Dogmatic Dicky Durbin Does Doctrine Duty - Abortion Doctrine

• Dogma - “a doctrine or body of doctrines concerning faith or morals formally stated and authoritatively proclaimed by a church.” 
• U.S. Constitution - “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Officer or public Trust under the United States.” Article VI
• Dick Durbin - “Do you consider yourself an orthodox Catholic?”
• Cecile Richards - Planned Parenthood Harpy - “In times like these, you can’t underestimate the importance of leadership.  Planned Parenthood thanks Senator Durbin for fighting for a woman’s access to essential health care no matter where she lives,”

Senator Dick Durbin is nothing if not a clown; an oafish clown at that.

Even the Chicago Tribune Editorial Board of Bruce Dold has been forced to offer a very grudging and tepid criticism of Senator Dick Durbin's oafish treatment of a candidate for the Federal Bench.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., told Barrett that “the dogma lives loudly within you” and worried that it might take priority over the impartial administration of justice. Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois asked, “Do you consider yourself an orthodox Catholic?”

It may seem out of bounds for senators to raise the matter of how a judge’s Catholic faith would affect her decisions. But the senators didn’t raise it; Barrett did, in a 1998 law review article examining the obligations of Catholic judges in death penalty cases. It concluded that judges faithful to church teachings “are morally precluded from enforcing the death penalty.. . . Given that Barrett said judges shouldn’t let religious faith dictate their decisions, the exact content of her Catholicism, which Durbin wondered about, is irrelevant. He and Feinstein also erred by putting the issue in terms that could easily be interpreted to mean they distrust devout Catholics. That gave Barrett’s supporters room to accuse them of indulging bigotry and imposing a religious test for office.
It’s an implausible charge on its face. Both voted to confirm John Roberts and Sonia Sotomayor, who are Catholics. So, by the way, is Durbin, and Feinstein graduated from a Catholic high school.”

Without offering the slightest suggestion of Progressive Secularist Orthodoxy within the twin Senators' Inquisition, the Chicago Tribune  failed to call-out real bigotry. Feinstein and Durbin 'tested's.Barrett's faith in order to block her appointment to the Federal Bench.

The official religion of the Democratic Party and a very husky hunk of the GOP is Progressive Secularism and worship at the altars of Diversity, Mother Earth, Abortion, Globalism and Oligarchy is all but legislated.

Chicago Tribune columnist and political Latitudinarian John Kass, honestly reported and commented on the oafish and obvious dogmatism of politicians in the pay of Planned Parenthood. This writing savaged the bumptious Durbin.

Bruce Dold seemed compelled to toss out some dish water prose to wash away the blood on Durbin's face.

Durbin went all witch-hunt on Ms. Barrett, in order to show fealty to Planned Parenthood's blood money.

Arthur Miller would have shivered the timbers of the Commonwealth were he alive to pen a new Crucible.

You see, Durbin, is a renegade.  He took the coin of the industry most out of orbit of the Roman Catholic Church - the Abortion Industry.  He not only took the coin but used the office of United States Senator to further its power and influence.

The Catholic Ordinary of the Diocese of Springfield, Bishop Thomas Paprocki noted this in 2014 -

“Senator Durbin was informed several years ago by his pastor at Blessed Sacrament Parish here in Springfield that he was not permitted to receive Holy Communion per canon 915 of the Code of Canon Law,” Bishop Paprocki reportedly wrote in response to a pro-life activist's query, the Illinois Review reported. “My predecessor upheld that decision and it remains in effect. It is my understanding that the senator is complying with that decision here in the Diocese of Springfield in Illinois.”
Canon 915 states that those who have been "obstinately persevering in manifest grave sin are not to be admitted to holy communion."

No taking of the Eucharist for Durbin in his home diocese, but I am certain he will be admitted to the rail at Holy Name Cathedral, where Pastor Pfleger-approved Cardinal Cupich welcomes political powerhouses.  Take that like  doctrine, brothers and sisters, because Cardinal Blase Cupich will offer no criticism of Durbin, Emmanuel, Preckwinkle, Pfleger or Duckworth.  He will offer no reminders to his media friends, Michael Sneed, Carol Marin, Mary Schmich, or Rex Hupke that the media must afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted.

Cardinal Cupich wants to be loved, by the powerful and their stooges - he is. He banned guns from Catholic Churches.  This Sunday I will leave my 9mm on the kitchen counter where it belongs, Priase Jesus!

The Rev. Michael Pfleger, pastor of St. Sabina Catholic Church and a prominent activist against gun rights, said after surveying clergy, the late Cardinal Francis George chose to leave it up to priests to ban firearms from individual parishes. On Tuesday, Pfleger praised Cupich's decree.
"There has been this kind of madness, in my mind, a growing obsession that guns are needed to be safe," he said, adding, "With that reality growing day by day, it is a tremendous statement for the cardinal to say for the church, we are not buying into this madness. In our buildings and our properties, we are not going to allow guns."  

Guns kill people, like pencils flunk tests.

Cupich sought and received the imprimatur of Pastor Pfleger and wears it like his pallium.

Even Mary Schmich, aswell as The Seeker Manya Brachear,  says nice things about Cardinal Blase.

Cardinal George afflicted the powerful and comforted the powerless.  Cardinal George acted more than he proclaimed.

Cardinal George did that and the stooge media detested the man.

Durbin is living Progressive Secularist Dogma.

He only turns to the faith of his fathers when he needs a photo op with some Knights of Columbus.

Dogma Dicky Durbin does doctrine.  He is clown, but a very dangerous and powerful clown

Why do Progressives Hate Italian Americans?

Columbus - Genocidal Genoan
Democrat Ameya Pawar says that if elected Illinois governor, he would work to have Illinois rename Columbus Day as Indigenous Peoples Day.

Balbo - Gotta Go!
 When a reporter demanded to know where the mayor stands on the monument given to Chicago by fascist Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, Emanuel got visibly annoyed and started to lose his cool.

“You don’t have to ask me what my position is on fascism. Thank you. I’m against fascism. Take a chill pill, will you?” the mayor said.

Why do Progressives need to insult Italian Americans at every turn?  They discovered the Land of the Free and Home of Brave.  Italian Americans  fought in every American conflict for freedom from the Revolution to today's war on Islamist Terror.  Thomas Jefferson formed the United States Marine Corps Band, "The President's Own," around fourteen Italian musicians. Italian Americans, like Brigadier General Luigi Palma Di Cesnola, Medal of Honor recipient, helped end slavery.

Enrico Fermi, Henry Mancini, Joe Di Maggio, Mother Cabrini, Frank Capra and the brilliant Camille Paglia have all added to American culture and its benefit to mankind.

In World War I, 400,000 Italian Americans went to war under our flag, though they made up only 4% of the national population and 10% of AEF casualties were Italian Americans.  They came home to Palmer Raids  sparked by the great Progressive Woodrow Wilson's anti-foreigner paranoia.

Today, in our goofy Progressive Politically Correct SJW Kutur Kampf which has but erased religion in public dialog, as had the secularist states of Progressive Europe in 1870's,   iconoclasm, intolerance and  dystopian initiatives to erase history have leaped from the Red Neck Confederacy to Italian American celebrations.

The statue to Balbo has stood on Lake Shore Drive since 1933 (seven years before WWII).  Only now, with political skinks like Terry McAullife of Virginia and Alderman Ed Burke of Chicago getting into the iconoclasm business, is Balbo's column an existential crisis.  Progressives always seem to be the most energetic when public scrutiny turns their way.

Columbus Day has long been a Progressive whipping boy - He was not the first to sail the Ocean Blue, He was a Nasty Viceroy, he hated indigenous peoples, or so some Howard Zinn contrarians decided Columbus to be.

Balbo is only the latest Progressive assault on Italian Americans, since Jane Addams erased Mother Cabrini.

Italo Balbo was an Italian aviator who flew an armada of seaplanes from Italy to Chicago. No mean feat that, in 1927.  However, Balbo's exploit helped make Mussolini Il Duce, or so say the Atticus Finch crowd.

Losers lose history. The Rebs and the Fascists are losers.  However, lost in all the fog created by the hot breath from the moral high ground is the fact that AntiFA activists support HAMAS and Hamas is a child of Hitler's favorite Muslim - Grand Mufti.

The United Nations, long the darling of tinpot dictators and psychopaths issued this dire warning on American racism, “We are alarmed by the racist demonstrations, with overtly racist slogans, chants and salutes by white nationalists, neo-Nazis, and the Ku Klux Klan, promoting white supremacy and inciting racial discrimination and hatred,” said Anastasia Crickley, chair of the committee.

 Irish UN harpy Anastasia Crickly forgets that the IRA was armed and aided by Admiral Canaris all through WWII and that the IRA founder of Amnesty International was a Nazi collaborator.

No one is taking down any Shamrocks.

Italian Americans get it good an hard from the hypocrites and weasels, but Italian Americans are better people people than those who insult them

History proves that.

University of Notre Dame's Little Manicheans

America has been led by the nostrils by Manicheans to the point where people test the atmosphere before offering an opinion on anything - life, marriage, identity, fried chicken breast cuts, hot, or cold  coffee products poured by baristas, doctors dragged off of United Airlines flights, Black Lives, White Guilt, historical cycles, or bathrooms.

People really have their shorts in a knot in Old Columbia - 24/7.

Musicians refuse to buy products at a store that they had for over thirty years because the owners voted for Donald Trump and Fox News junkies continue to watch Bill O'Reilly, but revile Bill Cosby.

This underlying cultural mind-set was formed by a pre-Islamic, 3rd Century Persian prophet by the name of Mani.

Mani had an ecstatic vision at ages 12 and 24 of a "heavenly twin" telling him to leave his father's cult, a sort of Jewish/Christian gnostic sect, and preach a new gospel Christ with Mani serving as a composite prophet (Christ, Zoroaster and the Buddha).  Everything is either good, or bad.

Manicheanism divided followers accordingly - electi ( the elites) and auditores ( everyone else).

Manicheanism was suppressed by Christianity:

The key to Mani's system is his cosmogony. Once this is known there is little else to learn. In this sense Mani was a true Gnostic, as he brought salvation by knowledge. Manichæism professed to be a religion of pure reason as opposed to Christian credulity; it professed to explain the origin, the composition, and the future of the universe; it had an answer for everything and despised Christianity, which was full of mysteries. It was utterly unconscious that its every answer was a mystification or a whimsical invention; in fact, it gained mastery over men's minds by the astonishing completeness, minuteness, and consistency of its assertions. Catholic Encyclopedia

Manicheanism returned with the Puritanism of John Calvin and especially the Methodism of John Wesley.  The notion of the elect.  It really took off in the 19th Century with the 'Great Awakening' in England and America. Unitarianism and radical abolitionism evolved into the transcendentalism of Emerson and Thoreau and radical intolerance of William Lloyd Garrison, Lyman Beacher, Jane Addams, Roger Baldwin and W.E.B. Du Bois.

WEB Dubois espoused the openly Manichean concept of "talented 10 percent" that has suppressed African American advancement as much as Jim Crow  -electi the talented 10%; auditores the unfortunate 90%.

Manicheans hated Marriage as well, " St. Augustine (especially "De Moribus Manich.") strongly inveighs against the Manichæan's repudiation of marriage. They regarded it as an evil in itself because the propagation of the human race meant the continual imprisonment of the light-substance in matter and a retarding of the blissful consummation of all things; maternity was a calamity and a sin and Manichæans delighted to tell of the seduction of Adam by Eve and her final punishment in eternal damnation. In consequence there was a danger that the act of generation, rather than the act of unchastity was abhorred, and that his was a real danger Augustine's writings testify."

Planned Parenthood could not ask for more.

Differ in opinion and see what happens.

Today, Notre Dame students, like so many students in America's ridiculous universities, are frightened by the possibility of  Vice-President Mike Pence doing an ND commencement address.

Mike Pence is a Christian and formerly a Roman Catholic.  Notre Dame University is a public relations driven university that formerly taught Catholic doctrine and defended the faith.  Federal funding and American Manicheanism changed all of that.

Students Immane Mondane and Jourdyhn Williams are agitating to cancel that invitation with a #NotMyCommencementSpeaker hashtag that will feature students holding white boards with “direct quotes from Pence that are racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, offensive, or ostracizing to members of our community.”
Campus Reform reports that the students add, “You may also write about why you feel unsafe with the presence of Mike Pence on our campus.”. . .“I feel  that is offensive to such a large population here at Notre Dame, and I also believe it goes against certain Catholic Social Teaching, which is something the University likes to broadcast that it stands behind, but it picks and chooses when it wants to stand behind them,” Williams stated.

The anti-Pence campaign is just another insult to the Trump administration. The legendary Catholic university has historically invited the president of the United States in his first term of office. This year, apparently fearing student protest, the university invited Pence instead.

But the university’s efforts to pre-empt protest have proved unsuccessful. Besides the social media demonstration, other student groups are opposing the Pence invitation, including the Diversity Council and the College Democrats. Daily Caller

Time was that heresy was unacceptable at a Catholic University.  That was long before, a Manichean American President ordered crucifixes and Catholic icons covered, whenever he gave a speech at American Catholic Universities.

Manichean Americans kept the volume at scream levels.

Pensions Looted for Profit is Re(a)d Meat - Tim Novak Rides Again!

“Valerie Jarrett served as a board member for several organizations that provided funding and support for Chicago housing projects operated by real estate developers and Obama financial backers Rezko and Allison Davis. (Davis is also Obama’s former boss.)…

"The old social actionists are largely men of action, doers, not talkers. The new social actionists are intellectuals...They are masters at manipulating words and sometimes ideas...They are fervent crusaders." Andrew Greeley - "Catholic Social Action"

I rarely agreed with Fr. Andy Greeley.  Social change is brought about by people who actually, not virtually, do good. Real people, like Father George Clements and  Fr. Dan Mallette actually Marched for Civil Rights with Dr. King, because they followed clerics like Bishop Bernard Shiel who founded CYO - he did not advocate for it.  People in the action have little to do with "do-gooders' who never seem to leave the plush Oak Park and Hyde Park dens. It is easier to get behind masters at manipulating words and sometimes ideas. 

Newspapers rarely talk about people in the action, other than snag a quote that justifies the words of an Advocate, Activist, or Office Holder.  Most columnists go to the pap of preachy, pontificating poltroon's who give good prose, like Claypool, Quigley, Schakowsky, Durbin, Quinn and Mell in Chicago because they are policy people and do-gooders. Pap is easy to read and nod-with-ruminent conviction and chew the cud of vegan issues.  A few, like John Kass of the Chicago Tribune, go to people in the action and presents their lives and struggles mired in the bog created by policy wonks.

Investigative journalists, the best anyway, go where facts have ignited a prairie fire.  The worst are jigsaw puzzle masters of making facts fit a narrative.

Reporters, investigative reporters, connect the dots hidden from the public.  Even those of us who read and remember quite a bit have not the time, nor the opportunity to often go 'beyond' the story.  People must do their jobs, raise their kids and the millions of dollars of taxes Progressive thinking political insiders loot from the commonwealth.

I am a pathological reader, I read everything from Cosmo to Commonweal, from Pepsodent tubes to the runic script on top of light bulbs.  Love to read.

I also love to read works that have something to do with the truth.  Editorial boards tend to present only a prefabricated package of political proselytism - Vote for Kim Foxx, or Mark Kirk is not really Dick Durbin's purse puppy.

The Chicago Sun Times, in my opinion, has the wackiest Editorial policy mandate that seems to have been crafted by retired and bonged-up Weather Underground and Catholic Call to Action cranks.  That's just me.

However, I believe that the Sun Times has the best investigative reporters Dan Mihiapoulos, Chris Fusco and Tim Novak, when they are not saddled with editorial constraints, or Andy Shaw and Carol Marin.

Tim Novak is a terrier.  He is the only reporter in Chicago to maintain a jeweler's eye on the connections between the political grifters and the Progressive machine emanating from Hyde Park and Kenwood.

The Fifth Floor, Real Estate, TIFs,  Big banking, the CHA, Slum Lording, Chicago's Department of Planning and Development and the White House are all players with the peoples pensions.

Sewer deals for Daley cousins seem as nothing compared to Valerie Jarrett.

Today, Tim Novak keeps the heat on the most powerful people plaguing Chicago.

Over the past nine years, two nephews of former Mayor Richard M. Daley have been involved in separate plans to redevelop a rundown warehouse on 15 acres of polluted land in Little Village just north of the Stevenson Expressway.
It hasn’t turned out well for Chicago taxpayers.

First, taxpayers have to make up for $4.2 million in city pension money invested on behalf of teachers, police officers and other city workers that ended up squandered on failed development plans involving Daley’s oldest nephew, Robert G. Vanecko.
Now, taxpayers stand to lose another $4.1 million on the same property at 3348 S. Pulaski Rd. That’s the amount of a property-tax break given to a second redevelopment deal for the site.
This one involves Vanecko’s first cousin, Patrick Daley Thompson, an attorney who helped the developers get the tax cut last year shortly before he was elected alderman of the 11th ward — the family’s power base for six decades.

Well them boys are "in the action."  Not for social good, but for profit in the name of Progress. There is so much more and Tim Novak delivers! He connects the dots of the contemporary ledger and double book accounting to the days of yore and actually gives us context that a Chicagoan can sink teeth into and gnaw healthy opinion into being - we are screwed not by the usual suspects, but by the do-gooders!

 The story of how the polluted Pulaski Road property became toxic for Chicago taxpayers begins in 2004, when Daley was still mayor. That’s when Vanecko — his sister’s oldest son — went into business with Allison S. Davis, the Chicago attorney who gave President Barack Obama his first job out of Harvard Law School, and Davis’ son Jared Davis.

Operating under the name DV Urban Realty Partners, their idea was to redevelop properties in some of Chicago’s most downtrodden neighborhoods. And they were aiming to get government pension funds to invest $100 million to bankroll their plans.
They had a hard time securing investments from pension funds, though, until the Chicago Teachers Retirement System agreed in early 2005 to put in $25 million of the money it held toward teachers’ retirement pay.

Then, the pension funds for police officers, municipal employees, city laborers and the Chicago Transit Authority also agreed to invest.
Altogether, the Davises and Vanecko wound up with $68 million from five public pension funds.

Man, if the editorial will of Chicago newspapers matched the grit of some of it's reporters, maybe a couple of dollars might be left in the kitty at the end of a Moody's evaluation.

This is meaty wholesome goodness in font!  It will put off the vegan offal digestions of 'edgy,whip-smart and Progressive voices in our city.

Eat more Chicago! Thanks for the red meat, Mr. Novak!

Chris Matthews Convinced Me to Vote For Trump

MSNBC's Chris Matthews was asked for his reaction to the speech during the network's convention coverage and didn't hold anything back.
"I don't understand why the Republicans would choose to put this on prime-time television when they have such wonderful stories of American heroism to speak to the American people," an emotional Matthews said. "I think it was wrong.
"I don't care what that woman up there, the mother, has felt. Her emotions are her own. But for the country in choosing a leader, it's wrong to have someone get up there and tell a lie about Hillary Clinton. It's not true. It's logically not true. I think it's wrong that they ruined their evening with this."
The first night of the Republican National Convention is only an hour old in prime time. 

I first became aware of MSNBC when the Ken Starr hearings were taking place and President Bill Clinton, a man I worked to get nominated and elected and voted for twice, became the first President to impeached after the Radical Republicans went mad-dog on President Andrew Johnson.

Republicans were always the party of the abortion lovers, the labor haters, the bank-rollers of the KKK ( yep, the blue stocking crowd were GOP bigots and the cross- burning bullwhippers were Cracker-Democrats) closed-country clubs to Catholics, Jews and African Americans.

As the Progressives like to say, things evolve.  The Progressive Wasp fleas jumped from the GOP, for the most part ( clowns like Senator Mark Kirk of Illinois excluded) and swarmed over the Democratic Party.  Progressives boarded and looted city, county and state governments with great speed after the Democratic Convention in Chicago 1996.  The individual was erased by the monopoly serving the few, but paying lip-service to the many: i.e. labor.

Labor no longer meant the Industrial and the Skilled Trades - Big Labor no longer meant the AFL-CIO - it meant AFSCME and SEIU.  Don't be confused. In order to survive organized labor allowed the mass numbers of unkilled people to reflect progress and power.  Real Power is in the hands of banks, law firms and agenda funded armies of people unleashed on foes, or imagined foes prior to during and well-after every election. Intimidation must be funded and it it,

In 2001, The Saban Group, Fred Eychaner and Steven Bing became the hard money of the DNC.

Democrats were no longer George Dunne, Richard J. Daley, John Stroger, Harold Washington,  Allen Dixon, Ed Howlett, Mike Sheahan, Jeremiah Joyce, or Kevin Joyce.  Democrats are led by people who were once, and should forever be, laughed out of the room - Rahm Emanuel, Barack Obama, Jan Schakowsky, Mike Quigley, Toni Preckwinkle and Pat Quinn.  Illinois no longer has Senators like Allen Dixon, or the GOP's Curley Dirksen; rather Illinois is represented by mealy-mouthed, vacuous ninnies and rump smoochers like Dick Durbin and Mark Kirk. Clowns all and padded by a lazy media.

Planned Parenthood now owns my local State Senator and Representative who have voted consistently against the values of the people they are meant to serve.

I was on the fence on this horrible election offering the choice between two persons I detest.  I detest one far less than Mrs. Clinton.

I remained a Democrat.  Today, I believe that I can safely vote for one Democrat who retains the values and work ethic of the Party formed my life as much as my education, and religion - Matt O'Shea 19th Ward Organization.

This week, the Buck Laughlin of political commentary, Chris Matthews pushed me into the Trump Camp.

Matthews went off on the mother of one of the slaughtered Benghazi heroes, whom Hillary Clinton disgraced with her lies.



Clown.

I was going to sit this election out.  Not now.  Matthews is a clown, but all of the clowns are backing a liar and a person who would walk over piles of dead children to get anything she wants at the moment and get more clowns to apologize for her.

I will vote against Hillary Clinton.  I will vote against what the Democrat Party has become.  I will hold my nose, gag up my gorge and vote for Trump.  That's one.

Just a Note to Mary Schmich - No Arrrests At the South Side Irish Parade

Leo Man marches with Big Shoulders Fund at the downtown St. Patrick's Parade.

Mary Schmich wrote a snotty and unnecessary column about St. Patrick's Day celebrations.

The Irish and Catholics in general are last ethnic joke-stereotypes available to faux wits in the media.

I penned a snotty, but most essential blog post in the response to a media person who gets a universal free pass on such nonsense as her column, because of her Progressive pedigree.

By way of courtesy, I offer this report that the south side Irish Parade was arrest free, even though it was very political: Rauner was heckled, Rahm was hectored and Chuy was  cheered.

 The South Side Irish Parade continued the St. Patrick's Day weekend celebrations Sunday by adding a third year to its zero-arrests record.
The annual event, which takes place in the Beverly neighborhood on the Far South Side, used to be known for its rowdiness, public drunkenness and high number of arrests. Parade organizers and Chicago Police cracked down on the mayhem in 2012 with a "zero tolerance" policy on alcohol, and the event has enjoyed zero arrests ever since.(emphsis my own)

No arrests.  At the downtown parade, I saw no bad behavior and the parade route was booze free. I saw drinking on the side streets, but no bacchanal. 

Why Americans are Silenced and by Whom - The Progressive Clerisy Explained by Joel Kotkin

Clerisy - Intelligensia - German Klerisei clergy, from Medieval Latin clericia, from Late Latin clericus cleric

Joel Kotkin is Casandra - that is if Casandra of epic Greek and Roman poetry looked like a dock-worker.  Joel Kotkin is a demographer ( studies the great American in his natural habitats: urban, rural and off-the -grid) more concerned with the living and breathing people of his study than the numbers that they represent.

I've been reading Joel Kotkin for years and every trend in population shift with underlying political and culture motor running them has been on the money.  Kotkin warned of the rise of the public sector unions, the titanium hand-cuffs of the welfare state, the Marxist control of immigration debate and the K-Street control of government back when Clinton was chasing interns through the cubicles and closets of the West Wing and few so-called political mavericks listened to his dire predictions.

Joel Kotkin clearly explained the gentrification of rust belt America as a signal accomplishment of Progressive hegemony.  The Smart Sizing of American cities is more about eliminating ethnic neighborhoods and opening up green-space for the elite than it is about meeting the challenges of a down-sized economy.

Somebody Else's Troubles is the meme of the New Progressive Millennium. The elites have their's - Up Yours, Dude.

The elites are the gated community of discourse and debate.  In his latest article published in New Geography reintroduced me to a word that I had forgotten from the time I took Father Charles Rohan, SJ's course on the Revolutions of 1848 at Loyola University in 1973.  That word is clerisy.  Kotkin offered clerisy in a previous New Geography articles on the eve of Term II Obama -

Like empowered bureaucrats everywhere, the clerisy also sometimes reserves a nice “taste” for themselves, much as the old bishops and upper clergy indulged in luxury and even prohibited pleasures of the flesh. Just look at the lavish payouts accorded to Orszag and Treasury Secretary-designate Jacob Lew, who, after serving in the bureaucracy, make millions off the same Wall Street firms that have so benefited from administration policies.
So who loses in the new order? Certainly unfashionable companies  – oil firms, agribusiness concerns, suburban homebuilders — face tougher times from regulators and the mainstream media . But the biggest losers likely will be the small business-oriented middle class. Not surprisingly Main Street, far more than Wall Street, harbors the gravest pessimism about the president’s second term.

These later-day-oligarchs  'wet their beaks' like Don Farnucci and do not countenance any nay-saying.  Telling the mass of folks to keep their opinions to themselves, to 'suck it up and salute,' demands a great deal of shovel-ready engineering and Obama's handlers have done just that in less than eight years and they ain't nearly done!

Kotkin is on it.

An alliance of upper level bureaucrats and cultural elites, the Clerisy, for for all their concerns about inequality, have thrived, unlike most Americans, in recent years. They also enjoy strong relations with the power structure in Washington, Silicon Valley, Hollywood and Wall Street.
As the modern clerisy has seen its own power grow, even while the middle class shrinks, it has used its influence to enforce a prescribed set of acceptable ideas. On everything from gender and sexual preference to climate change, those who dissent from the official pieties risk punishment.
This power has been seen recently in a host of cancellations of commencement speakers. Just in the past few months Ayaan Hirsi Ali, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, International Monetary Fund managing director Christine Lagarde, and former UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau, have been prevented from speaking by campus virtue squads whose sensibilities they had offended.
The spate of recent cancellation reflect an increasingly overbearing academic culture that promotes speech codes on what is permissible to say and even seeks to provide “trigger warnings” to warn students about the presence of nominally troubling subject matter in readings and discussions so they can avoid the elements of reality they find offensive.
The very term Clerisy first appeared in 1830 in the work of Samuel Coleridge to described the bearers society’s highest ideals: the intellectuals, pastors, scientists charged with transmitting their privileged knowledge them to the less enlightened orders.  

In Chicago, these bearers if society;s highyest ideals are retired terrorits like Billy Ayers and his odious Old Lady, Bernardine Dohrn, Hyde Park/Evanston  Mafia Dons like Abner Mikva, the late Dawn Clark Netsch, and the Red Dorain Grey Dr. Quentin Young, The Money - SEIU, Personal PAC Illinois, and Fred Eychaner This is the top of the food chain.

The level two elites are the elected officials academics, lawyers and activists, like G. Flint Taylor, Jon Loevy, Locke Bowman Craig Futterman, Thundering Dick Simpson of UICC and Martin Oberman Metra Overlord, the editorial boards and iconic columnists of both Chicago Papers and elected officials who do their biddings.

Third level elites are the qui bono go-alongs - investors, appointees, political debutantes in waiting.

Joel Kotkin warned that the fix was going in years ago with Casandra-like accuracy.  Remember, that erasing history and memory itself is essential to Progressive control - they will tell you what the 'right side of history, the climate, the fate of Israel, the minimum wage, the definition of marriage, the homicide rate, the fairness of everything and everything that "just can not wait, because we all have waited too long."

If you differ, you are

• A denier
• A hater
• A Palin
• A Flat-earther
• A Racist
• A Red-neck
• An Idiot
• A Catholic
• A Jew
• A Baptist

You will never be Bill Moyers, a member of CAIR, a Unitarian, or an NPR subscriber,    

Kotkin predicts ( and I have yet to catch him in error) that Clerisy is here to stay.

Will the Clerisy rule after Obama?
The fact that Republicans continue to maintain considerable power in both Washington and the states suggests that the Clerisy’s power is not yet determinative. And indeed after President Obama leaves office, the Clerisy’s reach may be temporarily diminished, but its ability to set the social and political agenda will likely persist and even grow given their influence to shape perceptions, particularly among the young.

 

What are you going to do about it, tough guy?

Hate Jews? No Sweat. Anti-Semitism is SALONFAHIG

Meet the Mitford Girls!  They were John Kerry before he learned to love Ketchup!

"The English have no notion of the Jewish danger. Our worst Jews work only behind the scenes. We think with joy of the day when we will be able to say England for the English! Out with the Jews! Heil Hitler![ P.S. please publish my name in full, I want everyone to know I am a Jew hater." Hon. Unity Mitford 

"I'm sure he (Hitler) was to blame for the extermination of the Jews . . ."I'm sure he (Hitler) was to blame for the extermination of the Jews"  The Hon. Diana Mitford, Lady Mosley

The Hon. Diana Mitford, Lady Mosely and her Sis Unity Mitford 

Secretary of State John Kerry went all Donald " Big Whip" Sterling about Israel's need to Judenrein.  Hey, John Kerry is a Vietnam Vet.  Thought I'd get that factoid out of the way.  He is also a Harvard Grad and married the heir to the Heinz Ketchup fortune on second run nuptials and he ran for President and we was a U.S. Senator for many years.

Secretary Kerry said that Israel could become an Apartheid State.  Apartheid is a Dutch word that means ‘separateness,’ and has come to mean any damn thing.  John Kerry, in my C student's opinion, is a dope, not real bright, short of smart and pretty much a dim bulb.  Elected and appointed public office is the warehouse of limited.  There are some exceptions to this canard, but not a whole hell of a lot. Secretary Kerry is smarter than Dick Durbin of Illinois and much dumber than Seator Al Franken of Minnesota. So there you have it.

Now, John Kerry s fronting for the Valerie Jarrett White House. Valerie Jarrett is the Cardinal Richelieu of President Barack Obama's Louis XIII.  Valerie Jarrett is the judge of our National Who's Got Progressive Talent and has selected Samantha Powers, Susan Rice and past mistresses of mayhem as Desiree Rogers and Anita Dunn to chart the path for America.  The trouble being, America has hit a dead alley in a bad neighborhood and the hillbillies behind us have a stalled garbage truck.

Kerry mouths platitudes dispense by people much smarter than Ketchup John, like Noam Chomsky and Cass Sustein.  Sustein is married to Irish OXFAM queen of the United Nations Samantha Powers.

The Chomsky Sustein variety of smart guy, equates Israel's steadfast defence of democracy to facsism, because that plays well in Europe and Europe is really, really, really tired of hearing about the Holocaust and 'blah, blah, blah, get over it already!'  The systematic and diverse European murder of  Jews in the 1940's is now intellectually and socially as interesting as that stupid and boring Potato Famine. Get over it, Paddy! Have you seen Twelve Years a Slave?

Yes; powerful. 

However, there is a real balance in the universe that should make Al Sharpton as accountable for his words and deeds as any owner of LA Clippers, but that is not how some demand things wag.  Me?  I know for a fact that at the very least Six Million Jews* were murdered by diverse continental with Europeans more than a nod from the British Isles including Eire in 1940's.  I also know for a  fact that more two million of my ancestors were starved to death and buried in mass graves like Skibbereen** - been there.  The same mentality allowed Paddy and Hymie to the charnel house are parsing policy today. 

The same creeps with inflated resumes and college transcripts who managed to help many Romanian, Ukrainian, Lithuanian, Estonian, French, Austrian and Arab people get their Jewish neighbors shot, gassed, looted, starved and tormented in the 1940's - people like Edward Duke of York, retired Kind and Duke of Windsor and of course Diana and Unity Mitford - the Der Sturm cover girls.

I recall the wonderful indictment of Leftist Progressive ( John Kerry et al) anti-semitism by the Dutch writer Leon De Winter.  It was when idiots in Chicago like Kevin Clark and Andy Thayer were ginning up support from Palestinian Gaza Gang in prelude to the Illinois Gay Marriage legislative push that De Winter challenged the OXFAM ACLU Peoples Law Office anti-Semites with this - Gaza is not occupied by Israel - it is Judenrein!  That's Jew Free, don't you know.  The left ignores facts in arguments and increases the volume of howlers in its bleachers.

Anti-Semitism is fashionable because Progressive is fashionable, or Salonfahig, as Goebbles used to say to the charming Mitford sisters.

*

**

Illinois School Reform is Dead -says Gov. Pat " Everyday People" Quinn

"Squeezy Will Now Choke School Reform to Death! Pension Debt?  . . . Not So Much!"

"These plutocrats at the top of the power heap, they may have a lot of money, but they don’t have any understanding of everyday people and what they go through." - Gov.Pat Quinn and the Family Stone

After picking up tree branches from the Chicago parkway on my property ( hard to get my head around that bit of Burnham ownership) I coffee'd-up and fended off potassium deficiency with an Irish-owned Chiquita banana and took in my morning's quota of political empty calories from Illinois Governor Pat " Everyday People" Quinn.

The Sun Times offers a political blog with the darling politically incorrect title of Early and Often ( the old-timey Democrat encomium for people who wanted to keep their jobs) which places solid reporters like Dan Mihiapolous and Natasha Korecki in close proximity to oily, or waxy political pests and nudniks needed by no one but editorial boards and other grifters.

Ms. Korecki is as solid and professional a reporter as one could hope for and did yeoman like work covering the vast decoupage that was the waning months of Gov. Rod Blagojevich's oil spill.  Korecki is no one's Carol Marin.  She is tough, witty and gifted with a foresight few journalists possess, because Korecki thinks for herself.

Sadly, Ms. Korecki is burdened with this Chicago Sun Times Civics Sesame Street for Dummies task, along with her more serious workload.

Nevertheless, Natasha Korecki, an everyday person if there ever was one, punches the time clock and gives editorial Star Chamber social engineers a solid eight.

Today, this morning, following coffee and banana, I joined Ms. Korecki for a Quinn-acopia of flat rhetoric and opaque insights.  Quinn drones about Stu Levine with whom Blago and Quinn spent many a happy hour in finding new and better ways to erase the middle class via pension and retirement scams  and Ralph Martire pie-charted tax increases.  Quinn squeezies  onto Stu-ey Levine like a plush python offered to teach Illinois morons about our unfunded mandates and pension debts.  I could almost see poor Natasha Korecki nodding off like a teacher at faculty meeting, when she too decides enough is enough.

The only take away of any substance in her exchange with Gov. Platitude Quinn comes about when Natasha Korecki somehow snaps herself out of a nap with a question that puzzles the droning Governor.

Q: Paul Vallas supports charter schools. Since you picked him as a lieutenant governor, does that mean you’re open to charter expansion?
A: No, Paul Vallas believes in public education. So do I. We believe in funding public education. A very, very important issue this year, we’ll be talking about that soon. ... He’s committed to a fair, open budget to properly fund education.

"No, Paul Vallas believes in public education!" ( exclamation mark my own)

Now, hold there a momentito!  Paul Vallas is The Grand Daddy of AMERICAN Charter Schools - ChiTown, Philly, N'Orl'ns, Connect -I-Cut!  Moreso, Paul Vallas has ALWAYS been open to Vouchers!  Real School reform.

Paul Vallas is every day people!  I know Paul.  I love Paul! I respect Paul!  If Paul were the top of this ticket, I'd vote Democrat in november.

Catholic schools comprise the bulk of private schools in Illinois.  Therefore, Catholic schools is a local euphemism for private education ( Non-public - no tax-money), including Dutch Reformed, Lutheran, Jewish, Muslim, and non-Denominational schools, as well as the elite first tier schools like Chicago Latin and Chicago Lab Schools.

Paul Vallas is solid man.  Pat Quinn is a pest with persistence, like all Progressives.  Like all Progressives, Pat Quinn is incapable of original thought and spouts only Hyde Park/Evanston Vatican Doctrine and Dogma.

Pat Quinn is no friend of Catholic schools.  By extension he is no friend of every day people who send their kids to Catholic schools.  Pat Quinn spoke for Paul Vallas.

Pat Quinn is the only one speaking - like any Progressive.  Everyday People, everyday people, everyday people, mean exactly what Pat Quinn thinks them to be - drones like himself.

Great job, Natasha Korecki!

Harvey Weinstein, Planned Parenthood and Progressive Fatwa on a Defender of Catholics

I heard the NPR interview with creator and co-Star of Philomena.  It was the typical low decibel stuff shirt chit-chat frosted with piously Progressive calls for civility, forgiveness, understanding and total hostility toward Roman Catholics.

NPR is a platform for the abortion industry, the redefinition of marriage voices and those who think completely without consideration of other people who just might not see things their way.

Hollywood is no longer the home of the stars,  but a computer of faux animations wrapped around very bad writing.

Harvey Weinstein is Hollywood. Harvey was hurt because the movie Philomena tagged for what it is -

 “Philomena” is about Lee’s quest, in the company of a former BBC journalist played by Coogan, to learn what happened to her son after she gave him up for adoption at a convent in 1952 Ireland. The movie makes this particular Irish Catholic institution look about as pleasant as Abu Ghraib.I found the film lazy, contrived, with a dull odd-couple road-trip structure dabbed with insipid humor (Coogan, in a discussion of busty 1950s pinups Jayne Mansfield and Jane Russell: “They were very big. They were huge! Their careers”) and smack-you-in-the-nose dialogue like “What they did to you was evil” and Coogan’s crowd-pleasing, film-defining cry, “F – - – ing Catholics!”). I could see no reason for the movie’s existence other than to soar overhead in the guise of the sweet bird of comedy, then drop a surprise load of guano on Catholic institutions (and, in the second half, the US Republican Party). Kyle Smith New York Post

A Fatwa on the critic who dared to object to yet another shower of power poop from the Hollywood Monkey House on Catholics.

All of the films attesting to the Hollywood doctrine on the Roman Catholic Church of the last twenty years have helped keep Kermit Gosnells in greenbacks and redefined marriage in the sixteen States with the demographics who will swallow anything.

To those deaf ears, Kyle Smith answers - 

Film critics tend to give a free pass to obvious, trite, heavy-handed movies that light up the correct political-pleasure circuits in their brains. I’m used to disagreeing with them. That is because I am, as far as I know, the only conservative film critic in the entire United States who writes regularly for a general-interest newspaper or magazine. I see things all the others miss.

Mr. Smith should go to Washington.

Eric Zorn Cheers for a Pelvic Papacy

Teaching is tough.  It requires patience, good listening skills and most of all should, anyway, require that the teacher knows something about his subject.  There can be, and should be, some diversity of opinion, but that usually is rooted in an individual teacher's preferences and predilections with regard to focus of study - in the teaching of English, let's say, one might prefer Thoreau, over Henry James. or Alice Walker over Margaret Mitchell.

A history teacher might suggest to his students that Truman's decision to drop the atomic bombs on Japan was not based on a desire to save hundreds of thousand of Japanese lives should an invasion of home islands be necessary. but rather one based on the cynical desire to keep Progressive former Vice President Henry Wallace from ever posing a threat to the burgeoning military industrial complex.

That teacher would be an opinionated ninny parroting what he recently watched on Showtime's moronic revision of American history with Oliver Stone. Stone teaches that his vision is no theory, but history.  It is not anywhere close to history. It is a Stalinist fabrication.

You see, with the passing of the greatest generation, hypocritical louses are free to re-write the history written in blood by the vanishing old guys who lost all of their buddies at Saipan, Guam, Iwo Jima and Okinawa and would have joined those said buddies, had President Harry not give the go-ahead to drop the bombs that ended Japan's world genocide. 

Those few 87,88,89 and God Bless 90 year old heroes die at a rate of 1,500 men a day.  Ten years ago they would collectively kicked Oliver's ass. Safe now, Oliver Stone goes full Chomsky.

In matters theological, I know very little.  I know more than Eric Zorn, who knows only what he cares to hear from lisping lordlings like Chris Hayes of MSNBC.  Chicago's own nitwit and hack Andy Shaw's son-in-law, (Boy, talk about the nepotism in journalism), Chris Hayes hissed the Catholic Church by digging up the comments of a disgraced professor of ethics Daniel C. Maguire.

Maguire, like Noam Chomsky,  is a political player noted for his pamphleteer-ing in favor of abortion, sexual permissiveness and gay lifetstyle everything being meanly smashed upon the Rock of St. Peter.  Maguire worked with DNC in parsing Geraldine Ferraro's position on 'choice.'

In 2007, just in time for the 2008 Presidential Election, Professor Maguire mailed out some of his pamphlets to 200 plus American bishops.  Daniel went into the lions den wearing a pork chop suit.

The theologian, Daniel C. Maguire, teaches religious ethics at Marquette University, a Jesuit institution in Milwaukee. He is a 75-year-old former priest and a prolific writer, educated at the prestigious Gregorian University in Rome, who has been challenging Catholic teaching on sexuality for years.
Last summer, Mr. Maguire mailed two of his pamphlets, “The Moderate Roman Catholic Position on Contraception and Abortion” and “A Catholic Defense of Same-Sex Marriage” to 270 Catholic bishops. In them, he argued that the Catholic position on these issues was “pluralistic,” and that Catholic theologians through history had taken a variety of acceptable stances on these issues.
The bishops’ Committee on Doctrine denounced the pamphlets as “irresponsible.” The bishops said that it was a “serious error” to claim “that the teaching of the pope and the bishops represents merely one voice among many legitimate voices within the Catholic Church.”

The Catholic Church is unyielding on abortion and marriage.  Professor Maguire, is an ex-priest who happens to have a job at a Catholic University and under sanctuary of academic freedom micturates out of the protective tent. Even after the bishops said that he was full of . . .pith, Daniel Maguire could not howling in the desert - 

“They’re simply uninformed,” Mr. Maguire said of the bishops. “There is no one Catholic view on contraception, abortion or same-sex marriage. There’s a diversity of views. And it’s not just Dan Maguire versus the bishops. There’s a large school of thought that agrees with everything I’ve said in these pamphlets.”

Listen to me!!!!!!!!!!  You mitre'd bullies and Bush Bishops!!!!!!!!!  I am a tenured Professor!!!!!!!  Thank gods for Chris Hayes and Eric Zorn!

Professor Maguire wrote a couple of books that challenged the Vatican; the Vatican took up the challenge.  Professor Maguire was not teaching Catholic doctrine, though he argued that he was.  This is a progressive flaw similar to the fat boy who tells the  Illinois DMV Maiden that his weight is 190 lbs, when in fact that morning he registered 265 lbs.  With an arched eye-brow, the DMV Maid good-natured-ly records, " Five feet; 5" and . . .One hundred and Ninety pounds? You go, Playah!"  

Last week, the Illinois State Senate overwhelming approved the Heather Steans Religious Freedom and Gay Marriage legislation 31-24-2; now, the impetus to stuff this legislation down the throats of Illini is going full bore.

To that end, journalism water boys like Eric Zorn and the editorial boards of most papers will lobby the Illinois House of Representatives in the newspapers, which will be handed off to iconic yaps of Carol Marin's WTTW cheerleaders.  Not only is Gay Marriage a Civil Rights-Social Justice Crisis Issue That Can't Wait, but great way to say I LOVE EVERYONE! and tea-bag the Bishops and Catholic.

"What Right Wing Catholics piously desire is a Pelvic Zone Papacy, one that will rail against contraception, abortion and same-sex marriage, and, would you believe it, even masturbation, will leave the greedy to their grasping ways. They studiously ignore a whole tradition of left-wing Catholic social doctrine, espoused by popes and general councils of the church which is well-grounded in the Bible. They run from all that just as they ran from “Blessed” Pope John Paul II when he presciently sent a cardinal to tell George W. Bush that an invasion of Iraq would be a “defeat for humanity.” Daniel Maguire

Kind of excited there, huh, Prof? 

You see, Maguire's latest bacchatur stultus littera, contorts an economic statement by the Vatican into a collating of Catholics are the Tea Party  in need of Pelvic Papacy's Purge.

Read it, it is joyful noise!

Teaching is tough. The Greek word ethics translates to mean " ought" - what ought to be.  Theology and ethics are lug-nuts and oranges.  What "ought" does not translate to "want." that would erasthai, which means intense desire.  I have an intense desire to see better journalism before I die.  As if.

That intense desire is not sexual.  That would be erotikos - all that sex stuff.  Heterosexual males are said to erotic thoughts once every 4. 275 seconds.  There is no way that my erotic thoughts will include Eric Zorn, epistemologically speaking.

I just can't bat from that side of the plate.

The Last Time American Catholics Refused to Bend To Progressive Doctrine - 1933

American Catholics supported Franco - rather, they would not support the Communists in Spain.

Catholics are told by editorial boards, news-readers, hack politicians, academics and activists to 'get on the right side of history' and abandoned their Church and consciences and embrace the reality that marriage must be redefined to include homosexual couples.  History does not have sides to it.  Armies may face one another in opposition and each may be considered a side. One faction, or side  will win and one will lose a battle and perhaps a war. But history does not take sides; only people take sides.

The 'right side of history' in early decades of the 20th Century depended on where you happened to stomp your feet - some goose-stepped and some fox-trotted.

In 1931,Spain's  King Alfonso was forced to abdicate the throne.  Thanks to Napoleon,the Industrial Revolution and the European imperial rush to colonize the un-claimed parts of the globe, Spain crashed from the  world power that dominated Europe from the 15th -19th Centuries, to the sad remnant armed with Mausers and Maxims against Col. Teddy Roosevelt;s Rough Riders, and Admiral Dewey's fleets.

Spain is a Catholic nation. Some abandoned their faith for the secular creeds of Marxism and anarchy.  Some found a balance with their faith and labor because Pope Leo XIII defended the right to organize trade unions. There were still folks who were loyal to the monarchy  and they were called Carlists. Some demanded that Spain follow Italy into fascism and the were called Falangists.

In 1932, the Soviet Comintern decided to make Spain International.

In 1933, a coalition of the Center-Left took the majority seats in Cortes:

The Comintern of Soviet Russia in 1932 made infiltration into Spain a priority, thus insuring a strong communist presence. Many workers, dissatisfied with the remorseless face of the liberal capitalism that had grown up under the late monarchy, began to turn in increasingly radical directions. Two separate extremist groups began to forge an alliance. One was the anarchists, those dedicated to the overthrow of any government; the other was the syndicalists, who wanted no government but only a series of disparate workers communes. The anarcho-syndicalists were especially strong in the ethnically separate Basque region and in the autonomous region of Catalonia, around Barcelona. It is important to note that the strength of the anarcho-syndicalists was not primarily among the farming peasantry, but rather took root with the working classes attached to industry in large cities. In the elections of 1933, a center-right coalition was voted in, but this was largely ineffective due to the destabilizing influences of the anarcho-syndicalists and the operations of the new communist party of Spain. New elections were to be held in 1936. These would be decisive in determining the course of Spanish history.

Election to the Cortes, or the parliamentary assembly of Spain, was an exceedingly complex process. It was anything but a direct popular election and many places, especially cities, were assigned a disproportionate number of representatives. This will be shown by the vote totals.

 Votes in the Spanish elections of 1933Right (Carlists, Catholic Action, Liberal Monarchists, Falange), 4,570,744 votes, 133 seats
Center 340,073 votes, 77 seats
Popular Front (Communists, Socialists, Catalan Separatists, Left Republicans), 4,346,559 votes, 263 seats

One can see that even though the center-right, which had governed since 1933, received over 500,000 more votes, the Popular Front had a majority of 26 seats over the old coalition. As a salient example of unrepresentative allotment, the center, which polled only 340,000 votes, received half the number of the seats that the right obtained with their 4.5 million votes. Ultimately, it was the socialistic Popular Front that formed a government. As each month passed, the regime acted in an increasingly despotic and radical manner, successively casting off ministers who were not liberal enough. Against this regime the military, the Carlist traditionalists and the political right rebelled. American Catholics went to great lengths to explain the facade of this "democratic" election process to the general public.

Progressive America was not accepting this - American Catholics found themselves on the 'wrong side of history.' American Catholics had become a political force.  George Babbitt was confronted by Studs Lonigan. American Catholics ran a coreligionist, NY Governor Al Smith for President in 1928 and lost. However, they formed something of a coalition with mainline Progressive Protestants, who demanded abortion and birth control; over the New Deal and elected FDR. Catholics remained very anti-Communist and somewhat isolationist and Progressives were delighted with Communism and were happily isolationist, until Spain got messy.

Hollywood cast Catholic Spain as the villain - universal and historical. Claude Raines, Basil Rathbone, the Inquisition tortured Errol Flynn, John Garfield and Tyrone Power in movies about pirates, gun runners and rebels with one cause.

Bernard F. Dick is of the opinion that Hollywood's preoccupation with portraying opposition to the fascist forces emerged long before September 1939: "Hollywood began its war on fascism before fascism began its war on democracy." He asserts that the film industry was conscious of political turbulence in Europe since the early 1930s, but veiled "their fascist aggression in allusion and metaphor until...history intervened." He goes on to support this claim with a discussion of the various attempts to produce meaningful films about the Spanish Civil War, a conflict that was never mentioned by name in any of the movies until 1940, and then only to say that it was over. According to Dick's examination of Hollywood wartime production, the OWI wielded enough influence to prevent the expression of firm political convictions in early war films, and the filmmakers were left to follow its advice.

 The Republic's Popular Front was dominated by Soviet trained commissars and immediately churches and monasteries were confiscated by the Republic, because the Church needed to pay its 'fair share' and immediately bishops, priests and nuns were executed.  Peasants and workers who objected to this savagery were executed.


The trouble in Spain forced American Catholics to break ranks.  General Franco led a rebellion against the Communist dominated Republic. Donald Prudlo's fine article for Catholic Culture details the powerful unity of American Catholics in opposition to the Popular Front and the support it maintained for Franco's government. The American Catholic Church remained fiercely and uncompromisingly anti-communist, even among its academics and politicians, unlike today.

Prudlo noted:

In their battle to justify Franco to the American public, Catholic journalists faced an extremely difficult battle. One of the most basic obstacles encountered was the persistent "Black Legend" regarding Spanish history, a view that had taken root in Reformation England and spread from there to all of the English-speaking countries of the west. This legend excoriated Spain as a backwards, religiously dominated gothic land of torture and inquisition. Hilaire Belloc was credited by Catholics as the first historian to plow through the patina of prejudice and hatred to offer a balanced English-language account of Spanish history.²⁰ McGuire was concerned with showing that all of the news correspondents in Spain were infected with this, and as a result were not being impartial. These correspondents presented Franco as standing for the forces of Church, inquisition, privilege and repression, against idealistic socialists, communists, and anarchists trying to shed some light on backward Spain.²¹ The editors of The Sign were constantly warning American Catholics not to trust major media outlets, but rather to get their news from the National Catholic Welfare Council News Service, as mediated through the 300 or so Catholic periodicals in the country.²² America attempted to reshape the terms used to describe the conflict. The editors railed against the tyranny of calling the Rightists "rebels" and the communists "loyalists." The rebels, "not the government forces, are fighting the battle of world democracy," the writers stated.²³ Catholic journalists refused to let Protestant and popular news outlets cast the struggle in terms of democracy vs. totalitarianism.

Today, the struggle is much less tangible and much more hostile; gay marriage is much more than a ceremony and license.  Gay Marriage and abortion are secular doctrines that Catholics, if they are to be considered American citizens, must not merely accept but heartily acclaim.

Catholic support for Franco was very unpopular, but the Church and Catholics did not cave.  Donald Prudlo's article concludes:

In the end the unpopular position of the Catholic Church in the war resulted in very few negative repercussions. Perhaps if World War II had not followed hard on the heels of the Spanish conflict there would have been more time for a backlash, but as it was the Church was prepared for war. Had Catholics remained in the camp of the old liberal isolationists one can only imagine what a shock the coming of the next war would have brought. As it was, the Church entered the forties and fifties as a unified group with a common identity ready to face the challenges of those decades. It is ironic that the terrible bloodletting of Spain helped to bring forth a strong and tightly knit American Catholic presence. Sometimes great good can come from the most unexpected of directions.

Wonder how we will do?