@americamag Girard went further. Scapegoating isn't just a social reflex; it is the blind consecration of violence through collective (often religious) denial—the counterfeit holiness hiding evil: the false sacred. That's the fundamental lie the Gospels unmask: evil wears a halo. 1 John 3:8
@lukeburgis 2/ The scapegoat mechanism works because it obscures this fundamental matrix of being. In that concealment, no logic of justice appears more unified or self-justified—and no desire more blind to its own hostility—than the sanctioned violence of the false sacred cloaked as true.
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Pictured speaker / quoted attribution: Nick quoting Ivan Illich Saved source record associated with pictured writing; full saved record, not an exact pictured excerpt. Passage boundary: Source: archive.nickroutledge.org/post/1723953725721686227 Preserve quoted-author distinctions; the containing tweet does not confer authorship. @ShaneClaiborne 1/ Evil's perverse capacity lies in its powers to camouflage the 'false sacred' as true - as something like common sense, justice or wisdom (2 Cor. 11:14). Whether in forms conscious or unconscious, secular or religious, “The ability to disguise sin defines Anti-Christ." (Illich) t.co/128h3ozJDA
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Pictured speaker / quoted attribution: Daniel Bowdoin quoting Reinhold Niebuhr Saved source record associated with pictured writing; full saved record, not an exact pictured excerpt. Passage boundary: Source: Preserve quoted-author distinctions; the containing tweet does not confer authorship. Copy of thread: ‘The final enigma of history is therefore not how the righteous will gain victory over the unrighteous, but how the evil in every good and the unrighteousness of the righteous is to be overcome.’ [Quotation from Reinhold Niebhur’s The Nature of Destiny and Man: II Human Destiny] [“The ways of history do not lead directly upwards to the Kingdom of God, they pass by way of the final unveiling of the anti-Christ who conceals himself under] the last mask to be stripped away - the mask of what is good and what is Christian.” - Von Balthasar
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Pictured speaker / quoted attribution: Nick quoting Hans Urs von Balthasar Saved source record associated with pictured writing; full saved record, not an exact pictured excerpt. Passage boundary: Source: archive.nickroutledge.org/post/1466095409550348292 Preserve quoted-author distinctions; the containing tweet does not confer authorship. @MassimoFaggioli If I may interject? “The ways of history do not lead directly upwards to the Kingdom of God, they pass by way of the final unveiling of the anti-Christ who conceals himself under the last mask to be stripped away - the mask of what is good and what is Christian.” - von Balthasar
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Pictured speaker / quoted attribution: Nick on Girard and Richard Rohr Saved source record associated with pictured writing; full saved record, not an exact pictured excerpt. Passage boundary: Source: Preserve quoted-author distinctions; the containing tweet does not confer authorship. High mimesis is usually a sign of insecurity and confusion, which is why no institution has become more mimetically reactive today than the Church Girard specifically identified such systemic mimetic escalation as the "Panic in the system" indicating the truth approaching of the Second Coming and the threat the Cross ultimately represents to “the infrastructure of all religions and all cultures", the Church first. Bailie: [Excerpt from Gil Bailie's 'Girardian' take, 'Violence Unveiled: Humanity at the Crossroads' which Sam Keen describes as “the single most important book of social analysis and prophetic theology to appear in our generation.”] "Those living closer to the Gospel’s epicenter, beginning with Christianity itself, are more likely to experience its cultural destablilizing effects than those at a greater distance from it. Christianity no more owns the Gospels than do multinational corporations own the earth." 1/ Evil's perverse capacity lies in its powers to camouflage the 'false sacred' as true - as something like common sense, justice or wisdom (2 Cor. 11:14). Whether in forms conscious or unconscious, secular or religious, “The ability to disguise sin defines Anti-Christ." (Illich) ‘The final enigma of history is therefore not how the righteous will gain victory over the unrighteous, but how the evil in every good and the unrighteousness of the righteous is to be overcome.’ [Quotation from Reinhold Niebhur’s The Nature of Destiny and Man: II Human Destiny] “The ways of history do not lead directly upwards to the Kingdom of God, they pass by way of the final unveiling of the anti-Christ who conceals himself under] the last mask to be stripped away - the mask of what is good and what is Christian.” - Von Balthasar Girard, like a thief in the night: "What might happen to our world if the precarious order of false transcendence imposed by the scapegoat mechanism ceases to function?" Rohr: “The True Sacred, which is synonymous with the Reign of God, unmasks and relativizes the false sacred."
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