Posted on 07/02/2023 3:02:56 PM PDT by Eleutheria5
“As a businessperson, you're saving lives…why politics?” I ask.
"I think there is an opportunity to drive a national revival in our country,” he tells me. "I couldn't think of a better way to do it than to...get elected U.S. president.”
Ramaswamy is obviously a long shot, but his arguments--that America has become a nation of victims, and that some on Wall St now collude with government to cripple capitalism--made me want to learn more about him.
Here is our full interview.
(Excerpt) Read more at youtube.com ...
There are like over a million likes on the blog, zero dislikes.
On YouTube that is unheard of.
If DeSantis gets condemned for thinking he can do a better job than President Trump, then so dies this little 4 percent peapsweak.
Good post.
No
He adds nothing to the ticket. Noem is a good choice.
Thanks bro
Noem is good! Vivek is my 2nd choice if Trump drops out for some reason. Garland will try his best to put Trump in prison.
It was not meant as a generalization. It was not taken from any writings, either, but from a personal acquaintance of mine, related orally to me.
” likely wrong and misrepresented in a particular case.”
I can understand you being defensive. It’s a horrible thing that one would rather not believe. But “likely wrong”? In particular cases, money will talk, and while one parish or one diocese might be strong enough to resist the temptation of ill-gotten money, it’s highly unlikely that it never happens. I’m quite sure that it happens to one degree or another in every faith, including my own. There is no reason to assert that it is “likely wrong and misrepresented” within the Catholic church, either.
I have no axe to grind. But it seems to me that if Brandon, Nanshy and others who are militantly pro-death keep calling themselves “good Catholics” despite their open opposition to and hatred of, basic Catholic doctrine, they must have something to base their professions on. So they get their absolution cheaply, because they donate generously with ill-gotten booty. Which is hardly unique to Catholicism.
You’ve said that you find their association with your church humiliating. I point out its root cause. Government crooks like Pelosi and Brandon make the mafioso look like amateurs. But they pay well.
There used to be a rich man in a synagogue that I once attended, which was affiliated with a distinguished and learned rabbi, who would talk out loud during services in an obnoxious, insulting way about how much money he donated, and this rabbi tolerated it. In all faiths, money talks, and those who bring it can romp. This is no secret, and in no way unique to your faith or mine.
I have never had an issue with people pointing out the problems we have in the Church, especially when they touch an obvious violation of Natural Law or established Church Dogma.
I do have a problem, with or without an axe to grind, the spreading of things with NO BASIS in fact.
You accused priests of giving mafia thugs absolution in exchange for promised donation.
First, there is NO WAY to know for sure what is said in a Confessional without eavesdropping. Any priest revealing the contents of a Sacramental Confession will get an immediate and most severe sanction, including indirect disclosure or disclosure to another priest. And any penitent (especially a Mafioso) is possibly lying.
The Church has been lax, but not in that area. Even the Fr. Pflegers of the world do not violate that one. Your fallen away Catholic friend has NO way of knowing what was said in the confessional.
Second, Mafioso have been superstitious or even superficially cultural Catholics for generations. There is less stigma for not practicing today. Many Catholics, and by inference, many Mafiosa do not even avail themselves of Confession, much less stay awake worrying about receiving Sacramental Absolution. Bishops have excommunicated members of certain crime organizations over entire dioceses, especially in Italy. There is no getting around that by a rogue priest.
Third, Confession requires the penitent to express contrition from his sins and an intention for amendment. If compensation is called for, it is generally to the person or organization that was sinned against. If you steal from a warehouse, you should return the money to the warehouse, not to a charity, however noble. If your “career” is stealing, you have to change careers, etc. While I wouldn’t discount the notion of a priest requiring compensation (e.g. the victim is unknown, the money is spent and cannot be replaced), donating to the Church or Her charities cannot be a condition of absolution (unless you stole directly from the church).
In your last example, our revulsion of what you describe goes to the root of Christianity in the New Testament (Mark 11:41-44; Luke 21:1-5). Any hypocrisy committed would be a LOT more subtle. A lot of these wealthy bad Catholics don’t even bother donating large sums of money to any church charity (John Kerry comes to mind), they get a pass anyway socially because some priests and bishops are sympathetic to his politics. It is a scandal, but does not directly touch the Sacrament.
I think it would be an interesting combination. Two businessmen fixing what the professional politicians have screwed up.
“You accused priests of giving mafia thugs absolution in exchange for promised donation.”
They get their absolution. They give their donation. The link is not explicit, but understood. Who can find fault with Dom Carlucci (spelling?), who runs a private commercial waste disposal in Crown Heights and lives in Staten Island, if he pays for new pews and an altar at his local Staten Island parish. The crimes he commits are not on TV, just an implicit understanding on Kingston and Utica Avenues that he does their garbage pickups, though it stinks up the streets. Otherwise, bad things happen to recalcitrant merchants. These facts are under the seal of the confessional, and the penance does not include giving up his enterprises and turning himself in to the police. And the church is well furnished and financed, with some charitable work as well.
But he’s small potatoes. The real bastards are the politicians, who maintain the façade of “good Catholics” while standing for gay marriage, abortion, “gender affirmation” for children, etc. They pay well for the privilege. What the terms of their absolutions are is between them and their confessor. But it’s mutually profitable. Main thing is, they get to be called “good Catholics” despite the obvious falsehood.
And lest you think I’m pointing fingers exclusively at your church, I remember when Chuck Schumer represented the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Then one day, suddenly, he represented me in Far Rockaway, and the rabbis in charge of my eldest son’s yeshiva couldn’t say enough or do enough for old Chuck, short of getting down and fellating him in public.
Chuck is now the senior Senator for New York and the Senate Majority Leader, and the rabbi in question is whoring for the next Democrat politician.
Mafia thugs? Small potatoes. They’re more savory than Dem politicians any day. And they corrupt churches, synagogues, yeshivas and mosques and madrasahs alike with their pernicious miasma. They’re wholesale. Dom Carlucci is retail and local only.
I’m in Israel and happily away from that mess, and blissfully unaware of its parallels here, because my Hebrew is good, but not fluent enough to follow the fast talkers who bring us the news and make it here.
It’s the way of the world, and it’s the life of the big cities, as I’ve seen it. Chuck Schumer got the red carpet because he gave something to that yeshiva.
Do you really rely on movies for your information? I don’t know where you live, but your life is obviously sheltered.
Dom Carlucci is an actual mafioso. I used to see his trucks and smell them, and an address written on the side for Staten Island, which is both the site of a huge land fill, and the site of a suburban neighborhood much favored by goombahs. I’ve never been inside the church there. But I know it’s well furnished and maintained, credit to the goombahs, and the father confessor does not tell them to shut down their numbers operations, brothels, sanitation services, protection rackets, cigarette tax evasion rackets, etc., because that’s where they get the money to donate to the churches.
Stop obsessing about the mafioso. They’re not from central casting in a gangster movie. In fact, they’re very personable and decent in their day-to-day life. No reason why a church would not want their patronage, except the rot at the core of their business, and the ugliness that they confess to in the booth. If you ever were on Kingston Avenue during pickup night, you’d smell it.
My main focus is on the politicians, as you would know if you had read my first post on the matter, and the one before this.
“You started on the mafioso, not me. You made an unfounded assertion about sacramental confession, something I likely know more than you about. You presented a made up story by a fallen away Catholic as fact, and you refuse to admit that it is not a fact.”
I used the mafioso as a springing off point for explaining about the Kennedys, Pelosis and Bidens. I neither know nor care about the details and terms of sacramental confessions. The bottom line is, the churches that have members of organized crime in their congregation do play footsie with them so as to avail themselves of their generosity. If it’s not part of the sacraments, BFD. It’s still part of the understandings under which mafia goombahs go to church, baptize their kids, marry in the church, attend confessionals, receive communion, and then go out into the world and whack their rivals and snitches and break the legs of delinquent borrowers.
Same with politicians who keep trading on their supposed Catholicism while pushing for abortion, gay marriage, transitioning kids. I’m pretty sure the Catholic Church is opposed to all three, but lets them profess to being “good Catholics” without objection. And it’s made worth their while.
“You presented a made up story by a fallen away Catholic as fact, and you refuse to admit that it is not a fact.”
Because it was not made up. It was fact.
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