Posted on 10/13/2009 12:56:05 PM PDT by editor-surveyor
Yeah, but the use of all the goofy fonts and stupid use of colors makes your NGR redundant. The silliness in format appropriately heralds the silliness of the post!
Just roll right past it, see if there are any actually worthwhile posts to read. The flourescent style of posting by some becomes a real time-saver to the many.
When certain posters are heavily involved in a thread, it can reduce the time needed to peruse the actual content of the thread by half or more.
sitetest
Sometimes it is useful to tell the attention-seeker they have failed.
Nice post. Clear, succinct, providing needed context.
I respect your judgment a lot.
However, I wish I could be 1/10th as confident of your assertions about all that as you are.
INDEED! . . . which actually is a consideration of mine.
I say first that too large a number of US Bishops really do not get how Catholic social teaching applies to a representative democracy such as ours is (or used to be?)
Second: the Church's teaching on government does not, cannot, support thoroughly any particular system or society, BECAUSE European socialism, aside from its support of awesome levels of immorality, works against both solidarity and subsidiarity.
Of course, Socialists will claim Vatican Support, but those claims will always gloss over the particular moral issues and the all important issue of subsidiarity, in favor of a huge, bureaucratic, centralized government. They don't get that this disqualifies them from the git-go.
The entire encyclical reads like a tome from the U. S. Congress.
And Chaput is a GOOD bishop. There are plenty of bishops who, um, well, ah, [catch my drift?].
I think for feelthy papists on the ground, this is part of the Catholic experience, especially for us innerleckshuals. What I have managed to plow through in Benedict's thought is, at least, worthy of careful consideration.
But that's no guarantee that it won't be (mis)used by some as an excuse to build an abortion clinic.-- okay, SLIGHT exaggeration ....
Or maybe it's their way of weeding out the unenthusiastic. I mean if you don't REALLY want to read this encyclical, you'll never survive.
Or possibly it's just a gracious outreach to those of us who have trouble sleeping ....
I do think that the usual media approach of cherry-picking headliners from encyclicals just doesn't work. Technically speaking, it's inappropriate to the "form." An encyclical is always going to be, so to speak, looking over its shoulder at earlier related documents. That just doesn't "fit" with the "juicy quote" or "headline" approach.
Good questions . . .
preliminary response . . .
1. Those are nuances that the . . . major forces and powers afoot in primarily satanic globalism . . . will not even . . . flick an eyelash at.
2. i.e. those nuances will have absolutely no impact on the sweep to an overt global government. None whatsoever.
3. The U.S. Bishops have been straddling lots of moral fences a long time.
4. If more than a very few Bishops still see, still think that the RCC has anything at all still to do with a real LIVE ALMIGHTY GOD, it would surprise me.
5. I’d be surprised if more than half of them really think in their heart of hearts that there REALLY IS a LIVE ALMIGHTY GOD.
6. No. We have not been a true REP Democracy for a long time, sadly. I reluctantly came to that conclusion a shockingly short time ago—several years ago.
7. Solidarity for any bureaucracy will always entail MORE BUREAUCRACY. It is inherent in the nature of the beast.
8. Subsidiarity to any bureaucracy will always be anathama . . . or interpreted as a bureaucrat in every bedroom of every home to insure that the bed is made and the sex immoral enough for government standards.
9. In any case, given the rush to the overt global government . . . any TRULY CHRISITIAN, TRULY SUBSIDIARY RESPONSE ON THE PART OF THE RCC, RC’s individually or any Christians individually . . . WILL BE QUICKLY GROUND UP IN THE GLOBALIST MACHINE AND SPIT OUT AS FERTILIZER for the National Parks.
10. EVEN IF some of the . . . hopeful [charitable word choices here] words and phrases in the encyclical are truly valid of the Pope’s heart, goals, intent—THEY ARE UTTERLY FUTILE. They will not slow the globalist machine’s wood chipper down in the slightest degree for even a microsecond.
11. The tyrannical goals, aims, methods of the globalist machine will have it’s way regardless of encyclicals and regardless even if the Pope spoke INFALLIBLY CALLING ALL RC’S TO ARMS against the globalists. That is the destiny of our era . . . thankfully for a very limited but horrible time.
12. The RCC’s teachings on government are . . . largely . . . futile. See above. The global tyranny will seize on those phrases, sentences and the critical paragraph which seems to grant approval and encouragement to the aims of global tyranny—and trash every other word, if necessary . . . if it pauses to bother about the encyclical or the Pope or the RCC at all.
13. The RCC WILL support the global tyrannical governmental system or it will be obliterated to every degree and corner possible by the global oligarchy . . . which will have considerable power to do so—particularly overtly as well as covertly. RC’s who are trusting God Almighty to prevent that are going to be greatly shocked and disillusioned.
14. Only Clusters of believers of all stripes and labels supernaturally protected and led . . . probably largely in wilderness encampments . . . will be viable congregations in any sense of the word.
15. All the grand edifices are coming down or being subsumed, taken over by the global oligarchy, for a time. Evil will flood the land and the planet as never before. Any shred of the Roman church that still exists, at that point, will be helpless against the globalist machine.
16. All the encyclicals will be seen as empty pieces of paper held up in Chamberlain’s hands after meeting with Hitler.
I wish I could see it differently.
BTW, MD, I’m sure you are aware . . .
that folks who cannot laugh at themselves have been very dead inside for a very long time. There’s even research to that effect. Do you happen to have any keywords, authors or links to such research?
Congrats on those Bishops.
I hope they stand tall in behalf of GOD ALMIGHTY; THE LORD JESUS; HIS SPIRIT
at each critical moment . . . unto death.
Yeah.
Burps can be very comforting.
The prohibition on dragging arguments from thread to thread has been in place for over 10 years.
(1) We have to remember the time that the Angel of the Lord revealed all the other angelic troops that were fighting alongside the children of Israel. Our evangelical and apostolic responsibility is to proclaim the Love. I guess we focus on our mission and leave the outcome to the Lord of Hosts.
(2) See(1)above. I don't know when the Lord's army will enter the battle, but I am confident that they will, and then "one little word will fell" the adversary.
(3) Yep. That's behind my comment on the "digesting" of Vatican II. Our bishop (Richmond) just smacked down his predecessor for trying to hold a meeting of Pax Christi - left-wing "anti-war" (like I'm PRO-war?) group. This was a good sign.
But I think it's complex:
First, no human can be a bishop well. It's too hard. If God does not build the house ... etc.
Second, fer shur, some bishops take refuge in the subtleties, which they exploit as ambiguities, of our teaching. Our response is to listen to them with filial respect, but not necessarily to do as they do -- as IHS said in another connection.
(4 & 5) I wish you could have been at the Ordination of Archbishop DiNoia, OP (ahem). This was everything that so many of our opponents don't like. The textiles alone! WOW! The music was (unusual for Catholics) sublime. And after the clouds of incense, well I can pretty much guarantee that there are no termites left in THAT church! And at the end of this long, elaborate, and ornate service, DiNoia clambers up into the pulpit for a "personal message", and cautions us not to be proud of ourselves for such a beautiful service. "To GOD ALONE be the glory!" he said. And then choked up as he thanked all the people who had ministered to him.
So I have a lot of confidence that a faithful remnant is preserved.
(6) Yep. I'm hopping things are stirring. It's fabulous that Zero is so wonderfully and obviously stomping on the Constitution. HE is summoning the nation to the Valley of Decision like no predecessor, not even FDR, has done before.
(7) Clarification please? "Solidarity" is not about some bureaucrat but about how I respond to the poor person in front of me.
(8) Yep, it will be the tendency of secular gummint to transgress. It will be our responsibility to resist.
(9) Let us then to our prayers. May our blood be the seed of the Church. The adversary may win the battle. He cannot win the war. Meantime, I'm so broke I can't even afford ammunition! But I can pray.
(10) The proclamation, even the attempt, is it's own justification. Let us speak the truth in Love. We're foot soldiers and we know our duty.
Seriously, how futile I feel praying in front of Planned Parenthood! Yet our local 40 days for Life "headquarters" got a call a couple of days ago: Some guy said that seeing people praying in front of PP had prompted this guy to review all his assumptions about abortion. "God gave the increase."
(11) In MY sectarian POV, the USSR fell not simply because of Reagan and the internal contradictions of their system, but because zillions of little old ladies in response to the Fatima apparitions prayed persistently for the conversion of Russia. We do not fight alone.
12) And so for the rest. Sufficient unto the day.... A soldier should THINK about the enemy, but not worry about them. Let us do our job. We have our orders. That's my attitude.
In as much that the Church has formally condemned socialism, it would be difficult for the Church then to embrace socialism. Campion quoted the appropriate Pope Pius yesterday that Catholics can't be socialists.
As you point out, though, the Church cannot formally endorse any human-made economic system, since they're all human-made, and thus to some degree infected with the effects of Original Sin.
But there is a difference, a wide chasm, between failing to endorse a particular system, and absolutely condemning a system.
When I read Pope Benedict's latest encyclical (and I admit that my understanding may not be particularly good), my sense was that the pope, in calling for "gratuitousness," wasn't talking about government-enforced solutions. To the degree that he was thinking about government at all, I think he was calling for governments to make sure that there is social space for a variety of institutions to flourish in society that can participate in a market economy, even if they are not strictly profit-oriented.
An example of this might be the Knights of Columbus insurance company. Our mutual insurance company provides needed life and disability insurance products to hundreds of thousands of Knights and their family members. The company is very well run, being one of only a handful of insurance companies with the highest ratings from the insurance ratings agencies.
Yet, the Knights of Columbus insurance company is a mutual insurance company, and thus, there are no shareholders to speak of, only the owners of policies.
Furthermore, our insurance company integrates its financial dealings closely with the life of the Church, and in solidarity with the Church and Her flock.
Thus, some of the profit is used for charitable works ranging from regularly paying for the Vatican's telecom links to millions of dollars for victims of Katrina, and millions in support of the families of the first responders who died on September 11.
As well, the profitable business of the company is woven even tighter to the mission of the Church. For example, much of the company's investement is in mortgages given to Catholic parishes at very low interest rates. The financial practices of most dioceses are very conservative when it comes to parish-building. In turn, these very conservative practices make it feasible for the Knights to lend money to parishes at exceedingly low rates, as the rate of default pretty much approaces zero, even in the current environment.
I think that this is part of what Pope Benedict is getting at - that there must be room in society for this sort of entity (even as there have been voices in the United States recently raised against the Knights insurance company), in this case, a mutual insurance association that is intertwined with the mission of a religion. Because an entity like this can compete in the market, can function effectively financially, but it can serve a greater goal than just the making of profit.
When Pope Benedict wrote this, "...increasing openness, in a world context, to forms of economic activity marked by quotas of gratuitousness and communion...," I think that he was specifically thinking of the Knights of Columbus.
I'm fairly certain he was NOT thinking of more government-as-answer, since the next sentences are: "The exclusively binary model of market-plus-State is corrosive of society, while economic forms based on solidarity, which find their natural home in civil society without being restricted to it, build up society. The market of gratuitousness does not exist, and attitudes of gratuitousness cannot be established by law. Yet both the market and politics need individuals who are open to reciprocal gift."
I think that Pope Benedict was also speaking to the rest of us - business owner, business managers, workers, everyone, to account for the needs of societies when making our business, financial and economic decisions. It reminds me of the verse in the Old Testament commanding the Israelites not to glean the grain from the fields, but to leave that residue for the poor, for those who have little or nothing.
Too many businesses have done what they can to absolutely maximize their profits at any [legal, I hope] cost. Too many businesses glean their own fields, leaving nothing for those in need, or, after gleaning their own fields, will take some small token and showily give it away.
I don't think that the new encyclical was really directed at setting up more government, more bureaucracy, but rather was a challenge to make more space in civil society for the "quota of gratuitousness" or whatever goofy word that was used in the English translation. I think that the pope isn't trying to instruct governments but rather to instruct PEOPLE, INDIVIDUALS. The problem here is that when liberals read the encyclical, they read through their own lense, which is anti-individual, anti-people. People are only victims to liberals, not independent actors with moral agency.
But that's hardly a genuinely Catholic perspective.
Finally, I believe that the pope is also instructing us to remember that whatever it is that we do, on an individual basis, on an organizational basis, or beyond, we must remember that the driving principle must be charity, must come from the concern of the other. I don't take this as inimical to a properly-arranged free market economy. In such an economy, the seller of a product or service sells what he has to earn a living, to make a profit, but also because he believes that the buyer will benefit from what he offers to him. The buyer buys because he believes that he is receiving something of value in exchange for his payment, something that fills his needs or desires. But the buyer, too, by implication, looks out for the welfare of the seller, in that he buys the product or service, rather than trying to take it for free. In caring one for the other, both parties provide for the mutual benefit of each. When I read through the encyclical, it is my sense that this also is what Pope Benedict is driving at.
Anyway, that's my take-away.
sitetest
Thanks.
I’m going to be doing some mulling over here ....
Good stuff.
In the first place, this isn’t “the Vatican.” It’s a Jesuit spokesman, who unfortunately is more liberal than the Pope.
In the second place, the Vatican and these last two popes are solidly anti-communist. JP II worked with Reagan to bring down the Soviet Union. And the last two popes pretty well managed to beat down the Liberation Theology movement in the Church, although there are still liberal priests out there—as there are liberals everywhere else in these days.
Nothing wrong with wanting and working for a united world. It just depends what you mean by that and how you go about it.
It’s a habit I’ve formed. Whenever I see “news” about the latest Pope statement, I say to myself “huh? I wonder what he really said?”
And then when you take the time to look it up, he either said something very different - or the rest of his statement balanced out the out/of/context quotes they pull.
WELL SAID. EXCELLENT POINTS.
I meant that the system will translate any call to solidarity with the poor or whomever as yet another justification for yet another level of bureaucracy to insure that any role of solidarity is consumed by THE SYSTEM.
They CANNOT ALLOW the church to be the church on a basic person to person level. They CANNOT. It’s too successful an ANTI-SYSTEM model.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.