And after the shot, Satan entered into him

And after the sop Satan entered into him. ...

-- John 13:27

A US Supreme Court of Judas Iscariots: All Catholics and Jews, not a Protestant among them, stick it to a Southern Baptist

Conservative SCOTUS Betrays Barronelle :

Rod Dreher:

. . . Where were you, John Roberts and Amy Coney Barrett? These two, by the way, also were among the majority that refused to hear the Gavin Grimm case, handing a big victory to transgender bathroom-invaders. [UPDATE: Bret Kavanaugh also left Stutzman in the lurch.] . . .   

Comments

Achilles Rienzi:

This so wrong—another stab in the back. I am angered by it. If this wasn’t a stab in the back, then what was it?

This is why people hate establishment Republicans and conservatives. Roberts has sided with the liberals in every split decision since Kennedy retired.

I honestly don’t know how this collection of Judas Iscariots sleep at night. It takes a certain type to backstab like this then sleep like a baby. They are where they are because of people who support religious liberty, then they turn around and stab us in the back.

Only a mass movement led by credible anti-conservative far right leaders will solve our problems. A far right solution but one that is not conservative is the only solution.

Honorable exceptions like Thomas and Alito aside, no group has done more to impose and solidify leftist policies than Republican-appointed SCOTUS judges.

The funny thing about Acts 1 is how there are about 120 "disciples" of Jesus after the "ascension", but only 2 are candidates to replace Judas because only they were witnesses to the baptism of John and to the resurrection

And in those days Peter stood up in the midst of the disciples, and said, (the number of names together were about an hundred and twenty,)

-- Acts 1:15

Wherefore of these men which have companied with us all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, Beginning from the baptism of John, unto that same day that he was taken up from us, must one be ordained to be a witness with us of his resurrection. And they appointed two, Joseph called Barsabas, who was surnamed Justus, and Matthias.

-- Acts 1:21ff.

Yet Paul claims Jesus was seen resurrected by more than 500 "brethren":

After that, he was seen of above five hundred brethren at once; of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep. After that, he was seen of James; then of all the apostles.

-- I Corinthians 15:6f.

By the time of Acts 1, the twelve disciples of Jesus have become the (almost) twelve apostles, and the not quite disciple followers of Jesus have now been promoted as it were to full disciples.

But Acts poses far fewer "disciples", now more broadly conceived, than Paul's even more broadly conceived "brethren", who were witnesses to the resurrection.

The key to apostleship according to Acts is NOT simply the terminus ad quem of Paul (And last of all he was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time -- I Corinthians 15:8), but the terminus a quo involving the ministry of the Baptist AND the terminus ad quem of the resurrection.

This is why Paul's apostleship was considered illegitimate during his lifetime. He was part of the more expansive group associated with the 500, not with the more restrictive group associated with the 120.

The deal breaker was the missing link to John the Baptist.

Him he knew not.

Paul's insistence on the "apostleship" as a gift of the Spirit (I Corinthians 12:28) is an expansive interpretation based on his own ecstatic conversion experience, which in the final analysis is the basis for his gospel and his claim to be an apostle. Everything about it hangs on his claim to have experienced "seeing" the Lord, simply the "back end" of the deal. It has absolutely nothing to do with seeing the historical Jesus from the time of Jesus' baptism at the hands of the Baptist right on through all the events to the end and witnessing his actual resurrection. Which, in fact, he utterly eschews.

Am I not an apostle? am I not free? have I not seen Jesus Christ our Lord? are not ye my work in the Lord?

-- I Corinthians 9:1

Paul an apostle--not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead. But I certify you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached of me is not after man. For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ.

-- Galatians 1:1, 11f.

Christianity as we know it today is based entirely on this, and it is sinking sand.

John and Paul do not agree on the identity of "the son of perdition"

To Paul the son of perdition is an AntiChrist figure who appears at the end of the world:

Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day [of Christ] shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition;

-- 2 Thessalonians 2:3

To John's Jesus the son of perdition is Judas, one of the Twelve, already come, and already lost, and completely uneschatological:

While I was with them in the world, I kept them in thy name: those that thou gavest me I have kept, and none of them is lost, but the son of perdition; that the scripture might be fulfilled.

-- John 17:12

Judas had the bag: How poor were Jesus and the Twelve?

 

 

 The Fourth Gospel is the only evidence we have that Jesus and the Twelve had a common kitty.

This "bag" was presumably the equivalent of the small box such as might store and protect the reeds/mouthpieces used by musicians in their wind instruments.

This he said, not that he cared for the poor; but because he was a thief, and had the bag, and bare what was put therein.

 

-- John 12:6

For some of them thought, because Judas had the bag, that Jesus had said unto him, Buy those things that we have need of against the feast; or, that he should give something to the poor.

 

-- John 13:29

Otherwise in the Synoptics we have references to the personal belt, which was hollow and could store money (Mt. 10:9, Mk. 6:8), personal money bags for coins (Lk. 10:4, 12:33ff.) and provision sacks in which to carry a variety of travel supplies, generally understood, analogous to backpacks or saddlebags (Mt. 10:10, Mk. 6:8, Lk. 9:3, 10:4, 22:35f.). All these feature in Jesus' missionary instructions to his disciples where we learn that they are to carry no money and no supplies whatsoever. This is in keeping generally with the call to discipleship in the first place, to say goodbye to one's possessions (Luke 14:33) and follow Jesus.

Presumably, however, Jesus and the Twelve, being thus poor and preaching poverty, were recipients of charity, and it had to be someone's job to thus be the banker. But such money as there was can't have gone very far and did not amount to very much.

The story of the miraculous feeding of the 5,000 provides a ceiling limit for what Jesus and the Twelve might have imagined to be a lot of money. In it the disciples express incredulity at Jesus' expectation that they come up with the cash to feed so many, knowing as he must have that coming up with such a sum was pure fantasy.

He answered and said unto them, Give ye them to eat. And they say unto him, Shall we go and buy two hundred pennyworth of bread, and give them to eat?

 

-- Mark 6:37

The penny here is the denarius, in Matthew 20 famously considered fair pay for a full day's labor or for even much less than a day's labor, which seems rather over generous (see below).

The parallel in John 6:7 indicates that 200 denarii would allow 5,000 to eat only a little and not be satisfied:

Philip answered him, Two hundred pennyworth of bread is not sufficient for them, that every one of them may take a little.

It should be stated that not even a Roman soldier would have this kind of walking around money.

At the time of Jesus, a Roman legionary received base pay of about 0.6 denarius per day (10 asses), from which the soldier had to provide for his own arms and food. That's 224 denarii per year, from the time of Julius Caesar. So try to imagine that sum in the bag Judas had, and it is not at all credible.

A soldier received other intermittent pay, boosting the base pay on average to as much as 1 denarius a day, and of course out on the perimeters of the Empire he had a reputation for intimidating the locals for additional gain, which would make sense in Palestine given the poor agricultural conditions which drove up the price of daily bread.

And the soldiers likewise demanded of him [John the Baptist], saying, And what shall we do? And he said unto them, Do violence to no man, neither accuse any falsely; and be content with your wages.

 

-- Luke 3:14

Content with your wages.

 

Theoretically, the cost of a one pound to one and half pound loaf of bread at this time could be as high as 2 asses or as little as 1, but double this on the poor soil of Palestine. So 200 denarii would feed at the outside 1,600, or as few as 800, with say 1,400 calories each. The conundrum with even 200 denarii means the 5,000 would have to get by on 224 to 448 calories each. While the problem in the story sounds about correctly imagined, the prospect of the availability for purchase of such a great quantity of bread as well as of solving the logistical and distributional problems implied seems as utterly fanciful as the notion that they might have had the means to purchase so much bread in the first place.     

On the other end of the scale it makes sense that the bag which Judas had could often be quite empty, necessitating scrounging operations on the part of Jesus and the Twelve themselves just to survive.

At that time Jesus went on the sabbath day through the corn; and his disciples were an hungred, and began to pluck the ears of corn, and to eat.

 

-- Matthew 12:1

And it came to pass, that he went through the corn fields on the sabbath day; and his disciples began, as they went, to pluck the ears of corn.

 

-- Mark 2:23

And it came to pass on the second sabbath after the first, that he went through the corn fields; and his disciples plucked the ears of corn, and did eat, rubbing them in their hands.

 

-- Luke 6:1

The needs of Jesus and the Twelve at a minimum subsistence level of 1,400 calories daily would mean in the hardest of times requiring as much as 3.25 denarii a day (4 asses for one loaf of bread X 13 = 52 / 16). Charity must have played an outsized role in the ministry of Jesus and his disciples.

Hence the centrality of daily bread to the Lord's Prayer, and the fame and survival of the bread sayings generally throughout the Gospels.

Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?

 

-- Matthew 6:25

Not everyone that saith unto me Lord, Lord shall enter into the kingdom, for example:

prophets, exorcists and wonder workers:

Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.

-- Matthew 7:22f.

fools who aren't already prepared:

Afterward came also the other virgins, saying, Lord, Lord, open to us. But he answered and said, Verily I say unto you, I know you not.

-- Matthew 25:11f.

familiars:

When once the master of the house is risen up, and hath shut to the door, and ye begin to stand without, and to knock at the door, saying, Lord, Lord, open unto us; and he shall answer and say unto you, I know you not whence ye are: Then shall ye begin to say, We have eaten and drunk in thy presence, and thou hast taught in our streets. But he shall say, I tell you, I know you not whence ye are; depart from me, all ye workers of iniquity.

-- Luke 13:25ff.

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Judas called him "Rabbi, Rabbi" (Matthew 23:8 But be not ye called Rabbi: for one is your Master, even Christ; and all ye are brethren):

And as soon as he was come, he goeth straightway to him, and saith, Master, master; and kissed him.

-- Mark 14:45

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And then there is Paul:

[N]o man speaking by the Spirit of God calleth Jesus accursed: and ... no man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost.

-- 1 Corinthians 12:3

For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.

-- Romans 10:13

Contra Mark Tooley And Michael Novak, Jesus Wasn't Interested In Alleviating Poverty, Funding Charity And Sustaining Liberty

Mark Tooley, here:

Creating new businesses is a Christian moral imperative, recalling the Savior was Himself a small businessman, and knowing that only business can meaningfully alleviate poverty, fund charity, and sustain liberty. Why aren’t more Christians speaking of business and economic expansion as central to true social justice???

This claim that Jesus was a small businessman stands on the strength of Mark 6:3 alone in the New Testament:

"Isn’t this the carpenter? Isn’t this Mary’s son and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas and Simon? Aren’t his sisters here with us?” And they took offense at him.

But of course Matthew has corrected this narrative at 13:55 of his own gospel:

“Isn’t this the carpenter’s son? Isn’t his mother’s name Mary, and aren’t his brothers James, Joseph, Simon and Judas?"

Apart from the fact that I rather doubt that Michael Novak would find a happy audience among his fellow Catholics if he similarly pressed these passages to insist Jesus' brothers and sisters were the progeny of the ever virgin Mary, to insist that Jesus was a small businessman is to miss completely from the gospels his vocation as eschatological prophet and his message of repentance, which required "saying goodbye to everything that one has" according to Luke 14:33. Fisherman are called to drop their nets and follow, in other words leave their jobs behind and become completely dependent on God in order to escape the wrath that is to come. The same for everyone else, rich and poor alike, from miserable tax farmers to princes in soft raiment. All are required to give up their former pursuits and come follow, bringing nothing to the table. Indeed, the more you've got, the more it is likely to hold you back.

Jesus' message is not about alleviating poverty. It's about increasing it. The meaning of Jesus' gospel is to become the poor.

Yes, distribution to others who are poor is required. You can call this funding charity if you wish, but Jesus expected the recipients to give it all away, too, and also come follow so that his movement would give and give and give without producing anything new until the eschaton of God's judgment intervened, which Jesus believed would happen imminently.

In other words, sustainability was the last thing on Jesus' mind.

Actually, liquidation of businesses is the moral imperative of the teaching of Jesus, not creating new businesses, because God's judgment is right around the corner. Well, if you said that today, they'd call you nuts, too.

If there is a stumbling block in the gospel it's this, not the cross of later invention.

Dull Humanitarianism At Blog and Mablog

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The dull humanitarianism of contemporary Christianity came up here recently, humorously (to me anyway) attacking itself in a mirror:

What I mean is this — many who claim to love Jesus with their theology hate the poor with their economics, and I think we should stop being okay with that. I frankly think we should knock it off — the gospel is not some airy fairy thing that fails to apply to how people have to live out their actual lives. When Jesus taught us to feed the poor, instead of turning their place of habitation into a desolation, this necessarily excludes every form of Keynesianism.

This swipe at the left's hypocrisy is hypocritical and blind in its own way, but it is difficult to appreciate it when we are captives of an historical moment full of unexamined assumptions and unresolved historical contradictions and loyalties. For one thing, it can be demonstrated that neither side in this debate loves "Jesus with their theology". Unfortunately, their love of him picks and chooses what it wants from "his" teaching just as they pick and choose whom to help from the poor. And for another, polite discussion of the poor amongst Christians left and right these days merely objectifies, patronizes and condescends to the poor, so that a great gulf yet remains fixed between them and the poor.

Take the statement, "When Jesus taught us to feed the poor". That's a nice sounding phrase which no one on either side finds objectionable, except that Jesus didn't teach us to feed the poor. Unfortunately this is not only the accepted and false premise of Christians left and right, but it has become the accepted and false premise of our entire politics, and it is wrong. What are the poor, dogs, who once fed get to go gamboling on their way? And who are we then but their owners?

Yes, Jesus fed the 5,000 (Matthew 14:21; Mark 6:44; Luke 9:14) and the 4,000 (Matthew 15:38; Mark 8:9) and spoke very positively of the poor and very negatively of the rich, even though the poor who hung on his every word he addressed as "you who are evil" (Matthew 7:11; Luke 11:13). But nowhere do you get from Jesus' teaching a programmatic statement like that, which is surprising when you have a Sermon on the Mount or a Sermon on the Plain replete with programmatic statements of all sorts. You know, like "Give to him who begs from you, and do not refuse him who would borrow from you" (Matthew 5:42; Luke 6:30).

 

How many times have I heard from Christian pulpits that one should not give money to people who beg on the streets because they'll just "use it to buy liquor"? Isn't that what we use ours for?

If there is any programmatic statement of Jesus ignored by all and sundry today it is the very basic one you were likely to hear from Jesus every time he showed up in a new venue and set up his soap box:

Then Jesus beholding him loved him, and said unto him, One thing thou lackest: go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, take up the cross, and follow me.  

 

-- Mark 10:21; Matthew 19:21; Luke 18:22

No, far from being "some airy fairy thing that fails to apply to how people have to live," Jesus expected his followers, as a condition of discipleship, actually to stop living as they "have to" and demonstrate repentance by the act of wealth liquidation and divestiture to the poor, and by becoming poor themselves. In other words, Jesus demanded that his followers change places with the poor and turn their own "actual lives" into a "habitation" of "desolation". This is repentance as reversal, a literal turning upside down of every thing, every relationship, every obligation.

Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God, And saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel.

 

-- Mark 1:14f.

This point cannot be stressed enough. Jesus demanded that people divest themselves of everything that they are and have as the way to "fill the hungry with good things", and, more to the point, become poor themselves and escape the wrath that is to come, and come soon.

When was the last time you heard a Christian talking like that, especially in the "Bible-believing" churches which promote both Biblical inerrancy and free-market capitalism? Christians are supposed to take personal responsibility for the poor, sell everything they have, and give it to them.

 

I think the last time I heard anything remotely like this was from Anthony Quinn as the pope in The Shoes of the Fisherman. Needless to say, I've frequented liberal Methodist churches and witnessed the dull humanitarianism at its best, which is indeed impressive in its way, but it's still what it is. Those Methodists still have a place to lay their heads at night, and money to go out to lunch together on Sundays after church. And they all have churches, and indeed keep building more of them, maintaining them, heating them, cooling them and filling them with very noisy machines to entertain themselves with.

Divestiture of everything one has, owns and is, dare I say including even all social connections and their obligations, is now the lost meaning of repentance in the teaching of Jesus. Very few people are familiar with this anymore in America, except for some priests and members of monastic orders who actually take vows of poverty.

 

Writing way back in the early 1930s one Oswald Spengler observed that this understanding was already then long lost in Europe, and goes on at some length to show how this original doctrine of Christian renunciation as a moral doctrine was replaced with materialist philosophy by the church itself in the wake of the Enlightenment. One cannot help but think that had Europe's Christians actually practiced their faith instead of selling-out wholesale to materialism there might not have been a Great War. And of course not long after Spengler died Europe exploded again, proving one more time that its Christianity was a complete fraud, just as ours is today.

To repent includes sorrow over personal sinfulness and what it has done to other people, to be sure, but nothing so ephemeral as an emotion can encompass the true meaning of repentance as Jesus understood it. Unfortunately, however, emotion epitomizes the current understanding of Christianity in the West. It is nothing but an evanescent, psychological phenomenon.

 

To Jesus, by contrast, to repent is actually a physical turning away from the direction in which one is going, which is the conventional way of the world, the way of the many, the easy way which leads to the certain destruction which comes upon you in your sleep after you sat up late planning to build bigger barns to hold all your gain (Luke 12:18). You know, physically turning away from your house, your job, your 401k. And your beautiful wife and children, and the dog. With all these goods Jesus expected one to make a sort of restitution when repenting and following him, a settling up of accounts so to speak, in addition to getting rid of the entangling alliances they involve, and rely wholly and utterly on God for his salvation.

The cost of this discipleship in the teaching of Jesus is the same for everyone, whether rich or poor or in-between: 100% of one's very self and all that that means. From the ruler whose possessions were so very great that he went away sorrowful (Matthew 19:22; Mark 10:22; Luke 18:23) instead of giving them all away to the poor and following Jesus, to the disciples who complained (!) that they had in fact left everything and followed him (they had: Matthew 19:27; Mark 10:28; Luke 18:28), to the old widow who inconspicuously (to everyone but Jesus) put into the Temple alms box just two mites (which constituted "her whole life" Mark 12:44 says), there is nothing which may be held back by anyone no matter what their station in life. And lest we forget, that goes for the poor, too, who often cling to the mean, squalid conditions of their existence as tenaciously as the rich cling to theirs.

Like death, Jesus' call to discipleship is the great equalizer of humanity, wherein all the distinctions of human existence bleed away into nothing. Not obeying this call will get you turned into a pillar of salt like Lot's wife, or laid out at room temperature as Ananias and Sapphira found out. The repentant will escape the coming judgment, but they are few, and those who turn back from the plough, or go home first to say goodbye, or insist that the obligation to bury a dead relative has priority, these are many, and it is they who get taken for tares by the suddenly appearing Reaper Angels of the Last Judgment, are gathered up with all who do iniquity and bundled together with all those who offend, and are thrown into the fire. Which is when the meek finally inherit the earth.

The repentance doctrine of Jesus survives in its starkest form in an unlikely place, the Gospel of Luke, where kingdom interpretations "already realized" and "not yet realized" clash in the same long historical narrative and form a sort of interpretive bridge between the kingdom coming-now-before-even-Israel-is-fully-evangelized idea found in Matthew 10 (and assumed in Mark) and the kingdom relegated-to-the heavenly-realms idea of the much later Fourth Gospel:

So likewise, whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple.  

 

--Luke 14:33

It doesn't get much plainer than that.

But it occurred to somebody along the way that there was a certain moral inconsistency in the teaching of Jesus which became difficult to resolve in the years after Jesus' death. This had everything to do with the historical inconsistency, the failure of the coming kingdom "now" idea which Jesus entertained throughout his career right up to the bitter end of his tragic life. After the kingdom failed to arrive during the mission of The Twelve as he famously but mistakenly predicted in Matthew 10, Jesus nevertheless continued to believe in it, as Albert Schweitzer first showed us long ago. The debacle of the triumphal entry into Jerusalem may be another example of it, where he made a big show in the Temple but got such an unexpected response that he had to use crowds by day and escape out of the city under cover of darkness by night for his own personal safety. And Mark shows Jesus still angling at the very last moment for a dramatic finish when at his trial Jesus tells the high priest that the high priest himself will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven (Mark 14:62).

It was not to be.

This coming kingdom "now" idea eventually got pushed back to a "coming back soon" idea in the form of Christ's return from heaven, as in St. Paul, to the point that mockers arose by the end of the first century saying "Where is the promise of his coming?" (II Peter 3:4). The Fourth Gospel came to the rescue just at this moment, complete with a Holy Spirit who revealed the real gospel, to give us a Savior who descended from heaven, instead of a Davidic King who brought us a restored monarchy of Old Testament prophecy and the Rule of God in a "kingdom come". This Eternal Logos of John's invention accomplished his work of redeeming humanity, and ascended once again to prepare a place for all who believe, helpfully omitting all the urgency implied by an impending end of the world, or even of an imminent second coming.

So in this context what do you suppose would happen to a doctrine of total renunciation predicated on the imminent end of the world? Of course it would get pushed aside just to avoid having to explain that Jesus was just a little off about the timing of the Apocalypse. But it is at once a measure of the thoroughness of our sources that they should still preserve the memory of it, as it is evidence of the deep respect with which Jesus' teaching was held, however difficult to integrate it might have been, Holy Spirit guiding into all truth notwithstanding (John 16:13).

The moral problem, I think, is less well appreciated. In the context of an imminently coming end of the world, suddenly saddling the poor with riches arguably could be justified on the grounds that the possessions wouldn't have time to corrupt them. The world would end too soon and be transformed for the no longer poor to succumb to the temptations. But introduce delay and now Jesus' teaching could possibly be guilty of hanging millstones around their necks which would keep them out of the kingdom of heaven forever (Matthew 19:23f.; Mark 10:23ff.; Luke 18:24f.).

Under such circumstances there was every reason to minimize the renunciation doctrine found in the Synoptics in favor of the new perspective enunciated in John where Jesus now merely says "the poor ye have always with you" (John 12:8). In John the poor still exist, but the rich no longer do.

 

Few appreciate that in that new framing the Evangelist has now put the objectification of the poor into the mouth of Jesus, as if Jesus and The Twelve are no longer to be identified as one and the same as the poor. No, now the followers of Jesus aren't the poor; they have the poor and are distinct from them in a way which is foreign to the equalizing message of the historical Jesus from the Synoptics in which the followers of Jesus become one with the poor. This also means that the world isn't going to end anytime soon, there will always be rich people and there will always be poor people just as there have always been, and really the only important thing now is the Savior, the Heavenly Redeemer, on whom rich ointment may indeed be lavished (John 12:3), or later . . . on his Vicar on earth, the pope. In that vignette from the Fourth Gospel is the birth of the church as charitable organization, following on the pattern of Jesus and The Twelve it presents, and gone is the directive to become poor. Rather, as that Gospel famously concludes, the directive now is that Peter "feed my sheep" with the gospel, with which the church is now rich.

Consider that according to John Jesus' followers kind of got left holding the bag quite literally when Jesus left them behind. For something like three years, or perhaps eighteen months on John's chronology, they had depended on the almsgiving of the people as they followed the man expecting God's kingdom to arrive at any minute. Judas was their Treasurer and kept "the purse". From it they not only paid their own expenses, but from it they themselves gave to "the poor". As givers of alms themselves and encouragers of same, the focus now turned to them in the absence of Jesus and they began to attract the poor as the place where the poor could beg and not be refused, just as Jesus taught. Soon The Twelve were transformed into the leaders of a self-perpetuating poverty relief machine as the poor, and the donations, kept rolling in.

So yes, the church repented Jesus' definition of repentance, and made its accommodation with the world. To that extent it may be decided by left and right in the church today that there is a basis for its materialist view of life and that they have a right to argue about the relative merits of various "economics" as if it were a category separate from "theology". The man they claim to worship, however, demonstrably had a different opinion of the matter.

Libertarian John Tamny says humans are capital

 

 

 

 Here, just in time for Holy Week.

Yeah. The life of Jesus was worth just 30 pieces of silver. Maybe 30 of these Tyrian tetradrachms, about 4 months' skilled wages.

Then one of the twelve, who was called Judas Iscariot, went to the chief priests and said, "What will you give me if I deliver him to you?" And they paid him thirty pieces of silver. ... When Judas, his betrayer, saw that he was condemned, he repented and brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and the elders, saying, "I have sinned in betraying innocent blood." They said, "What is that to us? See to it yourself." And throwing down the pieces of silver in the temple, he departed; and he went and hanged himself. But the chief priests, taking the pieces of silver, said, "It is not lawful to put them into the treasury, since they are blood money." So they took counsel, and bought with them the potter's field, to bury strangers in. Therefore that field has been called the Field of Blood to this day. Then was fulfilled what had been spoken by the prophet Jeremiah, saying, "And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of him on whom a price had been set by some of the sons of Israel, and they gave them for the potter's field, as the Lord directed me."

-- Matthew 26: 14f., Matthew 27:3ff.

Finally, Some Fighting Words About Barack Obama, and Other Enemies of Christ

"For 2,000 years the enemies of Christ have certainly tried their best. But think about it. The Church survived and even flourished during centuries of terrible persecution, during the days of the Roman Empire.

"The Church survived barbarian invasions. The Church survived wave after wave of Jihads. The Church survived the age of revolution. The Church survived Nazism and Communism.

"And in the power of the resurrection, the Church will survive the hatred of Hollywood, the malice of the media, and the mendacious wickedness of the abortion industry.

"The Church will survive the entrenched corruption and sheer incompetence of our Illinois state government, and even the calculated disdain of the President of the United States, his appointed bureaucrats in HHS, and of the current majority of the federal Senate.

"May God have mercy on the souls of those politicians who pretend to be Catholic in church, but in their public lives, rather like Judas Iscariot, betray Jesus Christ by how they vote and how they willingly cooperate with intrinsic evil. ...

"Remember that in past history other governments have tried to force Christians to huddle and hide only within the confines of their churches like the first disciples locked up in the Upper Room. ...

"Hitler and Stalin, at their better moments, would just barely tolerate some churches remaining open, but would not tolerate any competition with the state in education, social services, and health care.

"In clear violation of our First Amendment rights, Barack Obama – with his radical, pro abortion and extreme secularist agenda, now seems intent on following a similar path.

"Now things have come to such a pass in America that this is a battle that we could lose, but before the awesome judgement seat of Almighty God this is not a war where any believing Catholic may remain neutral.

"This fall, every practicing Catholic must vote, and must vote their Catholic consciences, or by the following fall our Catholic schools, our Catholic hospitals, our Catholic Newman Centers, all our public ministries -- only excepting our church buildings – could easily be shut down. Because no Catholic institution, under any circumstance, can ever cooperate with the instrinsic evil of killing innocent human life in the womb.

"No Catholic ministry – and yes, Mr. President, for Catholics our schools and hospitals are ministries – can remain faithful to the Lordship of the Risen Christ and to his glorious Gospel of Life if they are forced to pay for abortions."

-- Bishop Daniel Jenky

Read the whole thing, here.