>>So now you're Merton.
No. This is Merton:
"We are at liberty to be real, or to be unreal. We may be true or false, the choice is ours. We may wear now one mask and now another, and never, if we so desire, appear with our own true face. But we cannot make these choices with impunity. Causes have effects, and if we lie to ourselves and to others, then we cannot expect to find truth and reality whenever we happen to want them.
If we have chosen the way of falsity we must not be surprised that truth eludes us when we finally come to need it!”
—Thomas Merton
So. What deception did he have in mind?Sixty million plus dead infants say that "Christian" America is more lethal and Satanic than the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church Christ Himself founded that you refer to as "Rome".
And while I'm at it, let's be clear about the "America" you're defending as opposed to the America of your fantasy vision. Here is what the America you're defending now stands for and it's been heading this way for a long, long time.
“You can put half of Trump supporters into what I call the ‘basket of deplorables.’ Right? They’re racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic, you name it.… Now some of those folks, they are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not American.”
Now whatever you want to claim and pretend America is, the above is exactly how the people who run the country look at things, and it's exactly how they've looked at things at least since the seventies. So, people who see Christians who stand by their faith as nonentities who aren't even Americans act in the name of the citizenry, manage the country in keeping with that view, and are, like it or not, America at the moment.
But you'd like to discuss something else, right ? Not the fact that what YOU started this line of discussion with is absolutely false by any standard if you take all the exaggerated lies combined and toss them at "Rome" you still come no where near the number of people America as now run (and has been run for decades) has slaughtered. Even the worst liars can't match just the number of Americans the official policy of this country has slaughtered in the womb much less all the Americans who have died from various forms of abuse and calamity they'd have never suffered because the ruling elites have run this country like their own fiefdom for nearly sixty year. Add to that the people slaughtered around the world just since Clinton decided to give the Muzzies Kosovo and only someone totally out of touch with reality would even pretend what you call "Rome" comes anywhere near being even a tenth as lethal as this country has been.
You state that "Rome" yada, yada, can't defend that point, and now say we're discussing Merton ?
Typical troll behavior. Canned BS that can't be defended.
Now go get your shinebox.