They guy is DEFINITELY NO PROPHET. In fact, the only thing he is... is holy (in the head). He can't be the voice "of" God if he sided with a man like BUSH. Even if he sided with Bush before Bush became the voice "for" God.
Sometimes I wonder if the voice they hear in their heads.... is each other.
: SNIP
: Holy warriors
: Cardinal Ratzinger handed Bush the presidency by tipping the Catholic
: vote.
: Can American democracy survive their shared medieval vision?
: By Sidney Blumenthal
: April 21, 2005 | President Bush treated his final visit with Pope John
: Paul II in Vatican City on June 4, 2004, as a campaign stop. After
: enduring
: a public rebuke from the pope about the Iraq war, Bush lobbied Vatican
: officials to help him win the election. "Not all the American
: bishops are
: with me," he complained, according to the National Catholic
: Reporter. He
: pleaded with the Vatican to pressure the bishops to step up their
: activism
: against abortion and gay marriage in the states during the campaign
: season.
: About a week later, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger sent a letter to the U.S.
: bishops, pronouncing that those Catholics who were pro-choice on
: abortion
: were committing a "grave sin" and must be denied Communion. He
: pointedly
: mentioned "the case of a Catholic politician consistently
: campaigning and
: voting for permissive abortion and euthanasia laws" -- an obvious
: reference
: to John Kerry, the Democratic candidate and a Roman Catholic. If such a
: Catholic politician sought Communion, Ratzinger wrote, priests must be
: ordered to "refuse to distribute it." Any Catholic who voted
: for this
: "Catholic politician," he continued, "would be guilty of
: formal cooperation
: in evil and so unworthy to present himself for Holy Communion."
: During the
: closing weeks of the campaign, a pastoral letter was read from pulpits
: in
: Catholic churches repeating the ominous suggestion of excommunication.
: Voting for the Democrat was nothing less than consorting with the forces
: of
: Satan, collaboration with "evil."
: In 2004 Bush increased his margin of Catholic support by 6 points from
: the
: 2000 election, rising from 46 to 52 percent. Without this shift, Kerry
: would
: have had a popular majority of a million votes. Three states -- Ohio,
: Iowa
: and New Mexico -- moved into Bush's column on the votes of the Catholic
: "faithful." Even with his atmospherics of terrorism and Sept.
: 11, Bush
: required the benediction of the Holy See as his saving grace. The key to
: his
: kingdom was turned by Cardinal Ratzinger.
: With the College of Cardinals' election of Ratzinger to the papacy, his
: political alliances with conservative politicians can be expected to
: deepen
: and broaden. Under Benedict XVI, the church will assume a consistent
: reactionary activism it has not had for two centuries. And the new
: pope's
: crusade against modernity has already joined forces with the right-wing
: culture war in the United States, prefigured by his interference in the
: 2004
: election.
: Europe is far less susceptible than the United States to the religious
: wars
: that Ratzinger will incite. Attendance at church is negligible; church
: teachings are widely ignored; and the younger generation is least
: observant
: of all. But in the United States, the Bush administration and the right
: wing
: of the Republican Party are trying to batter down the wall of separation
: between church and state. Through court appointments, they wish to
: enshrine
: doctrinal views on the family, women, gays, medicine, scientific
: research
: and privacy. The Republican attempt to abolish the two-centuries-old
: filibuster -- the so-called nuclear option -- is only one coming wrangle
: in
: the larger Kulturkampf.
: Joseph Ratzinger was born and bred in the cradle of the Kulturkampf, or
: culture war. Roman Catholic Bavaria was a stronghold against northern
: Protestantism during the Reformation. In the 19th century the church was
: a
: powerful force opposing the unification of Italy and Germany into
: nation-states, fearing that they would diminish the church's influence
: in
: the shambles of duchies and provinces that had followed the breakup of
: the
: Holy Roman Empire. The doctrine of papal infallibility in 1870 was
: promulgated by the church to tighten its grip on Catholic populations
: against the emerging centralized nations and to sanctify the pope's will
: against mere secular rulers.
: In response, Otto von Bismarck, the German chancellor, launched what he
: called a Kulturkampf to break the church's hold. He removed the church
: from
: the control of schools, expelled the Jesuits, and instituted civil
: ceremonies for marriage. Bismarck lent support to Catholic dissidents
: opposed to papal infallibility who were led by German theologian Johann
: Ignaz von Dollinger. Dollinger and his personal secretary were
: subsequently
: excommunicated. His secretary was Georg Ratzinger, great-uncle of the
: new
: pope, who became one of the most notable Bavarian intellectuals and
: politicians of the period. This Ratzinger was a champion against papal
: absolutism and church centralization, and on behalf of the poor and
: working
: class -- and was also an anti-Semite.
: Joseph Ratzinger's Kulturkampf is claimed by him to be a reaction to the
: student revolts of 1968. Should Joschka Fischer, a former student
: radical
: and now the German foreign minister, have to answer entirely for
: Ratzinger's
: Weltanschauung? Pope Benedict's Kulturkampf bears the burden of the
: church's
: history and that of his considerable family. He represents the latest
: incarnation of the long-standing reaction against Bismarck's reforms --
: beginning with the assertion of the invented tradition of papal
: infallibility -- and, ironically, against the positions on the church
: held
: by his famous uncle. But the roots of his reaction are even more
: profound.
: The new pope's burning passion is to resurrect medieval authority. He
: equates the Western liberal tradition, that is, the Enlightenment, with
: Nazism, and denigrates it as "moral relativism." He suppresses
: all dissent,
: discussion and debate within the church and concentrates power within
: the
: Vatican bureaucracy. His abhorrence of change runs past 1968 (an
: abhorrence
: he shares with George W. Bush) to the revolutions of 1848, the
: "springtime
: of nations," and 1789, the French Revolution. But, even more
: momentously,
: the alignment of the pope's Kulturkampf with the U.S. president's
: culture
: war has also set up a conflict with the American Revolution.
: For the first time, an American president is politically allied with the
: Vatican in its doctrinal mission (except, of course, on capital
: punishment).
: In the messages and papers of the presidents from George Washington
: until
: well into those of the 20th century, there was not a single mention of
: the
: pope, except in one minor footnote. Bush's lobbying trip last year to
: the
: Vatican reflects an utterly novel turn, and Ratzinger's direct political
: intervention in American electoral politics ratified it.
: The right wing of the Catholic Church is as mobilized as any other part
: of
: the religious right. It is seizing control of Catholic universities,
: exerting influence at other universities, stigmatizing Catholic
: politicians
: who fail to adhere to its conservative credo, pressing legislation at
: the
: federal and state levels, seeking government funding and sponsorship of
: the
: church, and vetting political appointments inside the White House and
: the
: administration -- imposing in effect a religious test of office. The
: Bush
: White House encourages these developments under the cover of moral
: uplift as
: it forges a political machine uniting church and state -- as was done in
: premodern Europe.
: The American Revolution, the Virginia Statute on Religious Liberty, the
: U.S.
: Constitution and the Bill of Rights were fought for explicitly to uproot
: the
: traces in American soil of ecclesiastical power in government, which the
: Founders to a man regarded with horror, revulsion and foreboding.
: The Founders were the ultimate representatives of the Enlightenment.
: They
: were not anti-religious, though few if any of them were orthodox or
: pious.
: Washington never took Communion and refused to enter the church, while
: his
: wife did so. Benjamin Franklin believed that all organized religion was
: suspect. James Madison thought that established religion did as much
: harm to
: religion as it did to free government, twisting the word of God to fit
: political expediency, thereby throwing religion into the political
: cauldron.
: And Thomas Jefferson, allied with his great collaborator Madison,
: conducted
: decades of sustained and intense political warfare against the existing
: and
: would-be clerisy. His words, engraved on the Jefferson Memorial, are a
: direct reference to established religion: "I have sworn upon the
: altar of
: God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of
: man."
: But now Republican House Majority Leader Tom DeLay threatens the federal
: judiciary, saying, "The reason the judiciary has been able to
: impose a
: separation of church and state that's nowhere in the Constitution is
: that
: Congress didn't stop them." And Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist
: will
: participate through a telecast in a rally on April 24 in which he will
: say
: that Democrats who refuse to rubber-stamp Bush's judicial nominees and
: uphold the filibuster are "against people of faith."
: But what would Madison say?
: This is what Madison wrote in 1785: "What influence in fact have
: ecclesiastical establishments had on Civil Society? In some instances
: they
: have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of the Civil
: authority; in many instances they have been seen upholding the thrones
: of
: political tyranny; in no instance have they been seen the guardians of
: the
: liberties of the people. Rulers who wished to subvert the public liberty
: may
: have found an established Clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just
: Government
: instituted to secure & perpetuate it needs them not."
: What would John Adams say? This is what he wrote Jefferson in 1815:
: "The
: question before the human race is, whether the God of nature shall
: govern
: the world by his own laws, or whether priests and kings shall rule it by
: fictitious miracles?"
: Benjamin Franklin? "The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of
: reason."
: And Jefferson, in "Notes on Virginia," written in 1782:
: "It is error alone
: which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.
: Subject
: opinion to coercion: whom will you make your inquisitors? Fallible men;
: men
: governed by bad passions, by private as well as public reasons. And why
: subject it to coercion? To produce uniformity. But is uniformity of
: opinion
: desireable? No more than of face and stature. Introduce the bed of
: Procrustes then, and as there is danger that the large men may beat the
: small, make us all of a size, by lopping the former and stretching the
: latter. Difference of opinion is advantageous in religion. The several
: sects
: perform the office of a Censor morum over each other. Is uniformity
: attainable? Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the
: introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined,
: imprisoned;
: yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity. What has been the
: effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools and the other half
: hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth."
: The Republican Party was founded in the mid-19th century partly as a
: party
: of religious liberty. It supported public common schools, not church
: schools, and public land-grant universities independent of any
: denominational affiliation. The Republicans, moreover, were adamant in
: their
: opposition to the use of any public funds for any religious purpose,
: especially involving schools.
: A century later, in 1960, there was still such a considerable suspicion
: of
: Catholics in government that the Democratic candidate for president,
: John F.
: Kennedy, felt compelled to address the issue directly in his famous
: speech
: before the Houston Ministerial Association on Sept. 12.
: What did Kennedy say? "I believe in an America where the separation
: of
: church and state is absolute -- where no Catholic prelate would tell the
: President (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister
: would tell his parishioners for whom to vote -- where no church or
: church
: school is granted any public funds or political preference ... I believe
: in
: an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish --
: where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on
: public
: policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other
: ecclesiastical source -- where no religious body seeks to impose its
: will
: directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of
: its
: officials."
: Now Bush is attempting to create what Kennedy warned against. He claims
: to
: be conservative, but he seeks a rupture in our system of government. The
: culture war, which has had many episodes, from the founding of the Moral
: Majority to the unconstitutional impeachment of President Clinton, is
: entering a new and far more dangerous phase. In 2004 Bush and Ratzinger
: used
: church doctrine to intimidate voters and taint candidates. And through
: the
: courts the president is seeking to codify not only conservative ideology
: but
: religious doctrine.
: END SNIP-MORE AT LINK BELOW
