Wayward Christian Empathy
October 12, 2025 Leave a comment
Want to see what Christian empathy tends to look like?
No. This pop-project isn’t satire. The Church of England, so obsessed with its moral performance, really did cover the interior of the oldest cathedral in England in graffiti in order to represent themselves to the world.
As reported by The Independent,
The installation created by poet Alex Vellis is designed to contrast with the ancient, traditional architecture in the church to offer new interpretations of faith and worship.
Per the partnered gay priest and dean of Canterbury, David Monteith, “There is a rawness which is magnified by the graffiti style, which is disruptive. There is also an authenticity in what is said because it is unfiltered and not tidied up or sanitised. Above all, this graffiti makes me wonder why I am not always able to be as candid, not least in my prayers.
“This exhibition intentionally builds bridges between cultures, styles and genres and, in particular, allows us to receive the gifts of younger people who have much to say and from whom we need to hear much.”
“Mr Vellis said the language of the graffiti was “of the unheard”.
He added: “By temporarily graffitiing the inside of Canterbury Cathedral, we join a chorus of the forgotten, the lost, and the wondrous. People who wanted to make their mark, to say ‘I was here’, and to have their etchings carry their voice through the centuries.”
Reading the motivation behind the Church of England’s self-vandalizing approach to empathy, one has to wonder, as with many decisions made in our times, – where are the adults? And what is next on the empathy checklist? Will the CoE leaders, in order build “bridges between cultures, styles and genres” and to “welcome the stranger,” get tattoos and piercings? Hand out drugs and needles? Perform a satanic mass?
The understanding, resonating, and self-differentiating human voices of previous centuries are becoming the “chorus of the forgotten, the lost, and the wondrous,” the voices “of the unheard” in the Church of England, throughout Europe, and the U.S. Those voices are deemed non-empathetic and must be shouted over with graffiti.
Those who, with ancient wisdom, made their mark of truth, beauty, and goodness, must now be overwritten with graffiti.
The desire to look like the world, like walking in another’s shoes, as inclusive and pluralistic, is beneficial for the state and its open borders immigration policies which deface homelands and cultures with graffiti.
Per Olivia Murray at American Thinker,
“Canterbury Cathedral, a sixth-century English church—making it more than 1,400 years old—has gotten a paint job…in graffiti. And as it turns out, this act of vandalism wasn’t an act of street delinquency, it was actually commissioned by the church’s stewards. . ..”
“Call me crazy, but this seems counterproductive. Real Englanders, Brits by blood and spirit, with an undying love for their culture and home, are beyond fed up with what the Dean of Canterbury calls “marginalized communities.” These “marginalized communities” are parasitic, they’re destroying the cohesion of England and the nation’s society, and they’re given preferential treatment by the government, that’s ostensibly, representing the English people.”
Murray continues:
“Progressives really have an extraordinary ability to turn something unbelievably precious and beautiful into utter trash—how can you make Canterbury Cathedral look like a derelict warehouse in an inner city, or resemble a dirty freight train car?”
~~~
Christian empathy tends to be wayward, moving away from truth, beauty and goodness and toward a seamless identity with what those in the world think they need and want – a trait that Jesus never had.
Christian empathy tends toward a desire to be seen as acceptable to the world so that the world would, by virtue of such, respond – a trait that Jesus never had.
As we read the hymn in Philippians 2, we learn that Jesus made himself accessible to the world.
As we read in gospel according to John 2:13-25, we learn of his distinctiveness from the world, from what those in the world thought they needed and wanted.
When the Court of the Gentiles within the temple ground, the place designated for believing Gentiles to pray and worship became cluttered with the clink of coins, the braying of animals, and the sounds of commerce, Jesus, “Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, with the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. He told those who were selling the doves, “Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!” His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.
Note in the above accounts of the desecration of the cathedral, the SJW go-to descriptor ‘marginalised communities’. This indicates the current naming convention that paints humans in the Marxist graffiti of “oppressed” and “oppressor” while avoiding terms that speak of repentance and redemption.
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It is easy to snicker in utter disgust at the perversion of an ancient cathedral, but what are Christians doing with what they have been given? Are Christians preserving the good, the true, the beautiful that has been passed down? Are Christians adding or subtracting to what we’ve been given. Are Christians looking at screens all day?
Should Christians continue to build churches that look like commercial buildings? It seems that after the reformation, Protestants decided that beauty wasn’t utilitarian so why bother with it.
Are we composing music that goes beyond the folksy and often cloying church worship music? Are we writing operas, symphonies, fugues, sonatas? Hymns with actual embedded theology?
Are we creating works of art and literature that draw people to them or are we on screens and social media all day looking at and posting pictures? Early Christian art showed the immanence of God—his closeness to us—and his transcendence, his otherness. The Chosen is not art. It is redux sentimentality akin to watching a rerun of a Billy Grahm crusade or using crayons to color a Jesus picture.
Are we writing poetry that examines life – the wounding, the good, the true and the beautiful? Or, is that the purpose of MSM? Knowing God involves both spiritual and sensory engagement. Poetry can express both.
None of the above prompts are utilitarian and instantly beneficial. Hence, some will avoid a second thought about them.
From stained glass to straining for attention, the graffiti installation recognizes the ego in rebellion to the good, the true and the beautiful while virtue signaling empathy. Not only is the installation profane, it is an act of profound laziness. Evil is lazy and does not promote the spiritual growth of another.
The church of England, the dancing daughter of Herodias, offers its beguiling movements to please guests and the reigning authority. This while John the Baptist, who called people from all strata of society including King Herod to repentance, sits tied up in jail, his head to be removed with the axe of “Silence!”
Want to see what Christian empathy tends to look like?
The Brave New World’s Arch-Community Songster of Canterbury
There is an intense irony here that gets to the heart of the self-inflicted problems of the Church of England today. Sarah Mullally has been very clear on the kind of Church she believes in – she’s a supporter of LGBTQ+ rights and activism, she has strongly backed asylum and migration, she is a self-declared feminist, and she is both politically and it seems religiously progressive. As Bishop of London, she boasted about representing a diverse and multicultural city, and put her experience in handling diversity as one of the key qualifications and evidence of positive experience she could bring to being the Archbishop of Canterbury. (Emphasis mine.)
“The Church of England has lost 80 per cent of Anglicans on the planet” « Quotulatiousness
Added 10-18-2025:
Helen Andrews | Overcoming the Feminization of Culture | NatCon 5
Helen [Andrews] argues that the rise of “wokeness” wasn’t born from Marxism, academia, or even Obama-era politics. That in itself had people shocked. Helen theorizes that it actually came from something way simpler… the quiet but steady feminization of America’s most powerful institutions.
Helen Andrews wrote in The Great Feminization | Compact
“Wokeness is not a new ideology, an outgrowth of Marxism, or a result of post-Obama disillusionment. It is simply feminine patterns of behavior applied to institutions where women were few in number until recently . . .
Everything you think of as wokeness involves prioritizing the feminine over the masculine: empathy over rationality, safety over risk, cohesion over competition . . .
“The threat posed by wokeness can be large or small depending on the industry . . . The field that frightens me most is the law. All of us depend on a functioning legal system, and, to be blunt, the rule of law will not survive the legal profession becoming majority female. The rule of law is not just about writing rules down. It means following them even when they yield an outcome that tugs at your heartstrings or runs contrary to your gut sense of which party is more sympathetic.
“The problem is not that women are less talented than men or even that female modes of interaction are inferior in any objective sense. The problem is that female modes of interaction are not well suited to accomplishing the goals of many major institutions.”
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“THE EIGHT PRINCIPLES OF UNCIVILISATION
1. We live in a time of social, economic and ecological unravelling. All around us are signs that our whole way of living is already passing into history. We will face this reality honestly and learn how to live with it.
2. We reject the faith which holds that the converging crises of our times can be reduced to a set of ‘problems’ in need of technological or political ‘solutions’.
3. We believe that the roots of these crises lie in the stories we have been telling ourselves. We intend to challenge the stories which underpin our civilisation: the myth of progress, the myth of human centrality, and the myth of our separation from ‘nature’. These myths are more dangerous for the fact that we have forgotten they are myths.
4. We will reassert the role of storytelling as more than mere entertainment. It is through stories that we weave reality.
5. Humans are not the point and purpose of the planet. Our art will begin with the attempt to step outside the human bubble. By careful attention, we will reengage with the non-human world.
6. We will celebrate writing and art which is grounded in a sense of place and of time. Our literature has been dominated for too long by those who inhabit the cosmopolitan citadels.
7. We will not lose ourselves in the elaboration of theories or ideologies. Our words will be elemental. We write with dirt under our fingernails.
8. The end of the world as we know it is not the end of the world full stop. Together, we will find the hope beyond hope, the paths which lead to the unknown world ahead of us.”
― Paul Kingsnorth, Uncivilisation: The Dark Mountain Manifesto
Why I’m Taking Music & Art Lessons – Margarita Mooney Clayton
The Satisfaction of Making Art – Margarita Mooney Clayton
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From St. Augustine’s Confessions (Book 10, Chapter 27). St. Augustine reflects back on his own conversion from a life of profligacy to one of love and intimacy with God.
Chapter XXVII.-He Grieves that He Was So Long Without God.
Too late did I love Thee, O Fairness, so ancient, and yet so new! Too late did I love Thee For behold, Thou wert within, and I without, and there did I seek Thee; I, unlovely, rushed heedlessly among the things of beauty Thou madest. Thou wert with me, but I was not with Thee. Those things kept me far from Thee, which, unless they were in Thee, were not. Thou calledst, and criedst aloud, and forcedst open my deafness. Thou didst gleam and shine, and chase away my blindness. Thou didst exhale odours, and I drew in my breath and do pant after Thee. I tasted, and do hunger and thirst. Thou didst touch me, and I burned for Thy peace.
https://orthodoxchurchfathers.com/fathers/npnf101/npnf1027.html#P1660_683954
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The Ghent Altarpiece (Adoration of the Mystic Lamb) (1432) by Jan van Eyck
Cindy Wity 
Snakes Alive!
May 11, 2025 Leave a comment
A countryman returning home one winter’s day found a snake by the hedge-side, half dead with cold. Taking compassion on the creature, he laid it in his bosom and brought it home to his fireside to revive it. No sooner had the warmth restored it, than it began to attack the children of the cottage. Upon this the countryman, whose compassion had saved its life, took up a club and laid the snake dead at his feet.
Aesop’s The Countryman and The Snake
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The foolish take pity on snakes. Thinking to help creatures out in the cold cruel world, they bring them home and the creature’s true nature is revealed. Suffering follows.
The foolish do not take care to bestow their benevolence upon proper objects. And so, not having yet been bitten, the foolish continue to empathize with snakes.
Snakes on the Brain
The foolish take pity on and work to bring home MS-13 gang members, wife abusers, and human traffickers e.g., Abrego Garcia.
The foolish bring home a false premise of multiculturalism believing that all cultures are equal in some undefinable sense.
The foolish bring home DEI creatures and their true nature is revealed in the sorry outcomes.
The foolish bring home, with ad-hoc justice and zero-bail policies, criminals who are not fit to live in a community. Repeat offenders reveal their true nature.
The foolish take pity on unvetted (legally and health wise) invaders and bring them home by creating “sanctuary cities” and alerting them to the approach of the countryman, and by hiding them.
The foolish take home Hamas sympathizers and warm them by the fires of Marxist/critical theory/anticolonialism ‘higher education’. Thus embraced, their true nature is revealed. Their “freedom of expression” is to bite those empathizing with them.
The foolish take pity on invaders and rally behind rogue district court judges appointed by Biden and Obama who act unconstitutionally to block deportation of the invaders.
The foolish take pity on CCP snakes by letting them purchase U.S. farmland where they can breed.
The foolish take pity on and want to hold on to government programs of waste, fraud, and abuse that produce more snakes and snake bites, including “sex changes, LGBT activism, a “DEI musical,” a transgender opera, and birth control,” and terrorism, e.g., USAID.
I have known some as bad as the Snake.
Those with no sense will not only take a snake to their bosom, they will also take fire to their bosom, as Proverbs 6:27-35 tells us.
Disorder in the House
The foolish order their Mr. Rogers neighborly affections with Progressivism’s morally-relativistic calculus that breeds chaos, injustice and societal harm.
In the current cultural milieu given to Marxist victim-oppressor ideology, taking pity on a snake, a lowly creature, can provide a feeling of dominance and power. It can also make the snake-pitier feel virtuous. Benevolence upon improper objects follows: take pity on snakes, say nothing of their bite, and virtue signal your empathy to the world.
It helps Progressive sensibilities that the deep state media doesn’t show the consequences of snake-pity and holds snake-pitiers innocent of any biting consequences and that social media “Likes” flow with snake-pity empathy, and there are handshakes after sermons that wrangle scripture to have it mean that bringing a snake home is a loving thing.
And why not. Doesn’t the Good Book tell us to love? Isn’t that the Jesus way? And isn’t that the Woodstock way e.g., “Love the one you’re with?” Isn’t that the abstract universalist platitude way, e.g., “All You Need is Love?” Isn’t that the sentimentalist way, e.g., “love is love?” Isn’t that the social justice way, e.g., “Love is picking winners and losers?”
Prudent people bestow their benevolence upon proper objects. Prudent people focus on ordering their loves and not on joining fools who take snakes to their bosom. Here, I address the latter group, Progressive Christians who misplace empathy and disorder their love.
Empathy that cedes wisdom and objective reality for acts of trendy “social justice”, love so disordered will come back to bite them and the ones they love and those who go on to live with the consequences of their ‘empathy’!
Should we prioritize the foreigner above our family, our community, and our church? Isn’t the well-being of those closest to us more important than the migrant pursuing opportunism by crossing the border illegally? (Many illegals wave the flag of the country they left behind.)
Oh, I forgot. Many SJWs ‘exist’ on social media and in pulpits but don’t live in the communities affected. Snake bites – the raping and killing and stealing and fentanyl deaths and the zapping of community resources – Deep State Media doesn’t mention consequences of snake pity. Instead, Deep State Media is focused on vilifying snake deportations. (No pearl-clutching, please.)
A state government using taxpayer dollars to pay for housing, medical, legal and other expenses for the invaders is not on your radar – yet. Empathy that results in rape, murder, harm, and loss to your family, your community, your church, and your country – that snake hasn’t bitten you yet.
The Progressive snake preys on the naïve, on the sentimental, on those lacking wisdom and discernment. Figures in Christianity have brought home that snake and its dangerous nature. The result: moral relativity; prioritizing political correctness over truth; prioritizing the foreign over the familiar, the stranger over kin; abstract humanitarianism over the concrete needs of one’s community; disordered ordo amoris.
Disordered love is the basis of much confusion and chaos and corruption today. Disordered love can result in political disarray, protests, cultural demise, and a moral relativity that abstracts reality to gain social credit.
The breakdown of ordo amoris (order of love) explains benevolence upon improper objects It explains bringing home a snake. You cannot claim to love “the world” if you harm those closest to you in the process. And closing one’s eyes to the consequences of mis-placed empathy isn’t loving.
Order in the House
Imagine you are invited to a symphony orchestra concert. The program features atonal music.
The music lacks a tonal center or key. It sounds off, as it does not conform to the ordered system of tonal hierarchies and harmonious structures that characterize classical music.
The vagueness and generality of the sound is annoying. Dissonant and jarring, it is characterized by disorder – pitches in new combinations and familiar pitch combinations in unfamiliar settings.
By the end of the first movement, you’ve heard enough and walk out.
~~~
The new pope Leo XIV, the first Augustinian Pope, criticized J.D. Vance’s views on the Catholic teachings on caring for others, as well as President Trump’s immigration policies.
This past February, then-Cardinal Prevost challenged Vice President JD Vance on X, repeating a headline from The National Catholic Reporter: “JD Vance is wrong: Jesus doesn’t ask us to rank our love for others.”
I find such criticism rather strange and out of touch with the Order of St. Augustine that Prevost joined in 1977. The criticism sounds like Progressive politics that appropriates Jesus because it has no moral authority its own.
St. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas said that love must be ordered. One must love God first, then family, then nation. (The following summaries are from The Order of Love by Sean Ring. Document below.)
Augustine’s hierarchy of love can be summarized as:
God above all – The highest love is due to God, as He is the source of all good.
Self properly ordered – We must love ourselves rightly, seeking salvation and holiness rather than selfish pleasure.
Family and kin – Natural obligations to parents, spouses, and children take precedence over others.
Community and nation – A just love of one’s people and homeland follows from natural bonds.
Strangers and humanity at large – Charity extends to all, but not at the expense of higher obligations.
St. Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologica says that love should be given according to moral proximity, explaining that natural law thru justice and governance dictates a preference for those closest to us:
We owe special care to our families because they are an extension of ourselves.
The common good of a nation is more relevant than abstract global concerns.
Charity is universal, but obligations are graded, meaning the duty to kin and community is stronger than to distant strangers.
Ordo Amoris
Put God first – Moral order flows from divine truth.
Prioritize family and community – Nations and families are not arbitrary constructs but natural hierarchies of love.
Exercise prudent charity – Helping others should not come at the expense of justice or the destruction of one’s people.
Reject false universalism – Love for all does not mean an equal obligation to all.
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Today’s education system is focused on a Marxist victim-oppressor ordering.
Christian education should focus on Ordo Amoris, the order of affections. Children must be taught the order of priorities: what is most important and what is least important. This isn’t to say a given item is bad, but that it’s not as high in our affection (or priority list) as something else.
Teaching that involves such wisdom and discernment would be a guide to relationships and moral obligations and a protection against the modern sentimentality that distorts true love.
C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man:
“St Augustine defines virtue as ordo amoris, the ordinate condition of the affections in which every object is accorded that kind of degree of love which is appropriate to it. Aristotle says that the aim of education is to make the pupil like and dislike what he ought. When the age for reflective thought comes, the pupil who has been thus trained in ‘ordinate affections’ or ‘just sentiments’ will easily find the first principles in Ethics; but to the corrupt man they will never be visible at all and he can make no progress in that science. Plato before him had said the same. The little human animal will not at first have the right responses. It must be trained to feel pleasure, liking, disgust, and hatred at those things which really are pleasant, likeable, disgusting and hateful.”
The apostle Paul: “So then, whenever we have an opportunity, let us work for the good of all and especially for those of the family of faith.” Gal. 6:10
Charity begins at home. Societies thrive when love is ordered correctly. But fools bring snakes home.
In pity he brought the poor Snake
To be warmed at his fire. A mistake!
For the ungrateful thing
Wife & children would sting.
I have known some as bad as the Snake.
Aesop’s The Farmer and The Snake
The apostle Paul: “So then, whenever we have an opportunity, let us work for the good of all and especially for those of the family of faith.” Gal. 6:10
~~~~~
The Budget Savvy Travelers@thebstravelers
A Danish man—just a regular guy—gets confronted in his own country by a group of migrants who flat-out tell him: “This isn’t Denmark anymore. We’re taking over.”
That’s not integration or assimilation. That’s demographic conquest. These aren’t whispers in the back alleys—these are bold, open declarations: “We have 5 children, you have 1. In ten years, you’ll be gone.”
You’re not going to hear this story on CNN, MSNBC, or from the latte-sipping globalists at the UN—but this is what’s REALLY going on in Denmark right now.
While the mainstream media distracts you with puff pieces about Trump trying to “buy Greenland”—like that’s some kind of planetary emergency—the REAL crisis is happening on the streets of Europe. The globalist experiment is unraveling, and the social engineers want you asleep at the wheel.
Let me break this down for you—this is not immigration, this is replacement. It’s part of a globalist plan, and they’ve been cooking this up for decades: flood sovereign nations with unvetted mass migration, break down cultural identity, dilute national pride, and then centralize power in unelected bureaucracies like the EU and the World Economic Forum.
And yet—what’s the big scandal on the evening news? “Trump wanted to buy Greenland!” Give me a break! That’s not a scandal, that’s strategic resource acquisition! But they don’t want you thinking strategically. They want you guilty, distracted, docile, and outbred.
This is a warning. This is a five-alarm fire for Western civilization, and they’re telling you it’s a candle flickering in the wind. Denmark is the canary in the coal mine. What happens there will echo across Europe and the West if people don’t wake up, reclaim their identity, protect their borders, and stand up for truth, sovereignty, and survival.
WAKE UP, BEFORE YOU’RE ERASED.
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Why, in a land that prides itself on welcoming migrants, are so many gang members from migrant communities? And is it Swedish society that is the ultimate culprit, or the migrant communities themselves?
How Sweden’s multicultural dream went fatally wrong
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Added 5-14-2025:
THE MATT GAETZ SHOW EXCLUSIVE: FIRST LOOK INSIDE CECOT’S TREN DE ARAGUA WARD
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Filed under 2025 Current Events, Christianity, Immigration, Political Commentary, Politics, Progressivism Tagged with Bible, Christianity, Empathy, God, Immigration, Jesus, ordo amoris, politics, progressivism, religion