Posted on 12/31/2007 6:35:51 AM PST by LowCountryJoe
Catholic Church bishops, priests and other Church leaders in Latin America were once a reliable ally of the left, owing to the influence of "liberation theology," which tries to link the Gospel to the socialist cause. Today the Church is coming to recognize the link between socialism and the loss of freedom, and a shift in thinking is taking place.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Liberation theology arose some three decades ago. The Bible teaches concern for the poor, liberation theologists said, and then went a step further: Jesus was a symbol and advocate of class warfare to expropriate from the rich on behalf of the poor.
I don't think so but I have heard many -- even on this forum -- express their class envy and disdain for capitalism and then, finding the incident bizarre enough and after looking at their profile page, viola!
At least 100 years of evidence stands contrary to the claim that a more powerful state (and that is all liberation theology really offers) is the proper means to material advance. Nothing is to be gained for anyone but the state by smashing the rich. What society needs is not expropriation but ever widening opportunities for all classes to improve their living standards.
There is only one way toward liberation, and that is a genuine liberalization of economic and political life, one that separates the state, not only from the Church, but also from the culture and the commercial life of the nation.
In my travels in the region, I detect an honest reassessment taking place. Leaders and future leaders seem to be recognizing that if the middle class is to grow, there needs to be more vibrant understanding of how the market, where people make their livelihood, actually functions...
At least they're having an honest reassessment taking place after seeing the results. I am afraid that many on the Right here in the United States are experimenting with a thirty-year-old failing movement imported from Latin America. I pray to God that my fears are misplaced.
Ping!
The division of the Christian world along the lines of hierarchy and hierarchy controlled sacraments and Protestantism's individual thought, interpretation, and action was a tragedy . . .
What would have resulted if the concerns of the Protestants had led to true reform?
My answer is that a better world and a better church would have resulted. Instead the Catholic church reacted by closing out the concerns as if they did not have to be considered since the dissenters had left the church.
Liberation theology may going through a metamorphisis in Latin America but it is alive and well in the U.S.. In particular, the Church’s stand on illegal immigration. Further, the Church in Mexico and further south have a moral obligation to preach that it is in violation of God’s law to violate another country’s laws. Moreover, in the U.S. the illegal alien is held up as being virtuous in spite of the fact that they have violated the Commandment against coveting, stealing, etc.
I had a conversation with a lay member of the Catholic Conference. He told me that it is a human right to migrate. I explained that I should have the right then (taking his logic to its natural conclusion) to migrate to the Vatican. He told me that I was not poor or disinfranchised (evidently in his rule book the poor and disinfranchised are exempt from keeping God’s laws). The rest of us sinners must confess our sins (capitalism, nativism and the rest) while the Catholic illegal alien gets a pass for his transgressions.
As a Catholic I have contempt for liberation theology whether practiced here or anywhere else in the world.
Hilariously prejudiced analysis, considering that the first modern fascist dictatorship was that of "Lord Protector" Oliver Cromwell - a radical Protestant zealot.
2241 The more prosperous nations are obliged, to the extent they are able, to welcome the foreigner in search of the security and the means of livelihood which he cannot find in his country of origin. Public authorities should see to it that the natural right is respected that places a guest under the protection of those who receive him.
Political authorities, for the sake of the common good for which they are responsible, may make the exercise of the right to immigrate subject to various juridical conditions, especially with regard to the immigrants' duties toward their country of adoption. Immigrants are obliged to respect with gratitude the material and spiritual heritage of the country that receives them, to obey its laws and to assist in carrying civic burdens.
So it seems to me that while the Church respects the right to immigrate, there is a clear effort to be pragmatic with regard to the realities of the world (i.e. you can't just have unrestricted immigration and there are clearly obligations on the part of the immigrant toward their host country.
I agree, it was prejudiced. What's the difference between a "modern fascist dictatorship" & a brutally held monarchy?
I don’t know the Cromwell history very well at all, but I know he is still controversial. Some see him as a hero of liberty, some as a dictator.
Can you deny that the fascist and communist dictatorships, with the exception of China, arose in Catholic lands? I think there is a correlation between religious beliefs and political form.
Also, it is an incontrovertible fact that the rule of law, individual rights, economic freedom, and limited government all grew up only in Protestant England (and its colonies). Catholic countries have almost never had stable elected governments for any length of time. When you have a govt.-established monopoly, like the RC Church in places like Italy, Spain, and France, corruption of the church is inevitable.
I do not agree with compulsory taxation for welfare and redistribution purposes. Though, privately and trough charity, have at it. But, I do have sympathies for immigrants who come here. I really do believe that we should admit as many immigrants who wish to come to our country and do this through a wholesale policy of legal migration through a large guest-worker program. There's another WSJ editorial that discusses immigration. It's in today's edition, in fact.
Uh, I thought JP2 recognized way back when he ordered priests out of politics?
Besides Drinan in the US, I'm pretty sure he wasn't too pleased with "liberation theology" in South America, either.
The oppression was mostly at the hands of a Protestant monarchy.
(That's why the Pilgrims & many Puritans came over here.)
The Pilgrims had religious freedom in the Protestant Netherlands. Their main reason for coming here had to do with culture. They didn't want their children to become too "Dutch", so felt they felt the need to separate themselves out, to establish a New Jerusalem (Salem).
I heard that in church just yesterday, along with a prayer request for a new President. At least she didn't say the "H" word. There was also this strange dichotomy where the offering is blessed as money being denied to Herrod while concern for the poor teaches us we must place the poors' welfare in the hands of Herrod. No one seemed to understand the contradiction. My first and last visit there, obviously.
Catholic lands like Norway? Or Prussia? Or the Flemish region of Belgium? Or Japan?
I think there is a correlation between religious beliefs and political form.
I agree. And you will find that in every allegedly "Catholic" dictatorship you will find a population that had already rejected Catholicism in favor of an ideology imported from Protestant England and created there by a German Lutheran named Karl Marx.
Mussolini was a Marxist, not a Catholic. He came from a proudly anti-Catholic home. Adolf Hitler's introduction to political activism came when he joined an anti-Catholic secret society in turn-of-the-century Vienna - and his personal hero was the viciously anti-Catholic Otto von Bismarck. In Orthodox Russia, we all know who Vladimir Lenin's hero was.
The only dictators who could be described as Catholic were Franco and Pinochet, and both these men arose in countries that were locked in a death struggle with emerging Communist dictatorships.
And of course, unlike Italy, France and Spain in the 1930s, Poland and Ireland in the 1930s were devoutly Catholic nations. About 50% of Italians attended Mass on Sunday in Italy in 1930 - in Poland it was over 80% and in Ireland it was a nowadays inconceivable 90% +.
Poland fought tooth and nail against Communist and fascist dictatorship and neutral little Ireland furnished plenty of volunteers in the fight against Nazism.
Bloody Mary was no Protestant. Besides, the Anglican established church was not completely Protestant, but a hybrid of Protestant and Catholic traits. There was a constant threat that Catholic influences would get the upper hand in England, and with the Anglican Church enjoying a state monopoly, that was intolerable to strongly Protestant believers.
To get their religious freedom, the Pilgrims had to leave their own country and expose themselves to an alien culture. That certainly doesn't alter the fact that they were persecuted. Obviously they preferred to go to the New World and start a culturally English Protestant colony.
You are looking at the circumstances of each individual dictator which is valid. I’m speaking in a macro sense — what the populations exposed to the religious traditions did. It may be unfair in that the line of freedom is a brief moment historically in Greece and Rome and then the Anglo/American line which is very young historically. The Anglo American line arose in predominantly Protestant lands rather than Catholic lands, which may be an accident historically, but it seems connected to me.
Ping
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