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there is one man who stands out from the general level of mediocrity, a King who tried with some success to arrest the decadence—Charles III, King of Spain, 1759-1788

This zeal for the general welfare of his people brought him into rough conflict with the two main powers in the land; the nobility and the clergy

In October 1731 he set off for Italy to take over the Duchies of Parma and Piacenza, and to garrison Tuscany, an inheritance arranged for him by Isabella

Across the country, religious leaders whose politics fall to the left of center, and who used to shun the political arena, are getting involved — and even recruiting political candidates — to fight back against President Trump’s policies on immigration, health care, poverty and the environment.

Across the country, religious leaders whose politics fall to the left of center, and who used to shun the political arena, are getting involved — and even recruiting political candidates — to fight back against President Trump’s policies on immigration, health care, poverty and the environment.

Frustrated by Christian conservatives’ focus on reversing liberal successes in legalizing abortion and same-sex marriage, those on the religious left want to turn instead to what they see as truly fundamental biblical imperatives — caring for the poor, welcoming strangers and protecting the earth — and maybe even change some minds about what it means to be a believer

German Catholic theologians and clergy have mobilized against a recent ruling from the Vatican that said the Catholic Church would not bless same-sex unions.

"We decisively distance ourselves from this position," it said.The statement, signed by 266 theologians, said the ruling lacks "theological depth, hermeneutical understanding as well as argumentative stringency."

"A document that in its argumentation so blatantly excludes any progress in theological and human scientific knowledge will lead to pastoral practice ignoring it," Georg Bätzing, Bishop of Limburg, said in a statement published on Facebook on Wednesday.

between 1950 and 2020 at least 216,000 children were sexually abused in France by Catholic clergy.

on October 5th, concluded a two-year, independent inquiry commissioned by the church. Jean-Marc Sauvé, the president of the commission that conducted the investigation, said it uncovered “the lead weight of silence smothering the crimes” committed by 2,900-3,200 clergy. If lay members were also included, the number of abused could reach 330,000.

“for a very long time the Catholic church’s immediate reaction was to protect itself as an institution and it has shown complete, even cruel, indifference to those having suffered abuse.”

Francis’s reign will be a success if it begins to restore the moral credibility of the church’s hierarchy and clergy, and it will be a failure if it does not.

In that culture — our culture — priestly sex abuse and corruption in the Vatican aren’t just seen as evidence that all men are sinners. They’re seen as evidence that the church has no authority to judge what is and isn’t sin, that the renunciation Catholicism preaches mostly warps and rarely fulfills, and that the world’s approach to sex (and money, and ambition) is the only sane approach there is.

Religion without renunciation has obvious appeal. But its cultural consequences are not all self-evidently positive. Absent ideals of chastity, people are less likely to form families. Absent ideals of solidarity, more people live and age and die alone. The social landscape that we take for granted is one that many earlier generations would have regarded as dystopian: sex and reproduction have both been ruthlessly commodified, adult freedoms are enjoyed at the expense of children’s interests, fewer children grow up with both a mother and a father, and fewer and fewer children are even born at all.

“It’s amazing that this awakening of civic consciousness has affected the church as well, and not just lay people but clergy, too,” Sergei Chapnin, editor of the Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate, said last week, on the sidelines of a seminar about Russia’s historical identity

the reaction inside the church arose from disgust at official dishonesty surrounding the election. “A Christian has to protest against lies, especially lies to millions of people,

He said clergy members were speaking out because they saw vote-rigging and fraud as violations of the Ten Commandments.

If the restoration, above all the Second Restoration, was in its own opinion forced to rely on the noblesse, it was equally forced to rely on the Church

The alliance of “throne and altar” seemed to nearly everybody, on either side, desirable and inevitable

By the Concordat of 1802, the Church had, in a sense, been restored, before the Crown.

Islamic government is a government of law. In this form of government, sovereignty belongs to God alone and law is His decree and command. The law of Islam, divine command, has absolute authority over all individuals and the Islamic government.

re would have been no monarchy and no empire, no usurpation of the lives and property of the people, no oppression and plunder, no encroachment on the public treasury, no vice and abomination. Most forms of corruption originate with the ruling class, the tyrannical ruling family and the libertines that associate with them. It is these rulers who establish centers of vice and corruption, who build centers of vice and wine-drinking, and spend the income of the religious endowments constructing cinemas.5            

Even though that excellent man ruled over a vast realm that included Iran, Egypt, Hijāz3 and the Yemen among its provinces, he lived more frugally than the most impoverished of our clergy students.

The Supreme Court on Thursday night ruled that the execution of an Alabama man must remain on hold unless the state allows the man, Willie Smith III, to have his pastor by his side in the execution chamber.

However, the Associated Press reported shortly after the Supreme Court’s ruling that Alabama had called off Smith’s execution, which had been scheduled to take place under an execution warrant that designated Thursday as the execution date. The Supreme Court issued its ruling at around midnight eastern time – or about 11 p.m. central time, just one hour before the execution warrant expired.

Four justices — Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Amy Coney Barrett — all signed an opinion, written by Kagan, that said the state failed to adequately justify its policy of barring spiritual advisers from the execution chamber.

In Versailles, France, the deputies of the Third Estate, which represent commoners and the lower clergy, meet on the Jeu de Paume, an indoor tennis court, in defiance of King Louis XVI’s order to disperse.

Louis XVI, who ascended the French throne in 1774, proved unsuited to deal with the severe financial problems he had inherited from his grandfather, King Louis XV. In 1789, in a desperate attempt to address France’s economic crisis, Louis XVI assembled the Estates-General, a national assembly that represented the three “estates” of the French people–the nobles, the clergy, and the commons.

The Third Estate, which had the most representatives, declared itself the National Assembly and took an oath to force a new constitution on the king.

The video, along with Eric Trump’s claim that his father “literally saved Christianity” and the image Donald Trump reposted on Truth Social of Jesus sitting next to him in court, raises a question:

Does Trump believe that he is God’s messenger, or are his direct and indirect claims to have a special relationship with God a cynical ploy to win evangelical votes?

“Over the years since, there has been a growing chorus of voices saying Trump is the defender of Christians and Christianity. Trump says this himself all the time, ‘When they come after me, they’re really coming after you.’”

In religion, Elizabeth skillfully maintained peace in England while much of Europe was embroiled in religious wars. She did this by grafting moderate Protestant theology onto Catholic style ritual and organization.  She also blunted the ferocity of the religiously radical Puritans (Calvinists) by incorporating many of them into the hierarchy of the Church of England.  However, this put many Puritans into positions of authority where they could demand more sweeping reforms beyond the Queen's lukewarm Protestantism.  In addition, many of these Puritans were also members of the gentry (lower nobles) and middle classes who controlled the House of Commons in Parliament and voted on taxes.  Thus the issues of religion and money became even more tangled.

Religious wars, which threatened everyone's peace and security, and inflation, which made maintaining armies too expensive for rebellious nobles, also combined to help with the rise of absolutism in Europe.  This rising tide of absolutism would influence the Stuart kings of England to try to establish absolutism in their own realm in spite of popular opinion.  A less skillful and diplomatic ruler than Elizabeth would have trouble dealing with these new forces rising up in England.  Such an undiplomatic ruler succeeded Elizabeth in the person of James I (1603-1625).

While Elizabeth had so skillfully kept the issues of money and religion in check, James' absolutist beliefs and abrasive personality brought them to the surface.  As far as religion went, James fought the largely Puritan Parliament to keep the Church of England's Catholic style ritual, decorations, and hierarchy of clergy, over which he as king had control.  In money matters, king and Parliament clashed over James' growing requests for money to support his lavish lifestyle.  He also angered the middle class by raising customs duties, one of his main sources of revenue, to keep pace with inflation.  While James and Parliament never completely broke with one another over these issues, their constant squabbling did set the stage for the revolution that was to follow.

Most Americans in the 1730s had limited access to books. Books, in early America, were rare and expensive. There were no public libraries. Only the very wealthy and the clergy had access to large numbers of books. Even men of moderate means could not readily afford books. Enter Benjamin Franklin.

America has everything it needs for success in the twenty-first century with one exception: a critical mass of thinkers, analysts and policy entrepreneurs who can help unleash the creative potential of the American people and build the new government and policy structures that will facilitate a new wave of private-sector led growth.

the biggest roadblock today is that so many of America’s best-educated, best-placed people are too invested in old social models and old visions of history to do their real job and help society transition to the next level.  Instead of opportunities they see threats; instead of hope they see danger; instead of the possibility of progress they see the unraveling of everything beautiful and true.

there seem to be three big reasons why so many intellectuals today are so backward looking and reactionary.

For all our talk about separation of church and state, religious language has been written into our political culture in countless ways. It is inscribed in our pledge of patriotism, marked on our money, carved into the walls of our courts and our Capitol. Perhaps because it is everywhere, we assume it has been from the beginning.

the founding fathers didn’t create the ceremonies and slogans that come to mind when we consider whether this is a Christian nation. Our grandfathers did.

Back in the 1930s, business leaders found themselves on the defensive. Their public prestige had plummeted with the Great Crash; their private businesses were under attack by Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal from above and labor from below. To regain the upper hand, corporate leaders fought back on all fronts. They waged a figurative war in statehouses and, occasionally, a literal one in the streets; their campaigns extended from courts of law to the court of public opinion.

Black Daesh, white Daesh. The former slits throats, kills, stones, cuts off hands, destroys humanity’s common heritage and despises archaeology, women and non-Muslims. The latter is better dressed and neater but does the same things

Wahhabism, a messianic radicalism that arose in the 18th century, hopes to restore a fantasized caliphate centered on a desert, a sacred book, and two holy sites, Mecca and Medina. Born in massacre and blood, it manifests itself in a surreal relationship with women, a prohibition against non-Muslims treading on sacred territory, and ferocious religious laws. That translates into an obsessive hatred of imagery and representation and therefore art, but also of the body, nakedness and freedom. Saudi Arabia is a Daesh that has made it.

The West’s denial regarding Saudi Arabia is striking: It salutes the theocracy as its ally but pretends not to notice that it is the world’s chief ideological sponsor of Islamist culture

Church split over homosexuality would be a failure - Welby

"There's nothing I can do if people decide that they want to leave the room. It won't split the communion."

Views range from liberals in the US - who do accept openly gay clergy - to conservatives in Africa, who refuse to.

For years, Democrats accused Christian conservatives of being closet theocrats, seeking to impose Christianity on the country and refusing to accept, let alone embrace, American diversity. That was a generalization, but it turned out to be more true than not.

The evangelical defense of President Trump has taken on a religious fervor immune to reason.

We’ve tracked the evolution of Christian conservative leaders from public moralists to leaders of tribal identity. Their most visible leaders increasingly consider themselves the vanguard of white rural America (where so many of their flock reside), a group resentful of its demographic and cultural decline.

Hirono regards the traditional moral views of the Knights as “extreme positions.” The difficulty with this line of reasoning is that they are exactly the same positions of the Catholic Church itself

So why wouldn’t a judge’s membership in the Catholic Church — with its all-male clergy, opposition to abortion and belief in traditional marriage — be problematic as well?

The difficulty with a reductio ad absurdum comes when people no longer find it absurdum. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) has made the argument bluntly. In raising concerns in 2017 about appeals court nominee Amy Coney Barrett’s Catholic faith, Feinstein said, “When you read your speeches, the conclusion one draws is that the dogma lives loudly within you.”

In 1620, following the defeat of Frederick V (the elector palatine, or prince, from the Rhineland who had accepted the crown of Bohemia when it was offered to him in 1618) and the Bohemians, Spanish troops from the Netherlands entered the “Winter King’s” hereditary dominions of the Rhenish Palatinate. Militarily, Spain was now in a favourable position to restart the war with the United Provinces at the expiration of the truce in 1621

Little was said about religion or even the king’s authority, while the protection of the overseas empire had become the central consideration in Spanish relations with the Dutch rebels.

Having decided on war, Olivares pursued a perfectly consistent strategy: communications between Spain and the Spanish Netherlands were to be kept open at all costs