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Profaning chapels due to insufficient government relief

UCA News reports:

The social action arm of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines urged bishops and priests in disaster areas to offer chapels to be used as temporary classrooms as some 25 million primary and secondary level pupils around the country return to school this week.

You may have noticed that more and more parish buildings are dwarfing the actual churches.  Can you imagine the size of the community center next to Notre Dame Cathedral if it were proportional to the huge boxes we find adjacent our churches here?  Now whatever small consecrated space remains is becoming pointless.

If you read continuous reports from the Philippine Church you’d think the whole country was a constant emergency. Once they start making chapels classrooms in disaster areas, kids will have to go to China to be near Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament.

“I think the Lord would even be glad if His house will be used in helping others,” said Fr Edu Gariguez, executive secretary of the National Secretariat for Social Action and Caritas-Philippines.

Oh look, there’s that word, ‘Caritas.’  It means love.

Second-guessing the Lord is stock and trade for these faux-Catholic functionaries.  In the minds of our social justice champions, chapels are no help whatsoever.  They confuse the inmates at their indoctrination camps.

“The Lord is always about mercy and compassion,” he said in an interview, admitting that using the chapels as classrooms is a “band-aid solution” to a problem that should have been resolved by the government.

There’s that FrancisMercy again.  Perhaps God will also blame the government for profaning his chapels and depriving His children of the Faith?  Don’t bank on it.

Someday, please God, the Lord will also be about justice; just enough justice to free us from these weasels.

 

 

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Doctor of FrancisChurch

At the National Catholic Reporter fighting Global Warming is as Catholic as Catholic gets.  Here are some segments:

The call to stewardship of creation, for Catholic and Judeo-Christians alike, extends from our most recent popes and goes all the way back to Genesis and the story of Noah.

Global warming caused that flood too!

In his teachings, Jesus often spoke of God as father of all, creator and caretaker, and especially householder “In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If there were not, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you?” he said in John’s Gospel.

Jesus described God as one who cares for the birds in the field as well as each strand upon our heads. He himself healed and advocated for the vulnerable and those who had been left out, seen as wrong, in debt, unable to speak for themselves or who lacked advocates in the system of their time.

That’s about the most tired and politically correct biblical exegesis I’ve ever heard!

St. Ambrose, the 4th century bishop of Milan, remarked that God cares about all creation, that “the mystery of the Incarnation of God is the salvation of the whole of Creation.”

So save the planet!

“Unless we are able to view things in terms of how they originate, how they are to return to their end, and how God shines forth in them, we will not be able to understand,” Bonaventure said.

So believe in junk science?

Aquinas went on to say, as Christians and sinners, we recognize that sin “has distorted the human relationship with the natural world: We have disturbed the balance of nature in radical and violent ways. Sin damages our relationship with God and with one another, the relationships between social groups, and that between humanity and earth.”

A quick review of history shows times when humanity has gotten off-track from its valuing of creation. The Industrial Revolution brought with it many goods and allowed for the formation of modern civilization. At the same time, it brought pollution of the air and water sources, and is viewed as a trigger to climate change.

Sin distorted the balance of nature and sinful people caused the industrial revolution, therefore sin caused global warming?  Atone!

A couple hundred years earlier, in the 15th century, papal edicts forming the Doctrine of Discovery authorized European Christian nations to “invade, search out, capture, vanquish, and subdue all Saracens [Muslims] and pagans whatsoever, and other enemies of Christ wheresoever placed … to reduce their persons to perpetual slavery,” and to seize their possessions and property. This mentality, embedded in the European worldview and the legal codes of the lands they colonized, gave justification for denying indigenous peoples their rights, as well as respecting the rights of the land itself.

Do you believe that?  It sounds like a group of papal edicts may have morphed a bit during their grouping and then a few relevant things fell out.

John Paul noted in his 1990 World Day of Peace message that “there is a growing awareness that world peace is threatened not only by the arms race, regional conflicts and continued injustices among peoples and nations, but also by a lack of due respect for nature, by the plundering of natural resources and by a progressive decline in the quality of life… Faced with the widespread destruction of the environment, people everywhere are coming to understand that we cannot continue to use the goods of the earth as we have in the past.”

He continued: “The gradual depletion of the ozone layer and the related ‘greenhouse effect’ has now reached crisis proportions as a consequence of industrial growth, massive urban concentrations and vastly increased energy needs… The ecological crisis reveals the urgent moral need for a new solidarity.”

A perfect example of the limits of papal wisdom and jurisdiction.  Whatever happened to that ozone hole anyway?

Climate change is addressed specifically in the Vatican’s Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church (paragraph 470), which says the relationship between human activity and global warming must be constantly monitored, for “The climate is a good that must be protected.”

I’m not sure how much Catholics need to pay attention to this lengthy production from the Council for Justice and Peace, but the paragraph actually says this:

Programs of economic development must carefully consider “the need to respect the integrity and the cycles of nature” [989] because natural resources are limited and some are not renewable. The present rhythm of exploitation is seriously compromising the availability of some natural resources for both the present and the future.[990] Solutions to the ecological problem require that economic activity respect the environment to a greater degree, reconciling the needs of economic development with those of environmental protection. Every economic activity making use of natural resources must also be concerned with safeguarding the environment and should foresee the costs involved, which are “an essential element of the actual cost of economic activity”.[991] In this context, one considers relations between human activity and climate change which, given their extreme complexity, must be opportunely and constantly monitored at the scientific, political and juridical, national and international levels. The climate is a good that must be protected and reminds consumers and those engaged in industrial activity to develop a greater sense of responsibility for their behaviour.

I don’t see the term ‘global warming’ anywhere.  I just see the warning to monitor the complex climate to ensure it is protected.  It doesn’t say partner with the UN to lie and agitate about impending climate doom for selfish, nefarious, and anti-Christian purposes.

There’s nothing Catholic about that and I’m sure Noah would be against it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Message Sent. Message Received.

Message Sent. Message Received.

Recently Fr. Z noted there were no Italians taking part in the Secret Shadow European Synod. Today, the Eponymous Flower translates a message of frustration with the Pope’s ‘anti-Italian’ prejudices.

It’s not like that’s the only chip on the Pope’s shoulder.

(Rome) Pope Francis (almost) place for all merciful words, but when he talks about the bishops of the Catholic Church, “he seems to pick up the stick,” the Corriere della Sera. Italy’s bishops had to be told some of the pontiff at the opening of its spring conference on May 18. They had strives startled in the days before, to take cover and Francis to appease (see “Cicero’s” Stab in the Hornet’s Nest – Italy’s Bishops to Take Cover and Rehabilitate even the Ghostwriter of the Pope ).

For months the bishops registered pain not only in Italy, and to their surprise, a rigor of Argentine Pope, with whom she had not expected. A rigor that is directed against them.

Behind expressions of loyalty and fidelity to the Holy Father, there is palpable discomfort in the episcopate. As much as  the Italian bishops also endeavor to recognize the Pope’s cultural coordinates, to understand and to follow these, they seem increasingly convinced that the Argentine Church leader – despite Italian roots – cherishes an anti-Italian prejudice  whose edges are difficult to dull.

The discomfort affects not only the Italian Episcopal Conference and the Vatican. Staff at the Roman Curia have been left pretty hang dog since being  papally diagnosed with 15 diseases diagnostics before Christmas 2014. The mood disorder has been detected also in other countries and their church hierarchies. Francis, the Pope of the “epochal turning point” (Corriere della Sera), seems to be, thanks to media support, easy to do, acting as a popular triumph. Much more difficult, i is for the head of the church to find a convinced followers in the church hierarchy. Moreover, the consensus of Francis seems to sink among the bishops.

According to the Corriere della Sera from last May 20th the numbers 20, 70, 10 apparently reflect the mood of the Roman Curia.  Among all the employees of the pope  there are only 20 percent who would support him with conviction in his government. 70 percent said they would form a “silent majority”, which would remain “neutral” to fulfill their cause and wait for the next pope. Ten percent are strongly, however, among the group (though not always stated) who are opponents of Argentina’s pontificate.

These figures would tossed around in the papal residence of Santa Marta, in the Argentine community in Rome and in Argentina. The Corriere della Sera talks about a “potential geographic and strategic break”.

Pope Francis is not in Rome in order to make friends.  He already has friends outside the Church.  He’s a friend to the kinds of cardinals who think they have dotted lines to the Pope and direct lines other places. He has friends at the UN, in Washington, in Boston, and in Cuba.

Pope Francis is a radical.  He’d consider it a failure to be popular with the hierarchy.  He wants to make the old Church angry and sidelined, while he ushers in this new wordly vision.  He creates cardinals in lowly outposts like Lampedusa Isle that mean little to the Church – unless it’s not so much a Catholic Church but one of endless boat people support.

The Pope tried fractures and fissures that open up because his actions -despite his best efforts- are not understood by a part of the Church, to engage   his charisma.  How long this will be possible is also indicated by the Corriere della Sera on the outstanding issues. Above all there has been no match in language between the Pope and many bishops.

Who agile, as the Archbishop of Agrigento, Francesco Montenegro, whose diocese is in  the headline-grabbing  Lampedusa, has experienced a meteoric rise from unknown provincial bishop to be made a cardinal and this overnight possibly the future Pope, theoretically he may even be a contender for the successor of Peter.

Francis is so unorthodox there are few bishops and offices he can use to assist him.  He has to work with a hodgepodge team but that’s alright.  He has the financial markets, the White House, the UN, the entire press, and the best PR consultants on the planet at his disposal.

Pope Francis always makes for new construction, but the resulting internal church problems and fractures do not seem to concern him in any way. It seems as if the constant unrest, unease and a latent discontent is a means of government for him. Above all the last  , two years, two months and two weeks after taking office have been uncomfortable, especially for the critics of Argentine Pope. Francis himself still seems to literally enjoy his pontificate.

When Jesus calls you to make a mess, what’s not to enjoy?