Catholics and Protestant fundamentalists cozy in bed

After the Reformation, Protestants would have as soon burned on the stake (as many of their brethren had during) rather than agreeing with any Catholic about anything. Catholics, vice versa. It remained thus for, oh, about 400 years or so. The most notorious and virulent of Catholic haters were the Baptists, and their spin-offs, i.e., the Church of God and other fundamentalist groups who made traditional Baptists look like Episcopalians.

When it comes right down to it, not a whole hell of a lot has changed in that regard. There is more politeness, and I'm not sure I would continue to use the word "hate", at least as far as traditional Baptists viewpoints.

Let's just say that the day the Baptists, et al, find it acceptable for anyone to pray to Mary and the day Catholics even accept the confessional as optional will be the day the devil goes ice-skating in hell. If there were a devil and if there were a hell.

I don't know if any Baptist influenced individuals ever actually voted for Kennedy, but it must be remembered that the poor man had to stress that he would not be guided by the Pope in order to gain any support from Protestants whatsoever.

That's why I found this excerpt from the book The Theocons by Damon Linker somewhat flabbergasting. To think that certain conservative Catholics are in bed, so to speak, with the most fundamental of fundamentalist Protestants in their support of Bush and his warmongering is more than incredible. One has to think that the fundamentalists must not even be aware of how active this cabal of Catholics has been in supporting Bush. For, surely, if they did, it would mean that they have not only completely forsaken their own history, but that they are not even remotely what they present to the world.

I guess if you have a similar political agenda, it doesn't matter whether you maintain your faith's basic tenants. That is how thoroughly politics have influenced religious dogma.

I am beginning to wonder if it isn't politics that has taken over religious faiths, and it is only because of this factor that certain politically motivated religious leaders are attempting to eliminate the separation of church and state.

Here is a taste:
The following is an excerpt from Damon Linker's new book The Theocons: Secular America Under Siege (Doubleday, 2006).
For much of the past 25 years, a small group of Catholic intellectuals has worked to inject its radical religious ideas into the nation's politics. The leader of this theoconservative movement is Father Richard John Neuhaus. In the pages of his monthly magazine First Things, Neuhaus and his ideological allies set the theocon agenda on a range of policies. Michael Novak of the American Enterprise Institute argues that the American founders were orthodox religious believers who thought of the United States as a Christian nation -- and that American-style capitalism perfectly conforms to Catholic social teaching. Robert P. George of Princeton University insists that abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem-cell research, and same-sex marriage (and perhaps even contraception and masturbation) should be outlawed. And George Weigel of Washington's Ethics and Public Policy Center uses Catholic just-war reasoning to justify neoconservative foreign policy. As the U.S. began to prepare for war in Iraq in 2002, the theocons set out to provide theological justification for the coming conflagration.