#christian labor

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

“Hold Jesus Liable To Arrest As Radical,” Toronto Star. October 20, 1932. Page 3. ---- Could Be Charged With Sedition, Anarchy, Religion and Labor Body Says ---- New Haven, Conn., Oct. 20 - The National Religion and Labor Foundation, organized by leading Jews, Catholics and Protestants to arouse the interest of the church in improving labor’s status, announced in its first bulletin to-day a ‘Reward - for information leading to the apprehension of Jesus Christ.’

Under a pen and ink sketch of Jesus, there appears the following:

‘Wanted - For sedition, criminal anarchy, vagrancy, and conspiring to overthrow the established government.

‘Dresses poorly, said to be a carpenter by trade, ill-nourished, has visionary ideas, associates with common working people, the unemployed, and bums. Alien - believed to be a Jew - alias ‘Prince of Peace,’ ‘Son of Man,’ ‘Light of the World,’ etc. Professional agitator, red beard, marks on hand and feet the result of injuries inflicted by an angry mob led by respectable citizens and legal authorities.’

The bulletin contains a letter from Tom Mooney serving life in San Quentin prison, California, in connection with the 1916 preparedness day bombing in San Francisco, addressed to Professor Jerome Davis of Yale, one of the foundation’s leaders, appealing for financial assistance to enable his defence to investigate the alleged confession of Paul Callicotta of Portland, Ore.

‘We desperately need a reawakening of the flaming social righteousness of the prophets of old,’ says a communication signed by Davis, Bishop Francis J. McConnell, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, Edward Israel, Allen K. Chalmers and John A. Lapp.

[AL: The National Religion and Labor Foundation is still around!]

[politijohn]

Source

Source

[thecatholicbozo]

"That right to property... which has been proved to belong naturally to individual persons, must in like wise belong to a man in his capacity of head of a family; nay, that right is all the stronger in proportion as the human person receives a wider extension in the family group.

It is a most sacred law of nature that a father should provide food and all necessaries for those whom he has begotten; and, similarly, it is natural that he should wish that his children, who carry on ... and continue his personality, should be by him provided with all that is needful to enable them to keep themselves decently from want and misery amid the uncertainties of this mortal life.

Now, in no other way can a father effect this except by the ownership of productive property, which he can transmit to his children by inheritance. A family, no less than a State, is ... a true society, governed by an authority peculiar to itself, that is to say, by the authority of the father.

Provided, therefore, the limits which are prescribed by the very purposes for which it exists be not transgressed, the family has at least equal rights with the State in the choice and pursuit of the things needful to its preservation and its just liberty.

We say, "at least equal rights"; for, inasmuch as the domestic household is antecedent, as well in idea as in fact, to the gathering of men into a community, the family must necessarily have rights and duties which are prior to those of the community, and founded more immediately in nature.

If the citizens, if the families on entering into association and fellowship, were to experience hindrance in a commonwealth instead of help, and were to find their rights attacked instead of being upheld, society would rightly be an object of detestation rather than of desire."

-Pope Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum, Paragraph 13, 1891

[my-midlife-crisis]

[notaplaceofhonour]

By Emily K.

Source: https://www.instagram.com/p/Cz-ja99M6UG/?igshid=ODhhZWM5NmIwOQ==

[wilwheaton]

A new civics training program for public school teachers in Florida says it is a “misconception” that “the founders desired strict separation of church and state,” the Washington Post reports. Driving the news: That and other content in a state-sponsored training course has raised eyebrows among some who have participated and felt it was omitting unflattering information about the country's founders, pushing inaccuracies and centering religious ideas, per the Post. The Constitution explicitly bars the government from “respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." Scholars interpret the passage to require a separation of church and state, per the Post. In another example, the training states that George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were against slavery, while omitting the fact that each owned enslaved people.

Florida training program: "Misconception" that founders wanted separation of church and state

So ... DeSantis and his Fascist supporters want to just straight up lie to generations of children about the history of American violence, oppression, racism, and they are using the law to do that.

I’m speechless. I haven’t finished my coffee yet, and it’s early, but ... holy fuck. I am speechless.

[spotlightstory]

The Michigan Medicis of Donald Trump’s America

Left, clockwise from top left Blackwater founder Erik Prince; U.S. Sec of Education Betsy DeVos (Prince); philanthropist Elsa and Prince Corporation founder Edgar Prince. Right, philanthropist Hellen and Amway co-founder Richard DeVos; standing, businessman Dick DeVos.

If you ever wondered where the weird Republican ideas came from or how did we get here, well, here's a piece of the puzzle. Buckle up, it's a long read. Link to full article above. I pulled out quotes on topics below.

"In the solar system of elite Republican contributors, Richard DeVos Sr., who died Thursday at age 92—one of the two founders of Amway, the direct-sale colossus—occupied an exalted place, and his offspring did too. Since the 1970s, members of the DeVos family had given as much as $200 million to the G.O.P. and been tireless promoters of the modern conservative movement—its ideas, its policies, and its crusades combining free-market economics, a push for privatization of many government functions, and Christian social values. While other far-right mega-donors may have become better known over the years (the Coorses and the Kochs, Sheldon Adelson and the Mercers), Michigan’s DeVos dynasty stands apart—for the duration, range, and depth of its influence."

Conservative think tanks, advocacy organizations, and colleges

Grand Valley State University; Calvin College, attended by several generations of DeVoses, including Rich’s daughter-in-law Betsy DeVos, Northwood University, her husband Dick’s alma mater. Hillsdale, the libertarian-plus-Christian liberal-arts college in southern Michigan.

Other recipients of DeVos largesse: the Heritage Foundation, the Institute for Justice, and the American Enterprise Institute

"The DeVoses’ preference for “values-oriented” candidates reflect the teachings of the Christian Reformed Church. A small breakaway denomination of its Dutch forerunner, it has some 300,000 adherents in North America, many living in the same western-Michigan towns where their immigrant ancestors settled in the 1840s to pursue a faith.."

SCHOOL REFORM: Who can forget Betsy DeVos’s campaign to undo the state’s public-education system and replace it with for-profit and charter schools that, as she had put it two decades earlier, shared her mission of “defending the Judeo-Christian values"?

“[Among] her big ‘accomplishments,’” says Diane Ravitch, the N.Y.U. professor and respected education historian, “have been reversing civil-rights enforcement for kids with disabilities, putting administrators from for-profit colleges in charge of monitoring for-profit colleges . . . stabbing in the back young people with heavy debt for their college education, and being a constant critic of public schools.” One saving grace, Ravitch contends, is that DeVos has gotten very few of her budget proposals through Congress. 

LABOR UNIONS: Another target was labor unions. Amway and the Prince Corporation had no use for them. Now the family waged a public fight. After Dick DeVos was routed when he ran for governor of Michigan in 2006, he blamed his defeat, in part, on Michigan’s unions and began to push for a right-to-work law (weakening the unions’ economic power and political clout, a pillar of the state’s Democratic Party). In 2012, the bill got through, and Michigan—headquarters to the United Automobile Workers, no less—became yet another of the country’s right-to-work states.

FAMILY: "Betsy and Erik’s father, Edgar Prince, was a Chrysler-Plymouth salesman and then machine engineer who started a die-cast business and also had a tinkerer’s gift for inventions. One, the lighted vanity mirror on the flip-up sun visor (introduced in 1972), helped Prince become one of the wealthiest men in Michigan." (wow) "As he got richer, the elder Prince rewarded his hometown handsomely; Prince money has done much to preserve downtown Holland, which remains a 1950s time capsule of Candy Land façades."

The C.R.C.’s greatest figure, Abraham Kuyper, a Dutch theologian and prime minister who died almost a century ago, had declared, in words the faithful know by heart: “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, Mine!”  

The Princes and DeVoses—with neighboring homes in Holland—had effected a merger thanks to the 1979 marriage of their firstborn, Betsy Prince and Dick DeVos, then in their 20s. “Bible-reading jet-setter” was the description in a Detroit Free Press profile of Betsy.

Betsy and Dick own a 22,000-square-foot mansion on Lake Macatawa.

ERIK PRINCE was devoted to his father, who doted on him. He played four sports at Holland Christian and was the proudly straitlaced kid who, without being asked, put away the soccer balls after practice. Prince enrolled in the U.S. Naval Academy in 1987 but was shocked by the frat-house atmosphere—too much for a junior culture warrior who’d been an intern at the Family Research Council. After three semesters, he transferred to Michigan’s Hillsdale College.

Today Hillsdale, under its president, Larry P. Arnn (former head of the Claremont Institute, a citadel of far-right ideology), is known as a feeder school for the Trump administration, including Betsy DeVos’s chief of staff, Josh Venable. In May, the week Vice President Pence gave the commencement address there, Politico called it “the college that wants to take over Washington”—citing many alums who are now D.C. power players. 

In 1989, Erik had been invited to a “youth” inaugural ball for Bush—and there had met Joan Keating, the woman who would become his first wife. Prince even worked as a Bush White House intern. “I saw a lot of things I didn’t agree with,” he later said. “Homosexual groups being invited in, the budget agreement, the Clean Air Act, those kind of bills. I think the administration has been indifferent to a lot of conservative concerns.” He left that job for another, in the office of California congressman Dana Rohrabacher, who has often been called Vladimir Putin’s top Capitol Hill asset, so valued, the Times has reported, that he was given a Kremlin code name.

Prince spent four years with the SEALs in the early 90s but moved on after his wife was diagnosed with cancer and his father, aged 63, died of a heart attack. The elder Prince left behind a business with 4,500 employees. The family sold it for $1.3 billion, and Erik, at 25, now had a sizable inheritance.

One of Prince’s instructors in the SEALs, Al Clark, was also looking to set up a security-and-defense training company. Prince had money to invest. Out of this came Blackwater, which began as an instruction facility for law enforcement, the military, and special-ops squads in Moyock, North Carolina. 

The article goes into detail about Blackwater and it is mind-blowing. Their involvement post 9/11, Russian arms dealings, US government contracts,

"The source says he resigned after he discovered that Prince had approved plans to illegally weaponize aircraft and “actively train former Chinese Red Army personnel that are now being deployed into Pakistan, Thailand, Myanmar, and the Uighur region in China”—actions he perceived as supporting foreign interests above America’s. (Other Prince associates reportedly resigned for similar reasons.) Prince firmly denied the allegations."

[tomicscomics]

10/28/2022

I'm sure she's an immaculate roommate!

___

JOKE-OGRAPHY: In this Bible story, Jesus decides to stay at the house of the tax-collector, Zacchaeus, who has repented of his greedy ways.  Some onlookers wonder why someone as holy as Jesus would stay at a sinner's house.  In this cartoon, Jesus says that, if He couldn't stay with sinners, He'd have to live with His mom forever (because Catholics believe that Mary was sinless).  He says this as if it would be a bad thing, so when He catches sight of His holy mother eavesdropping from behind a nearby house, He quickly amends His statement so He doesn't hurt her feelings.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: This is yet ANOTHER Tomics Resurrection, where an old comic that has long suffered the cruelties of time is sent to the pasture to be... taken care of... while a new comic takes its place!  Here's the old version for comparison:

[darksouls2yuri]

ohio is so scary. stay safe

[thelordismylightandmysalvation]

Verse of the Day - 1 Corinthians 15:58

[lindseymcdonaldseyelashes]

Almost Paradise 1x2 - "It's Personal"

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

“BOTH HAVE DEVILS TO TROUBLE THEM,” Montreal Gazette. January 9, 1933. Page 5.  --- Link Between Printing Craft and Ministers Seen by Canon Shatford --- RULE OF TECHNOCRACY --- Dominion of Machinery as Against Ideals and Morals Constitutes Peril Suggests Rector --- Technocracy, the rule of technique governing art and craftsmanship, Is not everything in life, for in the final analysis it is man who is supreme, ruling in the interests of humanity and not on behalf Frankensteins to crush the life of the inventors, Canon Allan P. Shatford stated on Saturday night at a meeting of the Montreal Typographical Union, Local 176, in the Queen s Hotel. 

Decidedly, Canon Shatford pointed out, the present era is outstanding for mechanical progress. He questioned, however, whether the morals and ideals of humanity have kept pace with the technical developments, for, in his opinion, there must be men of ideals high ideals and noble aims behind that movement to benefit mankind. Mere domination of skillful machines is not enough, for the soul of man is the heart and essence of creation. 

The year 1933 should be one in which ideals and not machines should be the dominant consideration. "You can't measure things by length of time or external values. There is some element in the soul and mind of man that shapes the things of life. Man is the architect of his fortune, and the man of ideals will mould this Dominion in the glory of nationhood,' Canon Shatford continued.

APPLICATION OF IDEALS. The plea was for the placing of personality before everything else. The true rule of the world was not to be found in technique, but in the correct application of ideals. The higher the Ideals the better for the universe. "It is the ideal behind fact that is the governing influence of life. Keep your eyes on the stars, away from the brutal facts of life and dominating machines," he urged his audience.

Printers and ministers had many things in common. Canon Shatford assured his hearers. For one thing, both had devils to deal with. Printers devils, he believed, cause the, craftsmen as much trouble as Mephistopheles gave him in his ministry'. John Guttenberg invented printing and the first thing off the press was the Bible. "You had a good beginning," he remarked, "though I doubt whether many ot you have kept close acquaintanceship with the good book."

There is no department of work in the world without close relation to other endeavors. Canon Shatford maintained. It is impossible for one organization to consider itself apart from others. The great need, there-fore, was for mutual exchange and co-operation, instead of partizan cries, sectional clamors. Separation barriers, racial cries and national walls were but a few of the retarding Influences to a return to prosperous days. 

William Skanes, president, was in the chair. In introducing the guest speaker, he remarked that Canon Shatford was dominant in the community for the promotion of a healthy spirit of goodwill. Walter Olshefski, violinist, accompanied by Kathleen Harris on the piano, provided the musical entertainment of the evening.

[thechillseekr]

Made what I'm thinking of as a Devi-themed playlist.

QueenAdreena

Slutever

Girls Rituals

Honeyblood

Christian Death

Sloppy Jane

Feeding Fingers

The Pezheads

Hannah Fury

Katie Jane Garside

Chelsea Wolfe

Soap&Skin

Scarling.

Sleep Party People

[thecatholicbozo]

"So strong and convincing are these arguments [for the ownership of private property as needed to provide for oneself & the family] that it seems amazing that some should now be setting up anew certain obsolete opinions in opposition to what is here laid down. They assert that it is right for private persons to have the use of the soil and its various fruits, but that it is unjust for any one to possess outright either the land on which he has built or the estate which he has brought under cultivation.

But those who deny these rights do not perceive that they are defrauding man of what his own labor has produced. For the soil which is tilled and cultivated with toil and skill utterly changes its condition; it was wild before, now it is fruitful; was barren, but now brings forth in abundance. That which has thus altered and improved the land becomes so truly part of itself as to be in great measure indistinguishable and inseparable from it.

Is it just that the fruit of a man's own sweat and labor should be possessed and enjoyed by any one else? As effects follow their cause, so is it just and right that the results of labor should belong to those who have bestowed their labor."

-Pope Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum, Paragraph 10, 1891

[kawaiimunism]

the current discourse finally snapped me we do communist infighting on this blog now

[fieriframes]

[Hey, brother Christian with your high and mighty errand. Your actions speak so loud, I can't hear a word you're saying. Hey, sister Bleeding Heart with all of your compassion. Your labors soothe the hurt, but can't assuage temptation.]