Posted on 04/11/2016 7:49:06 AM PDT by Salvation
The eradication of poverty is an oft-stated goal of the modern, liberal West. President Lyndon Baines Johnson’s pronouncement of a “war on poverty” so imprinted this notion in the Western mind that it has become almost axiomatic. It is now a fundamental pillar in the thinking of almost every person (and organization) in the Western world, from the religious pew-sitter concerned for the poor to the most secular humanist bent on a utopian vision. Poverty is a great enemy that must be stamped out!
The only problem is that this is contrary to the Gospel! It is no surprise, therefore, that even after decades of Western “do-goodism,” barely a dent has been made in the percentage of people living in poverty. In fact, some statistics show that the percentage in poverty has increased. But why should we expect great fruitfulness in something that opposes God?
I can see the look of shock on your face right now; you may even be embarrassed that I have written this. I’d like to share a quote with you from Robert Cardinal Sarah, which makes an important distinction that we need to recover. While what he says may also shock you, I encourage you to read it carefully and thoughtfully; the distinction he makes is critical. Not only does the Gospel depend on it, but cultures and individual lives do as well. For indeed, in the name of eradicating poverty some of the worst of Western arrogance has been displayed. It is an arrogance that does not even recognize that it can become willing to the destroy the poor themselves as well as what and whom they love all in the name of this “noble” goal.
Cardinal Robert Sarah is no neophyte in this discussion. He grew up in an impoverished region of Africa and later headed the Roman dicastery, Cor unum, a charitable arm of the Holy See. The extensive passage below is an abbreviated version of the Cardinal’s response to the following questions posed by his interviewer, Nicholas Diat:
How would you describe the nature of Cor unum, the dicastery to which you devoted several years of your life, in its fight against all sorts of poverty? Furthermore, why do you speak so often about the close relation between God and the poor?
In his reply, the Cardinal is reacting somewhat to Mr. Diat’s description of Cor unum’s work as “fight[ing] against all sorts of poverty.” The Cardinal’s response is nothing short of stunning. Please read it carefully and consider obtaining the book so as to able to read the unabridged remarks as well.
The Gospel is not a slogan. The same goes for our activity to relieve people’s suffering … [it is a matter] of working humbly and having a deep respect for the poor. For example, I remember being disgusted when I heard the advertising slogan of a Catholic charitable organization, which was almost insulting to the poor: “Let us fight for zero poverty” … Not one saint … ever dared to speak that way about poverty and poor people.
Jesus himself had no pretention of this sort. This slogan respects neither the Gospel nor Christ. Ever since the Old Testament, God has been with the poor; and Sacred Scripture unceasingly acclaims “the poor of Yahweh.” …
Poverty is a biblical value confirmed by Christ, who emphatically exclaims, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven” (Mt 5:3). … The poor person is someone who knows that, by himself, he cannot live. He needs God and other people in order to be, flourish and grow. On the contrary, rich people expect nothing of anyone. They can provide for their needs without calling either on their neighbors or on God. In this sense wealth can lead to great sadness and true human loneliness or to terrible spiritual poverty. If in order to eat and care for himself, a man must turn to someone else, this necessarily results in a great enlargement of his heart. This is why the poor are closest to God and live in great solidarity with one another; they draw from this divine source the ability to be attentive to others.
The Church must not fight against poverty but, rather, wage a battle against destitution, especially material and spiritual destitution. … [so that all] might have the minimum they require in order to live. …
But we do not have the right to confuse destitution and poverty, because in so doing we would seriously be going against the Gospel. Recall what Christ told us: “The poor you will have always with you …” (Jn 12:8). Those who want to eradicate poverty make the Son of God a liar. …
[In his yearly Lenten message in 2014, Pope Francis] espoused what St. Francis [of Assisi] called “Lady Poverty.” … St. Francis of Assisi wanted to be poor because Christ chose poverty. If he calls poverty a royal virtue, it is because it shone brilliantly in the life of Jesus … and in the life of his mother, Mary of Nazareth. …
Similarly, I often think about the vow of poverty taken by religious … [they] do so in order to be as close as possible to Christ. The Son [of God] wanted us to be poor in order to show us the best path by which we can return to God. …
The Son of God loves the poor; others intend to eradicate them. What a lying, unrealistic, almost tyrannical utopia! I always marvel when Gaudium et Spes declares, “The spirit of poverty and charity is the glory and witness of the Church of Christ” (GS 88).
We must be precise in our choice of words. The language of the UN and its agencies, who want to suppress poverty, which they confuse with destitution, is not that of the Church of Christ. The Son of God did not come to speak to the poor in ideological slogans! The Church must banish these slogans from her language. For they have stupefied and destroyed peoples who were trying to remain free in conscience (Cardinal Sarah, God or Nothing: A Conversation in Faith with Nicholas Diat, pp. 140-142).
Perhaps stunned himself, Mr. Diat follows up with the following question: “Are you not afraid of being misunderstood in employing this sort of distinction?”
The Cardinal replies,
It is a lack of charity to shut one’s eyes. It is a lack of charity to remain silent in the face of confusing words and slogans! … If you read the Latin text of Gaudium et Spes carefully you will immediately notice this distinction (Ibid, p. 143).
This is a powerful insight and it reveals the deep flaw in Western “anti-poverty” programs. Christ asks us to love the poor and imitate the best of what they are, not eliminate them and disregard the simplicity and trust that they can often exemplify. But we in the West, imbued with our materialistic notions and mesmerized by the comfort and control that wealth can temporarily buy, denigrate what the Gospels praises and seek to eradicate it.
So unreflective are we in this matter that some will even justify the most awful things in the name of eradicating poverty. Many programs (U.S.-sponsored and U.N.-sponsored) with this goal advocate for contraception, abortion, and/or euthanasia. Some have even sought to compel these sorts of things as a precondition for receiving aid. Some seek to impose certain aspects of Western thinking, something that has been labeled an attempt at “ideological colonization.” Many of us in the “First World” often speak of the “Third World” in a way that at best is patronizing and at worst exhibits a thinly veiled contempt.
While it is true that certain economic and political systems best support Western lifestyles, there is more to life than material abundance. With our own culture, families, and common sense collapsing around us, it seems odd that we so easily consider our way of life superior; that we see our relationship to the poor and to poorer countries as one in which we have all the answers and they should just listen to us.
The word “arrogance” is derived from the Latin (a = not) + (rogare = to ask), which means “to not even bother asking.” We too easily assume, without even asking, that we know what is best; we presume that poor people in every part of the world want what we have (materially) and that they don’t perceive the awful price we have paid in order to get it.
We must recover a respect for the world’s poor, who have much to teach us. Even if they are not materially without troubles, they often possess many things we have lost: simplicity, family and tribal (communal) life, reciprocity, proper interdependence (as opposed to radical individualism), trust, a slower life, and a less-stressful life.
Further, we must not forget that the Lord counseled poverty (Lk 18:22), declared the poor blessed (Lk 6:20), lived simply Himself having “nowhere to lay his head” (Mt 8:20), lived among the working poor, and warned of the pernicious quality of wealth (Lk 16:13). God hears the cry of the poor and Mother Mary taught us of a great reversal that is coming, when the mighty and powerful will be cast down and poor and lowly raised up (Lk 1:52). Jesus taught us that many who are now last will be first in the kingdom of Heaven (Mat 19:30). In this life, the poor will sometimes need us. In the next life, on Judgment Day, we are going to need them to welcome us into eternal dwellings (Luke 16:9).
I really cannot say it better than did the good Cardinal, so I will not attempt to do so. We must surely work to alleviate the destitution that often comes in times of famine, war, or natural disaster. But destitution and poverty are not the same thing. Overlooking this distinction can be deadly for the poor we claim to serve and for their cultures, and can result in the worst forms of ideological colonization and secular utopianism.
History. More on this later.
Yeah I'm gonna need a lot more than that.
You confuse economic and spiritual poverty. The wealthy are often spiritually impoverishec, lonely. The economically poor need each other, borrow, comfort, help and sit with one another, so they are hard pressed but not lonely....and Christ is seen, experienced, in relationships, not watching dvds in a home movie room. The young rich man couldnt give up his safety and comfort to follow christ.....it is very hard unless you never had it to give
People want things of the church, so the church always needs money, but priests are not televangelists, even those with outside income from deceased parents.
Another Great one, Thanks!
God Bless
Why not?
Check the story of the Visitation where Elizabeth, inspired by the Holy Spirit, says, “And how is this that the Mother of my Lord should visit me.” (Paraphrasing.)
I sense another 500+ post thread, where the usual suspects make disparaging unsubstantiated offensive remarks about the Catholic Church.
The word mother is also not recognized as a proper noun in the texts as you've attempted to indicate rather slighly in your post.
None of the major translations cite mother as a proper noun. Only man-made roman catholicism does.
Unlike the catholic I can back my postings up with the Word.
You KNOW I’m a Catholic, and won’t know what that says without looking it up!
That’s what I suspected.
I say it for Pope Francis and for Obozo.
You really are one great “internet theologian” that trumps everybody else (scholars, historians, Augustine, Aquinas, Benedict including noted Protestant scholars who converted to Catholicism) who all disagree with you.
There were thousands of written fragments that early followers were using but they all were part of the first Church. The compilation of the books in the Bible itself was in AD 382. This early Church was the Catholic Church dating from Christ and Peter to his successors beginning with Pope Linus.
All the ancient records of the Roman bishops which have been handed down to us by St. Irenaeus, Julius Africanus, St. Hippolytus, Eusebius, also the Liberian catalogue of 354, place the name of Linus directly after that of the Prince of the Apostles, St. Peter. These records are traced back to a list of the Roman bishops which existed in the time of Pope Eleutherus (about 174-189), when Irenaeus wrote his book “Adversus haereses”. This author claims that Pope Linus is the Linus mentioned by St. Paul in his 2 Timothy 4:21. The passage by Irenaeus (Against Heresies III.3.3) reads:
“After the Holy Apostles (Peter and Paul) had founded and set the Church in order (in Rome) they gave over the exercise of the episcopal office to Linus. The same Linus is mentioned by St. Paul in his Epistle to Timothy. His successor was Anacletus.” Linus reigned from about A.D. 64
So much for your ekklesia!
14Therefore, beloved, since you look for these things, be diligent to be found by Him in peace, spotless and blameless, 15and regard the patience of our Lord as salvation; just as also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given him, wrote to you, 16as also in all his letters, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which the untaught and unstable distort, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures, to their own destruction. 2 Peter 3:14-16
You are aware that Paul's letters were accorded the status of Scripture by 66 AD and we in circulation among the churches prior to that....right?
Galatians 49 AD
1, 2 Thessalonians 51 AD
1, 2 Corinthians 56-57 AD
Romans 58 AD
Ephesians 61 AD
Philemon 61 AD
Colossians 61 AD
1,2 Timothy 63, 66 AD
Titus 63 AD
By 115 AD the four Gospels were recognized as authoritative.
Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria was first to list all 27 books of the NT in 367 AD.
Requirements for a book to be included in the canon were:
For a book to be considered holy scripture on the canonical level, it had to enjoy widespread acceptance among the churches. If a book was only accepted in one region, it did not enter into the New Testament canon. Also, since others in the second century and later were writing books, criteria needed to be applied that would separate these works from the ones that came from the first century: the book needed to date to the time of the apostles. And the book should be connected to an apostle, whether due to authorship by an apostle or association with an apostle (for example, Mark and Luke were associated with Peter and Paul, respectively). Of course, the books also needed to minister to the people in the churches who were hearing them read. This spiritual dimension was likely paramount. Our New Testament books were included in the canon because they spoke so strongly to people that they could not be kept out of the canon. Lastly, the books needed to be deemed suitable for public reading in the church. (Above paragraph is from my notes from Survey of the NT Seminary Class on the formation of the Canon)
One thing must be emphatically stated. The New Testament books did not become authoritative for the Church because they were formally included in a canonical list; on the contrary, the Church included them in her canon because she already regarded them as divinely inspired, recognizing their innate worth and generally apostolic authority, direct or indirect. The first ecclesiastical councils to classify the canonical books were both held in North Africa-at Hippo Regius in 393 and at Carthage in 397-but what these councils did was not to impose something new upon the Christian communities but to codify what was already the general practice of these communities (F. F. Bruce, The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable?, Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1960, p. 27).
Ok...so Linus was Bishop of Rome. This does not prove the primacy of Rome. There were bishops of other cities as well during this time.
There is no historical evidence that Peter founded the church at Rome. (John Drane, Introducing the New Testament, p403)
Prince of the Apostles???? Another false title by roman catholicism.
You seem to have left out some of the ECFs that disagree with you. Typical of catholic apologetics.
• Chrysostom (John) [who affirmed Peter was a rock, but here not the rock in Mt. 16:18]: Therefore He added this, 'And I say unto thee, Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church; that is, on the faith of his confession. — Chrysostom, Homilies on the Gospel of Saint Matthew, Homily LIIl; Philip Schaff, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers (http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf110.iii.LII.html)
• Basil of Seleucia, Oratio 25: 'You are Christ, Son of the living God.'...Now Christ called this confession a rock, and he named the one who confessed it 'Peter,' perceiving the appellation which was suitable to the author of this confession. For this is the solemn rock of religion, this the basis of salvation, this the wall of faith and the foundation of truth: 'For no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Christ Jesus.' To whom be glory and power forever. — Oratio XXV.4, M.P.G., Vol. 85, Col. 296-297.
Well, I've had enough fun with refuting your claims....again.
Off to better things tonight.
The Greek Orthodox apparently know some Greek, and they agree with us, and disagree with you, on a whole lot of things. For one thing, they revere the Lord's Mother, and you seem to denigrate and minimize her as much as possible.
The roman catholic church came into existence around the 4th century
Not even remotely historically true, but part of the mythology that low-church Protestants like to promote.
Exactly when and how "around the 4th century" did this remarkable event happen?
Irenaeus of Lyons says that the church at Rome was "founded and organized" by Peter and Paul. He was a good bit closer to those events than you are, and lived well before those amazing events "around the 4th century" that you're going to specify for us, dying around AD 150.
What is hard to dispute is that Peter went to Rome and died there, as prophesied by Our Lord in the Gospel reading we Catholics heard at Mass this past Sunday. We know that Peter died in Rome because we know where his tomb is ... under the high altar at the basilica named in his honor.
What's to REFLECT?
Do you NOT believe the very words of JESUS??
I'll balance that with some TRUE titles; OK??
Using what standard?
I'll tell you:
What the opinions of a majority of a group of men said was true.
A majority vote got Catholics their present pope.
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