Several instances of Jesus’ most important teaching, the “Kingdom of God,” rarely addressed in Protestant sermons or Catholic curriculum, are squeezed together in today’s Gospel selection. The effect is to squeeze out Jesus’ actual teaching on it – that the Kingdom of God, better translated as the Community of God, is happening in the here and now in our peaceful social transformation of the world. For example, one social transformation is humanity shifting from supremacy to communion. Today’s teaching tends to squeeze that out to instead emphasize one phrase about all of “the weeds” allowed to grow in the Community of God.
J.D. Vance, who claims a conversion to Catholicism, tends to squeeze out Jesus, the Gospel, and the Kingdom of God in his teachings. He’s one of the people who tends to emphasize all the weeds, aka immigrants, allowed to grow in the Kingdom of Western Civilization. J.D. Vance is quite the fan of Western Civilization. It’s usually described as the traditions evolving from European cultures. Historians like to trace it from ancient Greece and Rome, to the Magna Carta and the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment proposed secular ideas on culture some of which influenced the American Revolution. The ideas also challenged the Church which made significant contributions to Western Civilization and fought to remain the dominant force in it. Blending that competitive circumstance, Vance champions what he describes as Christian Western Civilization – which he champions for its supremacy. Vance therefore violently opposes communion, though his new book uses Communion for its title. Vance proves himself a Judas as he champions strict border control and deportation policies because he believes superior white men are being replaced with inferior dark people, and also by women. Vance believes all are threats to Christian Western Civilization because they disrespect its values. Values he likes, such as the nuclear family, which means rule by the father; meritocracy, which means gains made by unearned privilege and systemic inequalities; and the rule of law, which means laws set by Lords who owned slaves from ancient times to current times. Vance makes his strong “defense of Western civilization” when he talks with dictators about “weeds,” aka “illegal aliens,” and “millions and millions of unvetted migrants threatening Europe” “and the U.S.” In other words, Vance is talking about people who come from the Middle East and Africa, ancient and culturally rich civilizations. Both are the home of Jesus, the first disciples, and early saints like Vance’ own confirmation saint, St. Augustine, who was an African! These and other Middle Easterners and Africans are either whitewashed or excluded from contributing to humanity’s early development of civilization that is prejudicially called ‘Western.’ In his ignorance, Vance has specifically defended Christian Western Civilization in Germany, specifically its rising AfD Nazi party whose members extol Hitler and repeat Hitler’s Third Reich slogans. Vance, who once called Trump “America’s Hitler” now sounds like one of Hitler’s supremacists who also exalted Western Civilization against “weeds,” Joseph Goebbels. Goebbels was Nazi Minister of Propaganda who said, “National Socialism brought about a new version and formulation of European culture… (opposed) by Jewish-led international subhumans against culture itself.” These subhumans will bring about “the absolute destruction of all… civilizing advances made by western civilization.” Goebbels carried out a reign of terror against the “subhuman” “weeds” he believed were destroying Western Civilization: ghetto confinement, forced labor, concentration camps, and systemic extermination. The U.S. Minister of Propaganda, J.D. Vance, hasn’t targeted his “subhuman” “weeds” for systemic extermination, yet.
“Propaganda. We are told, what they want us to hear, by the media, and those behind the curtain, with their own agendas, their own shows, in the shadows… we can barely see, you and me… Politics for payment, Politics for gain, Politics for trade… “Your soul… for fame, so you can reign over others like a king? There will be no denial, of complicity. There will be no excuse for collusion.” (Propaganda – Ann Foster)
Prayer: Beautiful Spirit, we live for Communion.
Question: How am I being complicit and how am I being transforming?
July 19, 2026 Gospel Matthew 13:24-43 Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
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