Posted on 04/17/2009 10:21:05 AM PDT by NYer
I too am beginnig to wonder what he really is,if anything but an enormous ego.
Catholic Encyclopedia or not, that’s too complicated for most normal people. Just remember that it originated from using the first three letters of the name of “Jesus” in Greek (not Latin), which is IHS. (Although the Greek writing can sometimes make the first letter look like a J, but it’s the same letter.) So IHS means “Jesus” because it’s the first 3 letters of His name in Greek, period.
St. Ignatius of Loyola used this symbol to honor Christ, and the Jesuits and all Catholics have traditionally done so for centuries. You see “IHS” still (I hope) on altar linens, vestments and in older church mosaics and carvings.
There are about a dozen other explanations floating around since this Georgetown controversy brought the abbreviation, or monogram at it’s usually called, to the attention of the general public, most are some poetic but incorrect version of history. (The “By This Sign” is also incorrect.) I think the cutest, and this might be a good message for our time anyway, is that it’s an acronym for “I hate sin.”
I think you are the first one to point this out; I haven't seen it anywhere in the MSM, of course, but it is a positively blatant reference to Islam.
I don't think he worships Allah or gives a whit about Mohammed. He worships himself and his leftist worldview. But since Islam is at war with the West, he has sympathy for it as an ideological battering ram against what he regards as the world's true evil, Western Christendom. He will thus tolerate and even defer to Islam if convenient, just as militantly atheistic European leaders do. He will bow to Islamic leaders if it will "piss off the Bible thumpers" back home.
It is very important for him to deligitimize, and ultimately stigmatize, the idea that America and Christianity have some type of link. For that reason, he couldn't allow himself (the highest ranking American government official) to be seen in a Christian venue. Of course, politically expedient exceptions can be made as needed, such as making the rounds of the black church circuit when he's up for re-election in 2012, but in general he wants to obliterate the idea that America is a part of Western Christendom. He wants us to be an EU-type nation at war with its own heritage.
Good post. Explains well the people I know. He has a special case of it though- missing daddy and all.
I think this is true, but bear in mind that Islam is the one truly theocratic religion: that is, the religious law and the secular law are one and the same, and the religious rulers are also the secular rulers.
I think the only time this was tried in Christianity was by Calvin, but it didn't work because Christianity is not theocratic and maintains the distinction between God and Caesar, and Geneva became a failed experiment. Christianity spontaneously rejects theocracy.
Bambi and most Marxists would actually be fine under Islam, because they can impose their Marxist collectivist economy and enforce the ultimate Islamic control, which is both secular and spiritual.
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