Not Of This World (Parable Of The Ten Virgins, Five.)

In the bullshit department, a businessman can't hold a candle to a clergyman. 'Cause I got to tell you the truth, folks: when it comes to bullshit - big-time, major-league bullshit - you have to stand in awe, in AWE of the all-time champion of false promises and exaggerated claims, religion. No contest! Religion easily has the greatest bullshit story ever told. Think about it: religion has actually convinced people that there's an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever 'til the end of time... But He loves you! He loves you, and He needs MONEY! He always needs money! He's all-powerful, all-perfect, all-knowing, and all-wise - somehow, just can't handle money! Religion takes in billions of dollars, they pay no taxes, and they always need a little more. Now, you talk about a good bullshit story... Holy Shit! ~George Carlin

...

Then Pilate entered into the judgment hall again, and called Jesus, and said unto him, Art thou the King of the Jews?

Jesus answered him, Say thou this thing of thyself, or did others tell it thee of me?

Pilate answered, Am I a Jew? Thine own nation and the chief priests have delivered thee unto me: what hast thou done?

Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is my kingdom not from hence.

Pilate therefore said unto him, Art thou a king then? Jesus answered, Thou say that I am a king. To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth hear my voice. ~John 18:33-37

I saw this last night.

Apparently Leonard Leo (of Federalist Society infamy) is trying to foist Sectarian (specifically, Catholic...and doubtless his Fundamentalist Medieval "Traditionalist" variety of Catholicism, at that) Public Schools on America. (You know, this is the kind of shit that the Pope fires people for.)

Bitch, your hyper-sectarian Ancient Regime Unga Bunga In Nomine Patrie bullshit is a tiny minority among practicing US Catholics (despite the outsized presence of such people online and in the Republican Party) much less among Americans in total. Right or wrong, Christianity is declining in America, especially among White people. Yes, this is about 90% the fault of 40 years of "Moral Majority" political bullshit from White Conservative "Christians" whose main beef with the rest of the world is that their kids might have to go to school with Black people. (And probably the other 10% is people just realizing "Hey, this is America, we don't have to be like that, here.)

Oh, sure, there's lots of Christians of Color and those groups are growing, if more slowly (and they're also joining diverse church communities that include White people, too, or getting White people to join them. Anti-Trump conservative David French comes to mind.) Arab Christians of all sorts, Black Baptists or Pentecostals, Asian, Latino and various other Catholics, Pacific Islanders whose classical Christian Fundamentalism descends directly from 19th Century Victorian missionaries, the list goes on. Way back in the day, I had a good friend who was a Korean Calvinist. There's also LGBT Christians, liberal Christians, leftover mainstream Protestant denominations, etc. The list goes on.

Most of these people can (and usually do) do the whole Christian thing without being assholes about it, in my experience. It's safe to say, I think...that those people ain't Leonard Leo's intended audience nor what nor who he's pandering to. His whole bit seems to be focused mainly on "Evangelizing" elites, Republicans, and the wealthy. (And then claiming that "Traditionalist" Catholics are persecuted or suppressed somehow. How that works when most of the few who are for real...and not scammy bitches shaking their boobs on Instagram or Twitter Theo-Bros who've never been laid...are in politics and/or fantastically wealthy, I have no idea.) I suppose he thinks they'll impose Feudalism on America for him, too, from the top down? Motherfucker somehow forgot we don't work that way here.

The Knights Of Malta would be hard-pressed to raise an Infantry Platoon on their own (although they'd probably have the wealth to support such quite well) but somehow they own like a third of the Republican Party, and despite the fact that throughout the world Opus Dei is primarily a Catholic sub-sect of the lower classes and more poorly educated people...those mooks had an outsized presence in the Trump administration.

Especially, and no I don't give a shit if this sounds judgmental, in a place like Oklahoma, where if you have a Rosary and don't have an Irish or Mexican last name, people look at you funny. Shit, last I knew, half the people in Oklahoma were Baptists of the sort who think the Catholic Church is basically the Antichrist and/or the False Religion of Revelations to start with, but of course this entire scenario is designed to provoke a Federal case because these fucking people are all lying fanatics who think they're too good to have to persuade anybody of their point of view, anyway. 

So they probably selected a hostile environment (and may well be trolling for a bad reaction from the local Fundamentalist Protestants, I don't know and I don't live there but I wouldn't put it past these motherfuckers to do exactly that) specifically for the reason of getting some flaming dumpster-fire of a scenario that's specifically designed to manipulate emotions in front of a jacked Supreme Court where four of the Justices are specifically Leo's little pets and one or two more are at least sympathetic and also grabbing a bunch of whiny media soundbites.

I'm sorry, but I happen to be more familiar with America's religious history than most people, and Medieval Catholicism quite literally doesn't have a history or place here. 

There's not a bit of malice in this, it's simply a function of who came here and for that matter who sent people here, back when that kind of shit was more important. We were the place outcasts tended to wash up. Our colonizers were Protestant (or at least Anglican) The people who were the ancestors of many Traditionalist Catholics were by affiliation and ethnicity a lot more prone to end up in Latin America than what became the US, or they stayed in Europe. At that time, they certainly didn't have to leave. 

Hell, Jose-Maria Escriva, the founder of Opus Dei, was from Spain. People like him never got ran out of Europe at gunpoint or shipped off to the "Colonies." Outside of post-Revolutionary France, at least, they had power and wealth enough, why leave?? 

As regards America's religious history and political and/or social beliefs, Calvinist Puritanism has had a whole hell of a lot more influence than Catholicism ever did...and there was a fair amount of malice in that. Among other things, the KKK was both Anti-Catholic and Anti-Semitic as well as being racist.

We didn't even have a Catholic President until 1961. Yes, the Kennedys were Diversity, such as it was at the time. And the people who pine for that time period, who think RFK Jr. is something, are far more likely to be MAGA Republicans who worship Trump than they are to be Democrats. 

Think about that for a second.

Also, as far as that history is concerned; There's a reason a guy like Malcolm X could say, regarding Black people; "We didn't land on Plymouth Rock, Plymouth Rock landed on us." Yet, you want to find a faithful Christian who isn't constantly trying to impose their politics or their religiosity on everybody else? Chances are, a lot of the more noteworthy examples you'll find are Black. For example, think of Barack Obama;

It was right here, in the waters around us, where the American experiment began. As the earliest settlers arrived on the shores of Boston and Salem and Plymouth, they dreamed of building a City upon a Hill. And the world watched, waiting to see if this improbable idea called America would succeed. More than half of you represent the very first member of your family to ever attend college. In the most diverse university in all of New England, I look out at a sea of faces that are African-American and Hispanic-American and Asian-American and Arab-American. I see students that have come here from over 100 different countries, believing like those first settlers that they too could find a home in this City on a Hill—that they too could find success in this unlikeliest of places. ~Barack Obama

There's nothing Biblical, historical, or even natural about this bullshit...let alone about these fucking people's project to do it here...except that they're probably too racist to do try this shit in any Catholic country like, say Mexico or the Philippines where they wouldn't automatically be arrested by the local authorities for trying to undermine the secular government. But most of the heavily practicing-Catholic countries where the actual traditional beliefs thrive also aren't White and if I had to guess that's an important part of this whole goddamn mess.

And I'm here to tell you, if These Fucking People succeed in their quest to break America in half (and undermining secular government is a part of this) the Medieval Catholics are going to shank their Evangelical and Fundamentalist Protestant "Allies" right in the back, and probably a fair number of them will get shot for it too. The only things, functionally, keeping these two groups from killing each other now are the Constitution and a strong legal system. Take that shit away, leave these fucking people living in a banana republic with a weak government (and no military except raggedy-ass militias and whatever crap is provided by the Russians) in parts of the South and the lower Midwest, and guess what? 

The very first thing the religious nuts will do is start jockeying for power...the second is they'll start murdering each other over it. There's a non-zero chance that a rump United States, along with the EU, the United Nations, etc. would have to invade that shit just to make sure that there was people left who could surrender to any invading force. Trust me, I'm somebody who's crawled through the underbelly of American Christianity and who's made the mistake of fucking a couple religious fanatics. You do not ever want to see American Wars Of Religion, let alone have to do Peacekeeping or rebuild after such a thing. There wouldn't be anything left! The only good outcome here is to not let it happen in the first place! If you think their ideal of the Killing Fields with a mall...effectively demonstrated by their response to COVID-19...is nuts, wait until they tell you "It's not the Mark Of The Beast when We do it!"

Look at history, extremist religiosity and a zero-sum mentality is always a bad combination. Our Founders knew that. Europe's wars of religion were still then in living memory. That's why they started the United States as a secular country with a Constitution and did not follow after their European ancestors in establishing a national church that oppressed religious minorities. That's why we have Presidents and not Kings. You don't have to guess at this or need an Archaeologist to figure it out. They said so, they wrote it down, the documents in question still literally exist. You can see this history for yourself and I've made an effort in this life to do so.

And the only reason somebody like Leonard Leo doesn't see the obvious answer here (Hint; It's a "No.") is that he doesn't want to.

But these assholes already started out thinking they know better than Jesus Christ...but that's because they want it to be their Kingdom. Jesus doesn't have one damned thing to do with it.

The whole point of America is Citizenship, not religious belief. We already decided this. That's actually why these fucking people hate America.

Freedom isn't free, and sometimes you have to fight for it.

Слава Україна!

"The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride." ~Volodymyr Zelenskyy, allegedly 25 February 2022, Associated Press

Four

Then shall the kingdom of heaven be likened unto ten virgins, which took their lamps, and went forth to meet the bridegroom.

And five of them were wise, and five were foolish. They that were foolish took their lamps, and took no oil with them: But the wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps.
While the bridegroom tarried, they all slumbered and slept.

And at midnight there was a cry made, Behold, the bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him.

Then all those virgins arose, and trimmed their lamps.

And the foolish said unto the wise, Give us of your oil; for our lamps are gone out. But the wise answered, saying, Not so; lest there be not enough for us and you: but go ye rather to them that sell, and buy for yourselves.

And while they went to buy, the bridegroom came; and they that were ready went in with him to the marriage: and the door was shut. Afterward came also the other virgins, saying, Lord, Lord, open to us.

But he answered and said, Verily I say unto you, I know you not.

Watch ye therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of man cometh. ~Matthew 25:1-13