Readings for 18th Sunday in Ordinary Time: Ecclesiastes 1:1-2, 2:21-23; Psalm 90 3-6, 13, 14, 17; Colossians 3: 1-5, 9-11; Luke 12: 13-21
I’ve recently been invited to join the Arc of Justice Alliance (AJA). It’s a new progressive think-and-action movement designed to offer a coordinated, long-term alternative to the far right’s increasingly authoritarian agenda.
No doubt you’ve heard of the Republican Project 2025. Backed by the Heritage Foundation and other major right-wing institutions, it’s a blueprint for seizing executive power, dismantling federal regulatory structures, militarizing domestic politics, and further entrenching white Christian nationalism. It is as serious as it is terrifying.
The Arc of Justice Alliance is our answer. It recognizes a hard truth: for over 50 years, the U.S. right has invested billions into building a machine—media networks, policy mills, judicial pipelines, and ideological training camps for candidates. Progressives, by contrast, have often been merely defensive, scattered and uncoordinated. That’s changing now. AJA is bringing together scholars, activists, spiritual leaders, artists, and organizers to craft a long-term vision for democratic justice, human rights, and environmental sanity.
But here’s something that may surprise you: one of the right’s most potent weapons has been theology.
The Republican machine has spent decades coopting the Judeo-Christian tradition, turning it into a moral fig leaf for capitalism, nationalism, and even genocidal violence. Faith has been hijacked—not just by televangelists, but by policy strategists who know how powerful religion can be in shaping hearts and winning votes.
The results? A public religion that celebrates guns over peace, capitalism over compassion, and settler colonialism— in Palestine and elsewhere—over human dignity.
As a liberation theologian, I’ve been invited by AJA to help reclaim the authentic Judeo-Christian tradition. To rescue the voices of the prophets—from Moses to Jesus to Paul—from those who’ve turned them into champions of empire. We’re done letting Jesus be portrayed as a flag-waving American whose top moral priorities are deregulated markets, gun rights, and misogyny.
This week’s liturgical readings couldn’t be more timely. They mock the cult of wealth accumulation and call for spiritual liberation from materialist obsession. Ecclesiastes calls it “vanity” to work endlessly, lose sleep over your earnings, and die before enjoying anything. Psalm 90 reminds us life is brief—we might not wake up tomorrow. Paul tells us to set our minds on things beyond consumerism, and Jesus, in the Gospel of Luke, outright laughs at the man who builds bigger barns while ignoring his soul.
These aren’t just pious musings. They’re indictments.
They expose what capitalism demands of us: exhaustion, anxiety, competition, disconnection. They also expose what it consistently fails to deliver: peace, community, purpose, or justice.
Here’s the deeper issue: capitalism isn’t just an economy—it’s a theology. It teaches that your worth is your wealth. That you are alone, in competition, in a world of scarcity. That power, not compassion, is what keeps you safe. That “salvation” is financial security.
But the deeper tradition—the one the AJA seeks to reclaim—teaches something radically different.
It teaches that our lives matter not for what we earn, but for how we love. That justice, not greed, is the heartbeat of the universe. That our deepest wealth is found in community. That joy is a collective act of resistance.
And crucially, it teaches that we must name and dismantle the systems—economic, political, and religious—that keep us enslaved to fear and false gods.
That’s why we’re building the Arc of Justice Alliance. Not just as an intellectual exercise, but as a spiritual and moral response to empire. We are building a machine of our own—not to mirror the right’s authoritarianism, but to match its discipline and exceed it in vision.
So let’s stop pretending the Gospel is about prosperity. Let’s stop letting capitalism wear a halo.
Let’s laugh, like Jesus did, at the absurdity of endless accumulation. Let’s build networks of joy, resistance, and solidarity. Let’s speak clearly, act boldly, and remember what freedom really looks like.
This is what the moment demands. And this is what the AJA stands for.
Of course everybody’s talking about Jeffrey Epstein. The topic is often presented simply as a tale of his perversion possibly with connections to Donald Trump. But it’s much more than that. As Whitney Webb has pointed out in two 500 page books on Epstein, it’s about “Government by Blackmail.” It’s about Israel’s Mossad and why Zionists can exercise nearly absolute control over the U.S. government, no matter who’s president. With Webb’s help, I saw all that six years ago, when I published the following essay on OpEdNews and when I followed it up by another piece on the use of the phrase “conspiracy theory” to dismiss any deeper probes into Epstein’s identity. So, here’s what I wrote in 2019.
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Epstein Was Suicided; That’s How Our CIA Does Business
I could hardly believe my eyes this morning, when I read in Alternet that Jeffery Epstein was found dead in his jail cell of apparent suicide. And I find it hard to believe that he killed himself, especially since he’s been on “suicide watch” since the discovery of apparently self-inflicted marks on his neck ten days ago. Instead, I suspect he was killed by the CIA. My suspicion is based on my close reading for the past few days of muckraker, Whitney Webb‘s three-part expose’, “The Jeffery Epstein Scandal: Too Big to Fail.”
Webb’s series makes the point that the Epstein pedophilia scandal threatened to blow apart the entire U.S. government house of cards. It opened up a potentially devastating window not only on the sordid lives of Epstein and his close friends, Donald Trump and Bill Clinton, but on the profound corruption of the entire U.S. government and of international politics as a whole. Though connected with the pedophilia scandal in the Catholic Church, the scale of the Epstein branch of institutionalized child abuse absolutely dwarfs the shameful hypocrisy of justly vilified ecclesiastical criminals.
Epstein’s federal trial was scheduled to begin next summer. This means that the details of his crimes (and, more importantly, those of his high-placed patrons’) would steal headlines at the height of the general election of 2020. The evidence to be presented there is said to comprise more than one million pages.
In the light of what I’ll detail below, one can only imagine the surprises contained therein and whom those pages implicate. And given Epstein’s close association with Donald Trump and the Clintons (not to mention the other billionaire residents of Palm Beach Island in Florida), the trial and evidence presented at that crucial moment would likely have had an impact of the presidential election. Wayne Madsen for one, speculates that it may have already influenced the resignations of several Republicans from the House of Representatives.
Epstein, of course, is the alleged hedge fund tycoon whose central role in a pedophilia network came to light when he was arrested last July on Federal charges of sex trafficking of minors in Florida and New York. Previously, he had been convicted of molesting an underage girl, but had mysteriously served what’s been described as the most lenient sentence in history for crimes like his — 13 months in a county jail during which he was free to leave during the day.
Alexander Acosta, Donald Trump’s Secretary of Labor was responsible for securing the ludicrous sentence, when Acosta served as Attorney General for the Southern District of Florida. On Epstein’s arrest last July, the FBI found hundreds of photos, videos, and recordings of child molestations some of them allegedly involving prominent public figures.
According to Webb’s expose’, the Epstein story is merely the tip of a dark iceberg much bigger than most of us realize. The darkness below the surface stretches back more than 75 years. It involves not only Epstein, but the CIA, its Israeli counterpart the Mossad, the Mafia as a CIA asset, the mysterious MEGA Group of influential billionaires, many government officials, and other high rollers with familiar names.
Webb’s series unveils what she terms “Government by Blackmail” an all-encompassing political strategy that began at least as far back as the conclusion of the Second Inter-Capitalist War. As the phrase suggests, Government by Blackmail consists in luring heads of state and other powerful world figures into compromising situations (often with underage “prostitutes” of both sexes), filming them in the process, and then using such evidence as leverage to extort huge sums of money, to extract favors and actually shape the world’s political economy. It extended to the Mafia, for instance, a virtual license to kill without legal repercussion.
As an alleged intelligence asset himself (of either the CIA, Mossad, or both) Epstein’s job was to gather the required evidence. To that end, he placed in compromising and seductive situations government officials from across the world. His mansions, private islands, and fleet of jet planes provided the venues. They were the sites of fabulous parties featuring alcohol, drugs, and underage “call boys” and “call girls.” All the locales were equipped with sophisticated recording devices, both audio and video, and two-way mirrors for recording acts of criminal pedophilia and other crimes or embarrassments on the parts of Epstein’s “friends” and acquaintances. Invitees included heads of state from across the planet Donald Trump and Bill Clinton, of course, among them.
But, Webb reveals, Epstein is only the latest iteration of Government by Blackmail. He’s the clone of figures like the Mafia kingpin Myer Lansky, and Lew Rosenstiel (of Schenley distilleries). During the ’70s and ’80s Rosenstiel, Lansky’s close friend, regularly threw what his fourth wife (of five) called “blackmail parties.” According to Webb, the photos and recordings gathered there long kept Lansky out of trouble from the federal government. They also delivered entire cities to Mafia control in the post WWII era. In fact, Lansky entrapped for blackmail purposes, numerous top politicians, army officers, diplomats and police officials. He had photos of FBI director, J. Edgar Hoover in drag and performing homosexual acts.
Rosenstiel’s protegee and successor as blackmailer-in-chief was Roy Cohn, who at the age of 23 was a close adviser of Senator Joseph McCarthy. More importantly, he was also associated with Mafia bosses, J. Edgar Hoover, the Reagan White House and has been described as a mentor of Donald Trump. His mentor!
Simultaneously, Cohn took on the central role in the blackmail pedophile racket Lansky and Rosenstiel had started. As usual, its main targets were politicians often interacting with child prostitutes. That was the source of Cohn’s power. So were his dear friends in high places including (besides Clinton and Trump) Ronald Reagan and his wife Nancy, Barbara Walters, Rupert Murdoch, Alan Dershowitz, Andy Warhol, Calvin Klein, Chuck Schumer, William Safire, William Buckley, William Casey, and top figures in the Catholic Church.
It’s those latter figures that connect Cohn’s pedophile ring as inherited by Jeffery Epstein with the Church’s scandal. It directly involved “the American pope,” Francis Cardinal “Mary” Spellman, and Cardinal Theodore “Uncle Teddy” McCarrick. Father Bruce Ritter’s Covenant House (a multi-million-dollar charity for homeless and run-away boys and girls) was also deeply implicated. In fact, when Ritter’s involvement in sex acts with his underage protegees came to light, it was secular powers more than ecclesiastical forces that rallied to his defense.
Another pre-Epstein blackmail king was Craig Spence, a former ABC News correspondent who became a prominent DC lobbyist and CIA agent. All during the 1980s he provided child prostitutes and cocaine for Washington’s power elite. For purposes of blackmail, Spence used the now-familiar devices of video cameras, tape recordings, and two-way mirrors. His little black book and “favor bank” records have been described as involving a Who’s Who of Washington’s government and journalistic elite, this time including Richard Nixon, William Casey, John Mitchell, Eric Sevareid, John Glenn, and key officials of the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations, as well as media celebrities and military officers. According to the Washington Times, during the Bush administration, Spence had permission to enter the White House late at night to supply “call boys” to top level officials there.
Significantly, in the light of Epstein’s demise, just shortly before his death (also quickly ruled a suicide) Spence expressed fears that the CIA might kill him — apparently for knowing too much about connections between Nicaragua’s Contras and CIA cocaine smuggling to support them. But according to Spence himself, his knowledge went much deeper. Shortly before his similarly alleged suicide, he told Washington Times reporters: “All this stuff you’ve uncovered (involving call boys, bribery and the White House tours), to be honest with you, is insignificant compared to other things I’ve done. But I’m not going to tell you those things, and somehow the world will carry on.”
The Contra connection shows how in all of this, the Great Enemy of the hidden powers described here (involving the White House, CIA, FBI, Mafia, Mossad, powerful lobbyists, “fixers,” and billionaire political donors) was socialism and communism. The latter’s world project was 180 degrees opposed to governance by the moneyed elite as represented by the blackmail project of Epstein and his predecessors.
And so, it was important for blackmailers to support the prosecution of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, back McCarthyism and J. Edgar Hoover, to undermine the Soviet Union, attack Cuba and Fidel Castro, protect organized crime bosses, and to make sure that projects like the Sandinista Revolution of 1979-90 failed. To those ends, it was even more important to inveigle left-wing politicians and officials from socialist countries into the international blackmail dynamic described here.
As for Epstein himself, following Cohn’s death (from AIDS) in 1986, he quickly took up his mentor’s mantle. As described earlier, Epstein became an FBI informant in 2008 yet more evidence of the agency’s long-standing involvement with and protection of pedophile rings for purposes of blackmail.
In summary, the Epstein scandal has finally made public a decades-long pedophilic blackmail operation at the highest level. Ultimately run by the FBI and CIA, (i.e. with the knowledge, approval and participation of law enforcement), it has involved prominent politicians, businessmen, police and military officials, celebrities, and ecclesiastical officials. The scandal has touched the current U.S. president and may still bring him down.
In the meantime, it has left behind a trail of broken lives in the persons of the children exploited for the pleasure of old white men whose debauched proclivities have been parlayed into economic and political power. On Epstein’s watch, the operation has spread to Central America and beyond, becoming truly international in the process.During the 2016 presidential campaign, Pizzagate fascinated right-wing conspiracy theorists. It alleged that the Clintons were somehow involved in a child prostitution operation run out of the Comet Ping Pong restaurant and pizzeria in Washington, D.C.
If a debunked Pizzagate theory caused such stir, and if pedophilia expose’s within the Catholic Church have brought it to its knees, one can only imagine the revolutionary potential of the documented disclosures that would inevitably come to light in a Jeffrey Epstein trial. It would reveal pedophilic involvement by public figures far surpassing the scandal in the Roman Catholic Church. It could bring down not only the Trump administration, but the whole international House of Cards.
[What follows is the 3rd installment describing a wonderfully synchronic event that coincided with my wife Peggy’s and my visit to Rome to spend three weeks with my son and his family there. The visit just happened to coincide with the elevation of fellow Chicagoan Robert (Fr. Bob) Prevost to the papal throne. Today’s account is about Pope Leo’s inauguration. You can find the other two installments here and here.]
Peggy and I got up early this morning – 5:00. Our intention was to get to St. Peter’s Square in time to secure seats for Pope Leo’s inauguration which would begin at 10:00.
However, our ride to the basilica was half an hour late. That meant we didn’t get seats.
And though we were able to situate ourselves much closer to the center of action than we did a week ago for the introduction of the new pope, our late arrival left us standing in the increasingly hot sun from 7:00 till noon.
It was worth it though. It gave me plenty of time to observe and reflect on the thousands upon thousands of faithful and simply curious who filled the Square and about a mile of the Via Conciliazione – the broad avenue that extends from the basilica’s piazza towards the Castel Sant’ Angelo.)
The Ceremony
In the meantime, all of us were inspired by the St. Peter’s Basilica choir and their transcendent renditions of Catholic choral classics like “Christus Vincit” and “Salve Regina.” We also ended up praying the five Glorious Mysteries of the rosary in Latin (viz., (1) the Resurrection, (2) the Ascension, (3) the Descent of the Holy Spirit on the Apostles, (4) the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin into Heaven, and (5) Her Crowning as Queen of Heaven and Earth). I was surprised how easily the Latin came back to me.
The whole thing and what followed was made visible for everyone on perhaps 20 huge jumbotrons located strategically throughout the entire venue.
Then about 9:30 Pope Leo arrived. He was standing in the back of his popemobile smiling and giving his blessing to the adoring crowds as the vehicle drove around St. Peter’s square and down the length of the Via Conciliazione. He passed very close to the place Peggy, our Roman host, and I were standing. The crowd’s enthusiasm, shouts, and applause made it all quite thrilling.
At 10:00 right on the dot, the ceremony began. Everyone in the crowd had been given memorial booklets with the texts of every hymn, litany, and prayer, along with brief descriptions of ceremonies like the bestowal of the papal ring and other signs of papal authority. Texts (including the pope’s homily) were also projected on those large screens. So, it was all quite easy to follow and understand.
The center of it all was the papal Mass, with Leo the celebrant, while various members of the clergy and laity handled the biblical readings and some of the prayers in Latin, Italian, Spanish, English, and Greek.
At communion time, a whole army of priests (perhaps 50 or more) dressed in black cassocks and white surplices processed to various stations throughout the crowd to distribute the “hosts” that Catholics believe are the very body of the risen Christ. I noticed how some recipients received the wafer on their tongues, others in their hands. One priest close to me refused to place the host in extended palms. He repeatedly insisted on laying the host on the recipient’s tongue. The priest who gave me communion placed the wafer reverently in my hand with the traditional words, “The body of Christ.”
“Amen,” I replied. (I hadn’t received Catholic communion in years.)
All that describes the surface level of my experience this morning. But what did I really see and hear? Let me respond at three levels, one inspirational, one historical, and one political.
Evaluation
At the inspirational level I saw thousands of Catholics and others thirsting for a meaningful spiritual experience of transcendent, invisible dimensions of life. After all, we live in a world rendered increasingly meaningless by materialism, consumerism, war, shifts in global power, and social change almost beyond comprehension. Seeing such people praying the rosary with eyes closed and lips moving was inspiring indeed. So was their reverence in receiving Holy Communion.
At the historical level, I saw something more problematic. I witnessed:
An out-of-touch museum performance piece
Overwhelmingly led by men in pretentious medieval costume representing the most patriarchal institution in the western world
Now led by a nice American priest who actually believes he’s somehow the “Vicar of Christ”
Who founded the Catholic Church
Despite the evidence of even Catholic scripture scholarship that such conviction remains unsupported by credible evidence. It shows instead that Yeshua of Nazareth remained a good Jew throughout his brief life and had no apparent intention of founding the gentile “church”
That emerged definitively in the 4th century when (under Constantine) a powerful faction of the Christian community threw in its lot with the Roman Empire becoming in effect its Department of Religion,
Notwithstanding the fact that Yeshua died a victim of Roman torture and capital punishment.
However, most problematic of all were the event’s political dimensions. In that connection I saw a pope who (once again!) during a time of genocide and this time standing before its perpetrators (in the persons of J.D. Vance and Marco Rubio) spoke in generalities and empty platitudes instead of calling attention to their crime. As indicated in yesterday’s piece, I had been hoping for more – perhaps something in the vein of Episcopal Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde’s words to President Trump on behalf of Palestinians and migrants.
Conclusion
When I’ve expressed my concerns to friends and family members, I’m often told that the new pope must be careful and diplomatic. After all, he’s just starting out.
My reply however is that we’re in a state of emergency. The fact of genocide is undeniable in Gaza. Women and children are starving to death. Each morning, it seems, we’re told that as many as 150 Palestinians (mostly those women and children) were killed overnight. Such victims can’t wait.
The pope has potentially more moral power in his voice than anyone else in the world. If he truly believes himself to be the vicar of the prophetic Yeshua, he must use that voice now.
Tomorrow morning at 6:00, Peggy and I will drive to Vatican Square with some new Roman friends to attend the inauguration of Pope Leo XIV. The ceremony will begin at 10:00. That means we’ll be there four hours ahead of time. The attempt to secure good seats promises a long morning.
As you may recall, what Carl Jung called “synchronicity” has brought us to Rome at this precise time. Our ostensible purpose for being here was simply to spend three weeks with our son, daughter-in-law, and three small granddaughters (ages 5, 3, and 1). We wanted to spend as much time as possible getting to know the girls, whose parents’ foreign employment patterns would otherwise make that far more complicated.
However, my real synchronic purpose for being here, I’m convinced, is to reconnect me with my deep Catholic roots for purposes of final evaluation before transition into Life’s next dimension.
With that process in mind and at the age of 84, I feel overwhelmed by Rome’s beauty – its tree-lined streets, omnipresent sidewalk cafes, its lavish fountains, statuary, Renaissance paintings and churches, its operas and ballets. Today all that seems even more wonderful than it did more than half a century ago when I spent five years here (1967-’72) getting my doctoral degree in moral theology.
Those were magic years for me, when after spending my teenage and early adult years in a seminary hothouse, I finally began waking up to the real world. It all shook me to the core.
And here I’m not just thinking of personal growth experiences, but of the dawning of political awareness about the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement, Women’s Liberation, and of Liberation Theology which I’ve come to understand as “critical faith theory.” (By that last phrase I mean understanding the way Christianity has been used by western colonial powers to enslave, brainwash, and justify repeated exterminations of Muslims, “witches,” Native Americans, kidnapped Africans, and colonized people across the planet.)
Along those lines, being here in Rome during the ongoing holocaust in Gaza makes me think of Pope Pius XII’s virtual silence on the Jewish Holocaust in the 1930s and ‘40s. It has me wondering if Leo XIV will follow in his shameful footsteps.
I mean, the new pope will have a golden opportunity to confront his fellow American Catholics undeniably responsible for the ongoing slaughter in Palestine. I’m referring to J.D. Vance, Marco Rubio, and possibly Joe Biden. It’s as if during the Holocaust, Pius XII had the chance to publicly confront Hitler or Goering.
Will Leo use this golden opportunity to call them (and the absent Mr. Trump) to task the way the courageous Episcopal bishop Mariann Edgar Budde did when presented with a similar opportunity in the early days of the Trump administration? Recall that as the episcopal leader of 40,000 congregants in the D.C. area, Bishop Budde had Trump and Vance squirming in their seats as she pled for mercy on behalf of the immigrants, refugees, Palestinians, and others whom those key members of her audience show every evidence of despising.
Will the papal leader of 1.2 billion Catholics show similar courage tomorrow? Or will he take refuge in “safe” generalities, “diplomatic” bromides, and empty platitudes about “peace,” justice, and mercy?
My guess is that it will be the latter. But we’ll see.
Key predecessors of Leo XIV: Leo XIII, Francis, & John Paul II
Last evening, I was present just outside St. Peter’s Square for the first blessing of Pope Leo XIV, the former Augustinian Cardinal, Robert Prevost. Providentially, my wife Peggy and I just happen to be in Rome visiting my eldest son’s family now located here.
Around 7:00 Peggy had phoned me with news of seeing white smoke from the Vatican chimney. That traditional signal indicated the successful completion of Papal Conclave deliberations. Earlier in the day, the two of us had been together in St. Peter’s Square when black smoke revealed an inconclusive result of that morning’s process.
So, I raced off walking as fast as I could toward the Via Conciliazione, the long wide avenue extending from the papal basilica. My five years living and studying in Rome (1967-1972) told me that a huge overflow crowd would gather there spilling over from St. Peter’s Square and awaiting the introduction of the new pope.
Forty minutes later, I arrived just in time to hear and (barely) see him.
I could hardly believe my ears.
Imagine: a second consecutive American pope! And this one from the United States as successor to the first American pope, Argentina’s Pope Francis! Not only that, but the new man also turns out to be a fellow Chicagoan. Like me as well, he entered the seminary as a 14-year-old intent already at that tender age on becoming a priest. I felt I knew him. (I also found myself wondering, could he also be a Cub fan? Probably not though. Prevost is a South-Sider which probably aligns him with the White Sox.)
More seriously, I wondered what could the cardinal electors have been thinking in selecting someone like Prevost – a dual citizen of the U.S. and Peru? And what could Prevost himself be signaling in choosing Leo XIV as his papal name? I also wondered what Leo’s election might portend for the Catholic Church and the world.
Along those lines, let me share some initial impressions.
The Significance of Prevost’s Election
Regardless of the Cardinal electors’ intentions, I find it noteworthy that the last two papal elections have shifted church focus from Europe to the Americas. They have directed attention away from the colonizers to the colonized, from the oppressed to the oppressors.
Could the cardinals’ appointment of Prevost be making a forceful statement about such dynamic?
I mean Francis was a product of United States’ oppression. Argentina’s U.S.-supported “dirty war,” led to the deaths and forced disappearances of more than 30,000 Argentinians. Whether by specific intention or by direction of the Holy Spirit, Francis’ election called attention to such tyranny over the Global South by an imperialistic United States.
Yes, Argentina’s Guerra Sucia (1974-’83) was the bloody expression of what Noam Chomsky and others identify as a more general U.S. war against the Catholic Church in Latin America. The conflict was sparked by implementation there of Catholic Church teachings on social justice and by the emergence of liberation theology, which Washington long considered and treated as a threat to national security.
With that in mind, the college of cardinals might be suggesting that new pope’s trajectory embodies the response Catholics should take to the United States’ cruel history of violence in what it has long considered its “backyard.”
Think about it: Prevost so identified with the oppressed that he became a citizen of Peru, the home of the great liberation theologian, Gustavo Gutierrez. Could Leo’s election be another affirmation of liberation theology and of “Americans” need to identify with the Global South? Whether intended or not, the attentive can make such connection.
Prevost & Social Justice
In any case, Prevost’s clear identification with the oppressed was further underlined by his papal name, Leo XIV.
The name suggests the new pope’s intention to continue his 19th century namesake’s landmark contribution to “the best kept secret of the Catholic Church,” viz., its social justice teachings which are rarely mentioned from North American pulpits.
Nevertheless, the Church’s constantly reiterated teachings on economic and political justice highlight themes of:
Along these lines, in 1891, Leo XIII wrote perhaps the most important papal encyclical of all time. (Papal encyclicals are pastoral letters written by popes for the whole Roman Catholic Church on matters of doctrine, morals, or discipline.) I’m referring to Rerum Novarum on “The Condition of the Working Class.” While affirming the right to private property, Rerum Novarum even more centrally asserted the dignity of labor, and the right of workers to form labor unions. For its time, it was revolutionary.
The encyclical was so important that three popes have specifically repeated and updated its radical teachings.
In 1931 Pius XI did so in Quadragesimo Anno published in the middle of the Great Depression. Quadragesimo Anno began with the words, “Forty years have passed since Leo XIII’s peerless Encyclical, On the Condition of Workers, first saw the light, and the whole Catholic world, filled with grateful recollection, is undertaking to commemorate it with befitting solemnity.
Forty years later in 1971, Paul VI commemorated Rerum Novarum again with his own Octogesima Adveniens. It identified action in the political arena as an essential element of Christian faith. Paul VI’s document begins with the words, “The eightieth anniversary of the publication of the encyclical Rerum Novarum, the message of which continues to inspire action for social justice, prompts us to take up again and to extend the teaching of our predecessors, in response to the new needs of a changing world.”
A final specific reiteration of Rerum Novarum was promulgated by Pope John Paul II in his Centesimus Annus published in 1991. Its first words are “The Centenary of the promulgation of the Encyclical which begins with the words “Rerum novarum“,1 by my predecessor of venerable memory Pope Leo XIII, is an occasion of great importance for the present history of the Church and for my own Pontificate.”
Meanwhile, in 1965, the Second Vatican Council published what many consider its fundamental document, Gaudium et Spes, “The Church in the Modern World.” In what remains the official teaching of the Catholic Church, the Council document (like Rerum Novarum) declared the Church to be an agent of social transformation. It called on Catholics to constantly read “the signs of the times,” to denounce social injustices and contribute to identification of appropriate remedies. The church is humanist, the Council said, in that humanity itself is central to its philosophical and theological thinking. Moreover, human beings are not primarily individuals, but essentially members of communities.
In other words, Leo XIII remains an unforgettable giant in the history of the Catholic Church. Despite its not being acknowledged from U.S. pulpits, his teaching about social justice constitutes a central element of Roman Catholic official doctrine. Robert Provost’s assumption of his name represents yet another reiteration of Rerum Novarum’s centrality.
The New Pope’s Promise
So, what does all of this portend for Leo XIV’s reign?
It suggests:
A continuation not only of the tradition of Leo XIII, but of Prevost’s immediate predecessor and patron, Pope Francis.
Yet another encyclical in the spirit of Rerum Novarum
This time incorporating the environmental themes of Francis’ Laudato Si’ (2015) which remains perhaps the most important document of the 21st century on climate change.
Leo XIV as an outspoken voice concerning the climatic and imperial causes of Global South immigration to Europe and North America.
Denunciations of U.S. forever wars as responses to global crises.
In other words, amid of one of our planet’s darkest hours, the election of Leo XIV could signal a highly significant turning point towards the light.
Today is Good Friday. This morning’s New York Times (NYT) correctly identified the day as “part of the holiest week in the Christian calendar.”
It also recalled President Trump’s campaign promise to “bring back Christianity.” According to him and his first lady that means following “the living Son of God who conquered death, freed us from sin, and unlocked the gates of Heaven for all of humanity.” The pair wants this to be “one of the great Easters ever.”
The article went on to recall how Mr. Trump’s aspirations were following and expanding the lead of George W. Bush who established the first White House Office of Faith Based and Community Initiatives in the early 2000s.
Mr. Trump’s “personal pastor,” Paula White-Cain who heads the Office affirms its ability “to weigh in on any issue it deems appropriate.” Chief among them, she said, were the desire to “eradicate anti-Christian bias” including deviation from the position that there are two sexes, male and female. Such concerns have afforded the Faith Office “unprecedented access” for faith leaders to “officials in intelligence, domestic policy and national security.”
Accordingly, Mr. Trump has often met with pastors from states like Colorado and Pennsylvania. On returning home, those reverends have shared photos taken with the president sometimes with heads bowed in prayer, imposing hands of blessing on the president’s head, or with Mr. Trump joining them in singing hymns.
All of this led the NYT article and accompanying video to identify the White House as “one of the safest places in the world to be a Christian.” In fact, one of the Christian pastors interviewed for the piece said that “he doesn’t see any rails on the limits of the faith office.”
Good Friday Perspective
As a Jesus scholar and theologian, I found all this quite ironic, false, and heretical. In my view it is reminiscent of Germany of the 1930s, when Christian pastors and Catholic bishops routinely endorsed the leader of the Third Reich, who also affirmed allegiance to the Jesus reflected in Mr. and Ms. Trump’s profession of faith.
The reality was, however, that Hitler’s Germany and the policies supported by Trump’s MAGA crowd reveal an actual hatred for Jesus mourned and celebrated this Good Friday. After all he was the son of an impoverished unwed teenage mother who was houseless at birth. He was an immigrant in Egypt. He was an unemployed construction worker. He was a harsh critic of the Jewish political and religious establishment, of the Roman Empire, and of the rich in general. He said that the future belonged to the poor, the non-violent, and those persecuted for justice sake. He ended his life as a victim of imperial torture and capital punishment.
Conclusion
So, if there are no rails, no limits, on Mr. Trump’s faith office how about lowering them for pastors like Episcopal Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde? (Remember how she infuriated Donald Trump and JD Vance at Trump’s inaugural prayer service at the National Cathedral in Washington. She did so merely by pleading with Mr. Trump to “have mercy” on LGBTQ people and immigrants targeted by his policies.)
If there are no rails, how about lowering them for rabbis, ministers, priests, and faithful demanding that Mr. Trump stop the Hitlerian genocide he’s committing in Zionist Israel?
If there are no rails, how about implementing policies that recognize and honor Jesus in the children of poor unwed teenage mothers, in the houseless, in immigrants, in the working class, in opponents of the rich and powerful, in those protesting the hypocrisy of Jewish Zionists, in U.S.-supported torture facilities, and on death row.
Only changes like those can convince followers of the historical Jesus that the White House is “one of the safest places in the world to be a Christian.” Only changes like those can make this “one of the great Easters ever.”
I never thought I would find myself writing these words. But I think the world is far better off with Trump as our president than with Genocide Joe Biden.
There I said it. I do so under the threat of great personal detriment. I mean, I can hardly voice such opinion in polite progressive company. I can’t even say so in my own family.
So, at the risk of complete isolation, let me try to explain myself.
I think the world’s better off with Trump because a head of state should at least be sui compos mentis. Clearly, Joe Biden was not. By most accounts, Jake Sullivan has been running the country for the last four years. Secondly, Trump is better because he’s backing us off from nuclear war with the Russians. Joe wouldn’t even talk with them. Thirdly, whatever we might think of his words about real estate in Gaza, the Donald has introduced a cease fire there. It seems to be holding. Fourthly, President Trump shows promise of dismantling the CIA and FBI. That has no downside as far as I can see. And finally, and perhaps most surprisingly, he’s unifying the country around the issue of truth-telling. I mean it. Let me explain.
Trump’s Not Senile
I can hardly believe the Democrats knew Joe Biden was mentally over the hill from the first day of his administration. And yet after four years, they were willing to run him out there for a second term, when everybody knew he could scarcely tell up from down.
How cynical is that? How disrespectful to voters! How anti-democratic!
Thank God for the first presidential debate that showed the old man mired in an advanced condition of senility.
As such, his defining issues became:
Billions and billions and billions for Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine. (Trump stopped that right quick.)
His inability to do anything about a ceasefire in Gaza. (Trump turned that around even before he was sworn in.)
Unstinting cooperation in the genocide of Palestinians. (We have yet to see Trump’s final policy here, though his words and supply of 2000 pound bombs are not promising.)
Maintaining U.S. hegemony at all costs.
Those are the issues that obsessed and defined Genocide Joe – Ukraine, Gaza, genocide itself, and refusal to recognize that we live in a multipolar world. Little else he did really counts.
Trump Talks Russian
In sharp contrast to Biden’s foolishness, Donald Trump has agreed to peace talks with our proxy adversary in Ukraine. That war could have been entirely avoided had Biden even acknowledged reading and had he responded to Mr. Putin’s peace proposal in December of 2021. However, preferring war to diplomacy, he chose not to.
Shortly afterwards, the war could have been stopped in its tracks had Biden not (through Boris Johnson’s nefarious graces) effectively voided the peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine initialed by both belligerents in March of 2022. Instead, the old man again chose war that so far has exacted more than a million casualties.
In other words, Biden’s version of diplomacy was refusal to even talk with Putin.
Donald Trump has reversed all of that. Simple man that he is, Trump evidently realizes what all of us teach our children – make up with those you’ve been fighting with. Talk with your “enemies.” Try to see things from their point of view. No good parent would instruct them otherwise.
Diplomacy is as simple as that. Its exercise under Donald Trump has made the world a safer place.
Ceasefire in Gaza
So far, Trump’s policy in Gaza has made Palestinians safer as well.
The whole sequence of events since Trump’s diplomatic intervention illustrates the point. Since then, the whole world has witnessed:
Thousands upon thousands of Palestinians returning “home.”
The Zionist-caused rubble of their homes, schools, hospitals, libraries, mosques, and churches.
The uncovering of untold numbers of friends, relatives, doctors, nurses, and teachers buried and uncounted under the rubble raising the number of Palestinians indiscriminately killed to well over 100.000 – more than half women, children, and the elderly.
The survival of Hamas fighters still proud, well-armed, and undefeated by Israel’s genocidal attacks.
The testimony of Hamas prisoners about humane treatment on the part of their captors.
The contrasting emaciated and evidently tortured bodies of Zionist prisoners released by the Zionists.
None of this has been good for Israel’s image in the world. Instead, it’s made the world aware of the justice of the Palestinian cause.
To repeat, all of that makes Palestinians safer. It has also shown President Trump’s policy in Israel to be better than Mr. Biden’s, at least so far.
Today, Palestinians are better off under Trump.
Dismantling the CIA
And then there’s Mr. Trump’s appointment of Tulsi Gabbard to oversee the country’s 18 spy organizations. Those agencies spy on us! They engage in regime change operations. According to ex-CIA director, Mike Pompeo, they lie, they cheat, they steal all the time. They take entire courses on how to do so. Pompeo was proud of that. He thought it was a big joke.
Tulsi Gabbard realizes all of that. In Senate testimony, she refused to identify Snowden as a traitor.
Clearly, she has the “intelligence” establishment quaking in their boots.
That makes all of us better off.
ConclusionBringing Us All Together
Recently, I saw a YouTube discussion between leftist comedian Jimmy Dore and progressive journalist Matt Taibbi. Dore raised a question about climate change. He confessed that in view of all the lies that have infected the scientific community (and American public life in general) he was for the first time having doubts about climate change. Was its threat being overblown?
In response, Taibbi admitted that the exposure of so many lies conveyed by politicians, clergymen, journalists, and university researchers had him wondering too. “I’m ashamed to say so,” he said in effect, “but all of that has me wondering about beliefs I’ve taken for granted over the last 30 years of my life.”
The exchange between Dore and Taibbi made me realize that even the falsehoods conveyed by the Liar in Chief currently manning the White House has important benefits.
On all segments of the political spectrum, it has us wondering about truth. We no longer trust those claiming to be truth tellers. We no longer trust the “fact checkers.” They’ve all been shown to be liars.
Regardless of where we stand on politics or climate change, that’s a hugely important point for Americans to realize and agree to. Thank you for bringing us together, Mr. Trump.
I’m always disappointed with Democracy Now’s (DN) coverage of Syria. Its reporting on the fall of the country’s president, Bashar al-Assad was no exception. It described Assad’s deposition as primarily a triumph of freedom and the will of a brutally repressed people.
Absent from DN’s narrative was the straightforward truth that the fall of Assad was the fruit of another regime change operation. It was part of the U.S. plan announced in 2001 to depose seven governments in five years, viz., Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Iran.
Though the American timetable was overly optimistic, with the change of regime in Syria, the U.S. has succeeded in hitting six of its seven targets. Only Iran’s government remains in place.
Let me show you what I mean by summarizing DN’s account, contrasting it with its counter narrative, and sketching the way U.S. regime change operations work.
The Official Syrian Story
For years DN’s usually critical founder, Amy Goodman, has for some reason sided with the United States and Israel by uncritically repeating their official story about the Zionists’ neighbor to the north. It tells us that:
Bashar al Assad is a brutal dictator who succeeded his dictator father to rule Syria with an iron fist for the last half century and more.
He has not only claimed absolute power in Syria,
But has run an extensive secret prison system there (a “human slaughterhouse”) where captives are systematically mistreated, tortured, and held without charge.
His use of chemical weapons against those objecting to his rule is well documented by independent witnesses such as the Syrian Civil Defense Organization, the “White Helmets.”
For all these reasons, the U.S. and Israel have long held that “Assad must go.”
“Moderate rebels” have recently transformed that imperative into facts on the ground. Thankfully, they have successfully overthrown the hated dictator.
Since his removal from office, his brutality and consequent unpopularity have received ample testimony and denunciation by ordinary Syrians who are universally celebrating his fall from power.
Thus the U.S. and Israel (as champions of democracy, just war, and humane incarceration, and as opponents of torture and the killing of innocent civilians) have triumphed once again in yet another mid-east country.
The triumph mirrors what they have accomplished so idealistically and benevolently in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Lebanon, Sudan, Somalia and other countries benefitting from their wars fought for democracy and peace.
That’s the official line DN’s Amy Goodman consistently presents and/or implies.
A More Complete Picture
However, what Goodman’s account fails to explore are its following contradictions that would have us forget that:
The foreign powers advocating and celebrating the end of Assad’s cruelty (i.e., Israel and the U.S.) are the current perpetrators of genocide in Palestine. Arguably, that deprives them of ability to convincingly champion human rights in any forum. It demonstrates that they have no concern about civilian deaths, secret prisons, unjust torture, democracy, freedom, or peace.
In fact (according to George Galloway) during its war on terror, the U.S. used Syrian prisons as black sites to which they rendered “terrorists” for torturous interrogation.
Moreover, the “moderate” agents fulfilling the U.S. and Israel’s imperative to remove Asad from power are successors to the very “terrorists” responsible for al-Qaeda’s 9/11 attacks 23 years ago).
That is, while designating Syria as a “state sponsor of terrorism,” the U.S. has once again allied itself with al-Qaeda as it had in Afghanistan during Russia’s war there (1979-1989).
Additionally, the U.S. has crippled the Syrian economy by illegally occupying its eastern oil fields since 2014 effectively stealing its oil revenue since then.
While Israel has similarly occupied its neighbor’s Golan Heights.
Syria’s economy and population have suffered severe hardships under a U.S. sanctions regime that started in 2011 and whose effects worsened following a massive earthquake in February of 2023. For years they’ve had to function on the provision of a single hour of electricity each day.
Civil Discontent in Syria
As for the testimony of Syrians applauding and celebrating the fall of Asad . . .. It too demonstrates the effectiveness of standard American policy against designated enemies whose political “regimes” the U.S. wishes to change. That policy never deviates from the following procedure:
Vilify the regime leader as the latest incarnation of Hitler.
Under the pretext of punishing him, use sanctions, economic blockades, bombing, propaganda, bribery, election interference, terrorism, and internal subversion whose real purpose is to make the lives of locals so miserable
That they will arise,
Overthrow the regime in question,
And celebrate the victory as the triumph of democracy.
This is the standard policy followed not only against Syria, but against official enemies such as Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.
The subversion invariably causes the threatened governments to adopt their own counter-policies that the U.S. and its allies then describe as authoritarian, oppressive, and brutal. The policies include imprisonment of compromised political opponents, jailing and mistreatment of terrorists (no harsher btw than the mistreatment of prisoners in Israel and the U.S.), and restrictions on (usually foreign allied) press along with fifth column civil and religious organizations. All these government actions provide further evidence of the illegitimacy of the regimes in question.
They also provide well-meaning news sources like Democracy Now with reasons to uncritically repeat imperialist talking points.
Conclusion
Listening to Democracy Now’s account of a people’s triumph in Syria after more than a half century of dictatorship made me think of Cuba. As a friend of the revolution there and as a frequent visitor to the island, I couldn’t help thinking how in the case of a successful uprising there (God forbid!), a similar sort of account might be concocted.
There’d be the same people dancing for joy in Havana’s streets and the same people saying on camera how relieved they are that the hated regime had been deposed. There’d also be the same ex-pat Cuban professors from prestigious U.S. universities sharing the joy and supplying historical details about the brutalities of Castro’s legacy.
Misinformed viewers would be led to conclude “Thank Goodness Cubans are finally free!”
But if the current Syrian template were followed, those viewers would never be stimulated to question the official story. They’d never be reminded of the disastrous effects of 60 years of sanctions, blockade, and acts of terrorism against the state. They’d never know about attempted assassinations of the country’s president. Neither would they think critically about the effect of anti-Cuban propaganda on their own psyches.
The point I’m trying to make here is that questions should always be raised about official stories concerning designated enemies of discredited imperialist countries like the United States and Israel.
They should be asked as well when perpetrators of genocide decry the human rights record “dictators” carefully selected from a long list of tyrants routinely supported by the complaining parties and when the black sites and “slaughterhouses” of the offending dictators have been used by their accusers themselves.
Yes, critical reporters should be able to identify such contradictions.
Simply repeating “the official story” helps no one.
About Things That Matter 