Evolution of my outward human political "stances"

I spend some time each day trying to figure out the misconceptions that people (especially cultists and special interest groups) have, and then formulate an educational response. I have to figure it out on my own because, as I’ve blogged about this before, people have refused to speak honestly to me face to face during my entire life and ask me point blank the questions that would enlighten them. It has not been easy to figure out the demented beliefs that people secretly hold to be true. Once I knew the basics of their nutty and dangerous beliefs, however, it becomes easier and easier to calculate what skewed thinking and behavior those beliefs inculcated in individuals and in society as a whole. It also has become clearer how those who have stalked and eavesdropped on my personal life (as I never indicated I was in public ministry, and I had the most dire and serious reasons for not proclaiming my authority to teach either in public or private) could and would willfully misunderstand my every move, speech and “thought” (since some think they can read my mind). I don’t use mental neurons, which is what “mind readers” read, to communicate with God, by the way, but that’s another subject. So to give an obvious example, if I bought something in a store and its selection was recorded by the stalkers, they would assume nefarious reasons for my selection of the object, usually associated with their mean and demented assumptions that everyone is “reincarnated” and the objects they “chose” are “cries for help in the remembering of their ‘past life lessons’”. Yes, I am vomiting a bit in my mouth even as I type this; it literally is that wicked and sickening. Anyway, once I realized this was going on it makes it easier for me to think back over my every movement and words and identify likely areas where the insane drivel filled drunk and ego maniacal cultist child abusing porn pot head creeps who think they are “enlightened” have misunderstood even my simplest actions. So, this is a long prologue to another example I have thought of that I can share with my loyal readership (said with appropriate irony) and rectify (that’s rectify, not rectum, I know you all tend to confuse the two) another segment of reality.

I want to talk about how I, as a human, maneuvered the political and religious landscape of America during my youth. First of all, I’m aware but not “political.” By that I mean that at the earliest age I knew about the political parties and watched debates on the issues, both among politicians and within my modest lower class family. For example, I remember watching some of the Nixon – Kennedy debate on television. It was fun because my mother was in one party and my brother was in the other (they also cheered different rival football teams). To this day my mother teases me that I’d just stick my head into the living room, where the television was, and when I asked “Who is winning?” (Whether a football game, as I asked about even when I was only a toddler, or later the political debates), upon hearing the answer I would say, “Good, that is who I am for” and go back to my room. This did not mean that I was a fickle three year old, or too stupid to remember “my political past” and thus “blow in the wind” of whoever is “ahead.” It was a key indication that as a toddler I applauded excellence without partisanship. Whether it was a football team or a political debater, I became “for” each side as they advanced each of their achievements, both physically and intellectually. To this day I watch baseball teams and applaud each individual play for both teams equally. That’s just the way I am. Anyone could have asked me this at any point in my life and I could have explained it to them. I am “for” the person who is “ahead” because that person is doing well at their skill. This is not an endorsement of the strong over the weak. Trust me, it was the weakest who had the most skill in presenting their needs to Jesus, for example.

While I was in high school eighteen year olds won the right to vote. I was keen on that and enthusiastic to vote to “try it out” (I think in a school board election), but was not really invested in any local candidates or positions at all.

Now, I’ve blogged about this before, but will repeat it. I am a lifelong Catholic. In my day politics were not discussed at the pulpit. We celebrate holy masses of sacrifice, not have praise and worship services salted with political agenda. To me the Church is there to sacrifice to God and worship him in the most solemn setting. We in the Catholic Church in my small town talked about God and the annual German Picnic, that’s it. My town was pretty much half and half Protestant and Catholics. My context of upbringing was to observe that Protestants tended to be political and attracted to “power broker” types of activities. I don’t like that very much. The Catholics from which I proudly spring tended to be non-political people who either worshipped God or went about their hard working blue collar business, and did not mix the two. Nothing, in my opinion, should dilute the sanctity of the sacrifice of the mass and the worship of God in God’s place and during God’s time. (Though I did drop the occasional spit ball from the choir loft when I was a kid, until chastised by the angry bald man whose head I targeted, ha ha. Just showing I was human with a sense of humor at one time ha ha). But my observation was that as dear as Protestant friends were to my family, they had a certain haughtiness toward Catholics that, in my opinion, is totally without reason. If anything, children of the Reformation have much to not be proud of regarding the robbing of the sanctity of sacrifice to God in his name and in his places, and the mocking of those who continue to be pious in the fullness of Jesus Christ’s teaching, the Catholics. But I never experienced hostility to my face as a child up through high school since like I said; we were half of the small village’s population.

This all changed when I arrived on campus at Cornell University. Oh, first I have to mention that when I was sixteen my widowed mother remarried. She had not been going to Church at all, but once she married a very pious Orthodox man, she started attending his Church in the city. At that point I pretty much stopped going to Catholic Mass because we developed a new routine. I cooked Sunday dinner while they were at the Orthodox mass. Homemaking is a very important part of my life and personality, and this was the high point of my week. I loved cooking special dinners that would then be waiting for them when they returned from church, and I loved seeing my mother with this incredibly pious man finally going to church again, something she had refused to do since I was a small child. So when I arrived in college I was already not in a pattern of going to Mass for my own perfectly valid reasons (remember, I have authority of what components of my life should be emphasized since in all of them I am in service to the Lord and in what he expects of me).

I hooked up with other Catholics since “coincidentally” they were my roommates and dorm mates. Not such a coincidence (the early stalking) but I take everything at face value because that is the only sane way to live. You can’t talk to people and relate to them via hidden agenda without joining them in their insanity and their degradation of honor and reality. We went to the campus Mass and I was horrified. It was early 1970’s insane liberal paganism run amok, for example, sitting on the floor in MASS and passing around hunks of bread to gnaw off a groovy piece. (I shudder still remembering it). But since I was not in public ministry and I certainly didn’t know that I was being spied on in that fruity cult way, I didn’t condemn or chastise; I simply stopped going to Mass. I tend to not endorse things I disapprove of in a quiet and charitable way. I continue to be happy that at least kids are still going to visit God, even if it’s a shambles of an unholy mess. It’s still better than not going, I reckon, for the goodness of people on a whole. So while I could not endorse it with my presence, I didn’t go.

I heard the first snide remarks about Catholics in college, said to my face by strangers, which made me wonder how they knew I was Catholic since I’d not said or advertised it. Obviously we all know why now. And I got the usual invitations to go to “liberal” churches, such as “Unitarian.” Now, another thing you need to know. Absolutely everyone I knew except for myself and four other people were smoking dope and were the typical potheads of the time. During the drug and sexual revolution, college students shopped for places that seemed to be spiritual but were actually “enabling” their behavior. I went from neutrality to private disgust.

Another total turn off to me was Protestant movements such as the “Campus Crusade for Christ.” I totally loathed them. Not because I don’t think that there should be religious youth movements, or because I scorn those who sincerely love Jesus with their heart and soul. But it is because of what I explained earlier, the haughtiness of the children of the Reformation who are not only smugly certain of their salvation (but not of Catholics), but who also were combining God’s worship with politics. That is an anathema to me, I must emphasize. One’s faith should be pure, untainted with politics, and be strictly between you and God (I don’t mean secretly, but I mean without bringing in earthly forces into the dialogue). Don’t poke a hornet’s nest and expect not to get stung. The children of the Reformation are very proud without a cause and that is highly unattractive. I had much more liking of the “Jews for Jesus,” since theirs was (and as far as I know still remains) a very humble and joyous endeavor, rather than the arch glaring down the nose as I saw from the children of the Reformation.

And so the children of the Reformation were haughty, anti-Catholic and combined politics with their worship of God. And who did they become: Fundamentalists, evangelicals and … conservatives and Republicans. Do you now understand why so many Catholic people, like me, became Democrats? A true Catholic is pure in his or her faith and dialogue with God, and then, separately, allows his or her faith to inform their secular and political movements and decisions. True traditional Catholics do not combine the two, and should not. Remember, this is over thirty years ago that I am describing to you. The politicizing from the pulpit was truly invented during this time by the children of the Reformation; it was not as ubiquitous as it is today. Abortion became the battleground where they honed their self righteous and haughty skills at both diluting their worship of God while self proclaiming their own self superiority. Rather than deal with the problem of abortion with huge amounts of charity and creative solutions based on Christian values, they brought tons of screaming ugliness, self righteousness, and condemnation of those who supported abortion rights. I watched all of this in horror. To this day I have a difficult time having any relationship with a child of the Reformation, and it is their fault, not mine. They brought their exclusive club politicizing self righteousness that is hostile to Catholics along with all the other “unsaved” that has messed up so much of our culture, including the things we actually agree on regarding policy. The children of the Reformation could have been loving and charitable during the early years of the pro abortion movement and hence have nipped many of the abortions in the bud, and saved millions of lives. But instead they brought ugly and angry faces, screams of self righteousness but no money in their wallets for saving preborn babies. I’ve written about this at length before. I often stated during those times, “If they wish to save babies from abortion they should pay for them rather than scream abuse,” so my feelings were not secret. I supported the use of the Ricco (spelling?) anti racketeering act to control the violent protests outside of abortion clinics. How can Christians behave with such hatred toward women and girls who were filled with trauma and confused by deteriorating values (and lots of drug and alcohol use)?

Many girls I knew got abortions so as to continue their college educations and not “ruin their lives.” Where were the holy Christians who would set up a foundation so that girls could take a year off, have a child, give the child up for adoption (or learn how to keep the child), and who would advocate for them with parents and with schools? I never saw a single example of this. American history could have been “fundamentally” changed if the haughty children of the Reformation had stepped forward and taken the higher road of Christian kindness toward abortion seeking girls and women. And you wonder why I supported the legalization of the medical procedure of abortion and became a Democrat.

Abortion is a medical procedure; that is a fact. It is a grave moral wrong, but that does not change the fact that it is a medical procedure that can be done either in a back alley or a hospital. What Christians should have done is legalize the procedure but provide so many loving and real alternatives that having an abortion would become rare and repugnant, used only in the most dire situations, and not as “birth control.” This will go down in both secular and faith history as the greatest mean and idiotic missed opportunity of all time. The shrill meanness and politicization of worship by the children of the Reformation ruined one of the pivotal moments when people could have brought light to the dark. When I read anti-Catholic comments by these “right wing” “evangelicals” or “fundamentalists,” I can only say that it is a good thing that they do not say that to my face, because I would condemn them before God for being the mean craven hypocrites that they really are. I saw it from the beginning.


And so I supported legalization of the medical procedure of abortion (while loathing each and every use of it), while praying for and yelling to anyone who would listen that the pro-life lobby must mobilize to prevent this from becoming a frequent necessary and, God forbid, used as “birth control.” And so I became a Democrat, who remembered liberals who were moral, fiscally conservative, loved their fellow human, and who were patriotic. But like the termites who eat away at the wood, the Democrats became slaves to self indulgence and moral turpitude, becoming as much of a problem as the haughty and self righteous tight wallet Republicans. Voting has become a “choice” of voting for either the moral termites who are as incompetent as children driving a car while drunk or the fat self righteous hypocrite oligarchs who think God is lucky to be allowed to run on their ticket for election. Through the years I voted mostly Democrat because I continued to hope that all things go in cycles and that morality would return and restore a responsible liberalism that is also patriotic to the Democrat party. I voted for Kerry with that hope, and I don’t regret it despite how I’ve been disappointed by him. St. Paul said we all live in hope, and he was right. Without hope and charity you end up with “swift boat” advertisements rather than mutual conversation and conversion of both sides of hurtful and divisive issues. Don’t forget that I was there; the Vietnam draft was still on when I attended freshman year in college. It’s easy to have a self righteous and smart mouth about it now; it was not easy to live for anyone at the time.

I remember years ago slouching in my blue lazy boy chair watching the Presidential debates. This young “heir”, George W. Bush, was asked who the person was he most admired. When I heard his response, “Jesus Christ,” I sat up suddenly and took notice. I marveled and wondered if this was the start of something much better, more honest and more innocent. Bush proclaimed Jesus in a secular setting, and we just don’t hear that anymore, and it was a brave and honest thing to do. And his words were the first (and since then the only time) that I had heard a child of the Reformation, an “evangelical,” proclaim Jesus without using it as his special haughty calling card in the political arena. I was impressed and have continued to send my good will toward him, although I came to see that he is also a pawn of the behind the scenes spiritual gypsies who combine love of money and power with “salvation” and arrogant self righteous “prophesying” about the “end of times.” I hope he does become a Catholic and get away from at least part of that thinking. (Though Catholics of course have their own subversive secret agents working within them to bring down the faith too, reducing it to the “hunt for the anti-Christ 216 reality show, with porn.”)

Well, so now is it so easy to have interpreted what I have said and done?

Try honesty, humility and dialogue sometime. It could have saved many millions of lives.