This pope is simply another tired liberal masquerading as a religious leader. One catholic priest I spoke to said the pope makes his job much harder. Lots of lefty fake catholics have openly defied popes on abortion and the gay agenda.
Randy Treadwell American Greed: The Preacher’s Sinister Son: the son of a preacher, lives the righteous path, claiming he's a financial wizard. Randall Treadwell, 51, of Savannah, Ga., was sentenced to 25 years in prison and ordered to repay $44 million. Arnulfo Acosta, 45, of Edinburg Texas, an attorney, was sentenced to 7 years and 3 months in prison and ordered to repay $20 million. Two more defendants – Ricky Sluder and Larry Saturday – will be sentenced on Jan. 12. The gang promised returns of 2% to 50% a month – and in one case, “guaranteed” returns of 500% in 40 banking days, “risk free.” But it was a Ponzi scheme. Treadwell used his money to buy a luxury box to Jacksonville Jaguars games, buy a $100,000, sail around the Caribbean and pay the mortgage on his house.
Never heard of them, but it sounds like they got what they deserved. You don't judge a philosophy by it's misuse. Are atheists responsible for Stalin?
Greater Ministries International was an Evangelical Christian ministry that ran a Ponzi scheme taking nearly 500 million dollars from about 18,000 people. Headed by Gerald Payne in Tampa, Florida, the ministry bribed church leaders around the United States. Payne and other church elders promised the church members double their money back in 17 months or fewer, citing Biblical scripture. However, nearly all the money was lost and hidden away. Church leaders received prison sentences ranging from twelve and half years to 27 years.
Brother Pankey This is unbelievable. Right-Wing Republican “return Idaho to the God of the Bible and Constitutional principles,” Steve Pankey ran as Idaho candidate for governor in 2018 had earlier in 1984 kidnapped 12 year old Jonelle Matthews from a church he once attended, committed “crimes of violence,” and shot her in the forehead. He dumped Jonelle's body in Colorado and she was found a year later. Steven Pankey participated in Ballotpedia's candidate survey on May 8, 2018. The survey questions appear in bold, and Steven Pankey's responses follow below.[6] What do you perceive to be your state's greatest challenges over the next decade? “ Maintaining traditional core values with a Biblical and Constitutional perspective.[8] ” —Steven Pankey
Here is a newly released video by the journalist and minister Chris Hedges presenting a profound critique of cults in the world today:
Thank The Lord that I am not infected by that other pandemic that is the spiritual disease of American Christian Fascism which is a cult of bigotry, racism, hate, greed, and idolatry. Pro-Trump Televangelist Rev. Kenneth Copeland
And disturbingly it is an idolatry that knows itself to be idolatry; a form of malicious idolatry. Theologian Paul Tillich wrote of this phenomenon as it appeared in Nazi Germany dressed up in Christian values. "Those possessed of demons in the New Testament know more about Jesus than those who are normal, but they know it as a condemnation of themselves in their condition of cleft-consciousness. The Ancient Church called the Roman Imperial Government demonic, because it made itself equal to God, and yet prayed for the Emperor and gave thanks for civic peace, which he assured. In a similar way religious Socialism attempted to show that Capitalism and Nationalism were demonic powers, insofar as they were at the same time sustaining and destructive, attributing divinity to their highest values. The development of European Nationalism [Nazism] and its religious interpretation of itself has fully confirmed this diagnosis of mine."--Paul Tillich, The Interpretation of History
Sometimes you just have to laugh. In 2010 the Mississippi pastor, Rev. Vaughn, was arrested for insurance and bank fraud in Louisiana, and served three years in prison. He became a minister of his own church in 2016, three years after getting out of jail for fraud--for FRAUD! Who does he think he is? Jim and Jammy [sic] Baker? Mississippi pastor regrets that his viral pro-Trump video dredged up his criminal past.
A related report: Survivor of the Jonestown Massacre compares Trump to Jim Jones: 'The rhetoric is so similar,' by Alex Henderson November 19, 2020
Just weeks after Christian minister Todd Dunn posted that "Leftist forces were using the pandemic to keep churches from assembling," both his parents would die in hospital within a few hours of one another. Despotism always uses religion as a political weapon and this abuse of the sacred is right out of the fascist playbook of both Trump and Italy's two term fascist ruler Silvio Berlusconi (2001-2006 and 2008-2011). Trump proclaimed to be "the Chosen One" while looking up at the sky. Berlusconi called himself "the Jesus Christ of Italian politics," and that he was the savior of Italy, and a martyr persecuted by the Left-Wing ("Berlusconi Says 'I Am Like Jesus,'" BBC News, Feb. 13, 2006; Renato Schifani, in Marco Travaglio). Fascist propaganda results in innocent people needlessly dying. Charles and Shirley Dunn died within hours of one another at Texas Health Harris Methodist Hospital in Fort Worth after entering the hospital with COVID-like symptoms. Image from: Twitter
And I just remembered that the Golden State Killer, Joseph DeAngelo, had the same reverence for law and order. You should always obey the police and never question authority-- Joseph DeAngelo wrote in his police exam (The Golden State Killer)
I have watched the sell pitch for the "Epic Times" on YouTube while watching progressive videos and not once had there been a warning that the "Epic Times" was a news publication of a death cult. Thanks for the heads up YouTube! Everyone must have be careful as Trump fades away many of his cult followers will attempt a transformation and distant themselves from the Republican Party which attracts the worst psychopaths of American society. REVEALED: Trump-promoted social media star of "Epic Times" has secret ties to apocalyptic Chinese Falun Gong religious group "...the Epoch Times has grown into one of the largest clearinghouses for pro-Trump conspiracy theories. Originally a nonprofit newspaper devoted to the anti-Communist platform of a Chinese-American religious group Falun Gong, the paper is now the largest single buyer of pro-Trump advertising after the Trump campaign itself. Last year alone, the site spent $1.5 million in 11,000 Trump ads." (Source).
Here is a sermon by Rev. Chris Hedges that reviews much of 2020, and the state of democracy. The Meaning of Christmas | Chris Hedges December 2020
Here is another great video hosted by Chris Hedges discussing the power of the classics, such as Sophocles' play Philoctetes, to elucidate mass incarceration with Emily Allen-Hornblower and Marquis McCray. Emily Allen-Hornblower is a professor of Classics at Rutgers University and recipient of a Whiting Foundation grant to foster dialogues about the classics with incarcerated and formerly incarcerated men and women. Marquis McCray is a social justice advocate and spent 28 years in prison. He studied the classics through the prison college program offered by Rutgers University.
Still, no justice for the hundreds of thousands tortured and buried in mass graves in Guatemala. Sister Dianna Ortiz—US nun who survived Guatemala torture and became human rights champion—dies at 62.
"Amid the disorienting smog of eulogies for George Schultz, we should pause for at east a minute to recall the role of the State Department in the abduction, torture, gang rape and subsequent smearing of Sister Diana Ortiz by Guatemalan military goons, some trained at the School of the Americas."--Jeffery St. Claire
This is an important article written by Chris Hedges on the American Christian Right ('Quintessentially American': The worst aspects of US society are sacralized by a heretical form of Christianity). He has studied these groups for many years and is still warning of the danger they pose to democracy and Christianity itself. The same phenomenon was observed with the rise of Nazism in Germany within the Christian Churches. Robert Aaron Long, 21, was charged with murdering eight victims, six victims were Asian women, at three Atlanta-area massage parlors. "Long did not need the Christian fascism of his church to justify to himself the killings; the racial hierarchies within American society had already dehumanized his victims. His church simply cloaked it in religious language. The jargon varies. The dark sentiments are the same."--Chris Hedges The fascists must keep the population fractionalized to prevent widespread block voting against the racist nationalistic right-wing political playbook. One way to establish electoral division is to create stereotypes of a perceived enemy and then maintain the straw man characterizations and media personalities to mobilize insurgents. Robert Long is one of many fascist extremist that disguise their motivations with fake religious language. The sex addict trope was meant to hide Long's racist motivation, and inflame other promising issues for more Southern corn pone legislation aimed at pornography, and massage parlors. Another example is the Breitbart political operative and comedian Milo Yiannopoulos who plays a gay person, a 'cured' gay person, a secular atheist, a Christian, a conservative, and then a liberal, and all combinations thereof to construct and maintain the straw man that would otherwise fade away. Milo also play the role as the bait at university "freed speech" events that were really violent ambushes planned by White Supremacists. Dave Rubin is another right-winger that plays the role of a gay, reformed gay, non-Christian, converted Christian conservative that was at one time a liberal. These are fake personas to keep an array of straw man stereotypes alive for orchestrating hate and intensify division. The mainstream media are an important part of this agitation propaganda campaign--and it is extremely profitable for all parties involved, except for those of us that are murdered. Former Attorney General William Barr under Trump attempted to do the same with the stereotyped "Antifa," homunculus by targeting someone like Michael Forest Reinoehl who he had targeted for murdered in an ambush by police. Reinoehl was presented as the exemplar of an "Antifa" agent even thought the Department of Homeland Security, Brian Murphy reported there is no Antifa organization, only a general distaste for authoritarianism by some in the population. Barr's next step was to build a false historical record around Reinoehl and then go for a national roundup of "Antifa." Trump himself called Reinoehl's murder a "retribution." Billions of dollars and millions of manpower hours have been spent by think tanks and elite American universities to create this very sophisticated propaganda campaign in preparation of a future fascist takeover of the US Government by protesting the very social issues they worked to create and inflame.
Not everyone has lost their minds. Faith Leaders Denounce The Radicalization Of White Christians In Wake Of Capitol Riot. During times of political unrest there is always an out break of buffoonery. Pro-Trump pastor mercilessly mocked after video reveals his unhinged rant attacking 'baby-killing socialist' Biden.
In regard to the rise of Christian Nationalism with fascism, see the article: "The Coup & The Military-Christian Nationalist Industrial Complex:The retired military played an outsized role in Trump's coup attempt. And Christian nationalism and dominionism played an outsized role in preparing them for it. Warnings go back more than 15 years." Paul Tillich witnessed the rise of Nazism in the name of Christian Nationalism, and understood nationalism as a form of idolatry which he described as dynamic, self-sustaining, creative evil--or, demonic. Tillich warns that the first step to totalitarianism is making the simple analogy between the powerful state and the individual person (my bold text for emphasis): "...those who for seemingly moral reasons want to push the analogy as far as possible and make the state into a person do so in order to judge the state by the same principles by which they judge individuals, including themselves. What they actually do, however, in emphasizing the analogy, is to prepare the way for dictators, for totalitarianism. This is because at the moment in which the state is thought of as a person, the leader of the state becomes its center, its deliberating and deciding center, and there is no longer a possibility of criticizing him. Therefore, I ask those who are deeply concerned about the moral problem in this respect to avoid placing an emphasis on such an analogy.(Paul Tillich, My Search for Absolutes,(pdf.), 1964, p. 28 )."
When the going gets crazy, the crazy get going. The Cult of Irrationality lead by Diaper Don (He wears a diaper built into his pants for times that he gets too excited) has become the demonic idol of the American Christian Right-Wing. This pattern of Christian Churches joining in with the Nazis has been seen before. Some resisted such as theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer and many more leftist ministers, but were eventually overwhelmed by the Nazi death cult to be tortured and executed. This is how crazy it can get... Right-wing pastor Andrew Wommack wants LBGTQ Americans to have a warning label on their foreheads. Trump-loving pastor Mario Mruillo calls on followers to 'terrify national Democrat leaders': Evangelist Mario Murillo gave a sermon posted on the Destiny Image YouTube channel, which he appeared to be speaking at dominionist pastor Ché Ahn's Harvest International Ministry in Pasadena, California. Pastor James Kendall of Grace Community Church in Madera, California explains why QAnon is against everything Christianity is about. Diaper Don Diaper Don (the picture, like Hilter's media Nazi photo, has been faked, but Donny does wear a diaper!)