The Cosmic Conflict and the Future (of America)

1. The Cosmic Conflict and the Future (of America) Loma Linda May 28, 2011

3. Long Term Perspective “Ecclesiastical institutions tend to use a measure of time that is all their own. The cliché about the Vatican is that it thinks in centuries . …The Vatican takes the view that it is going to be there for a very long time.” - Peter Nichols, The Pope’s Divisions: The Roman Catholic Church Today (Middlesex: Penguin, 1981), 19.

4. Re-acceptances • Re-acceptance of the Church as State • Re-acceptance of extreme economic inequities • Re-acceptance of unaccountable authority • Re-acceptance of the mother Nancy Reagan: Pope & Ronnie Had Unique 'Psychological and Emotional Tie'

5. Theology in Congress the Oval Office and in Congress. For the first time in our history, ideology and theology hold a monopoly of power in Washington.” - Bill Moyers, 2004 “One of the biggest changes in politics in my lifetime is that the delusional is no longer marginal. It has come in from the fringe, to sit in the seat of power in

6. Case in Point: This Week in Washington any other has attempted to sell them such a pile of propaganda and prevarication, such hypocrisy and sanctimony as Benjamin Netanyahu did yesterday.” - Gideon Levy, May 25, 2011 “It was an address with no destination, filled with lies on top of lies and illusions heaped on illusions. Only rarely is a foreign head of state invited to speak before Congress. It's unlikely that

7. Cheering for the Death of Hope Israeli presence on the Jordan River - cheering. Jerusalem must remain the united capital of Israel - applause. Did America's elected representatives know that they were cheering for the death of possibility? If America loved it, we're in big trouble.” - Gideon Levy, Haaretz, May 24, 2011 “The fact that the Congress rose to its feet multiple times to applaud him says more about the ignorance of its members than the quality of their guest's speech. An

8. Theology in Congress • “The peak of the fury came when Netanyahu declared, to the sounds of the most prolonged applause registered during the entire speech, that the Jewish people has an ancestral right tothe land of its fore- fathers and it is not an occupier in Judea and Samaria... And if Congress so sweepingly adopts the Jewish right to the land, where are all those Israelis coming from, who for years have been explaining to the world that this is occupied territory?” - Israel Harel, Haaretz, May 26, 2011

9. Case in Point – 2: ‘Christoslavism’ Karadzic—architects of the “ethnic cleansing”—and spoke of Bosnian Serbs' struggle as following the “hard road of Christ.” Michael A. Sells, The Bridge Betrayed. Religion and Genocide in Bosnia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 81-82. On Orthodox Easter, 1993, Metropolitan Nikolaj, the highest ranking Serb Church official in Bosnia, stood between General RatkoMladic and Bosnian Serb President Radovan

10. Biblical Perspective for Today’s Topic “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” (Luk 4:18-21).

11. Biblical Perspective – 2 “Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great! It has become a dwelling place of demons, a haunt of every foul spirit, a haunt of every foul bird, a haunt of every foul and hateful beast. For all the nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth have grown rich from the power of her luxury” (Rev 18:2-3).

12. Christian Imperial Economics “To the empire the official change of religion made little difference: the old corruption and oppression of the masses by officials and landlords went unabated, and the last remnants of public spirit faded away.” - A. H. M. Jones, Constantine and the Conversion of Europe, 206.

13. Christian Imperial Economics: Fast Forward (to France) Lord Acton: “French historians believe that in a single generation six millions of people died of want. It would be easy to find tyrants more violent, more malignant, more odious than Louis XIV, but there was not one(cont. next slide) Louis XIV (1643-1715)

14. Christian Imperial Economics (cont.) who ever used his power to inflict greater suffering or greater wrong; and the admiration with which he inspired the most illustrious men of his time denotes the lowest depth to which the turpitude of absolutism has ever degraded the conscience of Europe.” - Lord Acton, Essays in Freedom and Power, 100.

15. Christian Imperial Economics 101 Cardinal Mazarin (1602-1661) “in his palace” Insensitive and indifferent to the plight of the poor Preferential to the interests of the rich Sustained by ideals, interests, and policies held in common by church and state

16. Reaching Out to the Poor – Better Late Than Never? • “Hence, by degrees it has come to pass that working men have been surrendered, isolated and helpless, to the hardheartedness of employers and the greed of unchecked competition. … To this must be added that the hiring of labor and the conduct of trade are concentrated in the hands of comparatively few; Leo XIII (1878-1903) so that a small number of very rich men have been able to lay upon the teeming masses of the laboring poor a yoke little better than that of slavery itself.”  RN #3

17. Why the Change? • Rise of revolutionary movements • Industrial revolution • ‘Working class’ • Church ‘on the wrong side of history’ • Left: Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) • Right: Karl Marx (1818-1883)

18. Predatory Economics Then(- and Now?) to vanquish competitors and made speculation the mainspring of their activity. With them appeared certain characteristics of what we call capitalism – concentration of capital and of business concerns so that exploitation could be rationalized, a development that gave this economic technique cardinal importance in the rise of European civilization.” - Georges Lefebvre, The French Revolution, 1:24. “A mentality foreign to the conventional economy inspired these traders. Their attitude, characterized by a hazardous quest for profit, transformed the warring spirit into a ruthless determination

19. Ideological Roots of the European Union • Above: Jean Monnet (L) and Robert Schuman (R) • Alan Fimister, Robert Schumann: Neo-scholastic Humanism and the Unification of Europe (New York: Peter Lang, 2008). The original idea of the European Union has deep roots in Catholic social teaching.

20. Ideological Roots of the European Union • Principal features: • Economic integration > political integration • (Free) market economy • Loss of national and local autonomy “What is seldom appreciated is the remarkable degree to which Schuman's actions were the conscious implementation of the Neo-Thomistic project of Pope Leo XIII (1878-1903).”

21. Constitutional Principle • exclusive powers the Community shall only take action where objectives can best be attained by action at Community rather than at national level. • Article A provides that the Union shall take decisions as close as possible to the citizen. The Treaty on European Union has established the principle of subsidiarityas a general rule. This principle specifies that in areas that are not within its

22. Tea Party Principle # 3 indivisible, as do we. Our current government's interference distorts the free market and inhibits the pursuit of individual and economic liberty. Therefore, we support a return to the free market principles on which this nation was founded and oppose government intervention into the operations of private business. Free Markets: A free market is the economic consequence of personal liberty. The founders believed that personal and economic freedom were

23. American (Christian) Economics 101 Insensitive and indifferent to the plight of the poor Preferential to the interests of the rich Sustained by ideals, interests, and policies held in common by church and state Neal Gabler, “America the stony-hearted,” LA Times, May 22, 2011. http://articles.latimes.com/2011/may/22/opinion/la-oe-gabler-morality-20110522

24. 1994 2000 1994 2000 No Data <4.5% 4.5-5.9% 6.0-7.4% 7.5-8.9% >9.0% No Data <14.0% 14.0-17.9% 18.0-21.9% 22.0-25.9% >26.0% Age-adjusted Percentage of U.S. Adults Who Were Obese or Who Had Diagnosed Diabetes Obesity (BMI ≥30 kg/m2) 2009 Diabetes 2009 CDC’s Division of Diabetes Translation. National Diabetes Surveillance System available at http://www.cdc.gov/diabetes/statistics

25. The Cosmic Conflict and the Future (of America) • “Taxation without representation” • Re-acceptance of a power structure of patronage • Gross ignorance of history and of the character of God

26. Sabbatarian Economics The Sabbath: rest and dignity for the poor, people newly liberated from the centralized, preferential-to-the-rich slave economy of Egypt Sabbatical Year: rest for the land Jubilee: periodic socioeconomic ‘reset’ to prevent an ever-growing gap between the rich and the poor; “the land is mine”

27. The Sabbath and thePoor • “And, as in every other relevant passage of the Old Testament, we have the interest of the Sabbath bound up in the same cause with the interests of the poor..…The interests of the Sabbath are the interests of the poor: the enemies of the Sabbath are the enemies of the poor.” George Adam Smith, The Twelve Prophets, vol. I, rev. ed. (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1928), 190.