Some Quick Thoughts on Trump v. Barbara (Birthright Citizenship Case)

I have made various posts on this blog on the issue of birthright citizenship and why I think the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment should be interpreted broadly. See here, here, here, and here. Though most of those were really more on specific points, rather than being a general argument on the subject, though I do link to some who have made such "general arguments" in some of those posts. So, with the decision finally having one up to the Supreme Court and their decision made, it makes sense for me to write some about it.

I hope to write up a more in-depth description of my thoughts on the subject, but I also know that I can spend a lot of time on these things trying to get them "perfect," and sometimes such things just languish as a draft forever. So, to ensure I get something out, I am going to post some very quick thoughts on it.

If one wants to see thoughts on a legal scholar first, though, try this post by Michael Ramsey which (so far) is probably the article by a legal scholar, atl east of the ones I've seen, that best agrees with my personal thoughts. But you presumably want my own.

First, a quick explanation of what the lineup actually was. The majority opinion was written by Roberts and was joined by Sotomayor, Kagan, Barrett, and Jackson. This asserted Trump's executive order (which declared that going forward, children of illegal immigrants or temporary residents would not gain birth citizenship) was unconstitutional. This means, functionally, one would need a constitutional amendment to accomplish the executive order's goals. Kavanaugh wrote a concurring opinion where he indicated his sympathies were with the dissents on the constitutional question, but said that Trump's executive order was unlawful on statutory grounds. This means that one would need to pass a law to accomplish the executive order's goals.

The primary dissent is by Thomas, joined by Gorsuch. This argues that children of temporary residents do not qualify under the Citizenship Clause, but leaves open the question about whether children of illegal aliens do. Alito's separate opinion is more confusing on what it is actually deciding, but seems to think the standard is primarily that if someone is, at their birth in the US, a citizen of another country, they do not qualify under the Citizenship Clause. Gorsuch's dissent is a brief one where, after joining Thomas's dissent, he expresses more explicit doubts that illegal immigrants do not qualify under the Citizenship Clause.

With that, here are my quick thoughts.

As you probably could guess if you read any of my previous writings on the subject, I think the majority opinion got it right. That said, I do wish it had gone into more detail on some things, and addressed some more claims of the dissents. The majority opinion captures all of the most important things, but I still think it could have been done a bit better. For example, I wish it had spent more time addressing the arguments the dissents make about the Civil Rights Act of 1866. It still does, and does so reasonably satisfactorily... but I would have liked to have seen a bit more, particularly if it had incorporated some of the points Michael Ramsey brings up in his Originalism and Birthright Citizenship article, most specifically the following from pages 453-454 (see also the preceding discussion on pages 451-452):

Third, even if one accepts a need to align the Act and the Amendment, it is not clear that it should be done by reading the Amendment narrowly. To the contrary, it appears that the Act’s drafters understood it, like the Amendment, to include U.S.-born children of aliens. Senator Trumbull introduced what became the Act’s Citizenship Clause (with the “not subject to any foreign power” language), leading to the following exchange: 

Mr. COWAN. I will ask whether [Trumbull’s proposal] will not have the effect of naturalizing the children of Chinese and Gypsies born in this country?

Mr. TRUMBULL. Undoubtedly.

Cowan then argued at length (in expressly racist terms) against adopting Trumbull’s proposed language. Trumbull repeated his understanding later in the debate:

I have already said that in my opinion birth entitles a person to citizenship, that every free-born person in this land is, by virtue of being born here, a citizen of the United States, and that the bill now under consideration is but declaratory of what the law now is; but, inasmuch as some persons deny this, I thought it advisable to declare it in terms in the statute itself.

No one was recorded disputing the effect of Trumbull’s proposal; the question the Senators debated was whether it was a good idea.

Thus it appears that when Senators said that the Amendment had the same effect as the Act, they took a broad view of the Act (rather than a narrow view of the Amendment).

There are some other points of the dissent I wish had been addressed more directly, but I will save those for if I get my more in-depth post out. The main opinion, while not perfect, is satisfactory. It makes its case well and addresses the main points of the dissent.

Now we move onto Kavanaugh's concurrence. This is an odd one. Kavanaugh says he finds the arguments of the dissents on the Constitution more persuasive, but says he believes the current federal law, despite using the same language as the Citizenship Clause, should be interpreted differently because whatever the framers of the Citizenship Clause thought about it, those who passed the federal law were definitely looking at decisions like Wong Kim Ark and believed that was the meaning of the law they passed. This is not an unreasonable point, but his opinion unfortunately does not go into much detail on this subject. Perhaps this is why no other opinion in this case interfaces with his argument to any real extent. What is also confusing about his concurring opinion is what he actually thinks the Constitution does require. He apparently finds the dissents persuasive enough to not join the majority, but which dissent is the one he finds persuasive? Is his opinion that of Thomas, that of Alito, or some combination of the two? Neither? The brevity of his opinion leaves it unclear.

Jackson wrote a concurrence, but I don't have too much to say on it for now. It exists.

We now move onto the primary dissent, that of Thomas. It's a lengthy one, and is nearly as long as every other opinion put together. I believe this was the first opinion of the case I read. This article about how to read court opinions has a lot of useful information, but unfortunately it's so lengthy that it is about as long as some court opinions. But one key takeaway from it I think is good is this: If you want to try to decide who is right, start by figuring out which position (majority opinion or dissent) you think is more likely to be wrong, then start reading that opinion. This works as a time saver; if you read it and are unpersuaded, then you don't need to read anything more. If you read an argument saying "A is correct" and are not persuaded, you don't need to spend extra time reading an argument saying "A is incorrect." You only need to read more if you think the argument is persuasive, and then you should check out the other side.

Thomas's dissent is sure to convince some people, but I think a big problem with it is that it will make various arguments that look strong initially, but when you look more deeply into them they crumble. There were various points where I read something in it and thought "hrm, that actually seems a strong point" but then looked more into it and realized there was a real problem with the argument. This is why I wish the majority opinion had gone into more detail on some of those things. Of course, that could have enlarged it greatly. 

 For an example of what I am talking about, consider this part of the dissent: 

Even the most expansive executive interpretation of the Citizenship Clause ultimately denied citizenship to a child born here but domiciled abroad. When Francois Heinrich, born of parents who ultimately returned to their native Austria, claimed to be an American citizen, President Grant’s Executive Branch did say that he was “‘originally clothed with American nationality.’” Ante, at 13 (majority opinion). But, it then promptly denied Heinrich’s claim to American citizenship. Heinxrich was instead—despite being born in the United States—a citizen of Austria, where he was domiciled: “Francois A. Heinrich should be held by the United States to be an Austrian subject, and treated as such; . . . he is not an American citizen.” Letter from Sec. of State H. Fish to Baron Lederer (Dec. 24, 1872), in 2 Wharton Digest 395–396. 

What Thomas does not mention is that if you look at the letter, the reason he was no long regarded as an American citizen was that, due to an agreement between the United States and Austria, if a citizen of one becomes a citizen of another, then lives in that country for five years, the other country will no longer consider them a citizen. Fish noted that Francois was essentially a dual citizen (gaining American citizenship from his birth in the US and Austrian citizenship due to his parents being Austrian citizens), and that his family moved back to Austria only a few years after his birth. Fish pointed to actions of Francois that Fish thought showed that Francois had embraced his Austrian citizenship, and that that combined with the aforementioned agreement between the two countries met the requirement for him to lose his American citizenship.

Thus despite Francois being considered Austrian and not American in the end, the reasoning for this does not benefit Thomas. By Thomas's logic (as I understand it), he was never an American citizen due to his parents being in the US temporarily, but that is not the case. If he was an American, even if he later lost it due to a law, it's a point against Thomas's position.

If you are wondering why such laws against dual citizenship are no longer in place, they were ruled unconstitutional in court cases in the mid 20th century like Schneider v. Rusk and Afroyim v. Rusk which said that someone can only lose their US citizenship by deliberately revoking it. Whether those cases were right or wrong, the point is that Thomas's explanation does not change the fact this does not work with his interpretation. And this sort of thing occurs repeatedly; an argument is made that looks powerful, but upon closer inspection falls quickly.

We now turn to Alito's dissent. Of the two, it is definitely the weaker one. Alito spends about a quarter of the dissent not actually talking about legal questions, but complaining about US immigration policy. I feel like it's harder to criticize than Thomas's simply because it's so less coherent there isn't as much to criticize. A number of the arguments are shared, but Alito's basic conclusion is that under the Citizenship Clause, someone becomes a citizen if at their birth they do not become a citizen of another country, but I do not think he satisfactorily explains why this does not exclude children who have even one parent who is a foreign citizen, for many (most?) countries grant citizenship to children born abroad if one of their parents is a citizen of that country. Unlike Thomas, Alito also seems to cast doubt on Wong Kim Ark itself.

Lastly is Gorsuch's dissent, which does little more than take one additional step past Thomas's dissent. Thomas said he was leaving it undetermined whether children of long-term illegal residents of the United States qualified under the Citizenship Clause. Gorsuch expresses outright skepticism they do not, although he does not definitively say they do.

That brings us to a good transition on something: Notably, none of these opinions say that children of illegal immigrants are categorically excluded. Thomas devotes his dissent almost entirely to the question of transient visitors, and explicitly says he is leaving the issue of illegal immigrants undecided, with Gorsuch taking an even more more skeptical view on them being excluded. Alito's suggestion would leave most of them not to qualify, but still some would. And Kavanaugh says, at least on statutory grounds, that they are included.

While I am glad the Supreme Court gave the ruling they did, I am not so happy about the lineup. Instead of a 5-1-3 decision, there should have been more in the majority. This is both because I think the majority is right, but also because it emboldens rhetoric against it... as we can easily see. I have seen so many people dismiss it, saying it was only joined by the liberals and the conservatives they view as wafflers. Had it been more lopsided--even a simple 6-3 rather than 5-1-3-- such rhetoric would have faded. And on the other side, we can see liberals citing this near-loss as proof of how bad the Supreme Court is, if they were to come so close to getting this wrong when it should have been 9-0.

Part of the problem, I think, is many people have not familiarized themselves with the arguments in the issue. This is frustratingly common when it comes to Supreme Court cases, where people express strong opinions but can't actually explain much of anything of what the case is actually about. Some, in fact, just look at the lineup and judge it based on that. To some extent, that is understandable; most people can't sit down and read every single opinion to have an opinion on it, and one probably can find certain justices that they are more likely to be in agreement with and try to get a feel for it just by who ruled what way. Indeed, if I were asked "if without knowing anything else about a case you knew Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson were on one side of a decision, while Gorsuch, Thomas, and Alito were on the other side, who do you think would be more likely to be right?" I'd certainly say it would be more likely to be the side Gorsuch, Thomas, and Alito were on. But that's certainly not always the case, and here is one where I think they were very wrong.

I am especially irritated by the hate one sees towards Barrett. In this term alone, conservatives got plenty of wins from her... but because of this (and the voting deadline case) they just ignore all of them. I saw one person make the baffling complaint that she was really bad on the issue of immigration, as if she hadn't just ruled for the Trump administration's immigration policies in two cases several days prior (Mullin v. Doe and Mullin v. Al Lado). This creates the puzzling rhetoric that liberals blast her for ruling against immigrants while she has an adopted Haitian child, but then conservatives are blasting her for for bias towards immigrants on account of that child. Perhaps she simply is approaching these cases neutrally as a matter of law, hence the different outcomes?

It is possible this temporary hatred towards her will fade. One remembers the backlash against Neil Gorsuch after the Bostock decision, and you barely hear about that now. And it seems it is more the rowdy online conservatives who are making noise; more sober ones like Jonathan Turley, who is certainly a conservative and who is no fan of birthright citizenship, note:

The attacks on Barrett ignored that there are good-faith arguments on both sides of the birthright citizenship case. They also ignore that she regularly voted with the conservatives and for positions of the Administration. For example, she voted to support states in requiring transgender athletes to compete with their biological sex. She previously was the most vocal justice in rejecting transgender status as a protected class akin to race or religion.

Or, indeed, this entire article from National Review. For me, this decision has essentially cemented Barrett as my favorite justice on the Court. She is the only justice on the Court who got both Dobbs v. Jackson (the decision overturning Roe v. Wade) and this one right. In fairness, Jackson was not on the court in Dobbs v. Jackson (ironic considering the name), but she probably would not have joined the majority opinion.

So I am satisfied with the decision, but it could have been better, both in its writing (some points could have been expressed better) and in the lineup (the dissenters are wrong in the merits, but even more problematically this error has harmed discourse on the subject).

And so that's the end of this post. Maybe these thoughts were not so "quick" after all. Again, I hope to get up a longer post that goes into it in more detail, but knowing my speed, that could be a bit of a wait, if it ever happens. But for now, those are my thoughts on it, which are sure to lost within all of those others who have posted their thoughts on the issue.

The "New York Catechism" Quotes

There is a quote you can find some people claim is found in a Catholic catechism called the "New York Catechism". It goes thusly:

"The Pope takes the place of Jesus Christ on earth. . . . By divine right, the Pope has supreme and full power in faith and morals over each and every pastor and his flock. He is the true Vicar of Christ, the Head of the entire Church, the father and teacher of all Christians. He is the infallible ruler, the founder of dogmas, the author of and the judge of councils, the universal ruler of truth, the arbiter of the world, the supreme judge of heaven and earth, the judge of all, being judged by no one, God Himself on earth." 

While there have been some very laudatory phrases used to describe the Pope in Catholic writings, this is very extreme, particularly with the "God Himself on earth" statement. But is this true? Did the New York Catechism ever say this? 

People who post this quote never give any further information on this work outside of its name, and no one seems to have been able to find any "New York Catechism" that has this quote. As a result, various people have asserted that the quote is made up or at best a muddled version of what a catechism does say. 

So why make another one post on this topic, if this information about how it seems a false quote is already available online? Well, some of the examinations seem incomplete, and I thought it might be good to try to add some more information. The short version is there are three things that I have seen put forward as possibly being this "New York Catechism"... but none of them appear to have this quote. So if you want just the short version, this quote does indeed to be a false one.

Let's begin with the origin. The first one to produce this quote, at least the first that I've seen anyone find, is  Lorarine Boettner's work "Roman Catholicism" published in the 1960's. The work is an attack on Roman Catholicism that is best known for two things: The first is a timeline of innovations it accuses the Catholic Church of introducing (sometimes called the "Boettner list"), and the second is the quote under discussion. The former has certainly come under some criticism, but our interest is in the quote rather than the timeline.

Boettner gives no further information about the source other than saying it comes from the "New York Catechism". This kind of vagueness is something that is frustrating about the book, where he cites a lot of sources ambiguously (vague as "New York Catechism" is, it's actually still more specific than another quote that he simply attributes to "an authorized catechism" without any further information). While it's the quote about the pope that's attributed to the New York Catechism that gets the most attention, Boettner does offer several other quotes he attributes to the "New York Catechism", again giving no further information about it (note the italics as well as the "[italics ours]" is Boettner's):

"Jesus Christ gave us the sacrifice of the Mass to leave to His Church a visible sacrifice which continues His sacrifice on the cross until the end of time. The Mass is the same sacrifice as the sacrifice of the cross [italics ours]. Holy Communion is the receiving of the body and blood of Jesus Christ under the appearance of bread and wine." 

"I must tell my sins to the priest so that he will give me absolution. I shall go to confession often . . . to fulfill a condition for gaining certain indulgences. . . . A person who knowingly keeps back a mortal sin in confession commits a dreadful sacrilege, and he must repeat his confession. . . . The sacrament of penance remits the mortal sins and their eternal punishment; it revives the merits annulled by the mortal sins, and gives a special grace to avoid sin in the future."

"The priest gives penance in Confession, to help me to make up for the temporal punishment I must suffer for my sins. The penance given to me by the priest does not always make full satisfaction for my sins. I should, therefore, do other acts of penance . . . . and try to gain indulgences"

The last of these, it should be noted, is not attributed to the "New York Catechism" but rather a "catechism, published in New York says" which leaves it unclear whether this is some separate catechism in New York or is indeed supposed to be the same New York Catehcism.

Whether or not this last one is an invocation of the New York Catechism or a separate one, Boettner neglects to provide any information about the New York Catechism other than its name. No page is offered for the quotes, no date of publication is given, and no author is cited. It is very sloppy work on his part to throw these quotes out and give so little information about the source.

All right. So what is this New York Catechism? Assuming this quote wasn't manufactured out of whole cloth, I have seen three suggestions put forward.

Possibility #1: An Old Episcopalian Catechism Called the "New York Catechism"

The first possibility I have seen some suggestions of is that Boettner was mixing things up and referring to an old Episcopalian catechism. It would be odd to see such a statement in an Episcopalian catechism (unless it was being done to criticize Catholics), there is an Episcopalian catechism which several older sources refer to as the "New York Catechism". See for example pages 117-118 of "A History of the Parish of Trinity Church in the City of New York" from 1906 which says:

"The New York Catechism was compiled from a Catechism of a Scottish Bishop which was first reprinted in this country by Bishop Seabury. Bishop Hobart found copies in circulation in Connecticut. He adapted it for use in his Diocese without any indication of the original source."

Similarly we see in page 78 of the 1924 book "A History of Religious Education in the Episcopal Church to 1835":

"In 1802 the Diocese of New York published a Catechism which carried on its title page the recommendation of the Bishop and the clergy of the Diocese. This consisted of the regular Church Catechism followed by another Catechism which was printed without acknowledgment but which upon comparison with the Innes Catechism proves to be that Catechism slightly altered and somewhat abridged. In a letter which the Rev. Amos G. Baldwin wrote from Utica on December 13, 1806, to Bishop Moore, he stated that this "larger Catechism would be a good book" to use in his parochial work It is not surprising that Church officials in the new country should adopt this Scotch instruction material in question-and-answer form; for Bishop Seabury who first republished the text of Innes's Catechism, had received his ordination in Scotland, and the question-and-answer form was highly approved at the time. What seems to be most significant is the publication of the New York Catechism without recognizing either Innes or Seabury. The explanation lies in the fact that the Church was becoming more conscious of her independent American existence; she was willing to use this good material from across the water but when she published it it was as her own."

A footnote mentions that the New York Catechism had only 29 lessons compared to the Innes Catechism which had 44. Unfortunately, these sources do not give the actual name of this catechism. Fortunately, further searching reveals that on page 244 of Volume 5 of "Archives of the General Convention" (published 1912) that the title when first issued was the rather lengthy "The Catechism of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America. Published at the Expense of a Fund arising from the Charitable Contributions of the Members of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the State of New York. new York, Printed by T. & J. Swords, No. 99 Pearl street. 1802. Appended. A Catechism published at the Expense of a Fund arising from the Charitable Contributions of the Members of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the State of New York and Recommended by the Bishop and Clergy."

A second edition had the slightly shorter title of "The Catechism of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America. To which is annexed, A Catechism designed as an Explanation and Enlargement of the Church Catechism. Recommended by the Bishop and Clergy of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the State of New York. The third edition. New York: Printed and sold by T. & J. Swords, No. 160 Pearl street. 1806."

With this information, the work can be found. WorldCat does not seem to have the specific 1802 or 1806 printings, but does offer some others. As noted earlier, this is an Episcopalian catechism, so one would not expect to find any statement like the one Boettner produces in it, unless it was done as a criticism of Catholics (such as to claim it was something Catholics believed). However, I was able to look at a copy and this quote does not seem to be there, not even as a criticism of Catholics. So this one does not have it.

Possibility #2: A 19th Century Catholic Catechism Referred to as "The Small New York Catechism"

The second is one that I do not think I have seen someone else examine, but I have seen mentioned as a possibility, though they were unable to look into it. One can find some references to something called "The Small New York Catechism" in a few list of books, as seen here ("The Publishers' Trade List Annual", published in 1878--unfortunately, there are not page numbers to specifically cite, but the link will take you there). This work, which was being sold by D. & J. Sadler & CO. in New York, is entitled "The Small New York Catechism" for short with the full name being "The Catechism; or, A Short Abridgment of the Christian Doctrine. Newly Revised. For the Use of the Catholic Church in the United States. To which is added a Prayer before and after Catechism. Permissu Superiorum. 48mo, 84 pp., per 100, net, . . . . . . $2.00".

(the ability to get 100 copies of a book, even a short one, for only $2 seems staggering, but remember that we have gone through a century and a half of inflation since then)

Unfortunately, finding this specific New York printing is difficult. There are various works with similar titles, but if we want the specific New York version to see if it is possibly different, I do not know where to find it; WorldCat has an entry for it here but it lists zero libraries as having this.

However, we can look at what seem to be printings of this in other areas. For example, here we find "A Catechism: Or Short Abridgment of Christian Doctrine. Newly Revised for the use of the Catholic Church. To which is prefixed a short Daily Exercise" that is from Quebec. One may notice the title is very similar. Also there is here which titles itself "A Short Abridgment of the Christian Doctrine; Newly Revised and Augmented, for the use of the Catholic Church in the Diocese of Boston." Again a similar, although not identical, title.

The Boston one does have some extra things at the start and end, but otherwise they seem nearly identical in context from what I have looked at. So most likely this has the same basic text as what "Short New York Catechism" had to say. However, the applicable quote about the Pope is not there; its treatment of the pope consists only of "Has the Church any visible head on earth? Yes; the Bishop of Rome, who is the successor of St. Peter, and is commonly called the Pope." That is essentially all they have to say about the pope.

Without a copy of the specific New York printing, one cannot say with absolute certainty that the quote isn't there. However, the evidence is strongly against it. Not only do we have a book that appears to have the same content that doesn't have it, such a statement would almost certainly have caught the eye of Protestants in the 19th century, but any search on Google Books for the quote turns up nothing from that era, or anything prior to Boettner. Copyright does mean that the available material will be either things out of copyright (that is, from the early 20th century or earlier) or recent enough that they were digitized and available in preview form, but that still is plenty of time for someone to take note of this extreme statement. It also doesn't seem likely Boettner would have had access to a copy of a minor catechism from a century ago. So while we cannot be absolutely certain the New York printing did not include the quote without looking at it, the odds are extremely against it, and the onus is clearly on anyone who claims this is where Boettner got the quote to get a copy and prove it.

Possibility #3: A Garbled Misquote from a 20th-century Catechism That Had a New York Printing

This brings us to the final possibility, and the one that those who have examined this seem to think is the most likely possibility. Namely, a catechism by Peter Cardinal Gasparri (also referred to as Pietro Gasparri), which was translated into English as "The Catholic Catechism" and published in New York (and other cities). Unlike the prior two examined, which were from the 19th century, this was from the 20th century, making it more possible that it was available to Boettner. Unfortunately, the specific New York printing does not seem to be available online, but I was able to look at physical copy of it from a library. One can find online a London printing here and a Toronto printing here. I compared a few pages between them and the New York version, and their text appears identical, though the pages themselves don't necessarily match up perfectly (that is, the actual words are the same, but may be found on different pages due to slightly different number of lines per page). So you can look at those links to see what the New York version has.

This work does not have the quote--certainly not the "God Himself on Earth" portion--but makes some comments that have some similarities to some parts of the quote. For example, on page 98, it says:

"The Roman Pontiff has supreme, full, ordinary, and immediate power both over each and every Church, and over each and every Pastor and his flock."

While not a perfect match, this are clear similarities to the portion of the quote that says "By divine right, the Pope has supreme and full power in faith and morals over each and every pastor and his flock".

However, other parts of the quote don't seem to match up with anything in this catechism that I can find; absolutely nothing in the final sentence ("He is the infallible ruler, the founder of dogmas, the author of and the judge of councils, the universal ruler of truth, the arbiter of the world, the supreme judge of heaven and earth, the judge of all, being judged by no one, God Himself on earth") appears to match up with it.

For a while, I thought this was where it ultimately came from, and that Boettner just badly garbled the source to change it nearly beyond recognition. This has been the conclusion of some others. However, I am not so sure now. The reason for this is that while the above "pope quote" Boettner presents could possibly be a very garbled version of the original, this would not explain all of the other quotes he claims are from the New York Catechism.

Let's look again at the first of the others:

"Jesus Christ gave us the sacrifice of the Mass to leave to His Church a visible sacrifice which continues His sacrifice on the cross until the end of time. The Mass is the same sacrifice as the sacrifice of the cross [italics ours]. Holy Communion is the receiving of the body and blood of Jesus Christ under the appearance of bread and wine." 

This quote is not found either, though something similar is on page 43:

"The Sacrifice of the Mass is one and the same sacrifice as the Sacrifice of the Cross which is renewed, for the Victim is one and the same, now offering Himself through the ministry of His priests as He then offered Himself on the Cross, only the manner of the offering being different."

There are some similar enough phrasings here that it is plausible the former is a very garbled version of the latter. So that quote and the one about the pope could both possibly come back to this, even if Boettner changed them significantly. However, we run into a problem with the last quote.

"I must tell my sins to the priest so that he will give me absolution. I shall go to confession often . . . to fulfill a condition for gaining certain indulgences. . . . A person who knowingly keeps back a mortal sin in confession commits a dreadful sacrilege, and he must repeat his confession. . . . The sacrament of penance remits the mortal sins and their eternal punishment; it revives the merits annulled by the mortal sins, and gives a special grace to avoid sin in the future."

I cannot find any matches for this in the catechism, even ones that could be considered garbled, for this. Yes, there are portions that treat on confession, but the phrasing is so different that unlike the preceding quotes, it cannot be considered to a garbled version of an actual quote. It's just not there at all, at least not that I can see. This therefore makes me less confident that this was where Boettner got the pope quote. Even if that was a garbled version of a real quote, one would think that would then apply to all of the quotes from this work.

In any event, even if some of his "New York Catechism" quotes do trace back to this, he clearly messed up the wording badly, and the most controversial parts of the pope quote are not there at all. 

Conclusion

So, what can we conclude from this?

Well, the same conclusion others have drawn: There appears to be no "New York Catechism" that has this quote. Assuming the existence of the New York Catechism wasn't simply made up, Possibility #1 does not have the quote, and was an Episcopalian catechism anyway. Possibility #2 cannot be definitively disproved without a copy of the specific New York printing, but given that the evidence is strong that the catechism in question was just a printing in New York of the same catechism available elsewhere, and that the other printings did not have this quote, it is very unlikely that the New York printing would. Furthermore, it is unlikely that no one in the 19th century appears to have caught this, and it was only Boettner writing over a century later who did. Possibility #3 is the most promising and has something that's sort of like the quote about the pope, but if that is the ultimate source it means Boettner botched his quote very badly, and it doesn't explain where the quote he offers about confession came from given that one diverges from the wording of the source so much it can't even be considered a mangled quote.

So on the whole, this post doesn't add that much to the conversation outside of the examination of #2, which still only led to the conclusion of it almost certainly not having the quote. Still, I thought it might be worth it to post it just to give information on that.

Someone thoroughly dedicated to this quote might still insist that it could be out there somewhere. But the onus should be on the person who refers to the quote to demonstrate that the work actually exists. No one, at least no one that I have ever seen, has been able to find a copy of any "New York Catechism" that has the actual quotes Boettner attributes to it. Until such time as someone is able to point to a copy of the New York Catechism that has this quote, there is no reason to give it credence.

We will likely never know for sure how Boettner came up with this quote; we certainly have no real way to ask him, given he died in 1990. Assuming he didn't invent it out of thin air, he may have been inaccurately reconstructing something from memory. Or perhaps he simply took it uncritically from someone else who (purposefully or accidentally) manufactured the quote. But however he came up with this quote, it does not speak well of him as a researcher if he is citing non-existent quotes (nor does it speak well of those who repeat it uncritically without verifying it), particularly when he does it so vaguely and ambiguously.

What the Number of the Beast Is Not

The question of what the "Number of the Beast" refers to in the Book of Revelation has been a disputed point for a very long time. While I have my suspicions, what actually is the Number of the Beast is not the point of this post. Instead, it's about what it is not.

The unfortunate thing is, a large percentage of what you see people suggest the Number of the Beast referring to are things that ignore the actual text of Revelation. One would think that what it actually says about the Number of the Beast would be paramount, but people so often ignore that.

Since the text is so important, let's look at it. The Number of the Beast is described in Revelation 13:17-18. Here is the text of those verses in several translations.

"...so that they could not buy or sell unless they had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of its name. This calls for wisdom. Let the person who has insight calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man. That number is 666." (NIV)

"... and he decrees that no one will be able to buy or to sell, except the one who has the mark, either the name of the beast or the number of his name. Here is wisdom. Let him who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for the number is that of a man; and his number is six hundred and sixty-six." (NASB)

"...and that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six." (KJV)

"...so that no one can buy or sell who does not have the brand, that is, the name of the beast or the number for its name. This calls for wisdom: let anyone with understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number for a person. Its number is six hundred sixty-six" (NRSV)

In footnotes, the NIV does note that "number of a man" could be rendered as "humanity's number", the NRSV notes that some manuscripts say "six hundred sixteen", and the NASB mentions both, but these are not particularly important for the point I am going to make (if you hold to the six hundred and sixteen, simply assume the rest of this post refers to that number). But we can see these agree on the critical points of translation. The Number of the Beast is six hundred and sixty six, it can be calculated, and it is from the Beast's name.

From this statement, we can draw two very clear points.

First, that the Number of the Beast is the numerical value of six hundred and sixty six.

Second, the Number of the Beast is the number of the name of the Beast.

With these two, we can instantly dismiss so many speculations on what it means. I'll explain.

I have seen so many people find three 6's (or sometimes two or four) together and try to find a connection to the Number of the Beast. 66, 66.6, 1666, 6666, 60606, and anything like that. One person I even saw appeal to an instance of 999, reasoning that upside down it's 666. Others try to focus on the way it is written in Arabic numerals (what we use in English), like one person who tried to offer an argument based on the fact it used the same numeral three times--ignoring the fact that in Greek, it was written ΧΞΣ (uppercase) or χξς (lowercase). And speaking of the Greek, still others look at the Greek numerals and try to find some kind of a connection to things that look like those numerals or try to find a connection to the alphabetical letters, in both cases not focusing on the actual number (some manuscripts did actually write it out in word form, namely ΕΞΑΚΟΣΙΟΙ ΕΞΗΚΟΝΤΑ ΕΞ, but most do it in numerals).

These, however, do not fit with what is actually written. First, it is the numerical value of six hundred and sixty six. Any other number--whether it be sixty-six, sixty-six and six-tenths, one thousand six hundred and sixty six, six thousand six hundred sixty-six, or sixty thousand six hundred and six, or anything else, does not qualify.

The author of Revelation in fact emphasizes it is the number, for he says to calculate or count the Number of the Beast. This is done as if the author wanted to emphasize the point we are talking about the number and to make sure people did not come up with all of the interpretations that, unfortunately, they did so anyway. So anything that is not the number six hundred and sixty six and is not that exact number is disqualified. Stop obsessing over numbers that in Arabic numerals happen to look similar to 666 and focus only on the number. What matters is that the number is the integer that comes between 665 and 667 that is written as ΧΞΣ in Greek numerals, 666 in Arabic numerals, DCLXVI in Roman numerals, and 六百六十六 in Chinese/Japanese numerals. It's the number six hundred and sixty six.

Thus, if the interpretation doesn't involve an actual numerical value, and that numerical value isn't the number six hundred and sixty six, the interpretation should be discarded.

We next move onto the other important thing: The Number of the Beast is not something that is simply affiliated with the Beast, but is the number of the Beast's name. It explicitly says this in Revelation. This rules out a lot of other proposed interpretations. I have seen, for example, a number of people note that the amount of gold Solomon received in 1 Kings 10:14 and 2 Chronicles 9:13 was described as six hundred and sixty six, and there is also the fact that the sons of Adonikam in Ezra 2:13 were numbered as six hundred and sixty six. Through these--especially the Solomon one--speculations emerge, like saying it has something to do with money.

But this again runs against what Revelation actually says, which is that it's the number of the Beast's name. So we can see the Solomon instance can mean nothing; Solomon's name does not add up to that, and even if someone were to try to claim it somehow relates to the name of the currency, I am not aware of any currency whose name adds up to six hundred and sixty six (certainly not the currency mentioned there, which was gold talents). Simply seeing the number six hundred and sixty six somewhere means nothing in regards to Revelation unless it somehow comes from a name.

And that brings us to the end of this relatively short post. While I will not venture forward to proclaim what the Number of the Beast refers to, we can certainly see many of the things it is not. If someone offers an interpretation of it, and the number does not come from a name, and it is not the actual number of six hundred and sixty six, then their idea should be disregarded.

A Brief and Probably Needless Examination of John Eastman's Amicus Brief in Trump v. Barbara, Plus My Own Related Ramblings on the Case

As is often the case for posts here, due to my slowness in getting stuff ready, this seems possibly out of date already. The Supreme Court already had arguments on Trump v. Barbara, and it appears they will side against Trump (for some good analysis, see this SCOTUS Blog post and also applicable episode of the Advisory Opinions podcast). Of course, oral arguments aren't a perfect indicator of outcome, but in my view the arguments against Trump's position are very strong and I do expect them to rule against him. So this post seems a bit outdated already. Still, it seems worth posting anyway.

This is a follow-up to this prior post, which one should probably read first. But what Trump v. Barbara is about is the Citizenship Clause, the portion of the Fourteenth Amendment which says "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside." At issue here is what "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" means. The standard view is that it means subject to the laws of the United States, so the exceptions children of are diplomats and their families (due to diplomatic immunity), Native American tribes on reservations (as they were subject to the laws of their tribes rather than that of the United States), and occupying armies (who have set up their own functional laws).

Some, however, argue for a more restrictive interpretation. In 1898, the Supreme Court ruled in a case called United States v. Wong Kim Ark that the child of two Chinese immigrants (neither a US citizen) who was born in the United States was entitled to citizenship by the Citizenship Clause. Since then, there are three main schools of thought that have emerged. The first is what I described earlier as the common view, that Wong Kim Ark was correctly decided, and that the Citizenship Clause has only narrow exceptions that I detailed. The second is to say that Wong Kim Ark was correctly decided, but that its decision did not apply to children of illegal immigrants and/or temporary residents (some say both, some say only one of these), who are excluded from the Citizenship Clause. The third and final one is to say that Wong Kim Ark was wrongly decided, and that if your parents are non-citizen immigrants (even if both legal and permanent residents), then you don't get citizenship from the Citizenship Clause.

(Note that while all three positions agree that children of Native Americans living on their reservations are excluded, the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 has conferred birthright citizenship to them. The Citizenship Clause is a floor as to who gained birthright citizenship, not a ceiling)

The first is what seems the dominant view in the judiciary and is my view, the second is what the Trump Administration is advocating, and the third is--or at least was--John Eastman's position. 

The issue is now in front of the Supreme Court in Trump v. Barbara. Based on oral arguments, they are expected to affirm the first position... but sometimes oral arguments aren't perfectly indicative of the resulting decision. 

On the general issue, others have made better arguments than I can that the first and least restrictive interpretation is the correct one. I recommend in particular Michael Ramsey's article "Birthright Citizenship Re-Examined". This is actually somewhat of a sequel to an earlier article he wrote called "Originalism and Birthright Citizenship", but that one spent about half of its length discussing the "in the United States" portion (which is more contentious than one might think), whereas the first one linked is specifically concentrating "subject to the jurisdiciction". Other useful, though older, articles can be found here and here.

It is regrettable, unfortunately, that so many in the public discourse have approached this case not with the question of "well, what does the Constitution say?" but "what would be good policy?" I suppose the latter would make sense with some interpretative methods. If one ascribes to "Living Constitutionalism" or its conservative counterpart "Common Good Constitutionalism", both of which essentially boil down to "I will interpret the Constitution in what I think would be good policy" (the main difference between the two is Common Good Constitutionalism is a bit more honest about that that's the goal, whereas Living Constitutionalism more frequently hides behind ideas of societal progress). However, if someone holds to originalism, the idea that the Constitution--and laws in general--should be interpreted by what they meant at the time, then the question should not be whether something is good or bad, but whether it is what the Constitution or law actually meant. And as argued in the aforementioned links, I think the evidence is very solid that the original meaning included everyone other than diplomats, Native Americans, and occupying armies.

This issue has, in my mind, exposed many people as fair-weathered originalists; they are perfectly happy to accept originalism when it benefits their preferred policies, but as soon as it goes against their preferred policies, they abandon originalism outright or come up with weak rationalizations to try to back up their claims. Ironically, even though Chief Justice John Roberts does not describe himself as an originalist, in the oral argument he made this point very well in the following exchange: 

GENERAL SAUER: No, but, of course, we're -- we're in a new world now, as Justice
Alito pointed out to, where 8 billion people are one plane ride away from having a -- a child who's a U.S. citizen.

CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: Well, it's a new world. It's the same Constitution. 

My policy thoughts on the issue of ending birthright citizenship are mixed; I certainly think the blunt manner in which the Trump administration is trying to do so has major problems, for tying it entirely to the biological parentage brings up questions like what to do with someone whose parentage cannot be determined, or cases where who you thought were your parents would qualify (a citizen father and a non-citizen mother), but then you later discover that your mother was cheating on your father with another person who is your biological father, but was not a citizen. Does your citizenship get retroactively removed?

Regardless, the issue here is not a policy one, but a legal one, which is how I have and will approach it in this post. 

All of this now brings us back to John Eastman. As noted earlier, he was for a long time a proponent of the most restrictive view of reading the Citizenship Clause. He did not merely think that Wong Kim Ark should be interpreted narrowly (as Trump's position is), but that it was wrongly decided to begin with. I have long found this to be a very weak position. One major issue--not the only one, though--is that it makes complete nonsense of the argument between Senators Cowan and Conness during the Citizenship Clause discussion, where Cowan argues it would be a bad idea to allow children of non-citizens like the Chinese or Gypsies to become citizens, but Conness responds by saying the things Cowan was worrying about are insignificant and that them being citizens would not be an issue. No Senator said they were arguing on mistaken premises--one would think at the very least the person who introduced the Citizenship Clause would have done so, but he gives no objection to this interpretation. Plenty of people have pointed to this Cowan-Conness interaction (along with other things) as evidence against Eastman's position, like Michael Ramsey in the earlier linked article.

Therefore, I had considerable interest in seeing if, after so much discourse and various people criticizing his arguments over the years, he had improved them to better respond to those arguments, and wanted to read his amicus brief. An amicus brief is an essay that a third party to a case submits to the judge in which they make their own arguments, usually in favor of one of the two parties, but sometimes just to assert an alternate view.

I first did so for the prior Trump v. CASA case, which he filed an amicus brief in (again, that analysis can be found here). In that one, he did not argue for the restrictive reading he has long championed, however. Instead, he tried to back up the Trump Administration's reading, though he mentioned in a footnote he thought Wong Kim Ark was wrongly decided, but thought that even under it their reading could be sustained. I noted in my prior examination how the arguments he raised, however, actually conflict with his actual position of the most restrictive reading.

However, as I noted then, Trump v. CASA was really about universal injunctions, even if the underlying issue was birthright citizenship. Since the issue of birthright citizenship was not before the Court directly, trying to stay consistent with precedent makes some more sense. So I thought that maybe when the actual issue went to the Supreme Court, Eastman would try to offer his arguments for his actual position of Wong Kim Ark being wrong and his particularly restrictive position being right.

There are, technically speaking, two amicus briefs he filed (it is filed under the Claremont Institute's Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence; the full list of amicus briefs is found midway through this page). One was before the Supreme Court took up the case, back in October. This one, in truth, really adds very little that wasn't already in the amicus brief we already looked at. After it was formally taken up, he then filed a new amicus brief, and that is the focus of our examination (the one from 1/27). And so I wanted to see it to see if he had finally, after this time, offered anything resembling a good counterargument to the points raised against him.

Much to my surprise, he does not do that. He does not even mention this time around that he thinks Wong Kim Ark was wrong (nor did he in the earlier Trump v. Barbara amicus brief). His entire amicus brief for Trump v. Barbara is advancing Trump's position on the subject, and (much like his amicus brief in Trump v. CASA) in contradiction to his own opinion. He makes arguments that actually do much to disprove his own most restrictive opinion.

Why does he do this? Why does he abandon the position he has spent so long arguing for? I already gave possible explanations for Trump v. CASA, but those explanations do not seem to apply this time around.

There is unlikely to be a better opportunity in his lifetime to overturn Wong Kim Ark. That's what he has so long argued for. So one would logically think he would use this one-of-a-kind opportunity to make his case to the Supreme Court that they should go even farther than even Trump wanted and to say the Fourteenth Amendment doesn't give birthright citizenship to anyone not born of a citizen. But... he doesn't.

So why does he argue for Trump's interpretation rather than the interpretation he's been advocating for so long? Well, there are several possibilities.

One is that Eastman legitimately changed his mind in the intervening period between Trump v. CASA and Trump v. Barbara. It's been less than a year between them, but that is still more than enough time for someone to undergo a change of opinion in something. It does not seem likely that he would have done so given he's been arguing this for so long, but it is not impossible. However, I am not aware of him declaring any such change (if he did, one is free to tell me) and the amicus brief makes no mention of it. So this one seems unlikely.

The second is that he is arguing for the more reserved idea because he does not think the Supreme Court would go so far as to overturn Wong Kim Ark. But in the past he filed amicus briefs arguing such a thing, so why not now when the possibility, while still low, is better than any other prior decision? Why, indeed, file an amicus brief at all to just express the redundant position that others have (but which you do not actually hold) instead of bringing up something more unique by advocating your actual position? Again, it is very noticeable that arguments he makes in this brief actually contradict his previously stated position that Wong Kim Ark was wrong and that children of even legal permanent residents do not receive automatic birth citizenship in the United States. So while again possible, it doesn't make that much sense to me if this is the explanation.

The third is that Eastman is abandoning his principles due to partisan bias. He previously was advancing this claim that Wong Kim Ark was wrong, but that isn't compatible with Trump's position; again, Trump's position is that children of legal permanent residents do receive birthright citizenship, and therefore attempts to narrow Wong Kim Ark rather than completely overturn it. It is this position that Eastman is now advocating. This would mean Eastman is abandoning his own principles and opinion in order to try to argue that Trump is right because he's a strong Trump supporter. That is not a good look, to abandon one's principles for partisan politics, however distressingly common it is (unless his original position was arrived at due to partisan bias, and he was only changing it due to the political winds switching a bit).

Maybe there is some other explanation, but those are the ones that come to mind. The first would be the most understandable--people can legitimately change their minds--but I'm not aware of him making any such statements. The second is one that seems to not make much sense, as it would be giving up this opportunity to advance his actual position in favor of just repeating the same claims others have largely done. And the third means he's just a partisan hack.

All of this greatly dampened my interest in it, as he's simply abandoned his prior position. My interest in this was to try to see if he had come up with better arguments to answer his critics, such as if he by now had managed to come up with an actually decent argument about how his position makes any sense given the Cowan-Conness exchange (he had offered arguments previously, but they were not very good, and I wondered if he had improved). But it seems that his response has instead been to abandon his arguments entirely and argue for something different.

Beyond that, though, most of what he says in his amicus brief is just the same arguments as he made in Trump v. CASA, so I would just refer any reader to look back at my analysis of that. There is really only one particularly notable new point he makes, which I will address. On page 14, it attempts to address the fact the New York Court of Chancery case Lynch v. Clarke gave a broad interpretation of who born in the United States gains automatic citizenship by bringing up a different case:

More fundamentally, in a subsequent flip-side-of-the-coin case, the New York Supreme Court (the State’s intermediate appellate court), held that the children of those “traveling or sojourning abroad,” “though born in a foreign country, are not born under the allegiance, and are an exception to the rule which makes the place of birth the test of citizenship.” Ludlam v. Ludlam, 1860 WL 7475 (N.Y. Gen. Term. 1860). That decision was affirmed by the New York Court of Appeals, which held: “By the law of nature alone, children follow the condition of their fathers, and enter into all their rights. The place of birth produces no change in this particular….” Ludlam v. Ludlam, 26 N.Y. 356, 368 (1863) (emphasis in original). 

For those who wish to look up the first citation, the "1860 WL 7475" is a Westlaw citation, though it does require access to Westlaw. One might be able to find the citation elsewhere online for free, though I didn't find it. I was able to look at it through my local college, which has a subscription to Westlaw.

I feel that Eastman is misrepresenting the case. The immediate problem with this case is what it was about. Lynch v. Clarke was one where the New York Supreme Court offered a broad interpretation of who is a citizen at birth in the United States (it is thus often cited against those who hold Trump's position). Ludlam v. Ludlam said that a child of an American citizen and a non-citizen, born outside the United States, was a citizen of the United States. Eastman does not disclose this important fact to the reader.

Thus, Lynch v. Clark is directly relevant, whereas Ludlam v. Ludlam is not. However, let's look into the case. Let's talk about the background as explained in the decision. Richard Ludlam was a citizen of the United States born in 1804. In 1822 he moved to Peru, married a woman who was not a US citizen, who gave birth to Maximo Ludlam in 1831 in Lima. He, along with his wife and Maximo, moved back to the United States in in 1837. After doing so, they had another child, Anna Ludlam, this time born in New York. Richard eventually died, but the concern is about the uncle of Maximo and Anna, Thomas Ludlam. Thomas died in 1847, there was a dispute between Anna and Maximo about inheritance; Anna contended that only she was a citizen and entitled to the inheritance, whereas Maximo claimed he was a citizen also and thus the inheritance would be split.

The Court said that due to quirks of when certain laws were passed, no US laws applied to determining the solution to this and thus they had to resort to the common law... which I find a bit confusing, because it seems to me that US law did give the answer. It claims:

"4. The counsel for the plaintiff is right in supposing that there is no statute of the United States which will reach the case. Congress possesses, under the constitution, express and exclusive power to establish a uniform rule of naturalization, and probably, as incidental thereto, to declare, if they see fit to do so, what shall make a man a citizen or an alien. This power has been repeatedly exercised. The first act for this purpose was passed March 26, 1790, which was succeeded and repealed by a second passed January 29th, 1795. By both these statutes it was enacted that all children of citizens, born out of the limits of the United States, should be considered citizens. If either of these acts were in force it would probably determine the present question. But the act of 1795 repealed the act of 1790, as I have stated, and the act of 1795 was itself repealed by a statute passed April 14th, 1802, which only provided that the children of “persons who now are or have been citizens, though born out of the jurisdiction of the United States, shall be considered citizens.” Richard Ludlam, the father of the defendant, was not born until 1804, *491 and hence did not come within the operation of this statute. This continued to be the only act of congress upon this subject until 1855, when an act was passed which will avoid such questions in future cases. But as this descent was cast in 1847, if Maximo Ludlam was then an alien the lands passed at once to the plaintiff, and her title cannot be divested by the character given to her brother by subsequent legislation."

As it notes, the 1802 law "provided that the children of “persons who now are or have been citizens, though born out of the jurisdiction of the United States, shall be considered citizens.”" It appears to me that this should end the inquiry; Richard Ludlam was a citizen and (whether he lost it or not later on) and therefore Maximo was also by this law. The opinion says that Richard was not born until 1804 and did not come under the operation of the statute--but why, given he was born afterwards? Doesn't that mean he would be under the statute? Not that this would seem to matter, for it was Maximo's birth that was at dispute here--Richard was unquestionably a citizen. Maybe there was something in the lower court not mentioned here that explained it, but it looks to me like the case is simple under US laws.

But at any rate, the New York Supreme Court said that the laws of the US at the time didn't apply, and it went on to say they would simply resort to the common law to decide the issue. It concluded Richard had never lost his citizenship and therefore it was conferred to Maximo.

The portion that Eastman quotes comes from the start, where it says:

"By the common law, when a subject is traveling or sojourning abroad, either on the public business, or on lawful occasion of his own, with the express or implied license and sanction of the sovereign and with the intention of returning, as he continues under the protection of the sovereign power, so he retains the privileges and continues under the obligations, of his allegiance, and his children, though born in a foreign country, are not born under foreign allegiance, and are an exception to the rule which makes the place of birth the test of citizenship."

However, one notices that this says nothing about the citizenship of the person in the country they were born in. Eastman seems to be presenting this as an either/or, when in fact someone can be a citizen of multiple countries at birth even under the paradigm that Trump and Eastman are advocating. Indeed, in the New York Court of Appeals decision affirming the New York Supreme Court decision (which is available online) essentially says Maximo appears to be a citizen of both countries:

"If we assume that the laws of Peru are similar to ours on the subject of citizenship, there is no doubt that Maximo Ludlam would be, in that country, regarded as a citizen of Peru. (1 Sandf. Ch., 583.) This would involve him, according to the rules which I find established, in a double allegiance, to this country and to Peru; and it cannot be denied that inconveniences might result from such a condition. The case, however, is not new, and I am not aware that any practical inconvenience has ever resulted to persons occupying such positions; their immunity in this respect resulting, mainly, it may be presumed, from the liberality of civilized governments toward persons thus situated."

Notice particularly its mention that "if we assume that the laws of Peru are similar to ours on the subject of citizenship" it notes that Maximo would be a citizen of it... meaning, by extension, if circumstances were reversed (his parents were from another country but he was born in the United States), he would be a citizen of the United States. It is true, of course, that this was all prior to the Fourteenth Amendment so it does not inherently follow that this continued to that point, but remember Eastman was the one who cited this.

Eastman perhaps could try to dismiss this point by saying that (if the laws of Peru were like that of the US), Maximo's parents were permanent residents and that is what would have given him Peruvian citizenship, and that it does not go against his assertion that children of permanent residents in the US do get citizenship. However, even if so, it means it is of no benefit to his argument that children of temporary or illegal residents are excluded, for it would not prove or disprove anything about them.

So Ludlam v. Ludlam, when read in larger context, appears to not actually offer much support for Eastman, and (arguably) offer support against it. His quotation is misleading, particularly how he does not note that the quoted remarks were specifically about the common law. This issue has not escaped the notice of some who have written amicus briefs; for example, see pages 15-16 of David Boyle's amicus brief on the case (this is not an endorsement of everything in the amicus brief, but the Ludlam quote is handled well there), where he points out these sorts of problems.

And that brings us to the end. We will ultimately see when the decision occurs what happens. But Eastman's brief is certainly a disappointment.

A Note Regarding URLs

It's possible you came to the blog looking for a post at a particular URL, but nothing was found. This may be because I recently shifted the URLs of some posts. This reason for this is that recently, when looking at some older posts, I noticed something odd, which is that their URLs did not properly reflect their posting date.

Normally on blogspot, the way it works is this: The URL starts out with the name of the blog, followed by dot blogspot dot com (or in some cases, omitting the dot blogspot part), slash, the year, slash, the month, slash, the first few words of the blog post and then a dot html.

So for example, this blog post's should be https://sometotallyrandomthoughts.blogspot.com/2026/03/a-note-regarding-urls.html. After all, it was posted March of 2026, so you see the 2026 in the URL to show the year, the 03 to show the month, and then what comes afterwards which is taken from the title. Normally, this is automatically done. However, I happened to notice that a number of posts, while having the correct dates of publication, had the wrong URLs. So for example, it would have been as if this post's URL, despite the posting date of March of 2026, had 2025 in its URL.was instead https://sometotallyrandomthoughts.blogspot.com/2025/02/a-note-regarding-urls.html even though it was posted on March of 2026 rather than February of 2025.

I'm not sure exactly how that happened. My guess is that somehow, the Permalink option (in which you set what you want the URL to be) somehow got the "Automatic Permalink" off. Normally Automatic Permalink just sets it up the way I described before, with the applicable dates in the URL followed by the title. So I think what might have happened is that somehow the automatic part got turned off and it got "stuck" on an older URL date, even though it was posted later. Since posts often spend a lot of time in draft before ever getting posted, this can cause the URL to therefore reflect the old date of editing (one of the posts was actually years off in its URL). This bugged me a bit, so I went and corrected the URLs to correctly fit with the dates of publication. I think I got all of them.

 

The downside of this is that it means someone might then try to go to the old URL, which would then give you a blank page. So I thought I should write up this post to explain the matter. If this happens to you--you try to go to a post and it's missing--try doing a search for the title of the post (which you can see the early words of in the URL itself) and it should show up.

 

This change probably won't make too much of a difference to people, because I don't get many views on this blog anyway; most have no more than a few dozen, and the most popular post barely clears 300. Also, I'm pretty sure at least half of all views on this blog are from robots. Most of the views of actual people probably come from search engines rather than links. Fortunately, the posts people might have actually linked to directly, that is the more popular ones (well, more popular than than the rest of the blog, at least) didn't need to have their URLs changed. So the search engine thing is what is most likely to happen, but search engines can sometimes take a while to update things (and in the meantime link you to the wrong ones), so you might have stumbled across a page before they got the stuff updated, and I thought I should put up this post to explain that.

 

Of course, the problem with one of these is that it will inevitably get pushed off the top of the posts as new posts are made, meaning as time goes on its usefulness will be decreased; but as noted, the most key point here (search engines) should be getting themselves updated by then, so most likely by the time this gets pushed off due to new posts, anyone who actually stumbles across this blog via some kind of search engine will have the correct post linked by the search. In the off chance this actually caused confusion, I apologize, but I did want the URLs to be accurate. I believe I changed all of the links within the blog itself--that is, when one blog post links to another blog post--so that they link to the updated ones, but if there are any that don't work, feel free to leave a comment mentioning it.

Christian Gaviria Alvarez's Predictions (and Their Inaccuracies Thus Far)

The subject of this post is Christian Gaviria Alvarez, a Colombian who runs a website called "Wisdom of God". Although he has a number of beliefs that are uncommon among Christians (e.g. rejecting the Trinity, believing Christians must follow the Jewish Law), what makes him notable enough for me to make this post about him are his eschatological claims about the end of the world. 

Specifically, he claims that the Mark of the Beast described in Revelation refers to the usage of fiat currency, and that the Second Coming of Jesus will occur on September 4 of 2026. Indeed, he has offered a timeline of the things he thinks will occur before and after that event. Some of those things have already failed to come to pass. Here are some of the dates he has offered for events:

April 6, 2023: The two witnesses of Revelation will begin to prophesy, and they will prevent rain from falling for years, leading to droughts and famines.

February 27, 2026: "The United States of Europe" will be formed.

March 14, 2026: Vatican City will be destroyed by the aforementioned United States of Europe, causing financial chaos.

September 4, 2026: Jesus will return in the Second Coming

There is some that follows after that; Jesus will not immediately put an end to evil upon the return, and there is more that comes afterwards (he puts things like the 7 Trumpets of Revelation and 7 plagues after the Second Coming). However, the specifics of the dates at that point are less important. One can find these things here in a lengthy writing of his going into his claims; to my knowledge he has not edited this even after his failures other than to add in some extra images, but I link to an archive just to make sure the original is preserved should there be changes subsequently (other links will also be to archives for this reason).

I could go into some detail explaining the issues with his various assertions, but sometimes the easiest thing to do is to simply point out the lack of fulfillment of these things and how they turned out to be false. Obviously, no witnesses of Revelation appeared in April of 2023 to cause worldwide drought. The author has a separate "Messages" section of the website where he puts up periodic updates on things, and he had to acknowledge he was wrong about that; but as is common of people who make these kinds of predictions that turn out to be false, he simply changed the date and subsequently asserted that the witnesses emerged in April of 2023, but would not begin their drought (and destruction of the Dome of the Rock) until Yom Kippur in 2025 (October 1), at which point they will start the drought. See, for example, his message on message on July 26 2025 saying there will be drought (due to a complete lack of any rain) starting on Yom Kippur in 2025 and continuing until the Yom Kippur of the next year. He declared that "In just a few short months by Hanukkah in December global food products will quickly deplete by half."

Well, as is fairly obvious, Yom Kippur came and went without any worldwide droughts occurring. So what next? Well, the first message he put up after on October 12 (thus nearly two weeks after the drought was supposed to start) here didn't acknowledge his failure. Instead it just talks about how something big will happen right when people think the war in Gaza is over, and we'll see the Dome of the Rock destroyed (which he previously said was supposed to happen around the time of Yom Kippur, in conjunction with the worldwide drought).

About a month after that, on November 8 there was a new message here, again with no explicit acknowledgment of his failed prophecy on both Dome of the Rock and drought, but confidently saying "Anytime now the Dome of the Rock is going to be destroyed, and the third temple construction will begin." Next was here on December 4, which did appear to offer an explanation for the lack of the witnesses (although no acknowledgment of error) by saying "The two witnesses and third temple have not appeared yet, because God has cursed this evil generation, and had decided to give it very little warning. Once the two witnesses and third temple emerge, only a few months will be left until the return of Yeshua." So his new explanation is that this drought will not start until later.

The lack of admission of the failure of his prophecies on the droughts and the witnesses is notable to me. Yes, he admitted his error when they didn't show up in 2023, but after they again did not show up in October of 2025 to cause the drought, he did not make any admission of inaccuracy, instead simply saying they would not appear until the final months. He still seems committed to the idea of the United States of Europe being formed and destroying Vatican City in his messages, as he's reiterated that in subsequent posts, though I notice in more recent posts he is no longer giving the February 27/March 14 dates and instead simply asserts that Vatican City will be destroyed 15 days after the formation of the United States of Europe, without specification as to the date. See for example here in what is (at the time of this posting) the most recent message of his, from January 20 of 2026 where he once again reiterates the claim that the United States of Europe will be formed, and that "They will destroy Vatican City 15 days after it forms."

It is now February 28, the day after the United States of Europe was due to form. As of the time of this posting, he has not given any new message explaining this failure. Granted, as noted, he has for a while stopped giving specific dates for the formation of the United States of Europe or destruction of Vatican City as he did in the past (outside of his repeated declaration the latter would come 15 days after the former), so perhaps he has quietly abandoned those specific dates and just thinks they will happen at some point in 2026. Still, I can't help but be noticed he's been wrong in every date he's given so far that has passed, including the revised date of the beginning of the worldwide drought (again, he initially claimed it would be in 2023, then when that didn't happen said it would actually be in 2025, and when that didn't happen apparently is claiming it will be in 2026).

This post originally was going to be put up in late 2025, after the failed Yom Kippur prediction, but it ended up getting shelved for a while, as a lot of my posts tend to do. I considered waiting even further for this one, and posting it after the predicted March 14 end of Vatican City... but this has been waited on enough, and certainly any reader reading this after that point can see for themselves if that prediction happened. I can always either go back and edit this with updates or make a new post as needed for any future information.

(April 13 update: On March 25, a new "message" was posted in which he again confidently reaffirmed his predictions for a global famine and hyperinflation occurring this year. On April 5, more specific predictions were given. He declared that "At any moment now the Dome of the Rock is going to be destroyed in Jerusalem and the third temple construction will quickly begin and will quickly finish in preparation for the return of Yeshua. And Vatican City will also be destroyed at any moment now." He also reiterated his claim that Jesus would return on Yom Kippur of this year, saying "The year 6,000 is now approaching in this next Yom Kippur in this year of 2026 AD, and Yeshua will descend unto the earth with 400 million angels." In neither was any acknowledgment given in regards to the failure of his prior predictions, such as how the Dome of the Rock and Vatican City were supposed to have already been destroyed by that point)

So, should anyone come across him or his predictions, this post was made in order to let them know about the failed predictions he had made in the past, which is useful to know when evaluating his other predictions. We will see going forward if his remaining predictions, or any new ones he offers in the future, have a better accuracy rate than his prior ones.

A Quotation Citation Examination

There is a quote attributed to Pope Paul IV that one can find in various places, which goes like this:

"Even if my own father were a heretic, I would gather the wood to burn him."

So, is this quote true? This post will be a discussion of that, but if someone wants just the quick version: This quote ultimately comes to us not from any formal writing or statement of Paul IV, but from someone else's (likely heavily paraphrased) recollection of a conversation with him. Thus while it is possible he said something similar to this, we should be very cautious treating these as the definite words of Paul IV.

Now let us commence the more in-depth examination. As is often the case for these sorts of quotes, it's frequently given with no citation. But a few have offered some kind of citation, so I tried to look into them. One source given is Dairmaid MacCulloch's book "Reformation: Europe's House Divided" which was later published as "The Reformation: A History". On page 224 it reads:

"Now Carafa had a cast-iron case to persuade Pope III to set up a Roman Inquisition, modeled on the Spanish Inquisition, and with the cardinal-archbishop of Naples himself as one of the inquisitors-general. The papal Bull was promulgated on 21 July 1542. "Even if my own father were a heretic, I would gather the wood to burn him," Carafa vowed."

Carafa was Paul IV's name before becoming pope, for reference. The bibliography offers "G. W. Searle, The Counter-Reformation (London, 1973), p. 78" as its source. This one tells me:

"As chief Inquisitor Carafa was authorised to appoint deputies wherever necessary, while he himself set an example of ruthlessness, decreeing that 'no man is to lower himself by showing toleration towards any sort of heretic, least of all a Calvinist', and proclaiming that 'even if my own father were a heretic I would gather the wood to burn him'."

No source is given for this. The work does have a bibliography listed at the end, but there are dozens of books listed, so I have no way of knowing which one the quote came from or where in it the quote is. So this one is a dead end.

Another source that gave the quote offered as a citation Owen Chadwick's 1990 work "The Reformation" on page 271. This does indeed say this ("'Even if my own father were a heretic,' said the Pope, 'I would gather the wood to burn him.'"), but again we see no clear citation offered for it, unless someone wants to check all of the works (more than 10) for the chapter listed in "Suggestions for Further Reading".

One thing that is notable here, however, is the divergences as to when this was said. MacCulloch's work (and his source) indicates that this was said before he became pope. But the Chadwick citation ascribes the quote to after he was made pope.

Another source, Constantine's Sword, makes the claim and cites Matthew Bunson's "Pope Encyclopedia" (which itself gives no source), and both identify it as occurring prior to becoming pope. Meanwhile, "The Pope and the World: An Illustrated History of the Ecumenical Councils" by Anton Henze refers to this on page 119, though it identifies it as an actual oath ("He [Paul IV] is supposed to have been the author of that horrible oath: "If my own father were a heretic, I would collect the wood with which to burn him."") No citation is cited, but as it is referring to the time he was pope, this indicates it was after he was pope, continuing our split with some references claiming it was before he was pope and some saying it was after.

At this point, I was ready to stop and say there didn't seem to be evidence, and the fact people disagreed on when it was even said was an extra sign of falseness. However, I did finally find the original source, thanks to Will Durant's "History of Civilization" which says on volume 6, page 213:

With impartial resolution the mad Pontiff pursued his own relatives with suspicions of heresy. “Even if my own father were a heretic,” he said, “I would gather the wood to burn him.”

This one identifies it as when he was pope. So what is the citation for this? It cites Volume 14, page 300, of "PASTOR, LUDWIG (C), History of the Popes, 14v., St. Louis, 1898, and London, 1910 f."

I was not able to find the specific 1910 printing above, but did find a 1913 one. The quote of that isn't on page 300, but rather 302; whether this was an error on the part of Durant or whether it was just on a different page in his edition is unclear. Anyway, what we read is (starting on page 301):

"Galeazzo Caracciolo had been a friend of Priuli, and at the mention of his name Paul IV. would get into a terrible state of excitement, for Caracciolo, a grandson of the Pope's sister, had fled to Geneva, leaving his family behind. "Let us be silent about him," exclaimed Paul IV., "even if my own father were a heretic, I would gather the wood to burn him!"

The citation for this is:

"See the *report of Navagero of October 23, 1557 (State Archives, Venice), translated in BROWN, VI., 2, n. 1067; cf. BERTOLOTTI, Martiri, 20."

The asterisk was in the citation; I'm not entirely sure why it is there. But what is being cited? It tells us in the table of contents to look at volume 13. And so we do that, and we see the only Brown is "Brown, Rawdon, Calendar of State Papers and Manuscripts relating to English affairs in the archives of Venice and in other libraries of Northern Italy. Vols. V.-VII. London, 1873-1890." And for Bertolotti, we have "Bertolotti, A." This has several works listed, but the one in question is clearly "Martiri del libro pensiero e vittime della Santa Inquisizione nei secoli XVI., XVII., e XVIII. Roma, 1891." Bertolotti's book does not seem to mention the quote as far as I could tell (my Italian is meager but I still see no trace of the quote), and seems to be cited not for the quote anyway. That means the quote comes from the Brown citation.

The "VI" clearly is saying this is in Volume 6 of Brown's work. Volume 6 is divided into several parts, so the 2 tells us it's in Part 2. The 1067 refers not to the page (it's found on page 1349), but the section number. The context here is that this is a report of Bernardo Navagero, an ambassador, of his meeting with Paul IV. It is mostly a conversation he had with Paul IV; well, maybe "conversation" is the wrong word because Paul IV monopolizes it with some lengthy speeches. This is a translation of an Italian document that it tells us is from the Venetian Archives; I have absolutely no way to access the original Italian, but the English translation is sufficient, particularly as in several places, including the most important one, it includes the original Italian.

At any event, here is the key quote, including what the work notes is the original Italian for part of it:

"Let us not speak about this matter, for were our father a heretic, we would carry the faggots to burn him (perché se nostro padre fusse heretico portassamo le fascine per abruciarlo)."

For those unaware: Although nowadays the term "faggot" is almost exclusively used as an insulting term, previously is was a term for a bundle of sticks bound together as fuel (the above work was from 1881, before the modern meaning was devised). One notices the quote offered by Ludwig Pastor is a little different than his source actually said. To put them next to each other for easy comparison, Ludwig Pastor quoted it as:

"Let us be silent about him. Even if my own father were a heretic, I would gather the wood to burn him!"

But his source said:

"Let us not speak about this matter, for were our father a heretic, we would carry the faggots to burn him."

The substance is the same, but the wording is changed in several places; "about this matter" is changed to "about him", "for were our father a heretic" is changed to "even if my own father were a heretic", and "faggots" is changed to "wood". This changes little in the meaning, but it is odd this is changed at all. It does not appear to be a case of being more faithful to the Italian; "nostro padre" means our father, so it seems an error to change it to my father.

While these changes puzzle me, at any rate, we now have what seems to be the ultimate source of the quotation. Thus we know it didn't come completely out of nowhere. However, we now must consider the question of whether this was actually said by Paul IV.

This is not from a document Paul IV wrote, but instead a letter of someone describing a conversation with him. In the letter, the author relays a conversation with Paul IV, but as noted much of it is not so much a conversation as Paul IV giving a lengthy speech to him. Take a look at this portion that is attributed to Paul IV, with the Italian parentheses removed:

"We do not speak of a thing which we do not know for a certainty; we tell you that such is the fact and that there are many in the College who know it, and that we have witnesses omni exceptione majores, and we touch it with the hand; he is of that accursed school, and of that apostate household of the Cardinal of England. Why do you suppose we deprived him of the legation? You will indeed see the end of it; we mean to proceed, and shall use our hands. Cardinal Polo was the master, and Cardinal Morone, whom we have in the Castle, is the disciple, although the disciple has become worse than the master. Priuli is upon a par with these and with Marc' Antonio Flaminio, who were he not dead must have been burned; and we had his brother Cesare Flaminio burned in public at the Minera. The comrade and guest of Priuli was Galeazzo Caracciolo, son of the Marquis di Trivento our kinsman, for he is the son of a daughter of my sister who was here last year, and he has a niece of ours for wife, he having left his father, his wife, and nine children, and about 6,000 crowns annual income, and has gone to live with those rogues at Geneva, losing both soul and body. Magnifico Ambassador! let us not speak about this matter, for were our father a heretic, we would carry the faggots to burn him. Write to the Signory now that we are placed by God to have the care of the universal Church, that they be pleased for us to have the same care of it as was sanctioned by them when we were in a private capacity in that magnificent city, and reminded them so intrepidly of their welfare, persuading them to prosecute that Friar Galatteo, who at length died in prison, although he was released under pretence of indisposition; but as he then did worse than ever, going into the shops of the booksellers, apothecaries, and shoemakers, sowing his poison, the Signory was compelled again to have him seized, and he died in prison; and there having come into the little church of St. Nicholas a Chief of the Ten, whom we will not name, we had him driven out of it, he being told that he was excommunicated for not having done his duty against that heretic; so that his Serenity will do well not to proceed in the matter, as cognisance of this case stinks in the nostrils. For the honour of God we are willing to suffer any torment, and when we can do do more we will throw ourselves on the ground and submit to suffocation, but so long as we can walk, although lame and feeble, we will run on. Rely on this and assure the most illustrious Signory, that whatever we can do for their benefit and honour, we will do as willingly and promptly as any of you yourselves, for we were so courteously received and looked in on your city that we consider ourselves your citizen, and were the opportunity to present itself, we should not wait to be prayed like a foreigner; and thus on the other hand we beseech his Sublimity, in a matter of greater value than the whole world, viz. the entireness of the Catholic faith, to be content that we do our duty, to the honour of God, for the benefit of Christendom, and for the especial safety of your Republic."

The titular character of Shakespeare's Hamlet is notorious for going off on long monologues in the play, but I don't think even he had a speech that long! Either Bernardo Navagero has an astoundingly good memory to be able to recount that perfectly (in addition to the other parts of the conversation), or we can be confident there's some considerable paraphrasing going on here. Additional evidence for the paraphrasing explanation is given by the fact that it is very unlikely that in a normal conversation--even in a formal setting--someone would go on with a speech like that. This kind of talking we see here is the sort of thing we'd expect to see in a prepared speech or in a fictional work, not a statement made in a normal conversation in regular life. Certainly, "were our father a heretic, we would carry the faggots to burn him" is the sort of poetic statement one would expect to see in a written or rehearsed remark, not as an unrehearsed statement in a normal conversation.

While for the aforementioned reasons these are very likely to be the exact words of Paul IV, they may represent the substance of whatever he said. Paul IV was rather zealous in going after who he viewed to be heretics, so such a quote wouldn't necessarily be out of character. And I'm not aware of any reason to believe Bernardo Navagero was deliberately misrepresenting Paul IV's intent, though I admit I don't know much about Navagero, so he may very well have had reason to do so.

So what can we conclude? Ultimately, this whole quote comes not from a definite statement of his, but rather what someone else reported Paul IV saying. Worse, the quote comes in the context of a lengthy statement that is almost certainly considerably paraphrased. Even if he actually did in fact give the whole spiel word for word, this quoted statement was an offhand remark in a conversation, so people should not treat it like it was some kind of major statement or official vow he made.

Given these considerations, I definitely wouldn't list this as any kind of confirmed quote of his. At most, it should be listed with a disclaimer of something like "attributed to him by Bernardo Navagero" to make it clear we are dealing with a secondhand quotation that is likely to be at best a paraphrased version of what he said.