Saturday, February 11, 2006
NEOCONS
Ever wonder who and what they are? Yeah, me too.
A reference in another magazine to NOR's defining them in their December 2005 issue prompted me to go looking for the article. Apparently the issue never came because I don't have it, and I save all the NORs. I checked the web and found the article online, fortunately. Here's a paragraph from it:
As we said in our September Editorial: "BeforeCrisis and First Things were even founded, the NOR was contacted by a neocon foundation -- right out of the blue. The foundation wanted to give us money -- 'free' money. A fellow flew out from the East Coast and asked me (the Editor) to meet him for drinks in a San Francisco restaurant -- on him. Sure! (We were desperate for money.) He told me he would fund us regularly -- if we would support corporate capitalism and if we would support a militaristic U.S. foreign policy." What I didn't say was that the fellow was a Jewish neocon with no interest in Christianity or Catholicism, and I suspected he was interested in getting us to promote Jewish neocon interests (which he had every right to do). As we said in the September Editorial, I said "no," and that was the end of that. But the neocon foundations didn't give up. Michael Novak (very pro-Israel) founded Crisis -- then called Catholicism in Crisis -- and Fr. Neuhaus (also very pro-Israel) founded First Things, both with huge financial support from neocon foundations. So the neocons found a way to get Catholic and Christian magazines to front for their largely Jewish neocon interests (which, again, is their right). Do we exaggerate? No we don't. When the Catholic Church denounced the war on Iraq -- calling it an unjust war, a war of aggression -- both Crisis and First Things supported it. A clear case of supporting Jewish neocon interests over Catholic Just War doctrine. For a synopsis of Fr. Neuhaus's support for the war on Iraq, based on his support for Israel, see our New Oxford Note, "What Does the Pope Know About World Affairs?" (Nov., pp. 13-14, 16-17). If you persist in seeing this as anti-Semitism, you're wrong again. In an editorial in The Forward, the oldest Jewish newspaper in the U.S., it was stated that: "Recently...reasonable people still could dismiss, as antisemitic conspiracy mongering, the claim that Israel's security was the real motive behind the invasion of Iraq. No longer.... Its advocates can no longer simply be shushed or dismissed as bigots. Those who disagree must now argue the case on the merits."
Now isn't that interesting!?! Catholic magazines financed by Jewish supporters in exchange for the magazine promoting the Jewish agenda, even when it opposes Catholic social teaching.
I may not even be the dimmest political light on the lamppost, but even I can recognize there is something wrong with this!
So who do you trust these days? Not the bishops, with a couple of exceptions. Not Catholic periodicals, with a couple of exceptions. Not the parish priest in far too many parishes.
The logical response is you trust the Pope. But then I reflect that John Paul II traveled while the Church apostacized.
Chaos Magick!
Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us!
