You have to wonder what John McCain thinks he is "playing at." He accepted a public endorsement from a man who wrote that the Catholic Church Is an "apostate church," this, evidently on the basis of the learning acquired at various bible "cow colleges." Since the endorsement McCain has done nothing real in the way of repudiating this man.
There are still a lot of Papists in this country and even those who no longer are observant are likely to resent this calumny and McCain’s willing association with it.
Now, there are not many Catholics as openly critical as I of the hierarchy for their self obsession and tolerance of child molesters but enough is too much in this case.
I have seen simple priests walk impassively through beaten zones in the Holy Land where tank guns, TOW missiles and small arms expressed the fury of nationalist madness. They were there to do their duty to deliver monetary aid to Christians and Muslims alike and they feared not. People had been literally "shot out" of their homes and Christian charity demanded a response. The response was given.
Has John Hagee ever done anything to express his "ministry" other than to solicit money on television? pl
I have no idea if Rev. Hagee has any redeeming qualities. I do know that when John McCain ran for president in 2000, he called Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell “agents of intolerance” who “shame our faith, our party and our country.”
I’d like to know what happened to that John McCain in the subsequent 7 years.
Col. Lang,
Mr. Hagee and “apostate church” brought to mind a bus ride into town from O’Hare 30 years ago. A flight attendant sitting next to me was intently studying the Bible. That was pretty unusual and she was good looking so I struck up a conversation. In the course of it, I recall being astonished when she stated that Roman Catholics weren’t Christians. I spent the rest of the ride pedantically giving her a short course on Christianity. It was, I’m sure, to no avail. I belong to a Denomination that has had it”s differences with the Roman Catholic Church since good King Henry VIII, however the notion that the Church was not Christian was too absurd for words. In retrospect, that was my first, but not last, encounter with “born again”, “holy roller”, “fundamentalist”, or “Pentecostal” beliefs. They continue to strike me as absurd, but I’m no longer surprised by the statements of Hagee and his ilk.
777Guy
Were the priests Jesuits?
Kevin
No. They were other kinds of regular clergy. pl
Reminds me of the long ago days in the late 50s, when my Virginia-born mom brought my Lebanese-born dad home to her parents, the Rev. and Mrs. Floyd T. Bentley. Grandpa was a Methodist minister. He liked my dad pretty well at first, but was deeply disturbed to find out that the new swain was an Arab. He got over that one, but then he discovered that Dad was a Catholic. This my grandfather could not stomach. He wasn’t quite sure *what* an Arab was, but he knew he didn’t like Catholics. This was someone who joined the NAACP in the 1940s and was pretty good on civil rights for a man of his demographic group.
Grandpa did get over it eventually, and was proud to perform the marriage ceremony. My father just didn’t believe it mattered (sorry) so he smoothed Grandpa’s ruffled feathers. In our village they recognized Protestant marriages – missionaries had converted a few families over the years – so my other grandparents didn’t object.
By the time I heard this story in the 70s it seemed as quaint and out-of-date and unbelievable as separate water fountains. I am sorry to see that this sort of thinking persists. It makes no sense at all.
What would Jesus do? indeed.
While accepting Hagee’s support tarnishes his “straight talk” image, McCain’s action is regrettable but human. It is politics – even though McCain is a “non-politician.”
What is more disturbing is that McCain would have converted from Episcopal to Baptist in order to promote his candidacy.
I always thought that GWB’s speech at Liberty U hurt him in 2000 among Catholics here in SE Michigan, contibuting to his loss.
There are still a lot of Papists in this country and even those who no longer are observant are likely to resent this calumny and McCain’s willing association with it.
__________________________
Amen to that, by a right-leaning lapsed (i.e., Mass attending at Christmas-Easter-baptisms–weddings) Virginian Catholic!
Still, I’ll certainly vote for McCain over Hillary or Obama, mostly because I think the anti-Nafta and other economic policies of the Dem’s are bad for the US economy in the medium-long-run (I do think that in the short-run, this Iraq venture is pretty dumb in cost-benefit terms).
From my admittedly limited reading of the Bible, what makes a Christian a Christian has already been defined in the sermon on the mount. Here’s the King James’ version.
The odd thing is… Catholic, Protestant, Baptist… none of that seems to be in this little speech. Although it does kind of indicate that anyone who judges another person is, to paraphrase “fucked”.
Thanks to the internet I had opportunity to hear a speech of Benjamin Netanyahu (who pushed all of the usual evangelical buttons) to an evangelical audience with an introduction by Hagee. I also heard some of Hagee’s fire & brimstone sermons. Hagee is all about eschatology.
Hagee is influential and his flock follows his political lead, which is the sole point behind McCain wooing him. What I give Hagee is that he appears to be sincere in his beliefs. What I also give him is that he tolerates nothing else but his beliefs, and that he wants to change America’s political system accordingly. The man is dangerous.
I am a catholic, but not observant. I agree with your above criticism of the Catholic church.
I don’t think that McCain is doing himself a favour by allying himself with essentially anti-semitic, anti-catholic, anti-everything-not-them zealots just waiting to be raptured. All they ask from McCain is unlimited support for Israel and an escalation in the Middle East, so that all the Jews who won’t convert to Hagee’s special brand of evangelicalism can die, finally, so the faithful can go to heaven, finally. And if they’re lucky they’ll get a global thermo nuclear war as well.
If Mikey Weinstein is right, and I have every reason to believe so, then the evangelical proselytizing at the Air Force Academy at Colorado Springs is more than troubling. When I think of Hagee-type evangelicals as missile launch control officers or deployed in Iraq in contact with Iraqis (doomed pagans), my stomach turns.
Does anyone really believe that something will come from pointing out the obvious hypocrisy between the non-reaction to McCain/Hagee and the vapors-inducing hysteria over Farrakhan’s endorsement of Obama? Hagee’s Muslim bashing sentiments and Christian Zionist credentials secure his place on the bigot protected list.
As I have a book coming out relating to this topic in December, I can offer a few comments. My book is: “Dark Crusade: Christian Zionism and US Foreign Policy. London: IB Tauris”.
The newest research about American religion is the Pew Forum on Religion and Public life’s survey just released. They indicate that: Evangelical Protestant Church members are 26.3 percent of US; Roman Catholic, 23.9 percent; Mainline Protestant, 18.1. There is extensive data on the website at http://religions.pewforum.org/
Scholars assess that about 70 percent of evangelicals are of the Fundamentalist type and 30 percent are in the moderate to liberal category. This would give us a population in the US of about 50 million Fundamentalists.
Scholars generally agree that most, nearly all, Fundamentalists believe in the same ideology that Hagee promotes as a televangelist and mega-church operator.
All churches outside of the Dipsensationalist churches are “apostate” whether Roman Catholic or Protestant.
1.Hagee’s theopolitical ideology is termed “Dispensationalism” or “Dispensational premillennialism.” It is an ideology constructed by a cultic group in the UK in the 1820s and 1830s. The ideology has a bizarre eschatology which interprets biblical passages in Revelation, Daniel, Ezekiel as meaning the world is in an apocalyptic “End Times.” Also, the scenario requires the physical transfer of Jews from all over the world to the Holy Land. Hence, it is called “Christian Zionism.”
2. The ideology was constructed primarily by two British cult zombies: John Nelson Darby and Edward Irving. Both can be “googled” for data.
3. Darby came to the United States and Canada a number of times between about 1860 and 1872. This is how the ideology was implanted in the United States and Canada.
4. For the best technical study from a theological perspective see (Rev.) Stephen Sizer, Christian Zionism Road-map to Armageddon? (Leicester, Eng: Inter-Varisty Press, 2004.)
In the US, Rev. Don Wagner has written extensively on it. Don is coming out with a new book on it as is Norton Mezvinsky. There is an academic literature on it but it is spread through political science, sociology, anthropology, religious studies, and the like in scattered articles and some books.
5. Hagee’s national pro-Israel organization is CUFI, or Christians United For Israel. Their website is http://www.cufi.org/site/PageServer
6. Hagee’s speech to AIPAC, American Israel Political Affairs Committee, is at
http://www.aipac.org/Publications/SpeechesByPolicymakers/Hagee-PC-2007.pdf
There are reports that some within this cultic national subculture have formed armed and potentially violent groups. More McVey’s out there???
Some suggest that there are counterintelligence issues here as well as law enforcement issues.
You could say I was in the belly of the beast. As you all probably remember, my last two years of high school were spent at a conservative, evangelical, fundamentalist boarding school. (Yes, I was a bad boy.) I’m Catholic and I heard it all.
Catholics are idolaters. Catholics aren’t Christians. Catholics worship Mary and the dead, but not Jesus. Roman Catholicism is a cult. The Pope is the anti-Christ. Catholics are sadistic nutcases who want to crucify Christ every day until His return. And yes, my all-time favorite, Catholics are cannibals! (Because of Transubstantiation.)
The worst was when some said Catholics can’t go to heaven. My mother was very devout. Boy, that made me feel great! Mom’s going to Hell even though she goes to Mass six days a week (she’s old-school, going to 6am Mass before work!)
She had grown up in the deep South as a Catholic. Her response was that they were ignorant – in the literal sense – and to ignore it all. That they really knew nothing of the Church and its teaching other than what some preacher had told them.
She was right. They were clueless.
If their motive was to “save” me from the evil clutches of the Catholic Church, it didn’t work. Their ignorance forced me to recognize my own ignorance of my religion. They pushed me deeper into the Church, where I started researching more and more in order to better understand the theology.
Just another example, out of many, that religious persecution, no matter how mild it is, will backfire.
One more thing, Protestants may not believe that the Pope is infallible and the head of the Church on earth, but they have no problem anointing their own pastors as the infallible popes of their congregations.
Here endeth the rant.
Hagee is the President and CEO…
‘Nuff said.
While I am not a religious man myself, at least the Catholic church is an international religious movement with a ecumenical profile. After the wall fell, we have had a great influx of polish folks here in Norway, and it has been a real eyeopener for many how the catholic church in many ways function as a social helping organization. Now the high-haired moneygrubbing warmongers of the born-agains nlike Robertson and Hagee dont seem to take *that* part of the good lords words too seriously.
Charlottesville, Virginia
1 March 2008
Sir;
One thing that I noticed about these guys (Hagee, et al) is they are never around when real work needs to be done. To elaborate on your example of the Catholic priests doing good deeds in the middle of a war zone, I would like to ad my own observation. As I once mentioned to you, I packed up a truck full of ‘liberated'(some might say stolen) medical supplies and headed down to what was left of Waveland, Mississippi just after Hurricane Katrina whacked it a few years back. For a week, I worked in a completely ad hoc and totally volunteer medical aid station, sweating out the oppressive heat and humidity of summer in the deep south (along with the very real possibility of getting whacked by Hurricane Rita churning off shore). There were a lot of different folks there; Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Mormon, Muslim, Hippies and even a crazed, renegade ER Nurse (such as myself), all of us trying to make a difference and help out our fellow citizens as best we could. In fact, I saw many different folks, different faiths and backgrounds there, but John Hagee was not one of them. He was too busy back in the comfort of his studio/pulpit inveighing against the wickedness of America that caused God to punish our fellow citizens of the Gulf states with such a destructive storm. While the Reverend John was raking in the dough from his televangelist duties, we were trying to make life a little better for some of our fellow Americans who were going through the most awful time of their lives. As far as I’m concerned, John Haggee can go to hell.
SubKommander Dred
While I don’t agree with Hagee, or anyone else who thinks Catholics are not Christian–in fact I find that absurd–I can see, intellectually, how some could make a weak argument for the case. But, with that said, don’t waste your time on those fools!
I guess McCain and Obama need to got through their list of unsolicited endorsements now and start “rejecting and renouncing.” Let’s just make sure we don’t get carried away with this.
Neither candidate will be all we want them to be. The selection for President is probably going to end up being between a totally inexperienced sweet-talking liberals liberal, or a cranky old experienced guy that is mildly conservative. I am not a big fan of either, but I will vote.
One item describing the life, times and business practices of Hagee.
THE OTHER GOSPEL
OF JOHN HAGEE
CHRISTIAN ZIONISM AND ETHNIC SALVATION
G. Richard Fisher
http://www.pfo.org/jonhagee.htm
We have discussed the dispensationalist mindset several times on SST. However, the end times mycelium is well ensconced in our political humus, budding numerous fruitings with silly to serious reprecussions.
The Interstate 35 purification movement is an example of the silly and invasion of Iraq, “birth pangs of a new middle east” and the pending invasion — perhaps cleansing — of Gaza examples of the serious.
I’m sorry to see John McCain accept the embrace of those who profit (or is it prophet) from the end times. Already, his campaign is recalculating the root mean square distance to limit the hazard of ionizing radiation yet still bask in the warm, dispensationalist glow.
Hagee’s business is just one of many. And this is big business from Ted’s former shop out in Colorado Springs to Doug Coe’s “The Fellowship”.
See:
“Jesus plus nothing:
Undercover among America’s secret theocrats
by Jeffrey Sharlet
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2003/03/0079525
My impression is these brimstone boys, though representing a minority of religious practice and viewpoint, have gained a disproportionate influence on our political culture. This influence is in the form of opportunity, money, organizational skill and in the case of Israel, exploitation of collective guilt.
The world is both a mission field and a market for these fellows and I don’t see anything good coming from that.
Hagee is certainly involved in something other than raising cash, namely scaring up support for Israel. He is a self-described Christian-Zionist who preaches about End Times with plenty of Muslim denounciation and “just” Christian aggression thrown in. His sermons are scheduled TV viewing on Sundays on where else — Fox Network. For a Christian, he sure does relish war. While Rick Warren hasn’t embraced Hagee’s brand of Christianity, it’d be interesting to see which other preachers are in Haggee’s camp? While Haggee is the most visible of this “sect”, he is certainly not the only one.
And you’re right Col., never heard of any Hagee congregants or associates putting themselves in mortal danger.
McCain alliance with Hagee looks like part of the a Southern political strategy. It’s the Hagee rapture vs. the Obama rapture in the deep South.
But I want to share an observation about the South. Southerners, especially those of the “Left Behind” ilk, listen to two people for advice: the preacher and the warrior. Certainly since 9.11, “the preacher” has caught their ear more than those in the military who see the folly of our military strategy in the Middle East. And these preachers are fervent dispensationalists.
This McCain-Hagee alliance is extremely potent because most Southerners presume McCain is the leader of the warrior class in the US. So there is a presumption in the South that he represents the voice of the warrior. (Back in the late 1990’s, I was a big fan of McCain until a well known Vietnam Vet in no uncertain terms told me never to support McCain. After considering carefully his words — which he did not mince –I would not vote for McCain under any circumstances now).
In my opinion, it will be very important for those in the military to oppose publicly Sen. McCain. Sen. Webb could play a role here. In my view, the military publicly opposing McCain is as important at the 07 NIE.
After reading Gorenberg’s book — The Final Days — I started watching Hagee’s show on Trinity Broadcast network. He is a very talented speaker. He inherited his rapture ideology from his father, who was an unsuccessful itinerant preacher.
But if you believe in some of the assumptions laid out in Jung’s book — Man and His Symbols — Hagee is projecting onto Muslims, particularly Mahoud Ahmadinejad. When he is talking about Ahmadinejad, he is really revealing himself and it is scary.
Black tele-evangelists could play a role here. I often wondered what some black tele-evangelists, such as T.D. Jakes and Eddie Long, really think about Hagee. Some of my black friends have nothing but disdain for tele-evangelism, but tele-evangelism has much of a hold on the South, including blacks. It will be fascinating to see if they break for the Hagee rapture or the Obama rapture (assuming he is the nominee, if not then the Hillary whatever).
Necessary Disclosure: Despite continuing to lead a rather secular lifestyle, I converted to Catholicism after corresponding and meeting a Trappist monk/priest for few years. But I come from a Protestant family, primarily Episcopalians and Methodists.
I am an apostate myself. But some of my close friends and associates are still practicing, some devout, some of the cafeteria variety. They were all in an outrage earlier last year when a certain Democratic candidate was accused of being anti-Catholic. But none seem to have heard of this McCain/Hagee flap yet. They lean right wing and listen to O’Reilly so perhaps it has not hit Fox News.
As for my own feelings on McCain and Obama: A pox on both their houses. Anyone endorsed by Hagee and Farrakhan is not fit to be in the White house, irrespective of rejections or non-rejections.
Sidney
Ever read the thing about the two cardinals, Manning and Newman in “Eminent Victorians?” Great fun and the man could really write!! pl
Mike
The arabic word for apostate has more flavor, “murtadd.”
Like the drums booming forth in the cave city of the dwarves. pl
In the same week that McCain sinks lower (I volunteered for him in 2000)seeking endorsements from the holy rollers and endtime/rapture losers, Barack got a nonsensical endorsement from louis farrakan, and immediately repudiated it. one guy parades the endorsement of an extremist; the other shuns it. I know it is simplistic, but that what is killing McCain, and why he will lose the election. Karl Rove’s machine is now eating itself alive.
It doesn’t matter who endorses a candidate, but whether a candidate accepts or rejects the endorsement that is important. Obama has “denounced” and “rejected” Farrakhan’s approbation while McCain accepted Hagee’s. Anyone who supports a candidate based solely on another persons recommendation should not be allowed to vote.
Col. Lang,
Thank you for the reference — Eminent Victorians. I have not read that book, although I believe I have seen it referenced before (perhaps in regard to General Chinese Gordon?) I will most definitely put it on my “to read list”.
Your novel, I believe, describes one of the keys that unlocks the beauty of Catholic mysticism. It was when Fr. Krueger said to Claude Devereux, “It is not permitted that you should despair, Claude”.
I consider myself extremely lucky or, perhaps more accurately, blessed. Thanks to my mother (may God bless her saintly soul), I was born and raised Episcopalian. During my more “rambunctious” years, I ostensibly called my a secular humanist, which was really just an excuse. And now– thanks to a Trappist monk/priest — I am certain that when the time comes, I will die a Catholic.
That said, I am fascinated with an idea in Carelton Coon’s book, The Caravan. He writes of a “mosaic” or seamless garment in the Middle East. I am trying to determine if this reflects a psychological state — one that many Westerners may yearn to experience, especially when you consider the “despair” in Eliot’s Wasteland or Lewis’s Babbitt. I don’t know the answer. But, perhaps as suggested by the theme of the WWII handbook for US soldiers headed to Iraq, the best US tradition — including the military one — is one that respects other cultures. It also is the way of Martin Buber (and probably Judah Benjamin). It is not the way of Hagee, from what I can tell. It would be refreshing if he would consider the former Trappist vow — the vow of silence.
Sidney
Thank you brother, and Father Krueger thanks you as well. pl
Andy
This is not about the Navy. pl
Anyone who recommends that others should not be allowed to vote should be condemned to an eternity of listening to the sermons Farrakhan and Hagee.
As a Republican and a Catholic I wondered where the Party was heading after Bush and now I know.
Mike, I have listened to Farrakhan and Hagee sermons and it seemed like an eternity.
The Constitutional amendment will be too late. McCain cannot legally become President and should drop out if he truly wants a Republican Presidency whether or not he is it. The Constitution is very clearly worded. Article II, Section 1 reads in part “No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be elgible to the Office of President; . . .” Unfortunately Sen. McCain is not a natural born citizen, he was born in the Panama Canal Zone of U.S. parents, father in the military. He is clearly a U.S. citizen but not a “natural born citizen.” To win any Republican must have a significant percentage of the Evangelical and Catholic vote, not to equate these groups.
Col. Lang
Thank you very much. There is no greater honor than a Catholic brotherhood.
It’s strange but my conversion experience was totally involuntary. For much of my life, I was anti-Catholic, primarily from the secular perspective. But then it was as if life grabbed me by the collar and yanked me into the Catholic experience, with me complaining and kicking all the way. I still am a terrible Catholic (this weekend proved it yet again) but I am grateful for the experience and, no doubt about it, I am forever indebted to a brilliant Trappist monk/priest.
That said, all my family and the vast majority of my friends, if religious, are Protestant. And a couple of my best friends are orthodox. The woman I am dating is Methodist. So to each his or her own.
But I would like to share an observation never reported in the msm. Once inside the Church, I have noticed that Catholics have an immense love for the good Catholic sacramental priest, regardless of race or national origin.
Anytime a work of fiction mentions a sacramental priest, I take notice. My radar clicked on when you mentioned Fr. Kruger. And the dialogue that you ascribed to Fr. Kruger — “It is not permitted that you should despair, Claude“– really piqued my interest. Very briefly, here’s why. During the involuntary conversion experience, I became fascinated with the “structure” of Mass, as I presumed that, at one level, it was a work of sacred or eternal art. So I spent a little time studying the history of Mass and I noticed that every Tridentine Mass started with a Psalm of the absolute deepest despair — Pslam 42 or 43. And every Tridentine Mass ended with a reading from the beginning of the Gospel of John, where the person becomes an adopted “son of God”. So I thought to myself, “In the history of art, is there a greater transformation?” I never attend Latin Mass but I respect that tradition, and this particular transformation sums up the great Catholic sacramental priest when he mysteriously “cures the soul.”
My grandparents had a cross burned on their lawn when they first came to this country because they were Catholic.
I made a choice long ago to be a Muslim, but I still respect the Catholic Church and realise Hagee and his ilk are dangerous extremists.
He is nothing more than a Protestant “takfiri”.
Tony Blair is a Catholic convert, welcomed by Cardinal Ratzinger. SOS III?
“The arabic word for apostate has more flavor, ‘murtadd.’
Like the drums booming forth in the cave city of the dwarves.” –pl
^^Not sure whether I should exclaim “ai oi” or “oy vey” to that one.
I particularly enjoyed McCain’s defender, Kay Bailey’s defense of Hagee: He’s done good things for Israel! I guess Kay Bailey doesn’t understand that a ring-kissing Papist like myself doesn’t give a rat’s a** about Israel. I do, however, care very much about fundy slander of my Church.
McCain had Hagee introduce him on stage not long ago. That in effect negates the term “unsolicited”, by
any stretch of semantics or warps of time. (We have all learned in the cases of Barack Obama’s meeting with a “domestic terrorist” and Michelle Obama’s student papers that time is indeed relative; a decade or two being but a blink of the eye to the likes of Sean Hannity)
Much more importantly, McCain explained/justified
embracing Hagee by saying “he is doing a lot of good things for Israel.” Confusedresponderer has already touched on the eschatological twist to Hagee’s Israel support, a has Glen Greenwald on his blog. But even if this were not a factor, the utilitarian calculus by which McCain during a campaign for the American presidency aligns himself with the fringiest of the fringe because it is perceived as “good for Israel” – another country in another hemisphere! – is so revealing of the man and the subordination of the American people’s interests to the values and global interests of certain unrepresentative factions that the CIA, at least in a country where the media could conceivably function as anything but a reliably comatose bystander, ought to have classified the comment and buried it in its deepest, darkest
vaults.
To the potential wishy washers, let me drive the point all the way home:
Even if the Obamas were to come out and say they embrace the allegedly racially charged “black values” of Dr. Wright, or the definitely racially charged “white skunks, white conpiracies” rethoric of Louis Farrakhan because “they are doing a lot of good” for Afro-Americans, Well at least those are Afro-AMERICANS – not Afro-Africans or Afro-Israelis.
Abu Sinan
Thanks for the comment. From what I can glean, we may have something in common. Although for other reasons and under different circumstances, the KKK crowd also threatened my father because of some decisions he made. It was not as serious as what your grandparents experienced — no cross burnings — but I recall phones calls and letters.
Now that I think about it…I have a recollection of USG personnel placing a shotgun at a strategic place in my father’s office and implementing other measures in case of an attack. USMC guards were assigned to the federal building where he worked. But this was probably a standard procedure that arose nationally after a bombing that took place in Alabama and a murder that took place in California, both by ethnic nationalists — one white, the other black.
Mainly because of great leadership in the Atlanta area, the civil rights era went fairly smoothly, arguably no worse than what happened in Boston a few years later when desegregation orders were finally, at long last, implemented, nearly twenty years after Little Rock.
In any event, I am extremely grateful for the experience. As a child, I was exposed firsthand to some “societal issues” and could observe things from a unique perspective. My guess is that you too have had similar experiences.
One of the great ironies to me is that my father and others of his tradition actually are and were “more” Southern than the KKK crowd from years ago that opposed the idea of justice. This explains in part my fascination with Col. Lang’s novel about the Civil War and the tradition he describes. ‘Tis true. One can only speculate, but I cannot help but believe that if Judah Benjamin had been alive during the second half of the 20th century, he would have sided with my father’s tradition and against the KKK. And the same with Mosby et al. Certainly Longstreet.
We ignore this tradition at great peril because it opposes imperialism and virulent ethnic nationalism. While I am not a military type, I cannot help but believe Mosby would have been appalled at our military strategy and tactics in Iraq.
I have enjoyed thoroughly reading your contributions, particularly your insights into US foreign policy as well as your thoughts about the Arabic language. If I have read Carelton Coon correctly, Arabic is considered the highest art in the Muslim world. The calligraphy is stunning.
I tend to agree with you re: Hagee.
Cloned Poster
Thanks for your comments as well. Truth be told, I have little aptitude for religion. I am a bit surprised I even wrote about it. Too much weekend coffee? Perhaps. But when it comes to a talent for theology, I have what a ex Korean-Am. Girlfriend use to say to me when she was angry: “Double digit IQ!” I may as well admit it.
Until JPII died, I really paid little attention to the Vatican. My experience revolved around meeting and corresponding with a Trappist monk/priest, so I was inclined to place the Trappist experience at the center of Catholicism. To use the vernacular: I figured if those guys were not connected, well…last person around turn out the lights. On a different level, because of the writings of Thomas Merton, I decided they were the Western equivalent of the contemplative tradition often associated with Buddhist monks.
A few years ago, I did get to shake hands with Cardinal Arinze from Nigeria. He was in Atlanta and the Nigerian community celebrated his appearance. I was able to observe Nigerian Catholicism and it, in my opinion, was beautiful.
I know little re: Tony Blair’s conversion. But a few years ago, I did read (former national lampoon writer and wildman)Tony Hendra’s book about his relationship throughout the years with a British Benedictine monk/priest — Father Joe. If you are not familiar with the book already, Hendra did a great job describing his respect and deep fondness of “Father Joe” who no doubt was a kindly, good man. Here’s a pic of “Father Joe”:
http://www.bustedhalo.com/pictures/FrJOEPIC.jpg
For those of us who have read “Focaults Pendulum” by Eco, or noticed bunker-religions before in history, the whole Hagee part of xtianity (as opposed to christianity, wich is different) seems to be quite insane. In the oldfashioned “Bwahaha! Bring on Armageddon! Bwahahaha! Come Thunder! Come lightning!” style of crazy.
it needs to be repeated, and again, this was not an unsolicited endorsement. hagee endorsed mccain because mccain requested it.
because mccain said please and thank you.
the endorsement is not what matters. mccain seeking the endorsement is what matters.
mccain seeking the endorsement is what matters.
repeat that til it’s clear. please. thank you.