God does not need your lie. – St. Augustine

Last updated on: October 7, 2016 at 12:17 am by Mark Shea

God does not need your lie. – St. Augustine 2016-10-07T00:17:49-07:00 Mark Shea

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So for months I’ve been told over and over that Hillary is on record as calling for Christians to be forced to change their teaching on same sex marriage and abortion. Persecution is coming. We have it from the horse’s mouth. She has already told us. Anybody who does not panic about the Arkansas Diocletian and her frank ultimatum to America’s Christians to bend to Caesar or face persecution is a fool. Trump alone can save us!

John Zmirak, for instance, reaches for his fainting couch and passes on what is now common knowledge among the panic-stricken Christians of the right, darkly warning that we have to vote Trump or we invite Hillary’s promised persecution:

Hillary Clinton and the worldview she represents have promised to make it happen here. What else can you make of her speech to the United Nations, where she said that for women to enjoy their fundamental rights, guaranteed by the government, Christian beliefs on abortion would have to change?

He then posts a carefully edited snippet from a speech she gave to the UN with this seemingly damning quote:

Far too many women are denied access to reproductive health care and safe childbirth, and laws don’t count for much if they’re not enforced. Rights have to exist in practice — not just on paper. Laws have to be backed up with resources and political will. And deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs and structural biases have to be changed.

After which he actually does compare her to Diocletian and then (I am not making this up) go on to try to sell the unlikely case that Trump is Constantine, God’s chosen vessel for the salvation of the Church who must not be criticized or questioned by “perfectionist” Donatist utopians (of which more in a moment).

Now here’s the thing, that whole claim that Hillary is threatening Christian persecution in that speech is simply a lie. Don’t believe me? Here, go to 7:54 mark:

Here’s the quote in full and the story of how the utterly unreliable Theodore Shoebat edited it to create the Diocletian Hillary lie:

Yes, we’ve nearly closed the global gender gap in primary school, but secondary school remains out of reach for so many girls around the world. Yes, we’ve increased the number of countries prohibiting domestic violence, but still more than half the nations in the world have no such laws on the books, and an estimated one in three women still experience violence. Yes, we’ve cut the mortality rate in half, but far too many women are still denied critical access to reproductive health care and safe childbirth.

All the laws we’ve passed don’t count for much if they’re not enforced. Rights have to exist in practice, not just on paper. Laws have to be backed up with resources and political will. And deep seated cultural codes, religious beliefs and structural biases have to be changed.

As I have said, and as I believe, the advancement of the full participation of women and girls in every aspect of their societies is the great unfinished business of the twenty-first century, and not just for women but for everyone — and not just in far away countries but right here in the United States.

Clinton is not talking about the US when she discusses changing cultural codes and religious beliefs. She is talking about the status of women across the globe and addressing the numerous barbarous regimes under which they live. Many of those regimes are Muslim and the same Christians who are fantasizing about the New Diocletian persecution in the US themselves regard Islam as a barbarous religious code that needs to be fought at every turn. One of them, a John Zmirak, not only believes that, but he even believes that the cultural codes, religious beliefs and structural biases of the Catholic Church both in the US and abroad have to be changed so that Catholics will join him in his Crusade against the the Musselman and stop listening to liberal idiots like the pope. Indeed, he has even led the charge in attacking the pope and his absurd belief in the ridiculous Catholic superstition “Blessed are the peacemakers”.

It is difficult to know if Zmirak was aware of the fact that this entire “Hillary pledges Diocletian persecution against Christians” thing was lie or not. He is, after all, already on record as approving the Noble Lie in a Good Cause. But let us assume he simply got bad info. No doubt now that the actual quote and its context is known, he will issue a retraction of this bit of hysteria. We might even hope that he will issue a retraction of this absurd bit of below-the-belt rhetoric:

Perfectionist Christians, who demanded the kingdom of heaven on earth, or felt a profound distaste for this ruthless autocrat, might have held themselves aloof and refused to work with Constantine — as one sect, the Donatists did.

For, of course, Constantine was not elected. He was emperor. And it is not “Perfectionism” to refuse to piss away the last dregs of integrity lying on behalf of a corrupt pro-abort pornocrat. Nobody is under any obligation to vote for either Clinton or Trump. But we are under an obligation to tell the truth.

There’s a lot about Hillary not to like. You don’t have to make crap up to make a case against her. And when you do, you only make it easier for people on the fence to abandon all trust in the gospel you represent.

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