In a moment when cruelty is being normalized and rights are being stripped, Christians cannot be neutral. On Feb. 18, 8 PM ET, Pax Christi USA Exec Director Charlene Howard will be a speaker during a prayer service focused on prayer, lament, and moral clarity. Register at bit.ly/CalltoChrist....

Previewed tonight on Rachel Maddow, Cardinal Cupich to celebrate Ash Wednesday Mass and Procession in solidarity with immigrants; the move comes just days after a judge ruled that priests and ministers must be allowed into Broadview Detention Center to minister to migrants. Official invitation here…

All of this stupendous Russian failure has just turned into background noise—something that makes it difficult to see just what an incredible failure Moscow's offensive is, and Putin's leadership remains. And it's only going to get worse, worse, and worse for Russia if Putin remains in power.

Not a single strategic goal has been met. Russia's losing a Vietnam's worth of soldiers every few months. The economy is sprinting toward stagnation, while Moscow is turning more and more every month into a Chinese vassal—all while the Kremlin's allies topple elsewhere. Staggering historic failure.

"Not to share our own wealth with the poor is theft from the poor and deprivation of their means of life; we do not possess our own wealth but theirs" (St Basil the Great) "Friends, this is straight out of the MARXIST playbook!!!" (R. Barron, bishop of Winona-Rochester, Founder, Word On Fire, Inc.)

he's a dying old man whose various underlings and viziers are repulsive freaks and they are losing every single public opinion battle they've fought

We bought Article II of the United Nations Charter with the blood of a hundred million human beings, and less than a century later, it's being sold for nothing by people who don't even understand what they're doing.

It sort of stands to reason that in an increasingly unequal society, an increasingly hereditary elite and the social climbers around them would get increasingly interested in eugenic defenses of privilege and wealth

I think a significant fraction of the theological rationale for abolition is precisely: Christians cannot accept there are discardable people.

The entire ethos of the Trump administration is that nobody who disagrees with them, nobody who fails to support them, is legitimate or entitled to any rights in any way. It is the ethos of thuggish tyranny.

having your city noticed by the president is now a natural disaster on par with a hurricane or major flood

This is true for everything ranging from "moral substitute" evangelical media (think Kirk Cameron's oeuvre) to Kid Rock as the "acceptable" substitute for whoever's the Super Bowl halftime performer.

It’s so funny to make the most intergenerational and family oriented halftime show in years to highlight how genuinely delusional (and fundamentally racist) MAGA culture war derangement is

ngl one of my biggest concerns with AI is just that it's good at automating a lot of unglamorous entry level roles where people cut their teeth. It's like how the airline industry thought that there would be an endless supply of cold war pilots, and now have a massive pilot shortage and no pipeline

Amen.

Trumpworld is attacking Bad Bunny as an "elitist" who disdains "law enforcement." But it turns out that ICE's paramilitary war on Americans has broken all the old culture war signifiers. The old tropes are failing. Trump is losing the culture on this. 6/ newrepublic.com/article/2062...

"It is our conviction that a person's willingness to accept the Negro as fully equal to the white both as a citizen and as a Christian is the acid test of his Americanism and his Christianity." — Father Louis J. Twomey, SJ, February 1959

the SSPX is trying to force the Vatican to renegotiate Vatican II (this is not new) and to (re)open within Catholicism a debate on the theological orthodoxy of the Pope who died a few months ago (this is kind of new). And they think they can count on a fifth column inside.

(Worth noting: excommunication is not intended as a permanent state, it's more a "time out while you think about what you've done" and the excommunication can be lifted by renouncing the schismatic actions and affirming your submission to the Pope's orders, yadda)

So *technically*, by announcing his intent here, and using this particular wording (there are some keywords there), Pagliarani has *probably* excommunicated himself. But it's up in the air. I think this is a test balloon to see if Leo will announce that this is a schismatic act--

--or wait until Pagliarani takes an actual action on the intent, basically trying to see whether Leo favors the carrot of Benedict or goes straight for the stick Francis whacked Viganò with.

I think it's best for everyone to understand that the unified class project of billionaires right now is to do to white collar workers what globalization and neoliberalism did to blue collar workers.

As it happens, the Catholic Church has explicitly rejected Johnson's idea that governments do not need to worry about details like treating people humanely regardless of their status. But Pope Leo made a broader appeal to the Christian obligation to see Jesus in the poor and vulnerable. 3/

It's a part of the Gospel that makes every Christian squirm, because you can't wiggle out of the obligation to love by pretending not to know it applies. "Lord, we didn't realize that was YOU!" is irrelevant. Did you treat others badly or with love when you had the power is all that matters. /4

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So we must pray for a good will, infused with charity, as we decide what it is just and good to do. Charity prevents goodness and justice from being place-holder words for the decisions of the powerful. Justice is a reality in itself sought in practice for the human good of all.

Anyway, ironically, SSPX "negotiations" are basically the same kind of thing as the Lutherans sending a delegation to Trent. It wasn't to hammer out a good-faith agreement; it was to stand up and make a statement about how they don't recognize the council and its authority, and Rome is wrong, period

The largest infrastructure projects currently being built in the US appear to be data centers and detention centers. The AI boom has coincided with ICE becoming the most heavily funded government agency. It's hard not to see a connection: This is the architectures of digital fascism

We cannot oppress the powerless and vulnerable people in our midst and also pray the "Our Father." We simply cannot do both.

This comparison just sent a chill down my spine.

For Liam.

I understand it's hard for some to use the term concentration camp, even for those horrified by what's happening. And there are settings (e.g., court) where it may not be helpful today. The key thing to realize is that there's an arc of how detention regimes tend to go, and we're recognizably on it.

"The real criticism [of the prophets] begins in the capacity to grieve because that is the most visceral announcement that things are not right. Only in the empire are we pressed and urged and invited to pretend that things are all right." W. Brueggemann

This right here is the beginnings of the result of what DOGE was really up to. Not *really* slashing stuff, but getting access to as many government citizen databases and joining them to be able to target people quickly and comprehensively across all their exposure to the federal government.

Pax Christi USA Teacher of Peace Kathy Kelly reminds us that this is the second anniversary of the death of five-year old Hind Rajab who was murdered when an Israeli Defense Force unit shot missiles at the car Hind and her family were traveling in. Those who tried to rescue Hind were killed, too.

I just wrote a @theactionnetwork.bsky.social letter: Tell Your Senators: Stop Harmful ICE and CBP Funding Increases. Write one here: actionnetwork.org/letters/stop...

On this Holocaust Remembrance Day, Pope Leo reminds us "the Church rejects any discrimination or harassment based on ethnicity, language, nationality, or religion.” Never forget. www.vaticannews.va/en/world/new...

A good summary of the second Trump administration in one photo.

There's a weird inverse of Murc's Law where the corporate leaders, academia, media, etc. conceptualize conservatives as a powerful bloc that needs to be catered to but no one seems to have a theory of mind for liberals.

The Trump administration said, flatly, that people shouldn't have guns at protests. Every anti-gun group has all those statements saved to their hard drives now. They made life much more difficult for the 2A folks. And they know it.

Cardinal Tobin calls on Catholics to pressure Congress against further funding of ICE. We need more bishops to speak up.

Considering Trump views wounded veterans and war dead as suckers and losers, this outcome isn't surprising.

This made me laugh.😂

I'm hooked on this show Homestead Rescue. Can't imagine why anyone would choose this lifestyle, it looks like constant work and drudgery. But I also admire them and kind of wish I had the fortitude to chuck everything and go live in the woods far away from the insanity of the world.

Not only is authoritarianism not new, it is still in our living memory. Southern racial apartheid is more recent than the Nazis, and more relevant to understanding our current politics. As American politics have nationalized, the South anchors one of the two parties and exported its politics 5/x

I genuinely can't imagine advice less useful than to hector people for saying "fascism" when the activities of the state — using secret police to enact terror, weaponizing the tools of the state to deter opposition, taking over mouthpieces of the media, bullying other liberal states — resemble it.

They’ve been reduced to claiming that the anticipation of violence is in itself violence, that being scared of normies is violence, that expressing anger is violence, that being physically around is violence, that speaking is violence.

Putin pioneered this. No opposition is legitimate. Regular, decent, “ordinary” people cannot possibly be against us because only we represent “the real people.” Tell-tale sign of authoritarianism.

The fact that conservative movements have dollars slushing around with random ancient billionaires has made them think that's the only way social movements are funded. Genuinely do not realise that this is not normal or how solidarity works. Pathetic.