The Mercers Lose The Seat They Bought On The National Security Council

Supposedly it was a "him or me" moment for National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster. After being publicly humiliated when he tried removing doofus Ezra Cohen-Watnick from his staff, only to be overruled by Bannon (and Kushner-in-law) he went to Trump and said the National Security Council needed to be reorganized-- without Bannon on it.

The White House came up with some cock'n'bull story about how Bannon was only appointed so he could "watch" Flynn (who "we all knew Flynn had issues," something they've been vigorously denying for months). They're trying to help Bannon and his sponsors-- the Mercers-- save face by saying it just a "Mission Accomplished" sort of move.

McMaster will now be setting the agenda for NSA meetings with no interference from Bannon. Reporting for Bloomberg, Jennifer Jacobs, also noted that the role of Trump's Homeland Security Adviser, Tom Bossert, was also downgraded. And. as congressional Republicans have been demanding, the national intelligence director, Dan Coats, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine Corps General Joseph Dunford, "are again 'regular attendees' of the NSC’s principals committee."

Peter Frase, writing for Jacobin predicts its Bedtime for Bannon, since he failed at his basic job: mobilizing the adoring masses for Señor Trumpanzee. Fraser believes Bannon is "getting hellaciously dumpstered [as] "things are already spinning out of control and falling apart, in the face of resistance from both mass street protest and the judiciary."

And Donald Trump is known to be a person whose primary loyalty is to Donald J. Trump. To stay in his inner circle, you need to have a “value proposition,” as the sleazy businessmen like to say. That is, something you have to offer, that can increase the revenue of the business.

And what, exactly, is Bannon’s value proposition?

It isn’t any special connection with the conventional Republican political elite. Paul Ryan and the like have always regarded him with something between indifference and contempt. And they’re probably starting to wonder if his agenda is crowding out more traditional conservative priorities, such as starving out grannies, enabling financial fraud, lowering taxes on billionaires, and ensuring that sick people die in the gutter if they aren’t rich.

Bannon also isn’t a gateway to the super-rich donor class. From the perspective of the billionaires, his pipsqueak Seinfeld-residuals-cashing ass barely registers.

What Steve Bannon provides-- or was supposed to provide-- is the mass base, the hordes of frothing Trump supporters, who would pour forth from 4chan and Breitbart.com to give aid and cover to the schemes of the Ayn-Rand-worshiping ideologues and the cynical rich.

The problem is that he isn’t actually delivering this. Hence the half-empty inauguration, followed up with packed Women’s March protests. The definitive image from Trump’s coronation wasn’t hordes of his adoring fans; it was Richard Spencer getting punched in the face. This was an embarrassment so severe, Trump was reduced to harassing the Park Service for more flattering photos. And then we got the executive orders on migrants that presumably were supposed to bring out the grateful masses, but which only succeeded in bringing on a whirlwind of mobilization against Trump.

Trump’s vanity and idiocy are sufficient that it may take him some time to realize this. But once he does, it’s bedtime for Bannon, who will be defenestrated without ceremony. That leaves the rest of the ghouls in this administration and in Congress, who are no less terrifying in their own way. But we’ll have gotten our first win, and hopefully far from the last.

Joe Scarborough had been urging Trump to fire Bannon, while Alex Jones, predictably, went ape-shit on his crackpot radio show when the news leaked out yesterday. Oh yeah-- and 16 organizations collected more than 1.1 million petition signatures urging that theRegime get Bannon of the NSC as well. Win Without War Director Stephen Miles:

Steve Bannon’s removal from the National Security Council will not only make America safer, but it’s also a victory for the hundreds of thousands of Americans who took action and said a white nationalist, warmongering, political operative with no credentials shouldn’t be anywhere near the epicenter of U.S. national security and foreign policy making.

President Trump put politics before our nation’s security by elevating Bannon to this position. Bannon was a key architect of Trump’s illegal Muslim ban and from his perch at the NSC, he would have been able to continue to turn his dangerous ideology-- which includes the belief that the U.S. will soon be engaged in a “brutal and bloody” clash of civilizations-- into reality.

While Bannon should never have been a member of the NSC to begin with, his ongoing presence in the White House endangers the United States and its allies. We, along with the American people, will continue to monitor Bannon and pressure every power center to ensure that he can no longer influence U.S. policy, foreign or domestic.

John Roberts on Fox News-- presumably in TrumpWorld not fake news-- reported that "The president wasn't particularly happy with the way Bannon had been grabbing the limelight and that may have played into all of this too." Flynn's crackpot son-- the one from PizzaGate-- was tweeting again yesterday, bitching that Flynn and Bannon are loyal to Señor Trumpanzee while that damned McMaster won't even say "Radical Islam." What a fruitcake!

By late yesterday, the NY Times was reporting that Trump just hated this:

#PresidentBannon

The Times sees Bannon's power-base falling apart as Kushner-in-law and others blame him for the disaster that the Trump Regime has become. When he was fired from the NSC, "Bannon resisted the move, even threatening at one point to quit if it went forward, according to a White House official who, like others, insisted on anonymity to discuss internal deliberations... Bannon’s myriad enemies, both inside and outside the White House, celebrated what they saw as a defeat for his brand of firebrand politics."By this morning Joe Scarborough was claiming on his show that Bannon said that "if my talents aren't needed here, I can take them somewhere else." Moscow?

Kushner-in-law and Ivanka fret that Bannon brings out Trump's worst qualities

Politico is reporting that the Mercers ordered Bannon not to quit over his loss of several West Wing turf battles, primarily to President Kushner-in-law. These leaks sound like people in the White House are pressuring Bannon to resign. "Bannon's removal from the NSC is symbolic of a broader realignment in the West Wing that has Bannon increasingly marginalized and at odds both with the president and Kushner," according to Politico.

The “big fight is between nationalists and the West Wing Democrats,” said a person familiar with Bannon’s thinking.

“You have these New York interlocutors who are just not political and who want to think that they’re above the way Washington thinks, but if anybody is allied on delivering on things that Trump ran on, it’s Bannon and Reince and the vice president,” said the Republican who has spoken to Bannon recently.

Kushner has also told people that he thinks Mercer as well as her father, the hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer-- who poured $13 million into a super PAC that supported Ted Cruz’s campaign in the Republican primary, and came around to Trump after he won the nomination-- have taken too much credit for their role in his victory, and has expressed misgivings about their go-it-alone approach to outside spending boosting Trump’s agenda.

“If Bannon leaves the White House, Bekah’s access and influence shrinks dramatically,” said the GOP operative who talks to Mercer.

Trump Needs To Learn That Revenge Is Sweet, But To A Calm And Considerate Mind, Forgiveness Is Sweeter

No one doubts that Trump is a vengeful asshole. Aren't all authoritarians? It's in their DNA. Interviewed about his own experience with Trump last year on MSNBC, British businessman Richard Branson recalled Trump as "a very vindictive, rather dangerous, rather sad man. I would feel very uncomfortable-- very, very uncomfortable-- with somebody like Donald Trump in the White House.

Some years ago, Mr Trump invited me to lunch for a one-to-one meeting at his apartment in Manhattan. We had not met before and I accepted. Even before the starters arrived he began telling me about how he had asked a number of people for help after his latest bankruptcy and how five of them were unwilling to help. He told me he was going to spend the rest of his life destroying these five people... I left the lunch feeling disturbed and saddened by what I’d heard. There are a lot of frightening things about this election; not least that policy has been pushed so far down the agenda. What concerns me most, based upon my personal experiences with Donald Trump, is his vindictive streak, which could be so dangerous if he got into the White House. For somebody who is running to be the leader of the free world to be so wrapped up in himself, rather than concerned with global issues, is very worrying.

And now members of Congress-- on both sides of the aisle-- wonder if Trump plans to come after them... and what it will mean it their careers. There is, after all, a lot of opposition to his ambitious legislative agenda-- from the wall and eliminating Obamacare to his expensive infrastructure program. Republicans seem to live in fear of his mighty twitter account. And everyone senses he's likely to hold rallies-- he enjoys them more than governing-- against Democrats in states where he's popular to threaten their reelection chances-- Tester in Montana, Heitkamp in North Dakota, McCaskill in Montana, Donnelly in Indiana... states he won with, respectively, 56.5%, 64.1%, 57.1% and 57.2%. He could even start in relation to his horribly flawed Supreme Court nominee. If Republicans like Dean Heller (NV) or Jeff Flake (AZ) their states could see the Trump Show live again too.

Mark Sanford (R-SC), who hasn't always towed the line, told The Hill's Scott Wong yesterday that "He's going to take names. He’s going to look at the people who are supportive and who aren’t. I suspect he will be rigorous in calling attention to those he believes are hampering his legislative efforts."

[S]everal Republicans said it’s only a matter of time before Trump cracks the whip on Capitol Hill.

He’s already given rank-and-file lawmakers a taste of what could be coming if they don’t fall in line. Last month, a series of tweets from Trump derailed House Republicans’ plans to gut an independent congressional ethics office.

And just last week, Trump launched a blistering attack on Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), tweeting that they’re “weak on immigration” and “always looking to start World War III” after the senators slammed his executive order on refugees.

Those types of personal attacks from Trump are certain to fire up his loyalists and could inspire primary challenges to his GOP targets.

“He could whip votes from Twitter,” said Rep. David Joyce (R-OH), who saw Trump personally get involved in his state’s GOP chairmanship race to defeat the handpicked candidate of rival Gov. John Kasich (R), a onetime presidential rival. “He’s definitely got an agenda and he wants to push it through. He’s going to use every arrow in his quiver to get those things accomplished."

“When he gets focused on something and he wants to get it done, he gets after it. That’s definitely a lesson I learned,” Joyce continued. “An enraged Twitter finger could really hurt somebody.”

...GOP fissures are forming that could complicate or delay several top Trump priorities. Freedom Caucus leaders are aggressively calling for the repeal and wholesale replacement of ObamaCare, while GOP chairmen have argued a more measured “repair” of the healthcare law is the right approach.

Writing for The Atlantic, McKay Coppins speculates that #NeverTrump Republicans are bracing for Revenge of the Asshole that Branson described. "Trump," he reiterated, "has never made a secret of his penchant for personal vengeance. He boasts about it, tweets about it, tells long, rambling stories about it on the transcontinental speaking circuit. When, last year, he was asked to identify a favorite Bible passage, he cited 'an eye for an eye.' And in his 2007 book, Think Big and Kick Ass, he devoted an entire chapter to the joys of exacting revenge. 'My motto is: Always get even,' he wrote. 'When somebody screws you, screw them back in spades.' For those who have crossed Trump, then, these are understandably anxious times. As he enters the White House and takes the reins of the most powerful government in the world, a small cadre of high-profile conservatives-- the haters, the losers, the Never-Trumpers who never fell in line-- has found itself wondering whether their party’s president will use his new powers to settle old scores."

“The question is not whether he’s vengeful,” conservative columnist Ben Shapiro told me. “The question is how willing he is to use the levers of government to exact that revenge.”

This is no idle question for Shapiro. The California-based commentator emerged in 2016 as one of Trump’s most vociferous-- and most frequently targeted-- critics in the conservative movement. He spent months relentlessly prosecuting the candidate on TV and Twitter, and in March set off a media frenzy when he abruptly quit his job at Breitbart and blasted the company’s then-CEO Steve Bannon for being a “bully” who had turned the site into “Trump’s personal Pravda.”

Now that Trump and Bannon are both in the White House, Shapiro says he has no intention of trying to make amends-- but can’t help but worry about his standing with them. “Trump has an extremely long shit list...I don’t want to flatter myself and say I’m top 10, but I’m certainly top 50,” he told me. “I’ve been half-joking for almost a year that my IRS audit is already being drawn up.”

In fact, he’s taking the threat of retaliation from Trump and his allies quite seriously. A favorite target of the alt-right troll army that Breitbart helps marshal, Shapiro told me he’s already purchased a shotgun and installed a high-end security system in his home. When we spoke the night before the inauguration, he was deliberating over whether to delete his entire personal email archive before spies or Russian hackers could infiltrate his inbox.

He knows all this may sound a little paranoid, but he doesn’t want to take any chances. “They can fight very ugly and very nasty,” he said of Trump and Bannon. “And they do have power now, where if they feel like destroying you, they can.”

For Glenn Beck, there’s nothing new about the fear of payback from a power-crazed president and his minions. The right-wing talk radio host spent much of the past decade preaching against the tyrannical terrors of the Obama administration, and twitchily looking over his shoulder as a result. Now, it looks as if Beck-- who spent the 2016 election bitterly feuding with Trump-- is consigned to repeating that experience for at least another four years. He believes the new president is “dangerously unhinged,” and he travels with two bodyguards by his side, fearing the death threats he’s received from Trump supporters.

“It is not fun,” Beck told me. “I don’t cherish it, but I value the truth more than I’m afraid of retribution.”

...Last month, the Washington Post reported that more than 100 national-security veterans in the GOP establishment are said to be “blacklisted” from administration jobs because they signed a public letter during the campaign opposing Trump’s candidacy. In another episode, the president-elect aggressively campaigned behind the scenes to unseat a state party chairman in Ohio who had fought him during the election.

Trump also spent weeks during the transition publicly weighing two of his most stubborn 2016 foes-- Ted Cruz and Mitt Romney-- for top cabinet posts, only to unceremoniously dump them once they’d been seen cozying up to the president-elect. Transition officials insisted these meetings were all in good faith; Trump’s longtime adviser Roger Stone claimed otherwise.

 “Donald Trump was interviewing Mitt Romney for secretary of state in order to torture him. To toy with him,” Stone said on the Alex Jones Show. “And given the history, that’s completely understandable. Mitt Romney crossed a line.”

...For many Republican politicos who were critical of Trump during the campaign, the fear of personal retribution from the leader of the free world is softened somewhat by their unwavering conviction of his incompetence. Several consultants and operatives, who requested anonymity so as not to provoke the president’s wrath, said Trump would likely be too overwhelmed and disorganized in office to keep working his way down the enemies list.

“I don’t think anybody’s too worried about Trump death-starring their business, because he’s still struggling to even make the Death Star operational,” cracked one strategist.

“When you’re really dealing with Putin and Turkey and Syria, is that county chair in Iowa who turned on you gonna get the attention of the president of the United States?” asked another. He paused and then added with a laugh, “Of course, that’s what staff is for.”

Indeed, Trump’s administration is not lacking for enforcers who share his instincts. Reince Priebus, now the White House Chief of Staff, publicly threatened Republicans who were withholding their support from the nominee in the final weeks of the election. And according to two knowledgeable sources, White House press secretary Sean Spicer used to maintain a “bad reporters” folder in his inbox to keep track of journalists he believed had treated him or the RNC unfairly.

But if consultants are worried about their contracts, and party officials about their positions, some of Trump’s opponents harbor deeper and more serious concerns. For Evan McMullin-- who quit his job as policy director for House Republicans to launch a long-shot indie bid in 2016 under the #NeverTrump banner-- the question of how President Trump plans to get even from the Oval Office is a singularly important one. Petty partisan punishments are one thing, McMullin told me. But as a former CIA officer, he has witnessed firsthand the rise of despotic regimes abroad. “If Trump uses state power to exact revenge on political opponents, that will be a very clear sign that he is a true authoritarian."

During the election, McMullin’s candidacy unexpectedly threw his native Utah into contention, sending the Trump campaign on a frantic last-minute scramble to lock down the deep-red state. By the end, Trump managed to eke out a plurality win there, but he was left seething at McMullin’s meddling. The future president lashed out repeatedly at McMullin in the final days of the race, calling him a “puppet” for moneyed establishment interests. And the attacks only intensified once Trump won and embarked on his post-election victory tour.

McMullin told me that watching the president-elect rail against him at raucous rallies was a “chilling” experience. “I remember at one of his rallies when he was attacking me, he said something like, ‘He’s sort of a bad guy, this guy.’ I immediately recognized that as something I’d seen before overseas in places where authoritarians takes power. They try to criminalize their political opposition. They tried to do it with Hillary Clinton… and they could do it with more of us.”

McMullin made clear that it’s still too early to know whether Trump will cross that line. “Despite my concerns, I genuinely still have hope that he will not govern in the way that he said he would during the campaign,” he told me. “At least, I hope that’s the case, because it would certainly make my life a lot easier.”

Clearly, though, neither Trump nor #PresidentBannon has ever thought about Martin Luther King's aphorism: "Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love." This morning's NY Times carries an explosive piece by Jason Horowitz about Bannon's intrigues against Pope Francis with, among others, crackpot Raymond Cardinal Burke. The anti-Pope Francis forces have rallied around the Trump Regime. "While Mr. Trump, a twice-divorced president who has boasted of groping women," wrote Horowitz, "may seem an unlikely ally of traditionalists in the Vatican, many of them regard his election and the ascendance of Mr. Bannon as potentially game-changing breakthroughs. Just as Mr. Bannon has connected with far-right parties threatening to topple governments throughout Western Europe, he has also made common cause with elements in the Roman Catholic Church who oppose the direction Francis is taking them. Many share Mr. Bannon’s suspicion of Pope Francis as a dangerously misguided, and probably socialist, pontiff... [I]n Mr. Trump, and more directly in Mr. Bannon, some self-described '“Rad Trads'-- or radical traditionalists-- see an alternate leader who will stand up for traditional Christian values and against Muslim interlopers."

Satan's Man In Rome, Ray Burke, Knows Who To Blame For All His Woes: Women!

Right-wing drag queen, Raymond Cardinal Burke

Pope Francis demoted Raymond Cardinal Burke from a powerful Curia job to a ceremonial post once he recognized him as a cancer within the Vatican. But Burke is still a darling of the far right of the church and they still cover his hateful blatherings. Yesterday, the Pope met with Burke for 45 minutes, although the routine meeting had already been scheduled before Burke's latest hate-filled outburst about the feminization of the Church.

The 66-year-old American cardinal emerged as one of the leaders of the conservative camp at last fall’s Synod of Bishops on the family, at one point openly suggesting that Pope Francis owed the world an apology for sowing “confusion” about Catholic teaching on family matters, especially Communion for divorced and civilly remarried Catholics.

In an interview published three days ago, Burke returned to some of the same themes, complaining that the Catholic Church has become too “feminized” and suggesting that a drop in vocations to the priesthood may be related to widespread use of altar girls.

A Vatican spokesman told Crux on Thursday, however, that the meeting with Francis was “routine” in light of Burke’s new role.

In early November, Francis removed Burke as head of the Vatican’s highest court and appointed him to a largely ceremonial post as patron of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, which today functions mostly as a philanthropic foundation.

The move was widely seen as a demotion, though in a recent interview with an Argentine journalist, Francis denied that the move was a punishment for the role Burke played in the synod and said he needed a “smart American” in the new role.

Whenever a cardinal receives a new position, the spokesman said, it’s customary to have an appointment with the pope to talk about it.

Moreover, the spokesman said, the meeting could not have been a response to Burke’s most recent interview, because it’s been on the pope’s calendar for at least the past 10 days.

Burke is a primitive woman-hater in the way that old-time, self-loathing homosexuals like Burke have been until recent decades. Best known for his outrageous drag outfits, Burke has been a coddler of predatory priests for his entire miserable career and has always stood in the way of the legitimate aspirations of Catholic women. In his latest screed against the post-Enlightenment Church, Burke, channelling another right-wing woman-hater, Rush Limbaugh, said that "the radical feminist movement strongly influenced the Church, leading the Church to constantly address women’s issues at the expense of addressing critical issues important to men; the importance of the father, whether in the union of marriage or not; the importance of a father to children; the importance of fatherhood for priests; the critical impact of a manly character; the emphasis on the particular gifts that God gives to men for the good of the whole society. The goodness and importance of men became very obscured... [the] "radical feminism which has assaulted the Church and society since the 1960s has left men very marginalized."

But many women will head to Mass this weekend and note that the priest, bishop and pope have something in common: They are all men, and the power they hold in institutional church structures hardly looks like marginalization.

In spite of Burke’s paranoid opinion that “rampant liturgical experimentation” resulted in men who were “really turned off” by the Mass, women will stand and recite a recently revised Nicene Creed that states that Christ died “for us men.” They will pray to a God referred to only by male pronouns even as God’s gender remains stubbornly mysterious. Even the language of the liturgy negates the presence of women.

Yet Burke is bewildered by women’s “self-focused attitudes” and “constant and insistent demanding of rights.” Women, he said, “respond very naturally to the invitation to be active in the Church.” And yet, when the sanctuary becomes “full of women,” and the parish activities and liturgy are influenced by them, these become “so feminine in many places that men do not want to get involved.”

...Burke argues that “feminized” priests have been so influenced by overbearing women that they have lost their sense of manhood. But it was that same generation of “feminized” priests who encouraged women to study theology, write for Catholic magazines, take up leadership roles in parishes and even educate future priests. Those priests see women as collaborators. They do not see women as something to be feared.

The problem with Burke’s idea of manhood is that it is oversimplified and based on antiquated notions of gender. Men, according to Burke, have “particular gifts,” they “make sacrifices” and defend their families with “chivalry.” They are “heroic” and should demonstrate a “manly identity” and “manly virtues.”

Women are “wonderful,” but that’s just about the only compliment Burke manages to pay them before he trashes the presence of altar girls in favor of Knights of the Altar who will “defend Christ” with their “chivalrous service.”

It would be easy here to point out that Burke also demands that “men need to dress and act like men” while having a reputation as a Vatican fashionista who often sports “elaborate silk and lace vestments.” One blog actually pairs photos of Cardinal Burke with ones of Liberace, and the resemblance is uncanny. Burke’s notions of gender may be woefully outdated, but his sense of style is wrought with irony.

Irony is perhaps the bottom-line takeaway from Burke’s ideas about gender. It is ironic that a man who wears silk and lace chooses to lecture men on what it means to be masculine.

It is ironic that the same man blames women for the drop in vocations to the priesthood when many of those women would make excellent priests.

It is ironic that women are considered a threat to a church that refers to itself as the “Bride of Christ.”

It is ironic that women who do the majority of catechesis at parishes, who educate priests, who write landmark works of theology and give birth to cardinals, bishops and popes are still not able to be leaders in the church. Because, according to Cardinal Burke, we’re just girls. And everyone knows girls are icky.

As Raw Story reminded us, "in his own time at the Vatican, Burke was called to account by his superiors for his lavish taste in ceremonial robes, donning a $20,000 jeweled hat for one prayer service and a cape with an elaborate 20-foot train that cost more than $30,000 for another. Burke was Cardinal of St. Louis from 2003 to 2008, a period during which he imported predator priests into his diocese from other areas in order to shield them from investigation. According to the clergy sex-abuse survivor advocacy group SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests), Burke was 'reckless, deceptive and callous regarding predator priests, vulnerable kids and wounded victims' during his tenure."

Burke, and conservative men in general, have always, all through history, seen women as a dangerous "other" to be feared and controlled. Burke is a symbol of the sickness that infects the Church hierarchy and Pope's Francis' decision to sideline him was a very good one. Now he should shut him up and get him to stop maligning the faithful.

Miss Thing wants to tell Catholic men how to dress

Satan’s Man In The Vatican— Demoted Again

American fascist Raymond Burke, the satanic cardinal, loses his power over Church law

We’ve been covering slimy little neo-Nazi Raymond Cardinal Burke for years. He’s the far right’s and Satan’s representative in the Vatican and, before Pope Francis came along, seemed destined to turn the hands of time back on the Catholic Church to the 15th Century, which is where his worldview comes from. He’s the Ayn Rand of Catholicism, just more primitive and more partisan. Pope Francis has finally tossed him out on his ass.

Predictably, Burke had gone against the Pope at the Synod, claiming Pope Francis was trying to “weaken the church’s teaching and practice.”

“According to my understanding of the church’s teaching and discipline, no, it wouldn’t be correct,” Burke said, saying the pope had “done a lot of harm” by not stating “openly what his position is.” Burke said the Pope had given the impression that he endorses some of the most controversial parts of the Relatio, especially on questions of divorce, because of a German cardinal who gave an important speech suggesting a path to allowing people who had divorced and remarried to receive communion, Cardinal Walter Kasper, to open the synod’s discussion.

“The pope, more than anyone else as the pastor of the universal church, is bound to serve the truth,” Burke said. “The pope is not free to change the church’s teachings with regard to the immorality of homosexual acts or the insolubility of marriage or any other doctrine of the faith.”

Burke has publicly clashed with the pope since Francis took office in 2013, and he has come to represent the sidelining of culture warriors elevated by Joseph Ratzinger as Pope Benedict and as the top doctrinal official under Pope John Paul II. Burke, who caused controversy while bishop of St. Louis by saying Catholics who voted for politicians supportive of abortion rights should not receive communion, went on Catholic television in 2013 to rebut remarks Pope Francis made to an interviewer that the church had become “obsessed” with abortion and sexuality to the exclusion of other issues, saying, “We can never talk enough about that as long as in our society innocent and defenseless human life is being attacked in the most savage way,” Burke said. While Francis famously responded to a question about homosexuality in 2013 by asking, “Who am I to judge?” Burke described homosexual “acts” as “always and everywhere wrong [and] evil” during an interview last week.

In the interview with BuzzFeed News, Burke confirmed publicly for the first time the rumors that he had been told Francis intended to demote him from the church’s chief guardian of canon law to a minor post as patron to the Sovereign Military Order of Malta.

“I very much have enjoyed and have been happy to give this service, so it is a disappointment to leave it,” Burke said, explaining that he hadn’t yet received a formal notice of transfer. “On the other hand, in the church as priests, we always have to be ready to accept whatever assignment we’re given. And so I trust, by accepting this assignment, I trust that God will bless me, and that’s what’s in the end most important.”

When the pope first took office, his pivot away from an emphasis on questions of sexuality were more a matter of personal tone rather than changes in church policy or personnel. There were rumors that he was trying to oust the man chosen by Pope Benedict to head the church’s office responsible for doctrine, Gerhard Müller, but last winter he instead elevated him from archbishop to cardinal. When word that Burke was on his way out began circulating last month, it signaled that Francis would take major steps to reshape the church. It coincided with the selection of a new archbishop of Chicago, Blase Cupich, whom Catholic progressives celebrated for positions like breaking with the American church hierarchy when it withheld its support for President Obama’s health reform law over questions of abortion and contraception.

Internal discontent among conservatives inside church leadership began to simmer over in the weeks leading up to the synod. Just before it began, Burke, Müller, and other senior cardinals published a book in several languages attacking the ideas laid out by Cardinal Walter Kasper on allowing those who had divorced and remarried to receive communion in a speech heartily praised by Pope Francis. It broke into open revolt at the midpoint of the synod, following publication of a document presented as a summary of discussions but that conservatives said misrepresented the debate by including passages on “welcoming homosexual persons” and discussing some of Kasper’s proposal on divorce. The backlash appeared to have been especially strong from the English-speaking world, which includes a large number of African and American bishops; in an apparent attempt to mollify anglophone conservatives, the Vatican released a new translation of the report that changed the phrase “welcoming homosexual persons” to “providing for homosexual persons” and made other small changes, while leaving the versions in all other languages unchanged.

The report is now being revised with feedback from small-group discussions held this week, and a final version is scheduled to be voted on on Saturday. Burke said he hoped that the committee writing the new report will produce a “worthy document,” but said his “trust is a little bit shaken” by the language in the interim draft he said lacks “a good foundation either in the sacred scriptures or in the church’s perennial teachings.”

But there seems to be little middle ground between Pope Francis’ worldview and Burke’s. Francis was president of the Argentinian bishops conference when that country passed a marriage equality bill in 2010 and reportedly tried to convince his colleagues to support a civil union proposal instead. He lost the internal battle and gave voice to the hard-line consensus that the law was “sent by the devil.” The fight over the bill left the church appearing out of step with the beliefs of many in Argentina, a country where 76% identify as Catholic but only 38.2% went to church in 2005, per the most recent data available from the Association of Religious Data Archives. While Francis has shown no sign he supports overhauling the church’s teachings that homosexuality is sinful, he seems to have taken from this experience a desire to downplay conflicts over sexuality in order to broaden the church’s message.

Burke isn’t being exiled to Malta and the Pope is keeping him in Rome where he can be watched. His job will be to head an organization charged with assisting the elderly, handicapped, children, homeless, those with terminal illness and leprosy in all parts of the world, as well as refugees and victims of natural disasters, epidemics and armed conflicts without distinction of race or religion.

Satan's Key Operative In The Vatican Loses A Major Post-- Bye Bye Burke?

Pope sends GOP's fanatic, hate-filled cardinal, Ray Burke, a message

If you're not from La Crosse or St. Louis, it's possible you first heard about the curia's most anti-Jesus cardinal, right-wing hack Ray Burke, here at DWT. As soon as it was clear that the new Pope was an actual follower of Jesus' message, we started urging him to get rid of Satan's man in the Vatican. Burke was a partisan extremist in America, a GOP operative in a cardinal's gown and he;s been a nightmare in Rome. Burke has worked hand-in-glove with right-wing Republicans in trying to defeat Democrats electorally. In 2004, during the presidential election campaign, he demanded that John Kerry not be given the Eucharist and because he led a boycott of a Sheryl Crow charity event for a children's hospital in 2007 because she's pro-Choice. In 2008, he urged Catholics to vote against President Obama. Here's part of a long interview he did with the rabidly homophobic Minnesota Catholic weekly newspaper, The Wanderer, which is independent of all ecclesiastical oversight.

Q. Things seem to be declining at an accelerating rate in our country. For example, it is shocking how quickly things happened in Minnesota. A year ago it seemed almost certain that a November ballot referendum would constitutionally define marriage as the union of one man and one woman. Despite a heroic effort by Archbishop John Nienstedt and many other Church leaders, it failed. Just four months later a law was enacted making Minnesota the 12th state to legalize so- called same- sex marriage. How did we get to this point? Aside from prayer and fasting, what can the faithful do?

A. First of all, I would underline the need for much prayer and fasting. The alarming rapidity of the realization of the homosexual agenda ought to awaken all of us and frighten us with regard to the future of our nation. This is a work of deceit, a lie about the most fundamental aspect of our human nature, our human sexuality, which after life itself defines us. There is only one place these types of lies come from, namely Satan. It is a diabolical situation which is aimed at destroying individuals, families, and eventually our nation.

How did we get to this point? The fact that these kinds of "arrangements" are made legal is a manifestation of a culture of death, of an anti-life and anti-family culture which has existed in our nation now for some time. We as Catholics have not properly combatted it because we have not been taught our Catholic Faith, especially in the depth needed to address these grave evils of our time. This is a failure of catechesis both of children and young people that has been going on for fifty years. It is being addressed, but it needs much more radical attention. I can say this because I was the bishop of two different dioceses.

After fifty years of this, we have many adult voters who support politicians with immoral positions because they do not know their Catholic Faith and its teaching with regard to same- sex attraction and the inherent disorder of sexual relations between two persons of the same sex. Therefore, they are not able to defend the Catholic Faith in this matter.

What has also contributed greatly to the situation is an exaltation of the virtue of tolerance which is falsely seen as the virtue which governs all other virtues. In other words, we should tolerate other people in their immoral actions to the extent that we seem also to accept the moral wrong. Tolerance is a virtue, but it is certainly not the principal virtue; the principal virtue is charity. Charity means speaking the truth, especially the truth about human life and human sexuality. While we love the individual, we desire only the best for one who suffers from an inclination to engage in sexual relations with a person of the same sex. We must abhor the actions themselves because they are contrary to nature itself as God has created us.

The virtue of charity leads us to be kind and understanding to the individual, but also to be firm and steadfast in opposing the evil itself. This confusion is widespread. I have encountered it many times myself as a priest and bishop. It is something we simply need to address. There is far too much silence-- people do not want to talk about it because the topic is not "politically correct." But we cannot be silent any longer or we will find ourselvesin a situation that will be very difficult to reverse.

Q. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, when recently questioned at a press briefing about the moral difference between what Dr. Gosnell did in murdering a baby born alive at 23 weeks as compared to the practice of aborting a baby moments before birth, refused to answer. Instead she is reported to have responded: “ As a practicing and respectful Catholic this is sacred ground to me when we talk about this. I don’t think it should have anything to do with politics.” How are we to react to such a seemingly scandalous statement? Is this a case where Canon 915 might properly be applied? [Editor’s Note:Canon 915 of the Church’s Code of Canon Law states that those who are “ obstinately persevering in manifest grave sin are not to be admitted to Holy Communion.”]

A. Certainly this is a case when Canon 915 must be applied. This is a person who obstinately, after repeated admonitions, persists in a grave sin-- cooperating with the crime of procured abortion-- and still professes to be a devout Catholic. This is a prime example of what Blessed John Paul II referred to as the situation of Catholics who have divorced their faith from their public life and therefore are not serving their brothers and sisters in the way that they must-- in safeguarding and promoting the life of the innocent and defenseless unborn, in safeguarding and promoting the integrity of marriage and the family.

What Congresswoman Pelosi is speaking of is not particular confessional beliefs or practices of the Catholic Church. It belongs to the natural moral law which is written on every human heart and which the Catholic Church obviously also teaches: that natural moral law which is so wonderfully illumined for us by Our Lord Jesus Christ by His saving teaching, but most of all by His Passion and death.

To say that these are simply questions of Catholic Faith which have no part in politics is just false and wrong. I fear for Congresswoman Pelosi if she does not come to understand how gravely in error she is. I invite her to reflect upon the example of St. Thomas More who acted rightly in a similar situation even at the cost of his life.

Q. Many faithful Catholics are troubled when high- profile political figures with unconcealed antilife, anti-family positions are honored in such ways as receiving invitations to speak at Catholic university commencement ceremonies and given honorary degrees or memorialized at public Catholic funeral Masses without having renounced their immoral positions. Faithful Catholics, at the same time, are taught they have committed a serious sin if they vote for these same candidates. How are those who are seriously trying to live out their faith to reconcile this apparent contradiction?

A. You cannot reconcile it-- it is a contradiction, it is wrong, it is a scandal, and it must stop! We live in a culture with a false sense of dialogue-- which has also crept into the Church-- where we pretend to dialogue about open and egregious violations of the moral law. Can we believe it is permissible to recognize publicly people who support open and egregious violations, and then act surprised if someone is scandalized by it? For Catholic institutions or individuals to give recognition to such persons, to honor them in any way, is a source of grave scandal for which they are responsible. In acertain way, they contribute to the sinfulness of the individuals involved. There is no way to reconcile it; it simply is wrong.

The big Church news today was how Pope Francis welcomed 4 homeless men to the Vatican to share breakfast with him on his 77th birthday. But there were two other pieces of news. The Advocate, America's oldest LGBT magazine, named the Pope "person of the year. The editors say they gave Francis the honor because, "although he is still against gay marriage, his pontificate so far had shown 'a stark change in [anti-gay] rhetoric from his two predecessors.' They hailed his famous response last July, when a reporter asked about gay people in the church. Francis said: 'If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge?'" Burke, no doubt would like to answer that. But that was the other big Church news yesterday. The Pope has begun downgrading the malevolent Burke's position.

Pope Francis moved on Monday against a conservative American cardinal who has been an outspoken critic of abortion and same-sex marriage, by replacing him on a powerful Vatican committee with another American who is less identified with the culture wars within the Roman Catholic Church.

The pope’s decision to remove Cardinal Raymond L. Burke from the Congregation for Bishops was taken by church experts to be a signal that Francis is willing to disrupt the Vatican establishment in order to be more inclusive.

Even so, many saw the move less as an effort to change doctrine on specific social issues than an attempt to bring a stylistic and pastoral consistency to the church’s leadership.

“He is saying that you don’t need to be a conservative to become a bishop,” said Alberto Melloni, the director of the John XXIII Foundation for Religious Studies in Bologna, Italy, a liberal Catholic research institute. “He wants good bishops, regardless of how conservative or liberal they are.”

...Last week, Cardinal Burke also seemed to create more substantive daylight between himself and the pope, giving an interview in which he raised concerns about comments by Francis that the church should reduce the focus on abortion and same-sex marriage.

“One gets the impression, or it’s interpreted this way in the media, that he thinks we’re talking too much about abortion, too much about the integrity of marriage as between one man and one woman,” Cardinal Burke said of the pope in an interview with EWTN, a Catholic broadcaster. “But we can never talk enough about that.”

…Cardinal Burke still serves as the prefect of the Vatican’s highest canonical court, but analysts say his removal from the Congregation for Bishops will sharply reduce his influence, especially over personnel changes in American churches.

“The Congregation for Bishops is the most important congregation in the Vatican,” said the Rev. Thomas J. Reese, a Jesuit priest and the author of “Inside the Vatican: The Politics and Organization of the Catholic Church.”

“It decides who are going to be the bishops all over the world,” he added. “This is what has the most direct impact on the life of the local church.”

To replace Cardinal Burke, Francis chose Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington, an ideological moderate with a deep knowledge of the Vatican but also with pastoral experience. Father Reese noted that Cardinal Burke had been a leader of American bishops arguing that Catholic politicians who support abortion rights should be barred from receiving communion, while Cardinal Wuerl had taken an opposite tack.

…In an interview in Washington last week, Cardinal Wuerl suggested that the pope was altering the way the bishops’ congregation functioned. For example, Francis is already surveying a broader range of bishops than those in the congregation, the cardinal said.

“When it comes to future bishops, he is asking a number of sources,” he said.

Asked whether all of the pope’s changes mattered if Cardinal Burke still had such influence in appointing bishops, Cardinal Wuerl smiled.

“Don’t we have to give this pope time?” he said.

This isn't about gays or about American politics. This is about the future of the Catholic Church and if it will be bringing the message of love and peace that Jesus preached or if it will be a bastion of hatred and bigotry on behalf of Satan. Go, Francis! God protect you!

The Catholics Are Attacking... Nancy Pelosi

Most people only know the Pop'O'Pies from their smash cover of the Dead's "Truckin'" but they had another song people loved as well, "The Catholics Are Attacking" from their awesome White EP, which was released on my label, 415 Records, in 1981. I'm still certain that producing the White EP prepared a young David Kahne for the work he would go on to do producing albums for Sublime, Fishbone, Sugar Ray, Paul McCartney, Tony Bennett, The Bangles and Regina Spektor. For me, a dj at the time, "The Catholics Are Attacking" posed a real problem. The station I played music on, KUSF, was owned by the Jesuits. They weren't impressed by the lyrics and I was asked to stop playing it. Of course, I ignored them. Actually, I didn't ignore them... I played it more frequently.

Remember last week when Pope Francis said the church he heads is too obsessed with preaching about abortion, gay marriage and contraception? That's not stopping some of the extreme right-wing elements inside the Church from continuing to rant and rave about those topics. One very political radical right freak, former bishop of La Crosse, Wisconsin and archbishop of St. Louis, Cardinal Raymond Burke, has put the Pope in an awkward position by further politicizing exactly what the Pope signaled his people to shut up about. Burke has demanded that Nancy Pelosi be denied communion because she is pro-Choice.

Francis' predecessor, the Nazi Pope, was a big fan of Burke's appointment to the Vatican’s Supreme Court in 2008. He never tires of being the poster boy for just what Pope Francis was complaining about. Hopefully he'll be removed when the Pope reforms the curia over the coming months. Here's a portion of his interview with a far right, rabidly homophobic Minnesota weekly newspaper, The Wanderer, which is independent of all ecclesiastical oversight.

Q. Things seem to be declining at an accelerating rate in our country. For example, it is shocking how quickly things happened in Minnesota. A year ago it seemed almost certain that a November ballot referendum would constitutionally define marriage as the union of one man and one woman. Despite a heroic effort by Archbishop John Nienstedt and many other Church leaders, it failed. Just four months later a law was enacted making Minnesota the 12th state to legalize so- called same- sex marriage. How did we get to this point? Aside from prayer and fasting, what can the faithful do?

A. First of all, I would underline the need for much prayer and fasting. The alarming rapidity of the realization of the homosexual agenda ought to awaken all of us and frighten us with regard to the future of our nation. This is a work of deceit, a lie about the most fundamental aspect of our human nature, our human sexuality, which after life itself defines us. There is only one place these types of lies come from, namely Satan. It is a diabolical situation which is aimed at destroying individuals, families, and eventually our nation.

How did we get to this point? The fact that these kinds of "arrangements" are made legal is a manifestation of a culture of death, of an anti-life and anti-family culture which has existed in our nation now for some time. We as Catholics have not properly combatted it because we have not been taught our Catholic Faith, especially in the depth needed to address these grave evils of our time. This is a failure of catechesis both of children and young people that has been going on for fifty years. It is being addressed, but it needs much more radical attention. I can say this because I was the bishop of two different dioceses.

After fifty years of this, we have many adult voters who support politicians with immoral positions because they do not know their Catholic Faith and its teaching with regard to same- sex attraction and the inherent disorder of sexual relations between two persons of the same sex. Therefore, they are not able to defend the Catholic Faith in this matter.

What has also contributed greatly to the situation is an exaltation of the virtue of tolerance which is falsely seen as the virtue which governs all other virtues. In other words, we should tolerate other people in their immoral actions to the extent that we seem also to accept the moral wrong. Tolerance is a virtue, but it is certainly not the principal virtue; the principal virtue is charity. Charity means speaking the truth, especially the truth about human life and human sexuality. While we love the individual, we desire only the best for one who suffers from an inclination to engage in sexual relations with a person of the same sex. We must abhor the actions themselves because they are contrary to nature itself as God has created us.

The virtue of charity leads us to be kind and understanding to the individual, but also to be firm and steadfast in opposing the evil itself. This confusion is widespread. I have encountered it many times myself as a priest and bishop. It is something we simply need to address. There is far too much silence-- people do not want to talk about it because the topic is not "politically correct." But we cannot be silent any longer or we will find ourselvesin a situation that will be very difficult to reverse.

Q. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, when recently questioned at a press briefing about the moral difference between what Dr. Gosnell did in murdering a baby born alive at 23 weeks as compared to the practice of aborting a baby moments before birth, refused to answer. Instead she is reported to have responded: “ As a practicing and respectful Catholic this is sacred ground to me when we talk about this. I don’t think it should have anything to do with politics.” How are we to react to such a seemingly scandalous statement? Is this a case where Canon 915 might properly be applied? [Editor’s Note:Canon 915 of the Church’s Code of Canon Law states that those who are “ obstinately persevering in manifest grave sin are not to be admitted to Holy Communion.”]

A. Certainly this is a case when Canon 915 must be applied. This is a person who obstinately, after repeated admonitions, persists in a grave sin-- cooperating with the crime of procured abortion-- and still professes to be a devout Catholic. This is a prime example of what Blessed John Paul II referred to as the situation of Catholics who have divorced their faith from their public life and therefore are not serving their brothers and sisters in the way that they must-- in safeguarding and promoting the life of the innocent and defenseless unborn, in safeguarding and promoting the integrity of marriage and the family.

What Congresswoman Pelosi is speaking of is not particular confessional beliefs or practices of the Catholic Church. It belongs to the natural moral law which is written on every human heart and which the Catholic Church obviously also teaches: that natural moral law which is so wonderfully illumined for us by Our Lord Jesus Christ by His saving teaching, but most of all by His Passion and death.

To say that these are simply questions of Catholic Faith which have no part in politics is just false and wrong. I fear for Congresswoman Pelosi if she does not come to understand how gravely in error she is. I invite her to reflect upon the example of St. Thomas More who acted rightly in a similar situation even at the cost of his life.

Q. Many faithful Catholics are troubled when high- profile political figures with unconcealed antilife, anti-family positions are honored in such ways as receiving invitations to speak at Catholic university commencement ceremonies and given honorary degrees or memorialized at public Catholic funeral Masses without having renounced their immoral positions. Faithful Catholics, at the same time, are taught they have committed a serious sin if they vote for these same candidates. How are those who are seriously trying to live out their faith to reconcile this apparent contradiction?

A. You cannot reconcile it-- it is a contradiction, it is wrong, it is a scandal, and it must stop! We live in a culture with a false sense of dialogue-- which has also crept into the Church-- where we pretend to dialogue about open and egregious violations of the moral law. Can we believe it is permissible to recognize publicly people who support open and egregious violations, and then act surprised if someone is scandalized by it? For Catholic institutions or individuals to give recognition to such persons, to honor them in any way, is a source of grave scandal for which they are responsible. In acertain way, they contribute to the sinfulness of the individuals involved. There is no way to reconcile it; it simply is wrong.

If Burke's name is familiar to you, it may be because he has worked hand-in-glove with right-wing Republicans in trying to defeat Democrats electorally. In 2004, during the presidential election campaign, he demanded that John Kerry not be given the Eucharist and because he led a boycott of a Sheryl Crow charity event for a children's hospital in 2007 because she's pro-Choice. In 2008, he urged Catholics to vote against President Obama. He's widely considered the most anti-Jesus Cardinal in the Vatican curia and more than a few observers suspect he is a conscious agent of Satan within the Church.

Evil incarnate within the Catholic Church