Posted on 07/05/2014 5:53:22 AM PDT by Kolokotronis
"I say only that the Communists have stolen the flag,” Francis responded. “The flag of the poor is Christian. Poverty is at the heart of the Gospel. The poor are at the heart of the Gospel. Take Matthew 25, the protocol over which we shall be judged: ‘I was hungry, I was thirsty, I was in prison, I was sick, naked.’ Or look at the Beatitudes, another flag. The communists say that this is communist. Yeah, right, 20 centuries later.”
The Holy Father concluded with a joke: “So you could say when you speak to them: ‘But you are Christians.’”
Some precincts of the American hard right went predictably bonkers. “NUTS,” was Jim Hoft’s headline at Gateway Pundit. Rush Limbaugh wondered if the pope was claiming Jesus as a communist. The comboxes at Free Republic, the Washington Times, Newsmax and The American Catholic swelled with insults aimed at the Holy Father. There will be more where this came from, but the week is young."
(Excerpt) Read more at aleteia.org ...
I do still find his association of government intervention and authoritarianism with works of charity and aid for the poor troubling, though.
Finally we get another truth about the Pope. The lamestream media (and even some Catholic sources, have been mistaken.
Simply put, Liberation Theology is an attempt to interpret Scripture through the plight of the poor. It is largely a humanistic doctrine. It started in South America in the turbulent 1950s when Marxism was making great gains among the poor because of its emphasis on the redistribution of wealth, allowing poor peasants to share in the wealth of the colonial elite and thus upgrade their economic status in life. As a theology, it has very strong Roman Catholic roots.
Liberation Theology was bolstered in 1968 at the Second Latin American Bishops Conference which met in Medellin, Colombia. The idea was to study the Bible and to fight for social justice in Christian (Catholic) communities. Since the only governmental model for the redistribution of the wealth in a South American country was a Marxist model, the redistribution of wealth to raise the economic standards of the poor in South America took on a definite Marxist flavor. Since those who had money were very reluctant to part with it in any wealth redistribution model, the use of a populist (read poor) revolt was encouraged by those who worked most closely with the poor. As a result, the Liberation Theology model was mired in Marxist dogma and revolutionary causes.
As a result of its Marxist leanings, Liberation Theology as practiced by the bishops and priests of South America was criticized in the 1980s by the Catholic hierarchy, from Pope John Paul on down. The top hierarchy of the Catholic Church accused liberation theologians of supporting violent revolutions and outright Marxist class struggle. This perversion is usually the result of a humanist view of man being codified into Church Doctrine by zealous priests and bishops and explains why the Catholic top hierarchy now wants to separate itself from Marxist doctrine and revolution. Read more: http://www.gotquestions.org/liberation-theology.html#ixzz36bG52R9f
Official Catholic teaching on economics - distributism?!?. You are wrong. You are completely wrong. I think your post is ignorant.
Marxist were, among other things, militant atheists. They always seek to suppress faith.
Only those who are truly ignorant of marxism can accuse the Holy Father, the leader of the Church, a man of faith, of being a marxist.
Repeat After Me: Subsidiarity & Solidarity
Subsidiarity and Human Dignity
Does the USCCB Understand Subsidiarity?
[CATHOLIC CAUCUS] The Principle of Subsidiarity
[CATHOLIC/ORTHODOX CAUCUS] Subsidiarity Over Social Justice
What is the USCCB’s problem with subsidiarity?
Subsidiarity: Where Justice and Freedom Coexist
Health reform still full of thorny problems for Catholics (Vasa comes out for subsidiarity)
What You [Catholics] Need to Know: Subsidiarity, [Catholic/Orthodox Caucus]
Catholic Word of the Day: SUBSIDIARITY, 06-11-09
The pope would make a good Methodist.
“It started in South America in the turbulent 1950s when Marxism was making great gains among the poor because of its emphasis on the redistribution of wealth, allowing poor peasants to share in the wealth of the colonial elite and thus upgrade their economic status in life.”
Which, it should be noted, never happened.
The poor in Cuba, for instance, are worse off today than they were 70 years ago under Batista.
>>The pope would make a good Methodist.
Nah. He’s against abortion and “marriage equality”.
So are the various churches in the Methodist movement.
“Only those who are truly ignorant of marxism can accuse the Holy Father, the leader of the Church, a man of faith, of being a marxist.”
It is clear to me that the man who wrote these words is no communist:
“I invite all Christians, everywhere, at this very moment, to a renewed personal encounter with Jesus Christ, or at least an openness to letting him encounter them; I ask all of you to do this unfailingly each day. No one should think that this invitation is not meant for him or her, since “no one is excluded from the joy brought by the Lord”.1 The Lord does not disappoint those who take this risk; whenever we take a step towards Jesus, we come to realize that he is already there, waiting for us with open arms. Now is the time to say to Jesus: “Lord, I have let myself be deceived; in a thousand ways I have shunned your love, yet here I am once more, to renew my covenant with you. I need you. Save me once again, Lord, take me once more into your redeeming embrace”. How good it feels to come back to him whenever we are lost! Let me say this once more: God never tires of forgiving us; we are the ones who tire of seeking his mercy. Christ, who told us to forgive one another “seventy times seven” (Mt 18:22) has given us his example: he has forgiven us seventy times seven. Time and time again he bears us on his shoulders. No one can strip us of the dignity bestowed upon us by this boundless and unfailing love. With a tenderness which never disappoints, but is always capable of restoring our joy, he makes it possible for us to lift up our heads and to start anew.”
>>So are the various churches in the Methodist movement.
The people in the pews are against, but the decision-makers are not. I left the UMC last week because of what I saw at FL Annual Conference this year (and last). You don’t know the depths of the socialist evil that has crept into such a wonderful movement over the last 50 years until you’ve been to AC or GC.
The seminary-trained clergy is overwhelmingly liberal.
They have a heavy hand in choosing the lay delegates to AC.
The delegates to AC choose the delegates to GC.
If it wasn’t for the African conference, the UMC would have had gay pastors 6 years ago.
Another thing, the real communists are the ones who write articles which try to make us think he is a communist just like them. They think that they win when they work to make us think that he has compromised his position.
They worked to make Pope Pius XII a nazi sympathizer. And whenever Clinton or Obama have spent time speaking with the pope they always come out of the room and mysteriously the pope has changed his entire position on abortion to match Clinton and Obama's pro-death views.
The truth is that the 20th and 21st centuries have had the highest concentration of holy popes of anytime is history outside of the first few centuries where every pope was martyred.
The Book of Discipline still hasn't changed on either of those issues you cite.
I left the UMC last week because of what I saw at FL Annual Conference this year (and last). You don’t know the depths of the socialist evil that has crept into such a wonderful movement over the last 50 years until you’ve been to AC or GC. The seminary-trained clergy is overwhelmingly liberal. They have a heavy hand in choosing the lay delegates to AC. The delegates to AC choose the delegates to GC.
I was actually at the IN Annual Conference back at the tail-end of April. We have a thriving Confessing Movement presence. INAC is probably the most evangelical/conservative AC outside of the Southeastern Jurisdiction and I'm not really concerned about whether my clergy are political liberals/moderates. God doesn't endorse one political brand, after all.
Sorry to hear you left the fight.
I know exactly what it is. I also know that it has not been the official Catholic teaching on economics - ever. Rerum Novarum espoused certain thoughts on economics which some people (mostly non-Catholic socialists) twisted into distributism. Distributism is never advocated in that encyclical.
Many popes have decried the damage of socialism and the excesses of capitalism, but no pope has advocated for a specific alternative. In fact, Saint PJPII in Centissimus Annus (the 100 year anniversary of Reum Novarum) decidedly shifted the Catholic thought toward capitalism.
Protestants have noticed that, as British Methodist William Sangster observed, there hasn't really been a truly bad pope since the Counter-Reformation.
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