God may very well use this in someone as a springboard for genuine conversion, I’m not denying that this happens

But if you’re considering religion, specifically Catholicism, it should be because you have come to believe that it is the only true and authentic way to achieve intimate union with the Divine, any other reasons must be wholly subordinate to this

general rule of thumb for me: keep your philosophical/religious worldview relatively stable for at least 3 years then I’ll seriously listen to what you have to say

it was never necessary for God to create, but it was always fitting according to His wisdom and inner fecundity for Him to freely do so, and so He did

ultimately the act of creation stems from the same inner divine act of self-manifestation and tripersonal communion

It’s just that this inner act of divine union and love in its infinite generosity did not see fit to withhold itself from beings outside of Himself

hence, Creation

“yet no one spoke openly of Him, for fear of the Jews” - John 7:13

Trump surged into office on the back of an open rebellion against all of politics— I am not going to enthusiastically get behind some wet blanket establishment Republican politician as my "second choice" just in case the revolution fails. The whole system is corrupt, if it's not Trump it's nothing.

in some sense. Jesus Christ *is*, in His own Person united with the whole cosmos as summed up in a human nature, the best of all possible worlds

He is the fullness of God’s self-outpouring into Creation which, by virtue of the hypostatic union, cannot be outdone

Reminder that the Catholic Church as recently as the year 2000, taught by an ex cathedra magisterial pronouncement against any doctrine that could be harmonized with dual-covenant theology in Dominus Iesus:

«Above all else, it must be firmly believed that “the Church, a pilgrim now on earth, is necessary for salvation: the one Christ is the mediator and the way of salvation; he is present to us in his body which is the Church. He himself explicitly asserted the necessity of faith and baptism (cf. Mk 16:16; Jn 3:5), and thereby affirmed at the same time the necessity of the Church which men enter through baptism as through a door”‌.77 This doctrine must not be set against the universal salvific will of God (cf. 1 Tim 2:4); “it is necessary to keep these two truths together, namely, the real possibility of salvation in Christ for all mankind and the necessity of the Church for this salvation”‌.»

Problems with in-person voting on election day disproportionately affect Republican voters, hard to see how this new "system" was not created by design.

if it’s even true (and I don’t believe that it is) that the only way to win elections is to drop our anti-infanticide stance, we shouldn’t want to “win” elections

This doesn’t mean that as a politician you have to immediately rush to the most unpopular anti-abortion public policy stance imaginable (per Evangelium vitæ), but it does mean that protecting the unborn from systematic slaughter in the womb must remain a non-negotiable electoral priority

That, or be a pawn of the Devil, plain and simple

universal suffrage is in itself a species of voter fraud

desantis could NEVER capture this spirit or even pull this off

donald trump may have made poor choices but behind his political persona there’s a real human being with a distinctive identity and character, he wasn’t made in a political test tube like desantis was and for that reason alone I could never choose desantis over trump

even with the vaccine, while trump made a horrible decision in peddling it, I genuinely think the enthusiasm he had for it was due to the fact that he saw it as his personal accomplishment, not because of some cold political calculation

whereas I think desantis’ eventual opposition to the vax was purely political once he realized how much vaccine hesitancy there ended up being among the Republican base

I don’t think he genuinely cares one way or another

and that means something!

it’s actually the best and only platform to run on in 2024

“If a people gradually become depraved, … if it hands over the government to wicked and criminal men, then that power of conferring honors ought rightly to be taken away from such a people and restored to those few who are good” - St. Augustine, Father and Doctor of the Church

https://twitter.com/noliewithbtc/status/1590771129681342464?s=46&t=4fmzlyXkyQJj-xsYGG6itg