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    Fr. Joseph Jenkins

  • The blog header depicts an important and yet mis-understood New Testament scene, Jesus flogging the money-changers out of the temple. I selected it because the faith that gives us consolation can also make us very uncomfortable. Both Divine Mercy and Divine Justice meet in Jesus. Priests are ministers of reconciliation, but never at the cost of truth. In or out of season, we must be courageous in preaching and living out the Gospel of Life. The title of my blog is a play on words, not Flogger Priest but Blogger Priest.

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President Trump Likened to a Doomed Caesar?

caesartrump

What were they thinking? Would critics really take delight in seeing the President murdered? On the left and right there is continuing evidence of a sickness of the American spirit and of individual souls. Politics has replaced statesmanship and governance. A patriotic love of country and our highest ideals have been supplanted on one side by a callous nationalism and on the other by inflammatory class, gender, orientation and ethnic warfare. How did we go from “one nation, under God” to the attitude that “I am the real American and you are the enemy”?

2 Responses

  1. I am not race-baiting; it is liberals and lefties that do that. Universities now teach courses in women’s studies on how white men are the scourge of the Earth. Even though Africa is a hotbed of Christianity there is no power or money there. I am not making anything racial – it is them that hate white men.

    FATHER JOE: Neither the left nor the right has a monopoly on prejudice. Usually those who are the worse are the ones who fail to see themselves and their prejudices objectively. There are extremists in every movement and cause. Our response should always be one that encourages dialogue and reconciliation. The posture of Christians would call forth from us something deeper than the etiquette of general civility in a civilized society. We are also called to love those who hate us, to forgive those who hurt us and to give to those who take from us.

    The problem with most priests is that they rarely are involved with non-Catholics outside of their parishes.

    FATHER JOE: And that observation alone shows how little you know about priestly ministry and associations. We work with county and state agencies, especially in the area of social services. We have ties to local businesses. There is fellowship and ecumenical involvement with non-Catholic faith communities and ministers. Priests also hear confessions that would make your skin crawl and hair fall out. We are neither ignorant nor detached. But we are Christian in our various interventions; yes, even when we are targeted as living signs of contradiction. Your insinuation here is often thrown out by the left; but you prove that the right also has a low view of priestly opinion and involvement in public life.

    This is not me speaking but a huge group of democratic liberal supporters. They would like nothing more than to eliminate Christianity from the face of the Earth. Remember this Father, Communists went after priests but they failed.

    FATHER JOE: Unfortunately, the Communists did not completely fail. Thousands of individual priests were imprisoned in gulags or faced execution. The Church survived but only to face new subsequent challenges to faith from the materialism of a Western secular humanism. The Church is neither democrat nor republican. One side would argue against the death penalty and better protect the rights of immigrants. The other would defend the right to life of the unborn and better defines the institution of marriage. One stresses environmentalism and the other exploiting natural resources for fuel and employment. The politics goes back and forth but the Church catches it from both sides.

    This social justice faction wants to finish off what their older brethren failed to do. They are not satisfied with just having power. They would like all their enemies eliminated. That means the Church and it’s mostly male leaders.

    FATHER JOE: Catholic social justice teaching has much to teach all the parties and citizens both in and outside the Church. Racial and gender justice are real issues. We should not be color blind but rather celebrate ethnic diversity and the richness of our culture. Gender matters, but so does the sanctity of life and the respect of persons. The Magisterium and the priesthood are dominated by males, although ethnically diverse; but when we factor in the many catechists, the majority of teachers in the Catholic religion are women. We work together to share the faith that has been revealed and passed down to us.

  2. Very simple answer father— it is the Leftists that are part of an international socialist cabal. Look at them in the US, Canada, Britain, France, Germany and other Western countries. They do not see national borders but a connection of socialist ideas connecting the world. They hate anything that is straight male and white. To them Christianity is dominated by white men. It must go. The wealth in the west is generated by white men. It must go. Our history in the west was created and invented by white men. They must go. It doesn’t matter how nice you are Father. You are a straight white male and you must go. That is why the left loves Islam. It is mostly nonwhite. It doesn’t matter that Islam wishes to destroy and kill all liberals.

    The left’s goal is to destroy Western Civilization pure and simple. Trump is a resurgence of the straight white man in power. The left hates that. That is why they wish to kill him. Where I live in Ontario, Canada, we have a liberal lesbian premier who voiced her hatred for Donald Trump before he was elected. When he won the presidency she was visibly shaken. She went to a local mosque to talk about equality and was told to sit upstairs in the back because she was a woman. Only a mentally deranged person would accept such behavior. The left does not believe in free speech unless it echoes their views. Do not forget this Father. They would like nothing more than to exterminate all Christianity from the face of the Earth.

    FATHER JOE:

    I would caution against any form of race-baiting. It is also wrong to utterly characterize Western culture as a whites-only club. Our intellectual and faith inheritance is weighted heavily in the Middle East as well as in the Greek-Roman world. Today the strongest witness from the Church is coming from the Third World, particularly the continent of Africa. The tension is between classical Western culture and faith against the challenges of atheistic secular modernity and Islamic extremism.

    President Trump is a populist who appealed to hurting people who felt as if their voices and needs were being neglected. He won the Electoral College but lost the popular vote. While the Democrats did better with minorities, both parties amassed large numbers of whites. Many of the immigrants that felt spurned by the Republicans were practicing Catholics.

    I know little about Canadian politics, but the government’s war with the Church is old news. It should be no wonder that the elected officials appreciate even less about Islam. Your premier entered a mosque and the Muslims had every right to run their house as their beliefs and rules of etiquette demanded. What many critics fail to appreciate is that a properly oriented feminism finds it roots in Christian teachings about equality in grace and the dignity of persons. If Islam should eclipse Christianity then I suspect then we shall see feminism (in both its Christian and non-Christian forms) retracing its steps, if not facing its extinction. The values of faith cannot be contained in churches, mosques and temples; they spill out (as they should) into the everyday lives of the general population.

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