Go, My Son And Stomp Out Those Chilean Pharisees!

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Don’t let all those rigid vicious lawmakers get you down!

The Eponymous Flower laments:

There was once a time when Catholics would reject an unworthy ordinary by force.

Hundreds of demonstrators dressed in black barged into a cathedral in a city in southern Chile on Saturday and interrupted the installation ceremony for the city’s new Roman Catholic bishop, Juan Barros, whom they accuse of complicity in a notorious case of clerical sexual abuse, blocking his passage and shouting, “Barros, get out of the city!”

The scene inside the Cathedral San Mateo de Osorno was chaotic, with television images showing clashes between Barros opponents, carrying black balloons, and Barros supporters, carrying white ones. Radio reports said several protesters tried to climb onto the altar where Bishop Barros was standing. After the ceremony, he left the cathedral through a side door escorted by police special forces. Outside, about 3,000 people, including local politicians and members of Congress, held signs and chanted demands that he resign.

How does the Pope defend this bishop’s appointment in the face of such scandal and outrage?  Is there no statement, no indication of any change?  Isn’t this the People’s Pope, close to the poor, the outcast, the suffering, and the little guy?

Weeks of protests, candlelight vigils and letters to Pope Francis were not enough to persuade him to rescind his decision in January to appoint Bishop Barros to lead the Diocese of Osorno, 570 miles south of the capital, Santiago. Bishop Barros was a close associate of the Rev. Fernando Karadima, a prominent Santiago priest whom the Vatican found guilty of sexual abuse in 2011. Father Karadima, now 84, was ordered to retire to a “life of prayer and penitence.”

How many such bishops do we suffer with every day around the world and make no peep of protest? Does the FrancisChurch care what kind of depravity and oppression they foist on us in the name of ‘going forward, ever forward?’

Will this Bishop Barros be a force for good in his diocese or a destroyer of it?  Who am I to judge?

 

 

Is This Noam Chomsky Catholicism?

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Don’t let us down this time

There continues to be considerable back and forth about a disorientation in the Church, about the heretical character to the new FrancisChurch and what to do about it.  It doesn’t wane because it’s constantly prompted and rejuvenated by the Pope.  For what purpose did Pope Francis give yet another interview to his atheist friend, Eugenio Scalfari, where we now hear that the Pope is one of those who believes there is no Hell, just annihilation?  Will the Pope retract?  Will this also be placed among the Pope’s other interviews at the Vatican website?

Why do these things keep happening?  Is there some point or mission to this Pope, placed rather abruptly at the head of the Church when a faithful Pope astoundingly stepped down due to a lack of energy?  It’s fascinating how the Leftist media was in full-gushing hype mode the moment he emerged on the balcony in 2013, and they haven’t stopped.  Why do they care?  Why do atheists feel the need to comment and applaud?  Why do Communists?

Why does shrill anti-Catholic dissident Garry Wills sing praises of Pope Francis, telling us he chose the name of St. Francis because he was a ‘subversive‘ and a ‘radical’; and why in the world is Noam Chomsky so interested?

I think there are a few clues in this video of Chomsky.  In it he gives a rendition of history and unfortunately, ‘geopolitical’ perspective on the Catholic Church, Vatican II, Latin America, and Francis.  It’s becoming increasingly apparent that hard-Leftists like Chomsky, despite the fact that they are generally atheists who hate the Church, seem to have a certain understanding of Pope Francis.

To summarize: In the mind of Chomsky Vatican II was a sort of ‘liberation’ of the Gospel from elitists who captured and suppressed it since the time of Constantine.  Jesus himself was a ‘radical pacifist,’ but that true Jesus has only now been revealed.  As an immediate result of VII, Liberation Theology was born in Latin America, where armies of new Catholic clergy and religious went among the poor and the rural organizing peoples’ rebellions.  According to Chomsky, this was the natural result of the now-liberated Gospel.

Next, the U.S. right-wing anti-Communists, through vehicles like the “School of the Americas”, moved to crush these rebellions, creating “a long bloody list of religious martyrs” like Abp. Oscar Romero.  These Americans lined up with the Vatican against these new Catholics because they “didn’t want the true Gospel to be taken seriously.”

There are two things we can say about this Noam Chomsky idea of ‘c’atholicism.  It’s radical.  It’s also very Protestant, co-opting Christian purity by claiming to reach deep into history beyond a time when the Church was not persecuted.

Citing an account in the New York times, Chomsky agrees that Pope Francis did not side sufficiently with the people in what was a losing fight.  So, Catholics need to ask ourselves in light of this Latin American reality, “To what degree does the Pope align with this vision of the Church?”  If he wisely played things safe in the brutal environment back then, what does he have in mind now that he’s Pope and, America being what it now is, he rides powerful tail winds and faces much weaker opposition?

A Church for the Poor

This weekend Pope Francis corralled homeless people again to circulate among the crowds in St. Peter’s Square and distribute pocket Gospels.  Message: The neediest bring us the word of God.

This latest stunt is the thousandth iteration of the ‘poor are the center of the Gospel’ theme the Pope pounds home, but is that true?  Are the poor at the center of the Gospel?  This ‘preferential option for the poor’:  is that truly Church teaching?

I know Our Lord teaches us charity and that certainly includes love for the poor.  I know He also teaches (and St. Francis reinforces) a love for poverty, for the discipline and the holiness which can be gained through it, through unselfishness and generosity.

The problem is there is really much much more to the Gospel than that.  To elevate concern for the poor to the center is to skew and twist it, to make the Gospel only something material just like the Communists do to everything.

 

 

 

 

 

The Pope’s Un-Catholic Scolding Against The Death Penalty Demeans And Cheapens Innocent Life

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Why is it that we support clubs of people who think they can impose some unjust law upon the whole planet?  How in the world is a collection of subsidized scolders, winers, and diners supposed to impose a worldwide moratorium on anything?  Why does the Pope think they can?

Pope Francis delivered a letter this week to the International Commission against the Death Penalty

With these letters, I wish to have my greeting reach all the members of the International Commission against the Death Penalty, to the group of countries that support it, and to those who collaborate with the organism over which you preside. I wish, in addition, to express my personal gratitude, and also that of men of good will, for your commitment to a world free of the death penalty and for your contribution to the establishment of a universal moratorium of executions worldwide, with a view to abolition of capital punishment.

Plato was clear, “When there is crime in society, there is no justice,” and if you look around you’ll find plenty of crime.  You’ll also find plenty of people teaching that actual justice is unjust or useless.

L.A. Archbishop Jose Gomez rolled out the tired pseudo-Catholic appeal against the death penalty once again this week, arguing that we’re so ‘advanced’ now it’s unnecessary, as if the point of an execution was to keep the convict from hurting anyone else.  If we’re so advanced, why is there so much murder, and why don’t we understand that the point is to keep ‘others’ from killing, not the one already in jail?

The justice of an execution is secondary to the value in it.  Is it just to execute a murderer? Yes.  But the value in that justice is its effect on society.  When criminals are executed swiftly and accurately, other crimes are deterred and the innocent are protected.  It’s not a new formula.  It’s been tried, proven for ages.

Gomez also argued that we are incapable of identifying the guilty parties in the first place so mistakes abound.  Again, if we’re so advanced, why can’t we even capture and convict criminals?  Might as well throw in the towel I suppose.  It’s all pro-life you know, unless you’re an innocent victim.  In that case it’s your business to die cruelly while killers go free or get life in prison in deference to their own ‘dignity’ and in light of other advances.

Everything is pro-life now if you are a Catholic bishop.  In the ‘seamless garment’ world illegal immigration, food stamps, unemployment benefits, government healthcare, and foreign aid are all the same thing as protecting unborn children from murder.  It’s because of ‘human dignity’ and poverty causes crime, you know. (Also, hate speech causes suicides.)

After listing some of the research he has performed, Pope Francis writes:

States can kill by action when they apply the death penalty, when they take their peoples to war or when they carry out extra-judicial or summary executions. They can also kill by omission, when they do not guarantee to their peoples access to the essential means for life. “Just as the Commandment ‘do not kill’ puts a clear limit to ensure the value of human life, today we have to say ‘no to an economy of exclusion and inequality’” (Evangelii gaudium, 53).

It’s eerie and frightening to think that a man who would conflate murder with ‘access’ to essential means for life – meaning free food, shelter, clothing, and healthcare; is the world’s leading moral guide.  If redistributive programs are all pro-life, they must also be murderous to thwart!  What is murder, what is justice, and who is guilty?  Enemies of the state are guilty I suppose.

Life, especially human life, belongs to God alone. Not even the murderer loses his personal dignity and God himself makes himself its guarantor. As Saint Ambrose teaches, God did not want to punish Cain for the murder, as He wants the repentance of the sinner, not his death (Cf. Evangelium vitae, 9).

Are we now expected to believe that since God was merciful to Cain, He was never just?  What about the rest of the Bible? Is he saying that St. Ambrose also crusaded against the death penalty in the name of the Faith, or is this just co-opting a great saint on behalf of his 23rd P.C. cause?  Were they like this back then?

On some occasions it is necessary to repel proportionally an aggression underway to avoid an aggressor causing harm, and the necessity to neutralize him might entail his elimination: it is the case of legitimate defense (Cf. Evangelium vitae, 55). However, the assumptions of legitimate personal defense are not applicable to the social milieu, without risk of distortion. Because when the death penalty is applied, persons are killed not for present aggressions, but for harm caused in the past. Moreover, it is applied to persons whose capacity to harm is not present but has already been neutralized, and who find themselves deprived of their freedom.

John Paul II, cited here, confuses the death penalty with stopping a killer in his tracks before he can do harm. If his argument applies, then it completely undercuts the nature of a just society or punishment; both which result after the fact.  A little hermeneutic of continuity needs to be delivered to contemporary papal expressions.

Today the death penalty is inadmissible, no matter how serious the crime of the condemned. It is an offense against the inviolability of life and the dignity of the human person that contradicts God’s plan for man and society and His merciful justice, and it impedes fulfilling the just end of the punishments. It does no do justice to the victims, but foments vengeance.

This is blather, is it not?  There’s that new MercyJustice I keep reading about, and it’s insidious.  How much wrong will the Pope advocate in the name of God?  Justice is not vengeance.  God is not unjust. He is only ‘also’ merciful.  The Pope’s blatant scolding against the death penalty demeans and cheapens every innocent life.

When an entire society from Pope down to serial killer becomes unjust and murderous, it’s left only to God to apply justice.