With God On Our Side
With apologies to Bob Dylan.
"The Lord's our shepherd, says the psalm, but just in case, we better get a bomb!" Tom Lehrer
This week, I was searching for a man I interviewed years ago. Dr. Werner Kelber was for years, a professor in the Religion Department at Rice University in Houston. I was thinking about our conversation and wondering if he was still teaching, or indeed, was still with us, and he fortunately still is, but is retired now.
He was the author of several books on the New Testament and at the time, I was both working in commercial broadcast news and helping out at the Rice Media Relations office. They were having a bit of trouble getting their faculty on local or national television as experts, probably largely because they were considered too highbrow for local TV.
As part of that, I did local interviews for the campus radio station and in looking up Dr. Kelber, I ran across this from 1985...
I won't bore you with it, or you can listen if you wish. It's about 15 minutes long. A few things hit me, though, as I listened to an interview from 41 years ago. As someone who made a living with my voice for 56 years, it is fascinating to hear it in 1985. I think I had a better vocabulary as well.
And as I have just wrapped up the commercial broadcast portion of my career, and prepare to spend the rest writing and podcasting, it's a little bittersweet.
The best comment on this composite, by the way, came from an old friend from my college days. "Hey, you still look better than Arafat."
The other is how refreshing it is to hear a literate and considered discussion of religion and the Bible without the hysterics and false emotion we are getting in our public dialogue these days. This not to mention, AI-generated blasphemous images of the President as Jesus which, If I could track Dr. Kelber down, I'd love to hear his thoughts on.
Franklin Graham has finally weighed in on it though, giving the President a complete pass. I know, I'm as shocked as Captain Renault...
That whirring sound you hear is Billy, by the way.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, who has been very publicly and ostentatiously religious simply said, "I talked with the president about it as soon as I saw it and told him that I don't think it was being received in the same way he intended it. He agreed, and he pulled it down. That was the right thing to do."
Well, how was it intended, Mike? What was the President trying to imply? This is the equivalent of voting "Present."
And now, this unexpected sideshow in the war in Iran has erupted into a full-fledged feud between the Pope and the President. Who had that on their bingo cards?
It began with Pope Leo's Palm Sunday sermon a few weeks ago wherein he prayed for peace and a resolution to this conflict. He opined that essentially, don't pray for success in killing the other guy. God isn't listening to that. Pray for an end to it.
Conversely, the public theological sentiments we are getting from Secretary Pete Hegseth the Lionhearted, leader of the latest Crusade, are by contrast, summarized as, "Lord, help steady my aim."
The Right-Reverend Hegseth, even gave a speech quoting a paraphrase of the Book of Ezekiel, which wasn't even from the book but from the film "Pulp Fiction." It's the quote Samual L. Jackson uses before shooting a guy, and was partially written by Quentin Tarantino. Or perhaps it should be St. Quentin.
Vice-President J.D. Vance, based on his full 7 years as a Catholic convert, decided to lecture a guy who spent his life in the clergy.
“I think it’s very, very important for the Pope to be careful when he talks about matters of theology.”
Yeah, me, too. Given that the day after meeting J.D., Pope Francis died and then Victor Orban was voted out in Hungary, I'd pay attention, Leo. The man's a jinx.
And of course, Trump being Trump, he took credit for Leo even getting to wear that tall hat. He said that Leo is Pontiff...
“...because he was an American, and they thought that would be the best way to deal with President Donald J. Trump. If I wasn’t in the White House, Leo wouldn’t be in the Vatican.”
You have to admit that running America, Venezuela and the Vatican has to be tiring. No wonder he's falling asleep in meetings. Thank goodness Putin is helping out because NATO sure isn't.
And of course, again Trump being Trump, he has cut off federal funding for Catholic Charities. Thomas Wenski, Archbishop of Miami, said the federal government abruptly ended a more than six-decade relationship with Catholic Charities in Miami, calling it “baffling” to shutter a program caring for migrant children that the government would be “hard-pressed to replicate at the level of competence and excellence that Catholic Charities has achieved.”
This is government by whim and ego.
"I don't like your guy in charge, so you will all pay."
He's done it with NATO and Ukraine, breaking US promises and treaties in both cases. He's done it to US universities and law firms. He has done it by pardoning and now completely exonerating those who stormed the US Capitol to stop a free election.
He has done it by gutting the US Forest Service and now environmental laws. He has done it by levying the kinds of tariffs that led to the Great Depression and now are feeding inflation. He has done it by launching a war to get a treaty like the one he pulled out of the moment he was elected in 2016. Why? It seems he wakes up in a different world every day.
And as in this silly feud with Pope Leo, it's petty and vindictive. The sad part is, there is no shortage of apologists and rationalizers to fill Cabinet meetings and voting booths.
The emperor is walking around stark naked and they'll say it's a Brooks Brothers suit. And it is one thing to do it domestically, but now our international relations are suffering. I mean, he's talking again about taking over Cuba.
Well, at least it's smaller than Greenland, but to be fair, bigger than Epstein Island.
Now, he is part of the Texas Outlaw Writers, and if this doesn't pan out, the outlaw part will still work as he will indeed resort to robbing banks.