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[ by Charles Cameron — responding to E.J. Dionne Jr. and others in a similar plight ]
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You may consider this post a response to E.J. Dionne Jr.‘s Washngton Post op-ed, It’s becoming harder to explain why I’m still Catholic

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The Catholic Church is being hammered, nailed — there’s even a crucifixion echo there, but no, that won’t work here — for its extensive clerical — priests, yes, but nuns too — child abuse, long covered up and mushrooming under that cover..

The focus is on the Catholic Church, as though Catholicism itself were the problem. In its bureaucratic structure, it surely is — but the message in the second panel of this DoubleQuote, a quote from one of Billy Graham‘s grandsons, should remind us that the rot is found outside as well as inside the Catholic tent:

Worse!
And btw, they don’t have (repressed!) celibate clergy!

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That’s to say, don’t keep the “conversation” focused on the Catholic tent, as though it’s all on Pope Francis, when it’s not. And this second one is to remind us of the very real spiritual implication of the abuse for those who commit, or by extension permit it, for instance by assigning a known pedophile priest to a new parish where he can continue his practice de novo — as Dionne mentions in his opening salvo.

Here in the second panel is Christ’s response to all such:

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If we bear in mind Christ’s personal and divine identification with the innocent, the victims, the gravity of the situation will not be lost. And if we can take Tullian Tchividjian’s word for the state of affairs in Protestant circles — he has a somewhat checkered past — then maybe we can escape the Catholic silo so prevalent in current news reports, and search more broadly for similar manifestations across faiths (and “none”) laterally, and vertically in terms of psychological drivers, generational descent, and so forth.

This is no time for blame-calling within the box.

[ by Charles Cameron — remembering the Ted Cruz Christ / Antichrist (and Obama ditto) rhetoric from an earlier post ]
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Dismal, both of them:

Sources:

NBC News, Trump Calls Clinton ‘The Devil’

NYT Magazine, I’m the Last Thing Standing Between You and the Apocalypse

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I could be wrong, but I somehow doubt that either Trump or Clinton is using the terms “devil” or “apocalypse” (respectively) in their literal religious meanings here.

For that I’m thankful.

But then..

In contrast to the two posts I’ve linked to above, these two below appear to me to be making overtly and deliberately religious appeals with respect to the current election.

Alex Jones, InfoWars, Hillary Clinton: Demonic Warmonger

Andy Crouch, Christianity Today, Speak Truth to Trump

I’ve included the InfoWars video clip because it makes it very clear that Alex Jones, at least, claims he is being “Biblical” — his own word — when he calls Hillary Clinton demonic — and the Christianity Today piece because it represents a distinguished Evangelical response to the general tendency of Evangelical Christians to support Donald Trump‘s candidacy.

In somewhat related news, I am saddened to report that Christianity Today‘s literary magazine Books & Culture will close at the end of the year. John Wilson, the editor, is a long time and valued friend from Pasadena bookstore days — see his kind words about the late Bill Tunilla, the bookman who introduced us, in this Letter from the Editor.

[ by Charles Cameron — why grokking is an important quality in analysts and diplomats, policy-makers and journos ]
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Update on the long-running diplomatic snafu between S Korea and Japan:

Welsh imam explains why sex slavery is okay:

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And here we are in 2016 CE.

I keep, keep, keep saying this: whether we’re dealing with Japan in WWII or ISIS today, we need to understand that worldviews differ, that the differences matter — and that knowing that intellectually is not enough, we need to be able to know it in the holistic, visceral-to-intellectual way Heinlein’s character Valentine Michael Smith in Stranger in a Strange Land called “grokking“.