hydroacetylene
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User ID: 128
hydroacetylene
7hr ago
Or the avignon threats never happened.
hydroacetylene
7hr ago
The history of Catholic political influence post-1970 suggests there is exactly one very weakly enforced red line for Catholic monarchs, and that's abortion. The princes of Liechtenstein otherwise do whatever they want(as do the princes of Monaco, the government of Andorra, etc). While there's a few Catholic organizations that formally require their members to do more than that in order to remain members in good standing(the Knights of Columbus can technically expel a member for missing mass, even if in practice nobody's taking attendance), Catholic monarchs don't have to be members of them- this isn't mormonism which regularly checks the practices of members. The six minima for religious practice are firmly on the honor system and you can't get excommunicated for just not doing them.
hydroacetylene
8hr ago
What's WP? Because that's a very high estimate for sedevacantists.
hydroacetylene
8hr ago
Ironically, he's overlooking the PNCC(an actually American breakaway hierarchy that's been around for 150ish years) to talk about French fundamentalists.
hydroacetylene
8hr ago
He's also denied it to the Catholic Herald, so this isn't just the US government covering for its embarassing actions.
hydroacetylene
8hr ago
The Catholic Herald and the Pillar(both much better news sources than Letters from Leo) are both taking the editorial stance that this meeting went nothing like what was described.
hydroacetylene
8hr ago
Weren't most of those rumours probably true? Theodora really was a prostitute, Nero and Caligula's shenanigans probably actually happened, Elegabalus actually was something faggy and weird.
hydroacetylene
9hr ago
They’re not even a real media organ. It’s an advocacy blog that doesn’t normally do straightforward ‘news’.
hydroacetylene
17hr ago
Yes, liberal Catholic journalism of record(which letters from Leo is not, it’s a rather poor attempt to tie secular political liberalism to the current pope) is treating this as a page five story.
hydroacetylene
18hr ago
Unnamed ‘sources’ aren’t uncommon or inherently unreliable in Vatican inside baseball politics. But letters from Leo is run by a former Democrat congressional candidate with the explicit goal of pushing the Catholic Church into alignment with the DNC, including dropping opposition to abortion, and more fact-oriented sources- or indeed, more high quality op Ed sources- are consistently unable to confirm the parts of this story that make it a big deal.
Of special note is the Pillar, which is easily a top five news source on internal Vatican goings-on and probably the top source written in English. They would likely be the first ones to confirm the story and so far, their stance is ‘thé meeting happened but nothing of note took place- no threats of Avignon’.
hydroacetylene
18hr ago
It’s worth noting that Archbishop Coakley was the conservative choice to lead the American bishops; he is otherwise quite friendly to the Trump admin. Similarly archbishop Broglio(who has also caught some flack for opposing the war) is firmly on the right within the episcopacy. These aren’t liberals that just hate the GOP/Trump/whatever.
hydroacetylene
18hr ago
After further looking into the sources on this one, I’m gonna press a strong X button. Better Catholic journalist outlets are consistently unable to confirm the threats, and if that part was real we’d have seen it on America magazine or Commonweal(thé top liberal Catholic newspapers in the English speaking world), and it would probably be confirmed by less op-Ed focused Catholic newspapers like Catholic Herald or the Pillar. Instead reputable sources are treating it like a page five story that didn't have any threats leveled, including ones hostile to Trump.
hydroacetylene
18hr ago
Pope Francis was a Jesuit…
hydroacetylene
1d ago
Bah humbug. I needed to give my fingerprints and a photo to get a drivers license, and it's a heck of a lot easier to not visit France than it is to go without driving.
hydroacetylene
1d ago
but Leo seems particularly passionate about this recent one.
There are two reasons for this- pope Francis was seen as overly conciliatory towards the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine(not totally without reason), and for internal Vatican political reasons this was a major mark against him, so Leo feels the need to make up for lost ground. And also Israel is bombing Christians in Lebanon; yes there's probably no way to invade Lebanon without doing this but the Vatican's perspective is perhaps more on the side of 'well they don't actually technically need to fight this war, now do they?' than about dispassionately measuring collateral damage.
hydroacetylene
1d ago
Once we've conceded that "Eternal Rome" means something different from, "the guy currently running The Vatican," then there is absolutely no reason that "Eternal Rome" can't be located in Dillwyn Virginia.
As if the SSPX has a history of playing ball with secular governments wanting political cover for whatever mindless anti-Catholic thing(the SSPX still believes in just war theory because it is Catholic doctrine) the secular government wants to do. Or as if the current(or any forseeable future) US government actually wants to give the kinds of concessions the SSPX would demand in return for being state-sanctioned(and end to the Iran war being one of them). Indeed, their willingness to suffer legal consequences for doing politically incorrect shit is probably part of why the Vatican is relatively conciliatory towards their loose-canon antics; it's simply useful to have a ready supply of priests willing to receive converts in Islamic theocracies and hold funerals for Nazi war criminals so the official hierarchy can keep its hands clean.
Their headquarters is also not located in Virginia(it is, literally, located in Rome- and their motherhouse is in Switzerland). They are a Francophone(and France is still a plurality of membership) fundamentalist organization which expects to outlast everyone who disagrees with them and so sees no need to compromise for temporal advantage.
Technically, the pope could order JD Vance to end the war, under penalty of excommunication and eternal damnation.
No he can't. JD Vance does not have the ability to end the war. The pope can yell all he wants, sure, but there's no possibility of a vice president personally ending the war. That's not how the government works.
hydroacetylene
1d ago
They'd better get to it before oil prices come back down.
hydroacetylene
1d ago
Liz Warren
Adult in the room
Uh...
Look, Elizabeth Warren isn't simply wrong about economics. That would be understandable. She's more than smart enough to note that her pie in the sky socialist economics won't work. 'But if we just tax the rich hard enough' is the adolescent impulse of not accepting limits, only in this case she should know better. It's totally understandable that AOC unironically thinks you can extract enough from taxing the rich to fund whatever nonsense or that 'universal' childcare will fix anything- she just doesn't understand economics, it's the voters' fault for putting her in office. Liz Warren knows these things aren't true, she's advocating them anyway because she can't hear the word 'no'.
hydroacetylene
2d ago
Losing a poorly thought out war with Persia is traditional for empires in this stage. I'm not surprised. At least nobody's had molten silver poured down his throat this time.
In any case, Iran will factually take a while to rebuild. Their regime is kinda shaky with very limited next generation buy in(is the IRGC recruiting well enough to sustain itself?). Trump can easily spin this as some minor matter where the US accomplished its objectives.
hydroacetylene
2d ago
It also wrecks the crime rates, which people do care about.
hydroacetylene
2d ago
These are well above average, albeit usually not literal top 1%, 14 year old boys.
hydroacetylene
2d ago
The US military is far more combat experienced, has a more flexible doctrine, and Chinese equipment hasn't performed with flying colours in Persia.
hydroacetylene
2d ago
The Persian war, our battle of Carrhae, is giving China pause about its Taiwan invasion plans if it has any brains. If Iran can close the straight of Hormuz then Japan can close the south China sea.
hydroacetylene
2d ago
Some of these places have no local jobs, but serve as commuterville for places that do.
And this is more or less a denial and being treated as such by non-joke commenters. Even fr James Martin released a statement about how it didn’t happen but the trump admin is gross enough to do it.
There are norms for Vatican communication, and ‘Letters from Leo’ is not a good source(and there are good liberal sources on this stuff, albeit often published monthly rather than daily/weekly). This is a salacious rumour that was being treated as fact on Twitter, I don’t blame you for being taken in briefly- but holding to it so tightly is a bit queer, thé USCCB doesn’t believe it, thé Catholic journalists with any standards at all don’t believe it, even if they’re liberal activist hacks- this is simply a thing that didn't happen, and the Trump admin is denying it for that reason.
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