simply nothing exceptional about your claim that Americans give to charity in a way unknown to the citizens of other nations. There are Mater Misericordia hospitals everywhere, and Catholic universities too. In fact the Catholic Church is a fine example of a global transnational institution.

Deep down the American Right may make alliances with the Catholic Church over abortion but these Christian fundamentalists remain deeply hostile to the "Whore of Babylon" of Revelation. Similarly they love Israel because they need to see some sort of End of Days prediction to come true before Jews are all swept away to burn in Christian Fundamentalist Hell with the Catholics who have been preparing it for them. The established church in America is straight out of Cromwell (after he abandoned his political ideals).

I think you should reflect on how much hatred there is in statement that "liberals" are "fascists" and the passive aggressive deceit that they want to start a "war". These are generally people who are committed to a democratic process who by their actions accept its outcome and the rule of law. Can you say the same?

As you say yourself below America was no different to Europe historically. Established churches were everywhere and now they are not. But you think that history suddenly stopped in the 1780s? This was years ago and generally all European nations have taken different but broadly directionally similar paths to the USA towards disestablishment. The only nation I can think of that has an established church today is England and that is hardly a bastion of nationalism (the joke is that atheists are welcome in the Church of England). In fact the European and American Right and fascist nationalists (not the European churches) are very similar in seeing themselves as some sort of new Christendom fighting some renewed thirteenth century crusade.

If there is any "established church" now in the West, it is in the USA, where white evangelical ideologically extreme right wing Christians now enjoy massive political influence that would be the envy of a medieval Pope. It is backed by billions of dollars. America has always had these forces of reaction and the US Founding Fathers, in the tradition of English freethinkers and French philosophes fought this strongly. Now those forces are winning in a way they haven't won since they were drubbed by the Deists and Theists that were America's Founding Fathers.

The separation of church and state wasn't some quirky compromise but was enshrined in the US constitution as a deliberate break by the Founding Fathers against the dominance of religion in government. It was a revolutionary (hence the description) break against claims of divine authority for governments that has characterised European royalism. You should read the Englishman/American Tom Paine on this. It was a movement of science and reason, a close cousin of the French revolutionaries and the movements for democracy in England and Germany. The breaking of the established churches in America was replicated in different ways across the enlightened world. It is not a uniquely American thing. The USA was in the leadership of this, but it was certainly not exceptional. In France (with England the World's Superpower) the Church was toppled less than thirty years after the American Revolution.

Yes Jeannette American history is available for us all to read. What is missed out in the American Right's analysis is the context. Government in 1776 had never been about welfare (which is the "gubmint" that so threatens the swivel eyed loons on the Right today). It had only been about warfare. Kings raised taxes so they could make war. In the beginning the US cry of "no taxation without representation" was hardly radical. It was a cry from Americans that they should have the same rights of representation as their English cousins: rights won from the King by centuries of struggle that meant the King of England could only raise taxes with the consent of parliament.

It was not actually a cry against military taxation until English radicals like Paine got hold of it. Until then it was more a nostalgic "why can't we be as Englishmen" notion. After Paine and warfare came the second amendment - a necessity for the people to protect themselves against the King (even an American King) with arms and representation. In those days taxation was only about war. The minority of Americans who opposed the King were against war and were rightly suspicious of the English standing army and state power. The fact is that in that tradition thinkers like Thomas Paine (without whom the American revolution probably would not have happened) also made the earliest explicit calls for a welfare state. This was originally an American idea, from one of the most influential founding fathers and the world's greatest political thinkers.

So much hate here. Liberals generally try to "impose their own beliefs" through persuasion and democracy (and the majority of Americans agree with liberal positions on so many things that the US government will not implement). The social contract (the idea that being a member of society confers obligations as well as rights on citizens) is a founding principle of the USA and of course it comes from France. Society being a good thing is an essential part of the American Revolution. The American Constitution is one of the monuments to human civilisation, like the Magna Carta that was its great grandfather. As a liberating tool it requires no "strict adherence": that is authoritarian, kingly language. It is not liberals who are trying to ram religion and saluting flags down the throats of children (well it might be some "liberals" but that is certainly not a liberal thing). It is the liberal constitution that protects people from "strict adherence" to anyones's dogma.

Can you not see that the separation of powers is a great foresight by the Founding Fathers. It is the protection against the wolves voting to devour the sheep that Jefferson talked of. And it is being damaged by both parties. But far more by conservatives. Liberals are petrified that Trump will destroy the American Constitution, through judicial coup d'etat, emergency powers and by taking advantage of the moral degeneration of a Congress that in any other period of American history would have impeached him, convicted him and put him in prison.

The Federal Government, like all federal governments, is mainly concerned with national issues, as it should be. I haven't noticed the shrinking of the State under recent Republicans and judging by the size of the Trumpian deficit, this isn't changing soon. The sheer size of military spending is extraordinary in the USA and wholly out of proportion with any external threat.

The second amendment will be of no use to you should the Federal Government want to impose control. Different times require different measures and giving guns to people who regularly (every day) massacre innocents is not the right way today. Political remedies are needed now. Guns will be useless if the US government wants to act against the people. Political safeguards are required, not military fantasies.

Luckily military power today is not to oppress farmers in Wyoming but is a tool of American international power, to further the aims of the Federal government on a global basis (which has a lot of economic benefits for the American people). There are some, like me that do not think that is a terrible thing, as since Roosevelt this Pax Americana has on balance been a benign thing (with exceptions). This is not particularly a "liberal" point of view.

 

Absurd to believe that the US economy cant survive without being the reserve currency. I suspect we can thrive better than all the other nations economies of the world who do not have a reserve currency. Now, if you are a fan of really big government, the end of endless, easy government credit is horrific. The thought of government being required to live within its means, terrifies them.

 

Ah I think I see your problem It is the word "Europe" that is confusing you. Let me help. There is no Europe. Or there are many Europes. Actually Europeans, like Americans, do not even think of themselves primarily as part of a nation. They are from their city or at most their region. Only wars and football create national consciousness. Only in the Ryder Cup do we all become Europeans. But let me play by indulging "Europe" as a political generalisation.

There is an ideal of "Europe" that is not doing too well at the moment. This is a Europe that believes, alongside free market thinkers like Adam Smith for example, that governments have the responsibility to set the rules for the market. This is the thinking that means we don't have child labour, seventy hour weeks, slavery, enormous deaths at work, wholesale illiteracy, ricketts and all the rest. Civilised countries have forged some consensus in this kind of thing over the years, including the USA. This "Europe", like liberal America, is under attack from those who want to throw us back to those times.

In this Europe, European conservatives from Thatcher to Macron, to Merkel and to many of the emerging countries in Eastern Europe, are and have been trying to weaken the power of the State to support free markets. Indeed the whole defeat of communism means that for vast areas of Europe the last thirty years has been about free markets and capitalism. European conservatives like Merkel have been about freedom partly because someone like Merkel grew up under the tyranny of communism.

But European conservatives alongside American conservatives, are losing (though not quite as badly as Romney, Cain and others have lost). Those of us who believe as Paine said that "the cause of America is the cause of all mankind" and wish to see liberal democracy extend over all the Earth, are losing to a whole myriad of different forces. Some of these forces like in Hungary and Poland are nationalist and authoritarian. Others like in Italy are more anarchistic. In France conservatives are economically liberal (which means conservative in American). In the UK they are extremely so (they want to see Britain de-regulated so that boys can go up chimneys again).

And then there are fascists. And maybe that's where we differ. You call these "conservatives". Maybe you think that they include some "fine people". I don't. Parties like the Front National are not "conservative". They are fascist. They are the unashamed heirs of politicians who sent little Jewish children to death camps. Collaborators. Traitors. No fine people there.

You see I come from a "liberal" tradition where on the really big things conservatives are my allies. The idea of fighting a war against them is anathema. Our common foe was the anti-semite, the white supremacist, the carrier of the fasces and the tradition that would throw out science and send us back to some Teutonic Dark Age. Against evil scum like this a conservative was an ally and a comrade. If you have one difference bewteen America and Europe it is that we really understand that Nazis and their friends are not "fine people". They are people to be crushed, by any means necessary.

You may indulge these and even let them into your tent and call them conservatives. We have a moral compass. That's not because we are better than you. It's because we saw what evil these people do. They destroyed our continent with over fifty million deaths. They caused millions to tramp thousands of miles fleeing persecution as you watched on from over the ocean.

And you know what's more? We were also allies with conservatives against real communists (not America's hateful John Birch fantasies, and other such obscenities that are making a comeback). Our liberal and conservative friends in the Czech Republic (Charter 77), or Poland (Solidarnosc) or East Germany (Civic Forum) risked their lives against real communists, not some right wing projection that was nothing more than a hippy with a flower in his lapel. We are talking Caucescu, Honecker's Stasi, or Jarozielski's martial law... this was our reality, in our lifetimes as "Europeans". Liberals and real conservatives have always been allies on the really big things. Never people who will talk about making "war" against each other, but comrades who lay down their lives for each other. Talk of "war" between democrats is fascist talk. Or whatever the new word will be to describe these times.

American solders knew all this because they saw this and helped liberate Europe from tyranny, but the American people never really learned this. That's why the post war "liberal consensus" in Europe united social democrats, liberals, conservatives and even monarchists. You know why? Because we fought together, side by side in resistance movements for our very lives, against the evil personified in real fascists, and we did so whilst the USA flirted with America First, Father Coughlin, Charles Lindberg and all the other snake oil salesmen that kept you out of "foreign wars". Again, read some history. It pays back the effort a thousand fold. European Lindberghs wore SS uniforms and hung us up with chicken wire, liberal and conservative both.

I think you should read Irving Kristol, the father of neo-conservativism, who was no social liberal. They are political liberals though and that's why I defend them against the troglodyte Left occasionally. To them, in the fight for freedom the USSR and Nazi Germany were equally disgusting foes. Neocons get this. They stood up to sentimental Western socialists and pointed this out. Kudos to them for that.

This guy, who on many issues I despise, described the leadership of the USA best, as a nation founded on ideals, that comes to the aid of its friends because it has the same interests as its friends:

http://www.historyplace.com/speeches/reagan-d-day.htm

Please reflect on these words:

We foreign liberals (and I mean liberals not mealy mouthed apologists for communist tyrannies) do not hate America. America is our shining city on the Hill. It is the beacon of light that shines for poor Cambodians, Bulgarians, Peruvians, Indonesians, and all the other huddled masses yearning to breathe free. Not because all will come to America, but because all will replicate America. It is the "hope of all mankind" that Paine talked about. Or it used to be.

It is now alas an America now being systematically destroyed by evil forces, eighteenth century Tories, superstitious anti-science medieval peasants and swivel eyed ignoramuses. Corrupt men are dividing it amongst themselves like money changers in the Temple: billionaire elitists posing as "men of the people". And where does that leave all mankind (you know the people that "God" cares about)? With European democracy in a similar degenerate state as American democracy it leaves the world to China - a group of equally avaricious and corrupt old men, who have no Constitution, electorate or philosophical tradition to impede their evil ambition. But they have the numbers.

Rage and anger is appropriate. Hiding behind faux politeness whilst peddling hateful ideas is not. Decent people have to come together in these times or all is lost.

 

That could be the result but I believe they just want more democratic voters and don't really even consider the consequences of allowing millions of the impoverished of the world to immigrate to the US illegally.

And thanks to WikiLeaks we know that Hillary, the democrats last chosen candidate, advocated for open borders.

 

???? Trump hasn't abandoned the cause. He just doesn't believe it can be achieved by using the military to force it upon other nations.

 

The whore of Babylon is not Rome it's Israel.

 

So he says. You believe him? Venezuela.

Ah look at all the conservatives who used to support Bush 42, now behind "isolationist" Trump: a Russian agent, an ally of a desperate and dangerous tyrant in Korea... gets a completely free ride from our "conservative" friends. The reality is that America does not have conservatives any more. It only has culture warriors.

 

I think you will find in protestant orthodoxy it is the Pope and the Seven Hill'd City. The "blasphemy of transubstantiation" is still the theological foundation of protestant religion. From Spenser's Fairie Queene until now. This is what their religion protests against.

 

I believe the expression is ROTFLMAO

 

Maybe Protestants should study scripture.

 

I'm sorry, I'm going to retract on the 20,000 hidden in the Vatican. I don't know where I picked up that number but maybe from a movie I saw 50 years ago and it was probably in reference to something else. My memory is not that great you know. Anyway here's what I found:

"...Pinchas Lapide, a former senior Israeli government official, has proven with documentation from the Yad Vashem archives that papal relief and rescue programs saved at least 860,000 Jewish lives– more than any other agency or government, independently or together..."

"...When Pope Pius XII died on October 9, 1958, Golda Meir, then Israeli delegate to the United Nations, sent official condolences: “When fearful martyrdom came to our people in the decade of Nazi terror, the voice of the Pope was raised for the victims. The life of our times was enriched by a voice speaking out on the great moral truths above the tumult of daily conflict. We mourn a great servant of peace.”

"...Dr. Raphael Cantoni, a leader in Italy’s Jewish Assistance Committee added, “The Church and the Papacy have saved Jews as much and insofar as they could Christians. Six million of my co-religionists have been murdered by the Nazis… but there would have been many more victims had it not been for the efficacious intervention of Pius XII.” Therefore, for anyone to condemn so easily in hindsight Pope Pius or the Church as a whole for the course of action taken during World War II reveals an ignorance of history..."

"...Pius XII helped to raise the Gestapo’s demand of 50 kilos of gold from the Jewish community for “their safety.” Unfortunately, the payment did not prevent the eventual round-up of Jews. However, of the 9,500 Jews in Rome, the Nazis only captured 1,259; the rest were hidden safely in churches, monasteries, convents, and the Vatican itself..."

"...He hid 3,000 Jews at his summer residence, Castle Gandolfo, and recruited 400 for his Swiss guards. He also lifted cloister restrictions, allowing religious houses to offer refuge for Jews. He allowed the issuance of false baptismal certificates to Jews..."


http://catholicstraightanswers.com/...-role-in-saving-the-jews-during-world-war-ii/​

I personally think that the Jews who suffered in WWII, and were saved by the sacrifices of many Christians would turn in their graves by the lies that are being perpetuated by certain elements in the Jewish community.

While many Christians in Europe either Catholic, Lutheran or Orthodox were risking there own lives and that of their families to save Jews, Steven DeNoon of Israelinewslive said he lost 200 members of his family in the holocaust because the Zionists wouldn't pay $1.50 to save them. Yet they paid thousands to save those who would be useful to the future state of Israel and their agenda.

 

Well the Orthodox monks think the Whore of Babylon is Rome too, but it seems to fit the US a lot more. (Maybe the World Trade Center?) As for transubstatiation being a blasphemy, by whose authority? If it's the Bible, well the same Fathers who compiled it also formed Holy Tradition. So again I ask, by whose authority? If they were faulty in their interpretation of the Bible that they compiled, then wouldn't they be faulty in their compilation of the Bible as well?

 

I am not here to justify Luther. I just explain it. Although I would reshape the question: on whose authority is the bread and wine of the mass changed into the actual body and blood of Christ?

But we are a little off the point. I am pointing out to Catholic conservatives that they are in alliance with people who see their Church as intrinsically evil. Better off with the Pope than the Trump my brothers and sisters.

 

,
On the authority of the Saints/Fathers who compiled the Bible. How can one accept them as being enlightened in their compilation of the Bible, and yet not be enlightened in their interpretation of the Bible?

But look I am Orthodox and definitely believe in transubstantiation, but I know it is culturally alien to Protestants. I also know that God has no limits. His Grace is accessible to anyone who opens their hearts to it no matter what their religious background is.

Trump was voted in with the hope he was strong enough to fight the very people who now control him. They did it by demonizing Trump with the lies of Russiagate. The intent was to instill in people's minds that Russia is evil incarnate and to insure that Trump will never better relations .

The following video is what they gained. Since they are gods and invincible they could care less..