It [Christian nationalism] is not Christianity. You’re taking some very conventional, somewhat obnoxious, beliefs and cloaking them in Christ. And if one was to study Christ’s teachings . . . it would make you more compassionate and more open, like the Pope is
George Saunders, novelist, The Edition, The New Statesman, 9 April
Absurd and inhuman violence is spreading ferociously through the sacred places of the Christian East, profaned by the blasphemy of war and the brutality of business, with no regard for people’s lives, which are considered at most collateral damage of self-interest. But no gain can be worth the life of the weakest, children, or families. No cause can justify the shedding of innocent blood
Leo XIV, X, 10 April
My fear of theodicy is that it becomes not just a justification of God but a justification of evil. It’s not just that I’m trying to justify God in the face of a child dying from diphtheria or a death camp; I’m actually justifying the death of that child and that death camp. At that point, the whole moral grammar of the New Testament seems to collapse in on itself
David Bentley Hart, theologian, interview in The New York Times, 12 April
Why do you desire to own a painting? The reason you desire it might be purely for an investment. But if you really desire the painting for itself, it’s because you have a prior desire that’s more general and transcendental for the beautiful as such. Beauty is an ultimate value for you
ibid.
It’s more than blasphemy. It’s an Antichrist spirit
Marjorie Taylor Greene, former Donald Trump supporter, on the US President’s social-media post of an AI image of himself apparently depicted as Jesus, 13 April
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