Posted on 05/26/2013 7:28:46 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
When Cardinal Bergoglio was first chosen as Pope, my immediate reaction was that, although he would probably not tamper with the Church’s views on sexual issues, he would likely move it to the left in terms of economic rhetoric. I based that to some small degree on his choice of name: Saint Francis is something of a favorite of progressives in the Church due to his vow of poverty and his love of animals. But even more important to me was the intellectual milieu out of which he came: Argentine populism, and his own public statements as a cardinal in support of those themes.
I was, of course, attacked by the Catholic left who were quick to denounce me for ignorance, (don’t I know that Francis Xavier was one of founders of the Pope’s Jesuit order), and arrogance (how dare you question the Pope’s Biblical exposition), inaccuracy (how could I, not a Spanish speaker, comment on the Cardinal’s economic homilies given in Spanish) and simple a lack of good will.
But I think subsequent events have borne out my initial impressions. The Pope has clearly identified Saint Francis as his inspiration, for example. Furthermore, I asked my friend Alejandro Chafuen, who is a native Argentinian, a theologian and an economist, to confirm my reading of the Pope’s homily about Zacchaeus. Zacchaeus is indeed referred to as a usurer and associated with foreign banking interests in the Cardinal’s homily, and used as a device to attack foreign bankers who insisted on having their loans repaid by Argentina, despite widespread public support for debt repudiation. But the actual gospel text declares Zacchaeus to be a tax collector, not a loan shark.
So the Gospel reading itself undermines any attempt to scapegoat market processes.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
"Not to share one's goods with the poor is to rob them and to deprive them of life," he said, quoting St. John Chrysostom. "It is not our goods that we possess, but theirs."
It's the behavior of an insular ethnic group, right down to the government-approved, politically charged pejorative for the "other" that doesn't roll out the red carpet for all they say and do.
But, then again, I suppose if I had been taught that, oh I don't know, flip a coin and choose some compromised church with heavy leftist leanings... the Archbishop of Canterbury was the Vicar of Christ on Earth, that the Anglican Church was the One, True Church, that there was no salvation outside of it, I'd more than a little neurotic and defensive too, on a conservative forum.
Seeing as their election proved that fallible men - acting upon their own faults of greed and debauchery - were unreliable to be able to discern what is the leading of the Holy Spirit, I can agree that the purpose can indeed be interesting. ;o)
Perhaps this is one of the ways the Lord demonstrated the fallacy of the Roman Catholic Church's declarations of infallible Popes whose apostolic authority can be traced back to St. Peter and who demand all of Christendom's fealty because of it.
Don't bother with dolts who talk about how bad a given Pope was.
If some Pope had a different personal interpretation of what “Christian Liberty” covers, so what?
The people blathering on about this or that bad Pope all live by Self Alone and the worship of their own, Most High and Holy Self anyway so what they point to as bad behavior today they may say is completely acceptable behavior next week.
After all, nearly all non-Catholics now preach that murdering your own children with contraceptives is no big deal after four hundred plus years of preaching that such murder was sin. Their "Christian Liberty" permits infanticide and whatever else they feel like doing.
The fact is, the worst thing you can say about the Popes they point to is that they behaved like a bunch of Protestants when they knew better than to do so. And even the worst Pope didn't throw out part of the Scripture the way Protestants and Protestant derived folks have.
The same people blathering about the liberties and abuses of papal infallibility have it completely backwards. Infallibility is extremely restricting on a pope because it means he is not free to contradict anything already established ex cathedra. Even in the most flawed individuals who have been popes there is no single example of error in their proclamations. The reason for that is that it is not the pope, but the Paraclete speaking through them. The absolute jealousy of that, like their jealousy of Mary, is what fuels the continued attacks. Pray for them.
Peace be with you
“”The Pope rightly views that the love of money is root of much evil. God is good. All other things are lesser and/or evil. The use of money as a tool in order to accomplish something is laudable and fits well within the Pope’s vision. The pursuit of money as an end in itself is a sin and abomination, to be publicly condemned,””
Right on target, Mark!
As Hilaire Belloc points out the true Liberal (calvinstic) system that people have been brainwashed into thinking is conservative. This system is destructive and the foundation of american economics
From Belloc...
Though the iron Calvinist affirmations (the core of which was an admission of evil into the Divine nature by the permission of but One Will in the universe) have rusted away, yet his vision of a Moloch God remains; and the coincident Calvinist devotion to material success, the Calvinist antagonism to poverty and humility, survive in full strength. Usury would not be eating up the modern world but for Calvin nor, but for Calvin, would men debase themselves to accept inevitable doom; nor, but for Calvin, would Communism be with us as it is today, nor, but for Calvin, would Scientific Monism dominate as it (till recently) did the modern world, killing the doctrine of miracle and paralysing Free Will.
This man was a Frenchman, Jean Cauvin (or Calvin), the son of an ecclesiastical official, steward and lawyer to the See of Noyon. After the excommunication of his father for embezzlement and the confiscation by his Bishop of much of the income which he, Jean Calvin, himself enjoyed, he, John, set to work - and a mighty work it was.
He was already on the revolutionary side in religion; he would perhaps have been in any case a chief figure among those who were for the destruction of the old religion. But whatever his motive, he was certainly the founder of a new religion. For John Calvin it was who set up a counter-Church.
He proved, if ever any man did, the power of logic the triumph of reason, even when abused, and the victory of intelligence over mere instinct and feeling. He framed a complete new theology, strict and consistent, wherein there was no room for priesthood or sacraments; he launched an attack not anti-clerical, not of a negative kind, but positive, just as Mohammed had done nine hundred years before. He was a true heresiarch, and though his effect in the actual imposition of dogma has not had a much longer life than that of Arianism yet the spiritual mood he created has lasted on into our day.
http://www.traditionalcatholic.net/Tradition/Information/What_was_the_Reformation.html
Pope Francis understands the destructive forces
“loaning sharking, extortion, theft perhaps. The point is, the love of money consumed him, and he likely cared little what he had to do to acquire it”
Like the new Pope, you take literary license with scripture and instead of accepting the plain text of the scripture you feel free to speculate on the ways Zacchaeus the tax collector made money, though evidence in scripture or elsewhere is lacking.
“The point is, the love of money consumed him, and he likely cared little what he had to do to acquire it”
No evidence that “the love of money CONSUMED him”. His job was collecting taxes imposed by Herod and Rome. Your slander is no different than the “dirty Jew” libel leveled at the Jews that the feudal lords in Europe appointed to collect their taxes because the Jew was a non-citizen with zero social or legal standing and could not, unlike many local citizens, convert a position of privilege into a position of power.
That is the same kind of libel against mere wealth that arrives in a misunderstanding of the problem a “rich person” has, in getting to the kingdom of heaven.
It is NOT his wealth, it is NOT how much wealth he has, it is NOT being successful and becoming wealthy by that success.
The problem for the “rich person” is the temptations it provides, the tempation to give into lusts, because he can afford it; the temptation to try to buy love, because he can afford it; the temptation to try to buy his way out of a crime, because he can bribe the officials; the temptation to use his wealth as a form of power to deny someone what is rightfully theirs; and many other temptations that become easier to give into, with enough wealth.
The “rich person” has the moral danger of thinking he can afford to “sin” in many ways and get away with it, because wealth, just like any form of power comes with the temptation to abuse what it can do.
That, not the “rich persons” wealth is the “rich persons” delimna, what makes life morally perilous for them, why it is, with all the temptation they have available, navigating life on the straight and narrow moral path is harder.
“Mr. Bowyer, our Forbes “Contributor”, like many, seem to have a difficult time separating wheat from tares, so to speak. His God and savior appears to be accumulation of wealth, and he seems to resent teaching that God expects us to help those less fortunate”
a position/argument without evidence
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