Stop Me Before I Vote Again

Why an extension of the state? Why not a vehicle of the status quo? Seems to me the state belongs to the investing classes, as do the various and sundry churches, as they continue enacting their diversionary function.

if we look at nazi germany we indeed see a catholic hierarchy collaborating in the most supine fashion with the "state machine"

i think the chuirch hierarchy's
independent existence is provisional and conditional ...inside any one state system

over 10 centuries
the church hierarchy has evolved
elaborate means to co exist with its host states

yes there have been
" moments " of struggle and collaboration
there has been
both victory and capitulation

regimes over thrown
and hierarchies dumped in the ditch
antagonist independence and utter submission
despite not one division north of what
Romagna ???

hey the pope has been deposed several times
and multiply popes too
and yet the hierarchy always reconsolidates

like a good slime will

------------
as to tilts left or right

its fair to say
even if unfair to say to my domestic partner
that the church hierarchy
in post war soviet dominated hungary or poland
was far more resistent to state dictate
then under those same nation's
pre war "fascist /proto fascist " regimes

"the state belongs to the investing classes, as do the various and sundry churches"

the "ownership of catholic churches
" in the pheeeesical sense "
is not really that cut and dried

church property rights vary greatly
from nation to nation
but it's safe to say the church in rome
the vatican owns most if not all
of itself or claims to
and the church and the various orders
own
themselves or claim to
in most host nations

the hierarchy owns this to be clear about it

the church laity owns nothing
the congregation owns not its house of worship

t'ain't no damn private country club for christ sake

i love the church of rome
precisely because its not
in its genes a bourgeois institution
not by any means
it has adapted to bourgeois hegemony
embraced it but not "moiged " with it

the hierarchies profoundly anti democratic anti egalitarian essence
is less compromised then anything
worth a shit on this god foresaken planet
outside the arabian peninsula

"Controversy", schmontroversy. The guy was fourteen.

What is it with liberals and the Catholic Church? It drives 'em crazy. You've gotta love that. And I also like the way it quietly goes on believing, and acting, as if it stands to some degree outside the sphere of the secular Zweckrational bourgeois state.

"...it quietly goes on believing, and acting, as if it stands to some degree outside the sphere of the secular Zweckrational bourgeois state. "

The Church to survive
must perform daily and on a mass scale
the crude art of hypocrisy
steadfastly and with a swallowed levity

i know i know
nothing escapes devouring
by the hegemonic class
bt its romantic nonsense
like for a brief moment
supposing so
that brings the occasional
spring to my step

Fr Smith:

What is it with liberals and the Catholic Church?

1) Abortion is the first objection, liberals think abortion-as-birth-control is preferable to the rhythm method. Liberals like the fact that a fetus generated by a drunken, regrettable fuck can be erased with an abortion. It's a choice, not a human fetus!

2) Jesuit education is the second objection, liberals hate that the RC church's educational wing (them Papal Marines) has high academic standards that yield students who actually can think circles around Haaahvaaahd meritocrats. While Yale Law School has no grades, the Jesuits have that whacky 96.5-100.0 A that is unattainable for most.

3) General religion is the third objection, liberals love the atheistic stance almost as much as they love hating Christians, and since the RC church is ostensibly Xtian... well, there you go.

4) That pedophilia thing. Truly a black mark on the Papists, can't argue with the libbies here.

oxy u surprise me
what a depraved seedy old prig u are

and the church as educateeerrs

in particular jesuit higher education....???

surely you gest
all they teach is ....

spulling
penmanship
sums by nuns

and after too many years of that

casuistry

producing except by revulsion

letter perfect deceeeeetful reactionaries

pre 20th century gay clerks
and

drunken cynical lawyers

drunken in past lives, now floating along on medical cannabis.

from what I hear, anyway.

I had Jesuit, Dominican, Franciscan and Xaverian educators, OP. I certainly learned a lot more than "penmanship."

Sure, we had to go to Mass a lot - but I learned evolutionary theory that wasn't treated as controversial by the nuns and other Catty teachersl and it sure as hell was (and still is) in the publik skool.

The Vatican hides a host of evil behind its frocks and man dresses - but Catty education is worlds better than publicly tampered-with skoolhus kind.

jack

"Sure, we had to go to Mass a lot - but I learned evolutionary theory that wasn't treated as controversial by the nuns and other Catty teachers "

are you serious jacko ???

darwin scoffed in pub ed
big deal
not an outrage !!!!

speaking of mass
lets go over that wafer bit
surely it's no less poisonous then intelligent design ...eh ??

we paine's were all
once
terribly firece deists don't you know

Lefties ought to wander into a Mass sometime. They'll actually encounter members of the working class. That is if those lefties can tear themselves away from the blathersphere or "lefty mailing lists."

MJS, I'm not sure what sets liberals off when it comes to the Church. Sometimes they like it. Sometimes they don't. Both like and dislike correspond to the perceived good/harm it's doing for Democratic chances. None of the like or dislike has anything to do with the faithful themselves, except insofar as they're perceived to be at the bidding of church hierarchy, which is where liberals focus. There's no other consistent standard involved.

The Catholic presence in pro-labor and anti-war movements is alternately praised and dismissed, again depending on perceived utility to Democrats. Sometimes there's a tear shed for the crushed Liberation Theology movements, but that's the same kind of nostalgia that JFK gets.

My own animus towards the Church comes from the same bitter disgust I have for any institutional elite that trivializes and traduces the moral convictions and struggles of people who actually believe, strongly, that cruelty is wrong.

geof
u often make dumb self serving assumptions

go to mass
to
meet working class folks ???

why there
when
they're everywhere we who have a mcjob
go to mcjobble

is it your belief
pwoggie-left views
melt away under
the gaze of honest wage earning eyes

whatabout u makes your living for u btw ???

Owen, it's my belief that the left is so pathetically removed from the working class as not to be in the same hemisphere, nor on the same planet. It's a joke. It's a cartoon. And it has been this way for decades. Elite, educated lefties have long, involved, brow-furrowing debates and discussions among themselves with nary a prole in sight, except maybe to refill the latte cups.

How many coal miners or truck drivers are on any "lefty mailing lists"? Hmmm. Bet it'll take a while to do a headcount.

I went to a lefty college. (Any other kind?) It was situated in one of the poorest counties in the USA. The "democratic socialists" used to huddle in a tiny office in the student union. They'd even sing the Internationale once in a while, fresh off of viewing Warren Beatty's picture on Reed.

But did they ever venture out of the cozy campus confines and try to lift a finger for the poor and the underpaid, exploited denizens of the desperately impoverished county where their little cell would meet? Hah! What a joke!

"But did they ever venture out of the cozy campus confines and try to lift a finger for the poor and the underpaid, exploited denizens of the desperately impoverished county where their little cell would meet?"

What would you have recommended in the way of finger lifting?

The feckless-elitist-nerdly-trustarian-college-lefty trope always makes an appearance around election time. The cue for it comes in August. By November it will reach a peak. If the Democrats lose, the partisans demonize the lefties who refused to play along with the One True Hope of the working class, the Democratic Party.

If the Democrats win, the partisans agonize about the continued strength of the Republicans—until it's time to fret about the feckless-elitist-nerdly-trustarian-college-lefties again. The demonization is borrowed from the Republicans, who invented the trope back in the sixties.

The narrowness of the Democrats' little game is best viewed as the resentment of an embattled managerial class, with factions that are desperate not to give an entirely meaningless satisfaction to the Republican managerial factions they don't like.

Owen,

The science and mathematics education in Cat schools is not subject to public whim tampering - is my point. It gets taught with an eye to absorption.

Sure, I was introduced to Teilhard De Chardin and the life of the Poor Claires, whether or not I wanted to learn about them.

But, Charles' original point really hasn't been disproved. The Catty education is far more rigorous, even with (and probably, because) of all the doctrinal mythopoetics.

Now - if you don't think rigorous education is a good thing (there's an argument there), that's another matter.

Respect,

Jack

*
Al,

"My own animus towards the Church comes from the same bitter disgust I have for any institutional elite that trivializes and traduces the moral convictions and struggles of people who actually believe, strongly, that cruelty is wrong."

Well said. As I mentioned before, I know a lot of really admirable orders and lay Catholics - who do good works within the superstructure of a monstrous edifice of rape, degradation, organized crime and women-hating, self-destructive cryptohomosexuality.

The Vatican isn't going away, so whatchagonnado?

Full disclosure - a younger brother teaches history in a New York area Catholic school. His opinions color mine - he's taught in both public and parochial schools, and prefers the Catholic system, since he doesn't have to divide fealty between two dozen administrators and the private fiefs of department heads.

Respect,

Jack

Respect,

Jack

op, I'm still laughing at "depraved seedy old prig."

Since my work provides daily interaction with middle school students, I have to agree that I'm much more like the old dude yelling at neighborhood kids to get off his lawn, than I am a Modern Hipster. Or Leftist. Not only can I not understand the 12-year-old's predilection for sexting (complete with photo), I also can't defend it like any good Modern Leftist Hipster could or would defend it as "healthy sexuality" or whatever. I can't say I disagree with the RC church on abortion (I see it as human life, not a "choice"), though I do disagree with it on contraception. Probably that's because I have no mission to increase my flock, so I have no interest in rapid population expansion through that rhythm method assurance of lots of pregnancies.

While I have met some truly screwed up priests in my time, none was a Jesuit; and the best teacher I've ever known was a Jesuit -- although the 2s best teacher was a cattle rancher who had no use for God.

The Jesuits fixed my slacker tendencies, and I thank them for that. They also gave me the tools to intellectually make fools of Hivey Leeg stuffed-shirt self-impressed asswipe lawyers who imagined their fancy parchment meant non-stop victory in jurisprudential contests.

Though I guess the Hivies have the "last laugh" on me with their secret-handshake-society yielding bigger incomes for less actual work. I guess they win that one. I mean, their House Negro is in the Whitest House in America right now!

What is it with liberals and the Catholic Church?

I see nothing wrong with liberal hostility to the Catholic Church. It's usually warranted. My question is what is it about the Church that bothers liberals that doesn't bother them about the D-Party, academia or our sainted medical profession, which is our unofficial secular priesthood? All these institutions service the interests of the elite to varying degrees, but I doubt the Holy Ghost surgeons have amassed quite the body count of late that the American medical profession has, nor do they enjoy such unquestioning faith. Nobody's forcing you to go to church, but thanks to the Pope of Hope you are now forced to pray and pay at the altar of Big Med.

Sean -- you have stated my case better than I did.