Podcast #59: Evangelicals, Televangelists, and Internet Cheats

92 August 30, 2015 by

59_finalWe begin this episode of Drunk Ex-Pastors by relaying a harrowing tale involving a Mexican native of Honduras who was buried alive, after which we take a call from a minister who admires Christian’s Christianity (yep, you read that right). We then venture into the crazy world of glossolalia, end times prophecy, and TV preachers, trying to figure out if anyone actually believes in this stuff (Jason admits that he misses how exciting it used to be to constantly be looking for the antichrist and fighting the mark of the beast that he’s seriously considering rejoining the team). We turn our attention to the infamous Ashley Madison leak and to Josh Duggar in particular, seeking to determine whether he deserves his public lashings more than others do (yes). Christian is biebered by myopia in the voting booth, while Jason’s bieber involves having to exert himself, ever.

Also, we totally need a DXP drinking game.

Links from this Episode:

92 Comments (click here to leave a comment)

  1. • We sanitize gun violence in this country to the point where unless it touches you directly, it’s just not real. So show the video. Fuck the tender sensibilities of people. Splay the photos of the victims of gun violence in the papers in color. Let America see the human wreckage we’ve caused. Hearing about a classroom full of dead kindergartners did jack shit to wake America up to gun violence, maybe seeing images of the actual classroom with innocent victims would do something to shock us out of our fucking apathy.

    • In the old days, there were coffins that came with bells, where the bell would be above ground with a string that ran down into the coffin, so if you were mistakenly pronounced dead and you woke up, you could ring the bell and alert people to that fact.

    • Fun fact, to combat body theft, they also sold kits you could attach to booby trap your coffin with, so folks tampering with your grave would end up shot dead.

    • Look, liberals, if we feed the poor, take care of the sick, help the disabled, worked for the common good, tried to limit access and treated minorities with respect and dignity, just imagine the kind of horrible socialist hellhole that would be.

    • Yes, I believed in speaking in tongues, demons, demon possession, spiritual warfare, the rapture, antichrist, end times, and all of that stuff. I desperately wanted to speak in tongues and ended up believing I could until I realized I was simply babbling to myself.

    • Well, if the Rapture happened, and I wasn’t included, I would believe in the Dispensational theology. Now, that wouldn’t necessarily make me change to an evangelical Christian, because if the Dispensationalists are right, God is going to be torturing billions of people forever because they didn’t say the magic prayer sincerely enough and go and vote Republican and He is going to torture me with demon scorpion locusts because I looked at porn and liked to drink. So I’d have to think a while to see if I really wanted to be with that sort of vengeful deity forever or not.

    • I wouldn’t mind the End Times nonsense if it weren’t bleeding into our foreign policy as a nation, where we can’t act in good faith as a neutral party between Israel and the Palestinians because God gave all of the land to Israel! Or we can’t criticize Israeli conduct even if it involves killing innocent women and children because if we do then God is going to curse us. It’s fucking ridiculous.

    • I get muscle spasms randomly when my anxiety is particularly bad: facial spasms, arms, legs, chest, stomach. It’s not a lot of fun.

    • If you see the word “Family” in the name of an organization, it’s a nicer way of saying “Anti-gay, anti-abortion, and pro-Republican.”

    • You might appreciate this. I still listen to KWVE sometimes when I’m in the mood to be annoyed. And heard Raul Ries last week preaching about the family and he quoted the passage from Deuteronomy that says parents should stone their disrespectful kids, and he quoted it as if it were a good thing.

    • The great thing about the AM scandal is the revelation that it was all just a giant scam where there were only an estimated 12,000 active women on the site, but there were 5.5 million female profiles that were created by staffers or contractors. These poor bastards could have gotten into a lot less trouble if they kept their money and just watched porn.

    • Josh will be back. He’s just following the script: Sin like a heathen while you preach godliness, get caught, confession with a statement that you’re stepping down to spend more time with your family and ‘heal’ and make sure you ask for people’s prayers and to respect your privacy, spend time getting ‘counseling’ (usually from a pastor and not a mental health specialist), find Jesus (again), write a book detailing how you’ve learned your lesson and are really, truly a Jebus follower for real now. Hallelujah! Go on Christian radio to tell your story of falling and redemption. Go on the Christian lecture circuit to sell your book. Get back into public ‘ministry’.

    • Doxxed means that your personal information has been leaked and published on the internet. As if some hacker got into the Disqus server and posted that Comrade Dread is really this guy who lives at this address, works here, and here’s his phone number.

  2. I’m biebered by Christian’s Facebook settings. I’m able to follow him. However, when I do see an occasional post, I’m unable to comment on it – unlike Jason’s settings.

  5. Hey! I’m always nice (except occasionally when discussing abortion…). I won’t be any more annoying than on the DXP FB page.

  6. Yeah, back in the day, in addition to grave robbers, you also had medical students who couldn’t obtain a cadaver any other way who would either steal fresh bodies to dissect or entrepreneurs who would take it upon themselves to dig up fresh bodies and sell them to medical schools that didn’t ask too many questions about where they came from.

  7. Speaking of Raul Ries, we got an email from someone who used to work with him who allegedly has all of this information about how his “Somebody loves you” ministry was (possibly unwittingly) being used to launder money for drug cartels in South America and how they’ve tried to hide that information. Ha ha.

  8. It would be really confusing if someone started speaking tongues in German – “go get an exorcist”!

  9. 1. While listening to the part on charlatans, I couldn’t help but think about prosperity gospel types (or those most commonly associated with mega churches) like joel osteen or rick warren. Do you think that they are more businessmen than preachers? I mean, how many millions of dollars does rick warren have now?

    2. The city you’re thinking about is Montreal where 2/5 of the city inhabitants are on ashley madison.

    3. While I’m not sure if Will Smith and Jada Pinkett-Smith have an open marriage or not, I know that they’re not divorced: http://time.com/3982792/will-smith-jada-pinkett-smith-divorce-rumor/

    4. Doxing (from dox, abbreviation of documents), or doxxing, is the Internet-based practice of researching and broadcasting personally identifiable information about an individual.

    Damn comraderead and his fast listening.

    5. I think that anti-choicers have kind of won the rhetoric war when even you guys, who are sanders fans, say that he is pro-abortion. Just because you are pro-choice, it doesn’t mean you are pro-abortion, if it were, people would say that, by saying that it is not anyone but the woman who is carrying’s choice, it doesn’t mean you want them to have abortions (which is what pro-abortion truly means). It is a very clear distinction that doesn’t get made often enough by pro-choicers.

  10. I’m glad their not getting a divorce. We need more successful open relationshippers in the world. 🙂

    I agree completely on #5, although it’s partly semantics. Of course what one usually means when they say “pro-abortion” or “anti-abortion” is whether or not they wish it to be legal or not. Of course, it works both ways too. “Pro-life” is also a misnomer, but we all know what it means.

  12. The first time I heard the term “doxxed” it was in relation to the Christian Bakery that refused to make a cake for a gay wedding in Oregon. I don’t think many Christians know that the Bakery’s owners doxxed the coupled online, which lead to “death threats, harassment, and the possibility of losing their [foster] children”. That is why the damages awarded against them were so high ($135k).

    I tend to side with religious people in these sorts of religious freedom cases, but what they did was unnecessary shitty.

    http://www.patheos.com/blogs/lovejoyfeminism/2015/07/sweet-cakes-by-melissa-didnt-just-deny-a-lesbian-couple-service-they-also-doxxed-them-and-their-kids.html

  13. Point taken, however, I don’t believe/know whether bernie sanders also holds those views and the larger point is that pro-choice ≠ pro-abortion 🙂

  16. On whether they actually have an open marriage: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/04/jada-pinkett-smith-open-marriage_n_7510392.html

    But ultimately, it’s nobody else’s business what couples agree to. What I am not generally on board with is lying to your spouse. If both parties on are board, who am I, as someone outside that relationship to judge.

    While you’re right that it’s a misnomer, words do matter and that’s why I wrote above why I think the right has popularised the idea that pro-choice = pro-abortion = baby killers thereby poisoning the well for the uneducated mass in the middle.

    Or to use another issue, like global warming. But because it’s still cold in the winter time (and in the past few years, even extreme events in winter), the right has scoffed at the idea that humans are ruining the world. You know?

  17. I agree about it being nobody’s business, and I think if they have an open relationship, that’s awesome. They’re not for everyone, but if you can make it work, I think it’s pretty awesome.

  18. Yeah, that’s another example I was trying to think of. That’s why it’s better to call it “climate change.” (So that people with low IQs understand what is meant!) 🙂

  19. Really? You haven’t heard about anti-choice people broadcasting abortion doctor’s personal information for decades?

  20. Right — words do matter.

    Hell, here’s a third one: the theory of evolution! I know we talked about this on the comment thread of another podcast, for scientists, theory means something very different to lay people.

  22. Yeah, as soon as I hit post I thought my comment came across as being a little dickish. Certainly no offense meant! 😀

  24. I grew up Pentecostal and heard tongues many times. I never heard a real language get spoken while speaking in tongues except on one occasion.

    It was at a christian week long conference. I heard the American speaker speaking in French and our american youth pastor speaking in Spanish while praying for a fellow student.

    Of course the speaker had told us earlier in the conference that his “heavenly language” was in French and there are many people in this country who took Spanish in high school.

    The skeptics first response I would think is that they both new these fairly common languages already. It was the one and only time I heard people speak in tongues using a real language (having heard it probably a 100 times before).

    Perhaps in the excitement of worship or prayer they knowingly or unknowingly started speaking in a foreign language that they knew OR could it be my mind was in a trance like state from the hours long emotional worship and prayer service and I was just hearing something that did not actually happen. I actually lean towards the latter explanation.

    Derrin brown, the British hypnotist, has an episode of his show you can find online where he is able to convince a life long atheist that she has experienced a real religious experience. it seems to me that the evidence shows that Pentocistal preachers are actually using hypnotist tools to play tricks on congregants minds. In most cases I don’t think they realize that is what they are doing. They are just using the same tools they have seen used many times by pastors that have come before. They think it is just effective traditional Pentecostal preaching when in fact they are using hypnotist techniques to get the crowd to believe something super natural is actually taking place (speaking in tongues, feelings of euphoria, congregants falling down when the speaker simply waves his hand, etc.)

  26. Finally able to finish the podcast today and the abortion issue struck me. It was actually our favorite Jeremiah who said this to me, in regards to his supporting Bernie (sorry if I’ve outed you as a secret liberal Nelson). He was speaking about his being against abortion but stated that he could support Bernie because abortion is a symptom no the problem.

    It struck me as so insightful to the issue overall, rather than it being a black and white issue – it is a systemic issue. When we focus on education and poverty abortion rates will decrease and everyone should be able to get on board with that. Even if we banned abortion it will still happen if we do not take care of the why.

  27. Hey Ernie, I’d be curious to hear more about Pentecostal pastors using hypnotics. How would that work on a whole crowd?

  29. So if we focused on education and poverty maybe we could be like western Europe and only have like two out of ten kids killed rather than like three or four. Wooo hooo!!!!

    Or…. we could take a stand for the children and refuse to ever support a candidate who supports mothers killing their kids. The more people that take that stand the more motivated politicians will be to stop it.

  32. One of the downsides to being lost in the postmodern matrix is what we see on display with you two on this topic. Everybody has their own truth and so if a bunch of people don’t think killing babies is wrong… well, it must not be so black and white. I’m the kind of person who thinks killing babies is prettttttty darn black and white. I’m sure that offends your liberal sensibilities, but that’s OK. Pretty sure we are gonna see a republican overhaul in 2016 so I’ll have I get used to hearing more whining from the left. 😉

  35. I still don’t understand the story about the poor girl being buried alive…. wasn’t that where the traditional concept of a wake came into play? Maybe that idea needs revisiting.

  36. Here’s the thing, Kenneth: I think abortion is killing a baby, and therefore I think abortion is wrong. But that doesn’t mean (1) that I can’t understand how people would see it differently, especially given some of the biblical data, and (2) that I would never vote for a candidate who didn’t agree with me on this.

    Like I said, nuance.

  37. So then you would vote for a “pro killing millions of babies” candidate because….. You like their economic theories better? Or because you favor their intervention policies? My thing is this:

    War and economics are convoluted, complex, and confusing from a moral perspective. Are you SURE that said pro death politician will make better decisions on war? Are you CERTAIN that said person will create a higher standard of living for the poor? I’ve taken several courses in economics and I can honestly say I don’t have the slightest idea which economic plan is the most reliable. Yet, I do know that killing children is horrible. Is your opinion that economics and war decisions are clear and obvious from a moral perspective? Keeping in mind that certain ideas are great on paper but fail in reality (see communism). If not, why would those over rule your conscience on the issue of a child’s right to live?

  39. No, just a fundamental disagreement with you on what a baby is, which is the point. Not everyone in this country agrees with you that a single cell organism is the moral and literal equivalent of a human baby.

  40. Keeping in mind that certain ideas are great on paper but fail in reality (see communism).

    See also capitalism, which succeeds in generating wealth for a few, but fails to enrich humanity in any other way.

  45. It is a wonderful idea. If I had evidence that a pro murder of infants candidate could pull that off I would be ecstatic…. but then I look at New York and California….

  47. Greg, from what I can tell of his voting history, Bernie isn’t just any garden-variety “pro-choice” candidate. He has repeatedly voted against banning even partial-birth abortion. If he doesn’t see the need to protect the lives of fetuses in *those* cases, isn’t it fair to describe him as being “pro-abortion”? This link clearly shows where Bernie stands: http://www.ontheissues.org/Bernie_Sanders.htm

  48. Bad examples of capitalism since all three of those examples were either created by, subsidized, contracted, or had government involvement at various stages of their development.

  49. It’s obviously not a wonderful idea to you since you were the one who sarcastically dismissed a reduction from four out of ten fetuses to two out of ten fetuses.

  50. Your church would disagree with you since they are convinced that some contraception prevents embryo implantation hence aborting a single or multicellular organism.

  51. Im dismissing the notion that we should ignore the fact that a man is pro killing babies because his other policies MIGHT possibly reduce the numbers of babies murdered. I wouldnt vote for Hitler no matter how fantastic his other policies happened to be. There are certain issues that serve as dis-qualifiers

  52. …….. You do realize that capitalism is not defined as “the government having no role what so ever in the business world”? The example is spot on because you have access to wealth that most people on the planet would kill for. You obtained this wealth through a capitalist economy. You are welcome.

  53. You made a statement about abortions and single celled organisms. Single celled organisms don’t get aborted. Babies with beating hearts do.

  54. You do realize that capitalism is not defined as “the government having no role what so ever in the business world”?

    You’ve obviously never talked to a free market libertarian.

    Capitalism by its very nature leads to winners and losers. In our country, the losers far outnumber the winners. And unrestrained capitalism like the sort the GOP advocates leads to the exploitation of people (including children), the despoiling and pollution of the environment, and the destruction of culture and moral fiber as it exalts the dollar above every other virtue of mankind.

    It is a very efficient system at moving wealth around, but it is not a healthy economic system. There needs to be some balance between the economy and the common good. Republicans and conservatives in particular have lost sight of this. Which is why I cannot support them. No matter how personally I might feel about abortion, there are more important issues to me.

  56. And I disagree. I would rather deal with the suffering of people, preserve a habitable planet (which will affect ALL life), ensure our cultural legacy, and make certain my children are not going to end up as indentured servants or disposable resources to corporations or grist to be thrown into the mill of a pointless foreign war so they have a chance at family and happiness and then focus on addressing the causes of abortion rather than vote pro-life Republican and try to turn women into criminals while the world burns around us or is sold off to the highest bidder.

    Your mileage may vary.

  57. The bit at the beginning of the podcast, about progressive policies seemingly being more inherently “Christian” than conservative policies, is frustrating, because it doesn’t take into account the fact(s) that there actually can be legitimately differing approaches to the same problems– and that, *just within Christianity as a whole*, differing but equally sincere people can subscribe, respectively, to differing approaches, with the true intent to actually help people and make things better! Many conservatives do care deeply about matters such as helping the poor and disenfranchised– we just think that, at least generally speaking, conservative policies actually end up helping more than progressive ones. Good intentions are wonderful, but if they don’t achieve the desired results, they don’t make for good policy.

    Jason and Christian, I’m not sure what the social/cultural climate is like where you live in Washington State. Maybe progressive policies work well there. I don’t know. I live approximately 30 minutes outside of Washington, D.C. I’d be interested to see if some time here might change your views at all. At the local level, the District has been run by people who at least *consider* themselves to be “progressive” for almost 50 years now– and poor people are still poor, much of family culture is deeply dysfunctional (going back several generations), gun violence is getting worse and worse (illegal guns, mostly, it seems from the local news), many the public schools are nightmares… I could go on. 50 years of “progressive” leaders have not changed these problems for the better. However, District voters just continue to elect leaders in the same vein. To me, it seems to be the very definition of insanity. The local leaders talk and talk about making the lives of people better, and the people continue to be hurt by the policies of these leaders. It makes me angry, precisely because I *do* care about helping the poor and disenfranchised, and about other serious issues which are *not* the exclusive province of the right *or* the left (or the radical right *or* the radical left).

  58. Slippery slope much?

    I also want to address the causes of abortion. You know what is the single biggest cause of abortion – our culture warped by the sexual revolution, followed by a close second: legality.

    The sexual revolution’s goals were to separate sex and childbearing from each other, and both from marriage; and promote that men and women are completely interchangeable. The sexual revolution wanted to give everyone “sexual freedom”. It teaches that sex is an essentially sterile, private, recreational activity, with no moral or social significance (babies are just an after-thought). It also teaches that adults are entitled to unlimited sexual activity, without a live baby resulting. It turns sex into a consumer good.

    What our culture tells women is that they can have it all. All they have to do is chemically castrate themselves during their most fertile period of life, and then struggle with infertility late in life (turning to expensive treatments such as IVF). Why can’t we have a society that treats women as women, and not force women to be men to succeed? Further, it tells people that they must be prepared for divorce, before even thinking about getting married.

    All of these factors contribute to abortion. Your answer? More condoms. Just like a Right winger, the answer is always more guns.

  59. The causes of abortion can be addressed in many ways, other than by electing leaders who will not even vote for a law which would ban partial-birth abortion, except to save the life of the mother. As for Republicans “trying to turn women into criminals,” that is definitely not my desire, and I don’t think that it’s the desire of the overwhelming majority of Republicans, I would like to see abortionists prosecuted but not women who seek abortions. On the “corporations” part of your comment, we agree. We also agree about preserving a habitable planet. (I don’t think that population-control measures are a good way to go about that though.) We would also probably agree, to a large extent, on foreign wars.

  60. Right, a Catholic holding to the social teachings of the church can be quasi-libertarian or quasi-socialist when addressing economic issues. The difference is purely pragmatic. When looking at Europe it seems that quasi-socialist answer might work, but then I look domestically at places like Detroit, DC, and Chicago. I’m open to answers from either side, but I want all the social teachings in sight: sanctity and dignity of human life, family, social justice, subsidiarity, preferential option to the poor and vulnerable, dignity of work, solidarity, and care for Creation (environment).

    I am genuinely frustrated that there is not a party that lines up well to all these principals.

    At the moment, as for economic systems, I’m looking at Distributionism.

  61. Libertarianism and its twin core values of ‘freedom’ and individualism aren’t really that compatible with biblical teaching.

    Now one can be a libertarian and act in a Christian manner, but as a governing principle of society, you aren’t going to end up with very many of those. Original sin and all, you know…

  62. I think it’s really impossible to look at the ghettos of our cities without addressing how they were formed, often deliberately, by government at every level to enforce segregation even when segregation was no longer in fashion and the effects that has had on the community, as well as a dearth of hope for any sort of life outside of that.

    Now would they be in the same situation if they had access to jobs that paid a living wage, access to free higher education, well-funded public schools, access to safe public day care and preschool so they can work and know their kids are being cared for, access to free and decent health care, drug laws the defunded street gangs, Federal gun laws that extended beyond the city limits, and community policing that saw them as people to be served and protected rather than potential threats because of the color of their skin?

    I don’t know. But it’s worth a shot. Certainly more than the GOP platform of cutting services and the safety net in exchange for a tax cut that doesn’t affect them at all.

  63. Ok, finally had a chance to listen to the whole podcast. I’m honored to have been part of your Bieber, Christian, lol! 🙂

    Seriously, guys, thank you for the thoughtful podcast response to my combox comments. To attempt to clarify where I stand, politically, it is *not* the case that I agree with Bernie Sanders on everything except abortion, and/or that I’m just continuing to vote Republican simply because I oppose abortion, while I disagree with Republicans on almost everything else.

    The reality is, the longer that I am Catholic, and the more that I study Catholic social teaching, the harder it is for me to comfortably align myself (even to the point of being comfortable with voting for many candidates) with the political Right *or* Left in America. I strongly agree with each political “side”, respectively, on different issues, and I strongly disagree with each side on other issues.

    I do agree with with Bernie Sanders on paid maternity and paternity leave. I agree with him on the need to at least regulate certain aspects of corporations, especially when it comes to crony capitalism. I agree that the U.S. government should not be in any kind of mode of being eager to go to war. I disagree, though, with many other aspects of his thinking, both socially and economically. I am not a socialist. I once was one, actually, but that was a long time ago. (In fact, I was *much more* economically radical than Bernie Sanders! I was a communist revolutionary who literally wanted the U.S. government to be overthrown!) I do not agree with him on decriminlization of drugs. I fiercely oppose his stance on abortion. As far as social programs, in my view, some help more than they hurt, and vice versa.

    At this point, I’m basically a social conservative who is, fiscally speaking, conservative in some ways and moderate-to-liberal in others. In foreign policy, I’m conservative in certain ways, and moderate-to-liberal in others. There really is no one, in the current field of Presidential candidates, who represents my views to the point that I would actually be *happy* to vote for that person. If one could somehow combine different (very different!!) aspects of Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Carly Fiorina, Rand Paul, Ben Carson, and Bernie Sanders into one candidate, then I could easily vote for that person, but that will likely never happen in America. This country is a no-man’s-land for Catholics who want to see *all* of Catholic social teaching represented politically.

  64. I’m curious how you square the comments above with a pope who is quite liberal in many of his positions. As a devout catholic, you come from the position that the pope is the literal representative of god on earth right?

  65. The problem, such as it is, when we try to view politics through religion is that politics, at least in the US, has never really been about religion, the overriding principle (for the most part, until basically the past 30 to 40 years) has been economics. Which is why this have ended up the way you describe.

    Also, the fact is, the republican platform is built upon quicksand and the mirage that if we all worked a little bit harder we could pull yourself up by the soostrap and become rich. The sad reality is that except in the most extreme examples, it just doesn’t happen. We will end up in the same economic class as our parents. But people live this fantasy and rather than voting for policies that benefits them today they vote for policies that they think will affect them when they become rich.

  67. Not too surprising considering some of the more recent brand of republican populism is really just nationalism

  70. the closest we’ve ever come to the sort of capitalism that conservatives pine for happened in the turn of the last century. it led to this little thing called the great depression.

  71. Surely you’re not against education. Even granting your supposition that more condoms = more guns, that isn’t the only thing that is taught in sex education classes.

  72. Comrade, there does seem to be a good bit of hopelessness in inner-city, largely black, D.C., and at certain points in history, government policies of segregation definitely played a part in forming that hopelessness. However, even some black leaders on the Left have acknowledged that poor black families, as a whole, were, paradoxically, in a place of more *personal* strength and solidity (not always economically but personally) in the days of open racism and discrimination than in the more recent decades *since* those times!

    I support many of the policies that you mention in your above comment. As far as policing, though, in inner-city D.C., both the police *and* many of the residents are just trying to not get killed by knives and stray bullets, and to get some semblance of sanity in their communities. On drug decriminalization, the hard reality is that there are social pathologies that have been part of D.C. for decades that would become even worse with decriminalization. When gun laws were made more stringent in D.C., killings by gun actually rose. Again, “progressive” leaders have been in control of D.C., at the local level, for almost 50 years, and the result has been greater social decline and greater violence.

  73. I try to keep up with Pope Francis’s public statements and speeches. I agree with 98% of what I have heard and read from him. The Catholic Church teaches that the Pope is the head Bishop of all of the Bishops and priests in the historic apostolic line that is descended from Christ and His original apostles. I don’t hold the view that he is the literal representative of God on Earth. I do hold that under certain circumstances, God protects the Pope from teaching error on certain matters. This does not extend to his every public and private conviction.

  74. I agree with you, generally speaking, on libertarianism. I can understand how some hardcore right-wing evangelicals can be attracted to libertarianism, given that, in my experience, much of their understanding of Christ’s teachings has become wedded to defending the socio-economic American empire, even to the point of defending torture. However, I have never understood how seriously practicing Catholics can be attracted to libertarianism to the point of openly embracing it. Too much of Catholic social teaching cuts against it.

  75. I do hold that under certain circumstances, God protects the Pope from teaching error on certain matters. This does not extend to his every public and private conviction.

    So how do you determine which are the ones where the pope is right or wrong on? What I’m sort of trying to get at is: don’t you get to the point where you wonder why have a pope at all?

  76. Trump and Bush won’t do well in an election… but any of the others will win easily. Yes, even Ted Cruz. Nobody wants a pussy liberal in office when isis is cutting off heads and Iran is closer than ever to becoming a nuclear country.

  78. In honestly, Greg, I don’t get to that point, because I know what the Catholic Church actually teaches about the Pope! 🙂 He is the head Bishop and the human leader of my Church. I am supposed to listen to him and follow his basic teachings on matters of faith and morals. His infallibility as Pope, though, does not extend to every exact public policy position to which he may hold. When he speaks on greater justice for immigrants, I should, and do, listen. As to exactly how that justice is brought about, that is a question on which Catholics can, and do, legitimately disagree. The Pope is a public religious teacher, helping to give Catholics general moral principles to follow from the history of Catholic teaching in Scripture and Tradition. The Pope is not a politician. As for how I determine where the Pope is right and wrong, in the areas where the Church holds that his teaching is authoritative and must be followed by Catholics, I follow it. I agree with the general principles of his teaching. It is only very rare cases that I have disagreed with him when he appeared to advocate a particular public policy over which Catholics can legitimately disagree– according to the teaching of the Church itself.

  79. Seattle sounds a good bit like the very liberal area of Maryland where I live, i.e. much more left-leaning than most of the rest of the U.S.! 🙂

  80. Yeah, definitely no snark meant, it was a genuine lack of knowledge on my part as to how catholics view/should view the pope.

  81. Apologies for the long block quote below (the whole thing is actually quite interesting and worth a read) but the below points to why we will probably see a democratic president with a republican legislature for the foreseeable future:

    Demographic trends are working against the GOP. If they continue, and the GOP continues to alienate growing demographics like minorities and single women, it will become increasingly difficult for the party to assemble a national majority and win the presidency.

    However, for various reasons, aggrieved older white men still punch above their weight, politically speaking. Democratic constituencies cluster in urban areas, where many of their votes end up wasted. GOP demographics are more spread out, covering a larger geographical area, thus giving them a reliably large bloc of low-population states in the Senate and a built-in advantage in the House of Representatives. (That advantage was magnified by the gerrymandering of 2010, giving Republicans what is likely an unshakable lock on the House through 2022.)

    On top of that, Democratic constituencies don’t reliably vote in midterm elections, which gives the GOP a huge advantage in those congressional elections (and in state elections).

    So that’s where American politics stands today: on one side, a radicalized, highly ideological demographic threatened with losing its place of privilege in society, politically activated and locked into the House; on the other side, a demographically and ideologically heterogeneous coalition of interest groups big enough to reliably win the presidency and occasionally the Senate. For now, it’s gridlock.

    — http://www.vox.com/2015/8/27/9214015/tech-nerds-politics

  82. Seattle is like any other urban area (NY; LA; Atlantic, _not_ Georgia), high concentration of democratic leaning voters.

  83. No problem, Greg. In the Church, the Pope is called the “Vicar of Christ,” which does mean that (we believe) He is Christ’s representative on earth *in a sense*– but again, this is in the sense of the Pope being the Church’s authoritative world leader, through the apostolic line of leaders begun by Christ with His original apostles. The Pope *can* teach infallibly on matters of faith and morals, but not everything that He says or does is held, by the Church itself, to be infallible.

  84. I actually agree. I would never be for full blown libertarianism. Like you said, it assumes a wrong anthropology.

  86. When I mention Catholic libertarianism, I have something like the Acton Institute in mind. Their mission is “to promote a free and virtuous society characterized by individual liberty and sustained by religious principles”

  87. Hey you little punk ass I just heard you call me out on your beiber! Haha OH MAN how I hope we get a republican president now. Not for any real economic or social concerns, but just to spite the damn drunk ex pastors!

  88. I understand that these are what democrats want people to think but I don’t believe it’s accurate. The reason why republicans lost the white house is because of the Obama tidal wave. The fact is that the popular vote is razor thin every election. Battle ground states are huge nad most years they could swing either way.

    Nobody is gonna vote for socialist Sanders nor Joe Biden. The only hope for democrats is Donald Trump who will certainly lose due to his stance on immigration. Republicans can’t lose the Hispanic vote, and it’s a sure loss with trump. Otherwise, Carson, Kosich, The chick, and even Cruz have an excellent path to the white house….. The one paved by the utter failure of dems the last 8 years

Related Posts