Contact

In the fall of 2026, Chris Graney, an astronomer at the Vatican Observatory, argued that the universe of at least 2 trillion galaxies (according to a study in 2016 using the orbital Hubble Space Telescope) probably contains few, if any, planets capable of supporting intelligent life. This claim may come as a surprise, given the gargantuan number of possibly habitable exoplanets in the universe and the associated likelihood of alien life out there. The overlay of theology onto science, as if the latter’s criteria were nugatory and thus dismissible relative to religious doctrine, is problematic because the two domains are arguably distinct and even unique, even though they are related. Such a category mistake is highlighted in the film, Contact (1997), in which religious figures (who have related political roles in the White House) impose monotheist criteria in the selection of an astronaut for space travel, which is primarily a scientific enterprise.

The full essay is at "Contact."

St. Francis of Assisi: On War and Greed

St. Francis of Assisi died 800 years before October 4, 2026, assuming that the days dropped in adopting the Gregorian calendar after his death have been incorporated in the calculation. It seems that not only gravity affects time; changing calendars does too. As time passes, how past heroes are viewed changes according to contemporary circumstances and values. Painting of Jesus during the late Roman Empire depict him as a young Roman, with short hair and clean-shaven. During the Middle Ages, when beards and long hair were in style for men, Jesus too was depicted in such terms as we recognize in modernity. Similarly, I contend that Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine and Israel’s genocide in Gaza and violence in the West Bank framed the 800^th death-anniversary of Francis in terms of peace and diplomacy being salient in his mission. I contend that this emphasis unduly relegates something more important to him: his strident stance against greed, and even money itself as a symbol of avarice.

In a piece on the anniversary, Euronews reports on Francis having worked on behalf of diplomacy and peace to the extent that his explicit stance on greed and wealth (the two being tightly linked) is hardly mentioned.[1] This omission must be obvious to theologians. In 2026, the E.U. state of Italy made October 4^th a state holiday in honor of the saint “to celebrate the universal values of peace, fraternity, solidarity, and respect for the environment embodied by Saint Francis of Assisi.”[2] No mention is made of Francis as a young man disavowing his family’s wealth because he believed that having accumulated money and being greedy are tightly linked. Other than Clement of Alexandria, the linkage was assumed by major Christian theologians in the patristic period—and this only began to change with Aquinas allowing for moderate profit (differing from Aristotle in making this move). Aquinas living amid Commercial Revolution has a lot to do with his novel stance).[3]

Euronews quotes Paolo Nicelli, an expert on the relationship between Islam and modernity, who points to Francis crossing enemy lines in one of the Fifth Crusade to engage in diplomacy with the Egyptian sultan al-Malik al-Kamil. That Francis as “a model of peace and interreligious dialogue” would be highlighted by Euronews in 2026 was not lost on Nicelli, who said in 2026 of Francis’s “example of mercy and forgiveness,” as in his crossing enemy lines in amity “is even more necessary today, especially in a globalized society like ours.”[4]  By globalized, people in 2026 would doubtlessly think of the awareness the world over of Russia’s invasion and Israel’s genocide. That context played a role in which of Francis’s stances was emphasized.

To be sure, reaching out to, and even compassionate acts for, enemies and even a person’s detractors and rude people can be said to be the way into the kingdom of God depicted in the Gospels. In fact, crossing enemy lines can be construed as the true meaning of the symbol of the Cross, and the kingdom of God here and now as the proper focus of Christianity itself.

Even so, the story of Francis commanding a friar to retrieve a coin by mouth and place the coin on a pile of animal dung to drive home the valuelessness of earthly wealth and its tight association with the sin of avarice is entirely absent from the Euronews reporting on Francis’s upcoming feast day. The closest that the reporters come is in quoting Nicelli as claiming that Francis, as a diplomatic model “runs exactly against the prevailing values of today: careerism, individualism, selfishness, self-centeredness, and self-glorification and so on.”[5] Careerism and selfishness are both closely related to greediness because greedy people tend to be very motivated to “climb the corporate ladder” in order to earn higher salaries and to be selfish due to their lack of concern for economic benefits going to other people unless there is something financially in it for the selfish person oneself. For example, a greedy person has no problem demanding an exorbitant rent, much above what a residence is actually worth, even knowing that the prospective tenant will struggle to pay so much. “That’s not my problem,” such a lessor would think regarding such a lessee. The privileging of money for oneself is reflected in an indifference toward whether other people benefit financially. Hence, selfishness and greed are good friends, while greedy people make awful friends.

In explicitly tying having a sack of coins to greed, and therefore selfishness (and the related sin of self-love), St Francis has been remembered as an extremely anti-wealth friar. Highlighting his anti-war stance pales in comparison, yet in the context of military invasion and genocide, the recessive role can easily become the dominant characteristic. To be sure, financial interest often is not irrelevant to waging war. It is no accident, for example, that the U.S. Government purchased bombs from American companies (in what President Eisenhauer coined as the military industrial complex) while being allied with Israel as it was conducting a genocide. Also, as Nicelli observes in regard to the dispute between Christians and Muslims in Francis’s day over Damietta, the fact that the city was “a major commercial hub . . . so the dispute is not spiritual but clearly of an economic and military nature” supports the contention that greed is more fundamental than war, which is not to say that greed is behind all warfare.[6] What is remembered from the past has perhaps as much to do with a contemporary context than with the actual history. History may say more about us than itself. Perhaps by recalling Francis’s strong anti-wealth position—that having accumulated earnings is itself indicative of being greedy—the subterranean financial interests behind contemporary military aggression can be rendered more transparent.

---

1. Fanuel Morelli and Celilla Ghezzi, “Assisi Marks 800 Years Since St Francis’s Death and Remains a Symbol of Peace and Dialogue,” Euronews.com, 2 October 2026. See also my chapter on voluntary poverty in God’s Gold as well as the related chapter in Godliness and Greed. The latter text is an academic treatise.
2. Ibid.
3. See my texts in note 1 above. Francis would not doubt point out to you that in citing my own texts, a financial motive probably lurks under the surface. That assumes that people would rush out en masse to buy my books, which is as likely as hell freezing over.
4. Fanuel Morelli and Celilla Ghezzi, “Assisi Marks 800 Years Since St Francis’s Death and Remains a Symbol of Peace and Dialogue,” Euronews.com, 2 October 2026.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid, italics on “economic” being added.

The Omen (2006)

Exactly 30 years after The Omen (1976), The Omen (2006) was released. An older boy plays Damien in the remake, which means that the actor is capable of acting facial expression-reactions; even so, what really distinguishes the remake as having more depth than the original film is the explicit use of a poem that undergirds the veracity of the narrative—that Damien as indeed been sent by his father, Satan, to usher in the apocalypse in a way that will fill hell with human souls. The poem is a Christian prophesy that functions in the film’s narrative as a thread. I contend that the poem partakes of several domains, rather than being exclusively religious in nature, and thus “muddies the water” in terms of answering the question of how the religious domain is distinctive, rather than to be read psychologically, historically, or scientifically.

The full essay is at "The Omen (2006)."

Jews and Arabs in 1930s Palestine: On the Impact of Categorical Overreaches

Writing on theology and ethics and their application to politics and economics in An Interpretation of Christian Ethics, Reinhold Niebuhr runs the risk of fusing the respective domains, which I maintain are qualitatively different, and thereby minimizing or losing outright what is unique to each domain. Besides occasioning category mistakes, such as in labeling divine love as ethical rather than as distinctly theological, overreaches from one domain onto another even at the expense of the other’s own criteria can occur from the underlying error. Besides being extant in Niebuhr’s text, the conflation of distinct domains and the related overreaches of their respective criteria has exacerbated the long-standing conflict between the Jews and Arabs in what was Palestine when Niebuhr was writing his book on Christian ethics in which he discusses the sheer intractability of the conflict.

In Niebuhr’s view, “the full evil of human finitude and sin is most vividly revealed in conflicts between national communities.”[1] Such conflicts “present a tragic revelation of the impossibility of the law of love because no party to the conflict has a perspective high enough to judge the merits of the opponent’s position.”[2] That is to say, every perspective is partial, and thus partisan, rather than wholistic containing tensions and even outright contradictions. “Every appeal to moral standards thus degenerates into a moral justification of the self against the enemy.”[3] To Niebuhr, “self-love is never justified.”[4] This is so both ethically and in religious terms. On the ethical level, Niebuhr insists that, “In spite of the relativity of morals every conceivable moral code and every philosophy of morals enjoins concern for the life and welfare of the other and seeks to restrain the unqualified assertion of the interests of the self against the other.”[5] Any moral justification on behalf of one’s own side against one’s enemy cannot be construed as moral, but, rather, immoral qua egoist. In terms of religion, Niebuhr wrote that “human egoism . . . is sin only from the perspective of the law of love.”[6] Here, Niebuhr’s statement would be more congruent on the religious level if self-love, which is a sin, were substituted for egoism, which is an ethical term. Self-love is a sin because it goes against charity, meaning love in a distinctive religious sense (i.e., caritas). The seventeenth-century Jansenist priest in Europe, Pierre Nicole, penned an essay railing against self-love precisely because it is antithetical to charity understood as love (rather than as philanthropy); even enlightened self-interest is still of sordid self-love and thus not at all consisting of love.

In Niebuhr’s discussion of international conflicts between nations in which distinctly religious love, such as manifests in compassion rather than hatred to enemies, is wholly absent, and taking into account the squalid theological idolatry of self-love that places love of self above love directed to an externally-based divine (e.g., God), Niebuhr’s theological claim, “Parties to a dispute inevitably make themselves judges over it and thus fall into the sin of pretending to be God,” is hardly surprising.[7] The gravitas of self-love that renders any combative perspective partisanship (i.e., partial) is ultimately sourced in self-idolatry, hence presumptuous infallibility and the presumed universalizability of one’s perspective as absolute can be expected. In the mid-2020s, in the midst of Israel’s militaristic decimation of Gaza, which went far beyond the damage that had been committed by Hamas in an attack in Israel in 2023, Niebuhr’s distinctly theological claim readily applies, and may even explain the longstanding intransigence of the aggressor in the multi-year operation that went far beyond justice to vengeance, which, incidentally, is supposed to belong to Yahweh alone.[8]

Writing in the mid-1930s, hence prior to the establishment of the modern state of Israel, Niebuhr perceived the “rivalry between Jews and Arabs in Palestine” as “a conflict between two races and religions, involving not only the natural will-to-live of two collective racial organisms, but [also] the economic differences between the feudalism of the Arabs and the technical civilization which the Jews [were] able to introduce into Palestine.”[9] From a standpoint in time after many decades from the establishment of Israel, it is easy in hindsight to grasp the superiority of the technical civilization not only economically, but also militarily. Even in the 1930s, the conflict must have been generally perceived as frozen in terse intractability. The rule of love based on forgiveness, as in being compassionate to enemies, was so far from the contending mentalities and emotions in Palestine that Niebuhr’s more general claim that such love is impossible in the world of politics appears to be tenable (even though I disagree with his claim).

So, in utter futility, Niebuhr asks his readers rhetorically, “How can a high enough rational and moral perspective be found to arbitrate the issue between” the Jews and Arabs in Palestine? “How is the ancient and hereditary title of the Jew to Palestine to be measured against the right of the Arab’s present possession? Or how is one to judge the relative merits of modern Jewish against ancient Moslem culture without introducing criteria which are involved in and do not transcend the struggle?”[10] Both peoples had some historical presence in the region, and the involvement of religion and questions of ethics in this mess renders the conflict that Niebuhr perceived in the 1930s as even more intractable. Conflating all of these domains doesn’t help.

For example, the claim that the Jews had a hereditary title is dubious if it comes out of a religious story, or myth, and has been superimposed on the political domain, for the religious and political domains are arguably distinct—each having its own unique basis—so criteria from one of the domains supervening on those of the other can be flagged as an overreaching encroachment and thus as out of bounds, to evoke sports. Put another way, the jurisdiction of material in the mythic genre does not extend into the political world, whose genre is that of political power rather than faith narratives. So, it would be more accurate to say politically and culturally that both the Jew and the Arab had (conflicting) historical interests in occupying the land.

Replacing the theological dimension with that of ethics and basing that on history, even fusing these two domains, is also problematic. Niebuhr disparages that the “(p)articipants cannot find a common ground of rational morality from which to arbitrate the issues because the moral judgments which each bring to them are formed by the very historical forces which are in conflict. Such conflicts are therefore sub- and supra-moral.”[11] In other words, ethical analysis would get only so far, rather than resulting in a definitive should that both parties would accept as legitimate as taking into account their respective interests and histories.

At this point, Niebuhr shifts back from the ethical to the religious level of analysis, but even in spiritual terms, he was not optimistic. “The effort to bring such a conflict under the dominion of a spiritual unity may be partly successful,” he admits, but then he observes that such efforts had “always [produced] a tragic by-product of the spiritual accentuation of natural conflict.”[12] Even though religion “may be regarded as the last and final effort of the human spirit to escape relativity and gain a vantage-point in the eternal,” the “introduction of religious motives into these conflicts [has usually been] no more than the final and most demonic pretension.”[13] In other words, the presence of religious motives on both sides contributed to the sheer intransigence of the antipodal political positions.

Again, warding off distinctly religious content from the turf of actual geopolitics between nations in the context of international relations is advisable, but distinguishing related domains is easier said than done, given the proclivity of the human mind to agglomerate different strands as if they were essentially the same stuff. This tendency is especially egregious when at least one of the domains, along with its criteria, is unique and thus not just different from the others. Given the tendency to project or apply religious meaning onto geopolitics, it is worth taking into account Niebuhr’s suggestion that “a contrite recognition of the finiteness and relativity which characterizes human spirituality, even in its moments of yearning for the transcendent,” is necessary in applying religion to political/cultural conflicts between nations lest the “religious aspiration” be “transmuted into sinful dishonesty” and thus make the political matters even worse.[14] In other words, without spiritual humility in line with the true situs of finite creatures, which of course are not deities and thus are not omniscient or omnipotent, religious beliefs can easily become weapons even in the midst of stultifying cognitive dissidence.

Hence Niebuhr laments, “Historical religions, which crown the structure of historic cultures, thus become the most brutal weapons in the conflict between cultures.”[15] This happens too much, and at least part of the problem, I submit, is that religious meaning is so often conflated with differing genres or domains, including those of history, politics, and even ethics. A religious entitlement to land, a title whose jurisdiction is limited to the religious domain, is not itself a political statement. Put another way, the criteria in the domain of religion that undergird the religious claim of being chosen by a deity, or even a shared deity, for the land, or even a chosen people, do not override the criteria of political power that are sovereign in and innate to the political domain; in fact, the criteria innate to religion do not even have validity there.

I contend that religious meaning, as in what religious scholars classify as myth (i.e., a religious story with a message), is qualitatively different, as well as unique, from the contents that are “home grown” in other, even related, domains. International disputes stand a better chance of being mitigated and even solved if all the combatants would “get on the same page” in the sense of focusing on the distinctly political criteria of international relations, whether the criteria are based on international law or the nature of power itself in the state of nature as described by Thomas Hobbes in his classic text, Leviathan. Diverging interpretations of a passage in a distinctly religious text need not complicate matters that could perhaps be solved politically, especially if those interpretations are subject to the gravitas of self-love and thus partial. At the very least, the contention that a convenient interpretation of one’s own text has universal validity incurs a conflict of interest even just in religious terms. For example, the statement, my sacred book says I get to win, inherently lacks credibility, and incurs the “extra-jurisdictional” overreaching of religious content onto the political domain of winning territory.

Category mistakes, consolidation, and especially presumptuous overreaches of one domain’s criteria into another domain even at the expense of that other domain’s own, sovereign criteria have been committed so much that they may be taken for granted, as valid, even as we look back at the Catholic Church’s overreaching onto Galileo’s valid scientific criteria and scoff at the theological overreach. The world is at the center of Genesis in that religious text, but this does not mandate or justify presuming that the religious meaning is astronomical in nature and applying theological criteria onto those belonging to astronomy. From the other direction, foisting criteria of the domain of history onto a faith narrative also counts as an overreach—in this case, at the expense of the sui generis (literally “of its own genus”) religious domain and its own criteria. From such errors, even peaceful international relations can be thwarted.

---

1. Reinhold Niebuhr, An Interpretation of Christian Ethics (London: Student Christian Movement Press, 1936), p. 136.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid., p. 64.
5. Ibid., p. 116.
6. Ibid., p. 124.
7. Ibid., p. 136.

8. “Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord” gave rise to Nietzsche’s point that because the vice conflicts with the divine attribute of God’s goodness (omnibenevolence), the interlarding of the former invalidated the concept of the deity, hence Nietzsche wrote, Gott ist tot (God is dead), even as Nietzsche leaves the living deity itself untouched. Misinterpretations of Nietzsche’s famous line presume, in effect, that the actual divinity can be changed by human hands, and thus discredited and even killed. It is a problematic, internally inconsistent conception of the deity that is the object of Nietzsche’s critique. In the movie, Angels & Demons, a priest asks Prof. Langdon whether he believes in God, “not what men say about God.” This distinction reflects Augustine’s point that due to the Fall, divine revelation reaches us as through a smoke-chalked rather than transparent window.

9. Niebuhr, An Interpretation of Christian Ethics, pp. 136-37.
10. Ibid., p. 137.
11. Ibid.
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid.
15. Ibid., pp. 137-38.

A Temporary Alignment of Politics and Religion: The U.S. Senate Sanctions Russia after a Funeral

It is easy to point to instances in which elected government-officials stage political theater for effect, for in the domain of politics, perception has a political currency that can leave a real imprint almost as if the staged were actual rather than pretense. When the leader of one group takes over as Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives from a person of another partisan group, for example, it is customary for them for the mallet literally to be handed over. In the U.S. Senate, its president, who is also the Vice President of the U.S., may sit in the presider’s chair during a vote if a tie is expected; the Senate President can vote only to break a tie. A certain depth of political meaning can go along with the actual presider presiding. Sometimes, however, an arrangement can have a depth of meaning as well as carry actual political weight. The Senate’s vote on additional economic sanctions on Russia on July 28, 2026 is a case in point, for the synchronicity itself could have caused goose-bumps on exposed skin. Even so, even profound political meaning (and fulfilment) is a far shot from religious belief and experience. Distinguishing these is important in this case, for the day of the vote included a very relevant funeral at the National Cathedral that many senators no doubt attended, and could be expected to ponder their own mortality and what may lie beyond.

The full essay is at "A Temporary Alignment of Politics and Religion."

Russian Patriarch Kirill: A Case of Religion Overreaching

The political separation of “Church and State” in U.S. constitutional law, a doctrine that is of jurisprudence (judicial decision) rather than theology and thus does not straddle and therefore demarcate the political and religious domains as qualitatively distinct from a neutral standpoint. Furthermore, the question of what makes the religious domain distinct (and unique) from all others is the pole from which a religious functionary’s (or religionist) leap into the political garden from the Garden of Eden can be detected. The trouble worsens if the criteria from one domain in imposed and overlaid in the overreaching into another domain, as if the criteria that is determinative in one domain were valid in another. In fact, the eclipsing itself of the other’s own criteria on their own “turf” is unethical. The legitimate sovereignty of a domain’s own criteria in that domain over criteria indigenous to other domains yet superimposed renders any supervening overreaching as both erroneous—as in going off-sides in football (soccer)—and unethical because the criteria indigenous to a given domain should not be disrespected within their own domain. In other words, encroaching is presumptuous. If these ideas strike the reader as novel, even strange perhaps, then I am keeping within the confines of my mission in writing, as I look to a new dawn in which the ideational tyranny of hitherto reigning yet questionable assumptions ist zerstört because they have been discredited, which is not to say that every extant assumption should be eviscerated and expunged for lack of substance. Unfortunately, Russia’s Patriarch Kirill, the head of Russia’s Orthodox Church, went out on a tree limb, far from his religious tree’s trunk, by formulating and spreading “revisionist propaganda to justify the war in Ukraine” while the invasion was underway.[1] The history and legitimacy of a bygone Russian empire (not the U.S.S.R.) properly belong to the political rather than to the religious domain. Being schooled in theology does not give even a high religious functionary the knowledge on which to presume to be an expert in political history and international relations. The resentment in the E.U. and U.S. at the patriarch’s intrusion into a domain that is not an extension of the religious domain was not merely from opposition to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but also from an intuitive sense that the domains of religion/theology and politics/government are distinct and thus require different knowledge-sets and have their own respective criteria and distinctiveness.

In late June, 2026, agreement in the E.U. on “the 21^st package of European Union sanctions against Russia” remained “mired in difficult, with multiple obstacles and the public threat” of a veto by the E.U. state of Bulgaria in the European Council, where the proposed law had to pass unanimously or else fail to be enacted.[2] Bulgaria’s governor, Rumen Radev, “publicly announced his opposition to sanctioning Patriarch Kirill” with “a travel ban and an asset freeze.”[3] Both the Bulgarian Orthodox Church and the Russian Orthodox Church “belong to the Eastern Orthodox Church, share the same faith and dogma, and are bound by cultural and historical ties.”[4] Radev’s rational is political rather than theological, however, as would be the proposed sanctions against the patriarch, who had overstepped from the theological onto the political domain in justifying the Russian government’s war even if he drew on theological doctrines in making the political statement on the war. Had Kirill restrained himself to “coloring within the lines” of theology proper, he would not have been vulnerable in the political domain.

Especially in Christianity, where Christ’s preachment, give what is Caesar’s unto Caesar, is a salient reminder that distinctively religious transcendence does not bother with politics, Kirill’s political ideology can be likened in the Gospels to the Jewish Zealots whose cause Jesus does not take up because that political movement is antipodal to  the religious preachment to love thy enemy. It is fitting, therefore, that Pope Leo had recently been implicitly invalidated even Catholic just-war “theory” by stating that Jesus would not be in favor of fighting in any war. From the perspective of the political domain, Jesus of the Gospels may appear, at a distance, as a mystic whose teachings pertain to a kingdom not of this world. This is not to say that a distinctly religious message cannot have political implications, even dire ones, as per Jesus in the Gospel narratives, but to say that something that is in one distinct domain has an effect in another domain is not to say that the “something” is in the other domain. Kirill went into the political domain in formulating and spreading pro-war propaganda and thus lost hold of that which makes the religious domain unique and distinctive. In other words, he went too far out on a branch and fell into another property without bothering to acknowledge that he was then in another, qualitatively different domain with its own criteria.

Crucially, the political domain is based on this realm, whereas, as Pseudo-Dionysius wrote, the divine transcends the limits of human cognition, perception, and sensibility (emotion). Whereas the political domain is compatible with humanism, religious transcendence, having a transcendent reference point (e.g., God), is not based in, and thus limited to our realm, which is in the principle of possibility within the limits of human conception, perception, and sensibility. The two domains—the political and the religious—are thus qualitatively different. To remake the latter too much of this realm is to deny the radical transcendence that renders the religious domain unique. In depicting the Kingdom of God in overt political terms wherein social, economic, and political inequalities are treated as the problem and the Kingdom as a particular political-economic system, or structure, Liberation Theology risks denying the distinctly religious transcendence that is in the kingdom preached by Jesus in the Gospels. No where in those stories does Jesus design an equitable economic system, for his Father’s kingdom is of the heart rather than political economy. Similarly, Jesus does not justify the Roman, or any other empire, for his orientation is to reverting hearts back to God. Kirill’s attempt to justify the Russian empire from a Christian standpoint can thus be regarded not only as dogmatic in the sense of being arbitrary, but also besides the point, lying in another domain of human experience.

At a basic level, the religious domain can be said to be unique, and thus distinct from other domains qualitatively rather than just by degrees of difference, because of the transcendent basis that is not based within our realm wherein we think, perceive, and feel. The experience of religious transcendence is thus unique. Kirill strayed from this by climbing so far out on a tree branch (limb) that he fell into someone else’s yard and started telling the people there how their game is properly to be played. Any player in the indigenous group there could not be blamed for exclaiming to the prelate, Excuse me? You don’t know how to play our game because it is taught only here, not where you come from. You are off-sides.

---

1. Jorge Liboreiro, “Oil, Cod, Kirill: Friction Points Emerge in New E.U. Sanctions Against Russia,” Euronews.com, 26 June, 2026.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.

Religion and Politics: On the Catholic Church’s Just War Theory

In the Gospels, Jesus is portrayed as an idealist, even other-worldly, from the standpoint of the political domain. To be sure, he knows how to alienate the Temple hierarchy enough to be put to death, but he stays clear of the Zealots in their militaristic rebelliousness against the Roman occupation. Give what it Caesar’s unto Caesar. The just-war theory developed by Augustine and Aquinas seeks to bring that gap—to make the idealist of the Gospels more relevant practically to the politics of international relations. To be sure, Jesus’s refusal to join the Zealots—symbolized by Jesus including Romans among those whom he heals—could be used to argue convincingly that attention to compassion for one’s enemy makes impossible even any just war. Jesus is just as idealistic in the story of the rich man who will not give up his wealth to follow Jesus—it is harder for a camel to get through the eye of a needle than for a rich man (who will not give up his wealth to follow God) to enter the Kingdom of God, whose very substance spiritually is epitomized by compassion to one’s enemies, according to the American theologian, Samuel Hopkins. So, Pope Leo was on solid ground in April, 2026 in the midst of the U.S.-Iran War when he emphatically insisted that Jesus would oppose any war—not just any unjust one—but where does that leave the Catholic Church’s just war theory as promulgated by two theological giants, Augustine and Aquinas?

The just war theory “sets out strict conditions for the moral use of military force. The threat must be lasting, grave and certain, and success must be realistically achievable. Most importantly, all other means of resolution must be genuinely exhausted, and the harm caused must not exceed the harm it seeks to prevent.”[1] World War II against Nazi Germany would certainly qualify, given the severity of the Nazi threat in Europe both within and outside of that empire, and the force of the Allies combined as against that of Germany. Nevertheless, the Catholic doctrine can be viewed in relation to Gandhi’s prescription of moral rather than military force set against the Nazis should they have invaded India. Jesus in the Gospels furnishes yet another alternative: reaching out to be compassionate even to Nazi soldiers in response to the humane needs even while voicing opposition to the Nazi regime. In these terms, the Catholic just war theory looks rather militaristic, although clearly not in terms of “anything goes.” Israel’s holocaustic genocide of the people of Gaza would obviously fly in the face of even just war, given the extreme disproportionality in Israel’s over-reaction to the earlier attack by Hamas in which only about 1,200 Israelis had died. Even in bombing Iran and Lebanon, Israel did not even attempt all other means of resolution, and in fact dismissed even the American brief cease-fire during in the spring of 2026. So too, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine could not be counted as just according to the Catholic theory, as the invasion was unprovoked and President Putin had not attempted other means of resolution; his goal, after all, was to restore the Russian Empire of Catherine the Great. Such a naked power-grab cannot be reckoned as just, and in fact manifests Hobbes’ state of nature rather than anything normative.

It was in the context of Russia’s invasion, Israel’s genocide, and America’s bombing of Iran that Pope Leo became speaking in strong words against what was becoming a world order characterized by Hobbes’ state of nature in which life can be expected to be short and brutish. The pope’s criticism of the American bombings thus had larger implications than merely to pressure the Trump administration to resort exclusively to negotiation rather than deadly force. Three bullies on the world stage were literally getting away with murder on a mass scale, while the UN and the International Criminal Court by in large could only stand by and proffer impotent verbal rebukes. As could be expected, the Pope’s opposition to the new status quo was like a lightening rod for the bullies.

Even though U.S. Vice President Vance was schooled in politics rather than in theology, and had only years before even converted to Catholicism, he warned the pope to “be careful when he talks about matters of theology.”[2] I’m sure that rebuke from a recent convert went down well at the Vatican. Abstractly, the over-reaching epistemologically and in terms of praxis of the political domain onto the religious one, supervening the innate criteria and knowledge exclusive to the latter domain, implies a category mistake and even a conflation of the two distinct domains as if they were a seamless whole. President Trump’s comments that the pope was “weak on crime” and “terrible on foreign policy” even covered over the theological domain entirely with political pavement. The pope had used distinctly theological, rather than just moral, not to mention political, language to criticize the American use of military force as stemming from the delusion of omnipotence and self-idolatry. Trump’s earlier threat to destroy Iran’s “whole civilization” was thus “truly unacceptable” from a distinctly theological standpoint (as well as moral one).[3]

In short, even though there was arguably some daylight between the Catholic just war theory and Pope Leo’s assertion that Jesus of the Gospels opposes war itself, it is not as if that theory permits any and all wars. To be sure, especially up against the Hobbesian state of nature, a normative constraint without powerful enforcement can safely be ignored by bullies on the world stage. Theology is distinct from the political realm, and this point is clear in the Gospels as Jesus distances himself from even the Zealots. Hence compassion even (and especially) to enemies and detractors can take place under Christian auspices even against enemies during a war. Vance’s warning to the pope about the latter’s attempt to do theology is thus ludicrous. Moreover, the pope’s alleged pacifism, which is arguably in line with Jesus of the Gospels, implies that the Church’s just war theory may need to be thought with more attention to the Gospels and less to trying to be relevant in the political domain. The world was arguably careening away from the message of peace through forgiveness and compassion that is in the Gospels in break-neck speed, and Pope Leo’s decision to use stronger, more direct theological language reflects just how potentially dangerous the collapse of the post-World War II world order was, as government officials around the world merely looked as at least three bullies were setting up a very different kind of world “order,” one of “(military)might makes right” in which even the legal fiction of international law is wantonly ignored with utter impunity. Antipodally, just because Jesus’s preachments on how the Kingdom of God can be realized here and now could have a significant impact on international relations does not mean the theological domain is the same as, or reduces to, the political domain. Ironically, were the Catholic Church to replace its just war theory with Pope Leo’s statement that Jesus can not be used to justify war itself, this more idealistic move could have a more significant impact on the world both interpersonally and between governments because the ideal of compassion even to enemies would be highlighted from the theological vantage point.

---

1. Aleksandar Brezar, “White House vs the Pope: What Is Behind the Clash and Catholic Just War Doctrine?” Euronews.com, 17 April, 2026.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.

Religiosity among Young Republican Men: An Escape from Homosexuality to White Privilege?

Idealism may exist especially in young adults because they have not experienced decade upon decade of the intractability of a deeply flawed social, political, and economic world’s status quo, which typically permits only incremental change. Zealous optimism can be expressed in a variety of domains, including religion, social issues, and politics. For example, political group-affiliation can stimulate a more intense devotion to religion, and vice versa. Even a passion on social agendas can translate into increased religiosity, and the latter can overreach onto the former. It can be asked of such instances whether the religiosity is genuine, or merely transferred energetic enthusiasm from another domain. The upsurge in religiosity among young Republican men polled by Gallup in the mid-2020s may be more political than religious. Relative to the growing numbers of non-religious-affiliated people in the U.S. as well as the E.U., the uptick among young Republicans should be put into perspective.

In 1979, Ronald Reagan ran a presidential campaign that brought in the “evangelical right” as well as blue-collar democrats. Accordingly, the Republican group went from pro-choice on Abortion to being against the procedure from a distinctly religious standpoint. The election of Pope John Paul II in the same year furthered the turn to the right on social issues as they took hold in the Roman Catholic Church and even went on to displace attention to soteriological matters especially in the American Catholic clerical hierarchy such that Pope Francis felt the need to suggest to his fellow bishops that the moral/social issues be de-prioritized relative to preaching on the vicarious sacrifice of Jesus Christ and his subsequent resurrection. In the mid-2020s, as shown by Gallup polling, an upsurge in religiosity among young Republican (American) men—the political context being explicit—may have begun, resonating with Reagan’s incorporation of the Moral Majority in Republican politics. What was behind the upsurge, and why weren’t young women enjoying an upsurge in religiosity too?

Gallup’s data in 2024-2025 “shows that 42% of men in the U.S. ages 18-29 said religion is very important to them, a notable increase from 28% in 2022-2023. Over the same time, young women’s attachment to religion . . . stayed low, at about 30%.”[1] The percentages of men and women who claimed to be very religious had gradually declined since the polling had begun in 2000, with the exception of the 42% in 2025-2025 going up from the 28% in 2022-2023 for young men.[2] Moreover, the majority of young men and a supermajority of young women in the U.S. indicated that religion was not important to them. Put another way, the uptick in the religiosity of young men of 14% is dwarfed by the 70% of young women who were not actively religious on a weekly basis. The uptick in Republican-related religiosity among young American men should be viewed in the context of an increasingly secular West.

In fact, the “very religious” self-identification could stem from having the Republican political group-identity, given the strong positive correlation. The question, in other words, involves which domain was primary for the “very religious” respondents in terms of their group-identifications. Each person has several such identifications, one of which is usually primary.

For myself, my primary group identification is cultural; I view myself chiefly as a native Midwesterner. For me to allow this group identification to monopolize my self-identity, hence excluding my political, religious, racial, gender, sexual, etc., group-identities would be highly artificial because in actuality all of them pertain to me. I am conscious of my decision to make one primary. As an aside, a racist could be defined as a person who has decided to allow racial group-identity to monopolize the group-identities that are possible in all other domains, not only pertaining to oneself, but to other people too, even if their primary group-identities are otherwise. Imposing racial group-identities on a person whose primary group-identity is in another domain produces tension, given the dogmatic overreaching, and such imposing may be termed racist.  

Overreaching is evinced in the analysis of the poll by Ryan Burge, a political scientist and Baptist preacher, whose claim that the uptick in religiosity of young Republican men “represents a seismic change in society and the future of the church” is likely overblown, given the fact that majorities of both young men and women were still refusing to say that they were very religious.[3] Burge also overreaches in bringing in race in claiming that young men were more drawn to religion “because it is a space where they feel more accepted in a world where other institutions are ‘less interested in white men compared to women and people of color.”[4] Given the salience of Caucasians still in corporations and Congress, it would be interesting to learn of which “other institutions” Burge had in mind in making his statement. His claim that the domain of religion is “the only place where you don’t have to apologize for being a white man” demonstrates just how artificial (and ludicrous) imposing race in a fundamentally non-racial phenomenon can be.[5]

Completely aside from race, it is possible that the “very religious” respondents in the Gallop poll tended to self-identity as Republicans primarily and as Christians in the religious domain only secondarily even though they viewed themselves as very religious because the latter was infused with political energy and idealism. The salience of religion in the Republican party since Reagan incorporated the social-issue-oriented Moral Majority could explain the paradox. In fact, to the extent that “religion” in the Republican party has actually been more about social issues such as abortion and homosexuality than theology, the respondents may have actually been “very social-issue-oriented” rather than theological. Pew Research Center surveys in 2025 “found about 4 in 10 men under 30 say divorce is morally wrong, compared to only 2 in 10 young women. Even more men under 30, about half, say abortion is morally wrong, compared to only about one-third of women the same age. Young men are also likelier than young women to say homosexuality is morally wrong, although both groups are substantially less likely than older men and women to hold this view.”[6] Higher numbers regardless of age would be more critical of homosexuality were more people aware of the profligate norm that gays in the Castro district of San Francisco were imposing on each other in insisting on rampant sex outside of relationships, including separate emotional/romantic attachments rather than just separate anonymous sex, which boyfriends and husbands are expected to accept. Monogamy and commitment, as well as fidelity, became dirty words in that sub-culture when the “woke” ideology took over sexual “ethics.” It is interesting that that sub-culture went in that direction even as the Republican group was becoming more socially conservative. Seeking meaning, whether in a political or a religious group, can be distinguished antithetically from the lack of emotional connection and the related loneliness that go with a refusal to channel momentary urges in ways that do not eclipse emotional intimacy and trust. It is indeed a tale of two cities.

Regarding the “very religious” young Republican men, I suspect that both social issues and theology were in the mix because of the overtly Christian-leanings, to say the least, that entered the Republican group in 1979. Pope John Paul II’s stance against the U.S.S.R., especially pertaining to his home state of Poland, combined with the pre-existent firm anti-Communist stance of the Republican party, contributed to the tight link between Christianity and the Republican group. In fact, the ideal of a “Christian nation” has not been uncommon in the Republican group since Reagan, who interestingly referred to America as a “city on a hill,” an expression that Augustine used to denote the Heavenly City as against the Earthly City. With the very earthly city of the Castro well-entrenched in San Francisco becoming increasingly primitive instinctually, it is no wonder that civilized Americans would envision a city on a hill above the degenerate, utterly selfish filth of unrestrained instinctual urges. Such an envisioning would not be exclusively religious.

---

1, Deepa Bharath, “What a New Gallup Poll Shows about Young Men’s Religious Revival,” Apnews.com, April 16, 2026.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.

Iran’s Theocracy: An Uneasy Fusion of Religion and Political Economy

As mass protests erupted in Iran during the second week of January, 2026, Iran’s theocracy was on edge. That the protests stemmed from the dire economic conditions facing the people amid staggering inflation, including on basic food staples, rather than from foreign affairs, raises the question of whether religious clergy, including the “supreme leader,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, are competent in making economic policy. Without the ongoing political pressure that can come from constituents in a representative democracy, or republic, it is no surprise that the protests in Iran quickly became mass riots. In other words, bad economic policy by religious clerics in power in an autocracy can easily result in popular protests abruptly erupting into rioting. The overreaching of functionaries based in the domain of religion into politics (including economic policy), such that the distinctiveness of the two domains is ignored or obfuscated, can be distinguished from the problems that go with autocracy.

The full essay is at "Iran's Theocracy."

An American Proto-Fascist Presbyterian Church

Mixing religion and politics can be a dangerous business, especially if done from the pulpit and backed up by fully-weaponized police poised in a worship space at the laity in the pews, and from the front so the congregants know they are being intensely watched even as the words, “Peace on earth” are shown on the big screen directly above one of the uniformed police employees. To my utter astonishment, I encountered just this scenario when I visited a large Presbyterian church in the U.S. early in 2026. A Christian who has read the Gospels might look askance at the weaponized, uniformed police in the sanctuary who were facing the people from near the front, and the television cameramen who were standing on the stage even very close to the altar, and think of Jesus castigating the money-changers and sacrifice-animal sellers operating inside the temple.

During the piano prelude, a cameraman hangs out near the altar.

A uniformed, fully-weaponized local police employee at the front-left of the altar faced and stared at the people in the pews throughout the service, except, interestingly, during the sermon. 

The full essay is at "An American Proto-Fascist Presbyterian Church."

Pope Leo on the Fallacy of Collective Justice: The Case of Israel in Gaza

One of the many pitfalls in the doctrine of absolute sovereignty, whereby government officials acting as government can literally get away with murder domestically given the lack of credible de jure and de facto enforcement of international “law,” is the ability to inflict collective punishment based on group-identity, including the ideologies that hinge on identity politics. Going the actual culprits of a crime or even a revolt, collective punishment inflicts harm and even mass murder on an entire group, including individuals thereof who are not at all culpable. Unlike “collateral damage,” the ideology of collective justice includes intentionally harming such individuals. It is an ideology because it is based on beliefs about a group rather than an ethic that would justify normatively the infliction of pain and suffering on the innocent. Furthermore, collective justice is an ideology because it includes the artificial elevation of a group (i.e., the collective) over the individual even though members of a group are arguably foremost individuals, who typically belong to more than one group or organization. To put the collective abstraction first ontologically is thus tenuous at best. A person may be a Texan, a Democrat, a Catholic, and a member of a football team, for example, so the claim that that person is essentially any one of these would be dogmatic in the sense of being arbitrary. In privileging a part over a whole, thus being partisan, an ideology is in a sense arbitrary, even in claiming that a state of affairs that is favored or desired is the present state of affairs, as if the statement were a fact of reason rather than a counter-factual statement.

The full essay is at "Pope Leo on the Fallacy of Collective Justice."

A Bishop's Partisanship Overshadows Her Christianity

On the first full day of U.S. President Trump’s second term, the president and vice president attended a multi-faith prayer service at the National Cathedral. Episcopal Bishop Mariann Budde delivered the sermon on what is necessary for imperfect political unity in a country such as the United States. I contend that in trying to influence the president on immigration policy in a partisan way, she undercut the credibility of her message that there is strength in loving rather than retaliating against one’s detractors and even political enemies. The sacrifice of which she spoke concerning being kind in reaching out in humanity to people we dislike could be applied to herself in resisting the temptation to be partisan. That she lapsed at the expense of Jesus’ most important message is particularly striking.

Rev. Budde claimed that recognizing the dignity of even one’s enemies as being worthy of respect is one of three elements in achieving an admittedly imperfect (for we are imperfect beings) political unity, which in turn can be understood as “a way of being with one another.” To hold different perspectives or opinions as “valid and worthy of respect” does not require agreeing with them, and it is indeed permissible to proffer corrections on faulty reasoning. Such differences can exist within a deeper political unity if there is also compassion with another person’s humanity, as in the context of natural disasters.

Helping another person even though dislike exists in either or both directions involves sacrificial love as we give of ourselves for the sake of others, regardless of whom they voted for in the last election. In his Sermon on the Mount, the priest said, Jesus advocates loving not just our neighbors, but to love our enemies. Such love can seem vague, and the term “enemies” can easily be dismissed as too extreme to apply as the term does not include people who simply don’t like us or whom we don’t like. Being willing to be compassionate and kind in not just sympathizing, but also helping even people whom we regard as assholes is none other than the content of the kingdom of God, according to Samuel Hopkins, an American theologian who followed his relative, Jonathan Edwards, in the First Great Awakening. God is incarnate in our world in the interpersonal dynamic that only exists when a person disregards dislike in choosing to respond in kindness to another person’s needs when doing so is inconvenient interpersonally.   Valuing this divine presence in the world and enabling it to manifest by helping out in humaneness is something that anyone can value without necessarily believing in a god-man. Indeed, the litmus test in Christianity could be changed in line with this focus on the kingdom of God, whose mysteries Jesus says in the Gospels he came to discuss. Put another way, were actual acts of kindness to people who have been rude or even mean the focus for Christian intention, interpersonal peace might just break out as from a mustard seed. The world would change dramatically, and a president could lead the way by example.

Had the priest left her message at that, the impact would have been greater than it was, but she went on to bring up Jesus’ position on societal outcastes in order to beg President Trump to have mercy on people in the United States who have entered illegally. Reminding the president of Jesus welcoming outcastes in the Gospels, she pleaded for mercy on the hard-working people in the U.S. who don’t “have the proper documentation” to be in the country but “are not criminals.” I submit that not having the proper documents is a function of having broken U.S. law, and thus being criminals by entering the U.S. illegally. The problem lies not with documents, but with the willful decision to enter another country without permission, which, I submit is rather presumptuous. To label this as not criminal is not only incorrect factually, but glosses over the sheer presumption in sneaking into another country. I submit that the attitude of “laws don’t apply to me” is indeed presumptuous, and in fact is inconsistent with being in a society at all. For it is only in a Hobbesian state of nature that laws do not apply.

So, I submit that by “getting political” in a misleading or artful way, the priest undercut the immense credibility that lies in the strength of forgiveness by helping out people who have been most unkind—a kind of strength that is often dismissed in the political world, as it is by the Romans in the Gospels. In his writings, Nietzsche argues that this sort of strength is actually weakness. He even points out how it is preached as a means of gaining power over the politically strong. This is exactly what the priest was doing in trying to make the president feel guilty for objecting to people whose first act in the U.S. was to break its laws by entering illegally. That they have no right to be in the U.S. does not undercut their dignity, for they have done that themselves in audaciously sneaking into a country (or staying beyond a court date). The priest herself said that honesty is a major element of political unity.  

Unfortunately, the focus was not on whether serving the humanity of even political adversaries in acts of kindness rather than seeking retribution constitutes strength or weakness. Christianity stands for the former, whereas Nietzsche provides a counter-argument wherein the religion is useful for the weak who are not strong enough to be politically powerful. It could be that valuing not only turning the other cheek, but responding to the humanity of detractors in acts of kindness is the or ought to be the definitive litmus test by which a person can decide in the privacy of one’s own heart whether one is a Christian. Were this the focus of the religion, then the earthly city might really change. Being opportunistic in seeking political influence, on the other hand, is unfortunately already well-ensconced, and is thus easily recognizable.  

Pope Francis: Urbi et Orbi against War

Although Pope Francis of the Roman Catholic Church could not amass a countervailing military force, he could use his pulpit to excoriate the world’s military aggressors in moral terms. Gone are the days when popes wielded military forces and whose threats of excommunication and damnation could be used with effect; modern-day popes speaking to a global audience, which includes non-Christians (not to mention non-Catholics), must resort to moral suasion. So it is ironic that as unprovoked military attacks on civilians have become more massive and increasingly against the norm expected of governments, the influence of popes has decreased, both militarily and theologically, in international affairs. Even so, Pope Francis was able to appeal to a theological belief and value in Christianity during his Christmas Day, 2024 public address at the Vatican. Although not in itself enough to thwart the invasions and related crimes against humanity in Gaza especially, but also in Ukraine, the main impact may be said to be in throwing some light on just how antipodal Russia’s President Putin and Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu were from the distinctively Christian the kingdom of God, both as a concept and a spiritual reality fundamentally at odds with the ways of the world. In other words, there is value in the world being able to grasp that two degrees of separation exist between military invaders intent on harming and killing innocent civilians and the kingdom of God as described in the Gospels by Jesus.

The full essay is at "Pope Francis's Christmas Urbi et Orbi Message."

The Devil’s Arithmetic

The Devil’s Arithmetic (1999) can be classified superficially as a coming-of-age film, for Hanna, the protagonist, starts out being immaturely contemptuous of her family’s ethnic and religious heritage and current practice. She tries to skip the Passover Seder at her grandparents’ house. That her aunt Eva had been a prisoner at a Nazi death camp makes no difference to Hanna—that is, until she is transported back as her aunt’s cousin (for whom Hanna was named) and experiences the camp herself. Whether she is really transported back in time (and if so, how?) or is merely dreaming is answered in the end but not so blatantly as would insult the viewers’ intelligence. Then again, it’s not every film that has allusions both to theology and The Wizard of Oz. The different ways in which that movie is incorporated and alluded to in this film are actually quite sophisticated in extending the viewers’ sense of synchronicity beyond the film’s narrative.

The full essay is at "The Devil's Arithmetic."

Undermining Progress: Power as Ignorance that Cannot Be Wrong

Bleeding to heal. The Earth is flat. Earth is at the center of the solar system. Zeus lives on Mount Olympus. The divine right of kings to act even as tyrants (e.g., Henry VIII of England). Hitler died in his bunker. Turning the heater on in a local bus kills coronavirus. These are things that were thought in their respective times to be uncontrovertibly true. In some of these cases, the power of the establishment was not subtle in enforcing them even when they should have been questioned. How presumptuous this finite, mortal species is! If ignorance on stilts is bliss, then why is it such in need of power? Subconsciously, the human mind must realize that its assumption of not being able to be wrong is flawed. We are subjective beings with instinctual urges—one of which manifests in the unquestioned assumption that what we know cannot be wrong, and furthermore that we are entitled to impose our “facts” on others. As the homo sapiens (i.e., wise) species, we are too sure, and too proud, concerning our knowledge and especially beliefs. We would like to have the certainty and objectivity that computers have, but we are subjective biological animals, not inert machines. 

The full essay is at "Undermining Progress."

Christianity on Climate Change

First Reformed (2017) contains fundamental ideas concerning the human condition and wrestles with the relationship between religion and politics.  Ideas play a significant role in the film, hence it can be used in support of the thesis that film is a viable medium in which to make philosophical (and theological) ideas transparent and derive dramatic tension from clashing ideas. In this film, the ideas that clash concern the role of religion in the political issue of climate change—or is that issue primarily religious?

The full essay is at "First Reformed."