Is Corpus Christi Just Some Poverty Thing?

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Corpus Christi?

Corpus Christi?

La Stampa reports on last week’s Angelus address given by Pope Francis where he continued to incessantly impute some supra-doctrine about the poor.

Pope Francis has poignantly said that Christians have no right to refuse help to those who need it, saying that to partake in the commemoration of Christ’s death is to see him in the poor and suffering and to welcome them and offer them help.

First of all the Pope is not poignant.  Secondly, the Eucharist is not a commemoration of Christ’s death.  It is Christ himself.  At Mass it is being present at His own sacrifice.  Third, and most importantly, the Blessed Sacrament is not about seeing Christ in the poor and suffering, welcoming them, or offering them help.  That is something else entirely.

Speaking during his weekly Angelus address in St. Peter’s Square Sunday, the pope reflected on the meaning of the Catholic feast day celebrated this week, that of The Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ.

Known commonly by its Latin name of Corpus Christi, the feast commemorates Christ’s actions at the Last Supper, when he is said to have instituted the Eucharist by first holding a piece of bread and saying: “Take this, this is my body.”

Francis applied wide ranging social consequences to that action on Friday, saying those who participate in the Eucharist enter into a communion that requires them to give care for all.

“When we take and eat this bread, we become associated with the life of Jesus, we enter into communion with Him,” said the pontiff. “We commit ourselves to realize the communion between us, to transform our life into a gift, overall to the most poor.”

“Today’s feast evokes this integral message and pushes us to welcome the intimate invitation to conversion and to service, to love and to forgive,” the pope continued. “It stimulates us to become, with our lives, imitators of that which we celebrate in the liturgy.”

“The Christ who feeds us in the consecrated species of bread and wine is the same that we meet in daily occurrences,” said Francis. “It is the poor person who pulls our hand, it is the suffering person that implores our help, it is the brother that asks our availability and waits for our welcome.”

This kind of 1970’s propaganda is quite the blast from the past.  Why is it that liberals always go back to their tired old playbook?  Who decided that we would now be re-treated to the effeminate, suffocating nightmare that was hippie Catholicism?

When we receive Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament we do not commit ourselves to transform our life into a gift overall to the most poor.  Jesus in the Eucharist is not the people we meet in daily occurrences.  He is not the one who pulls our hand, implores our help or waits for our welcome.  He is Jesus.

Jesus tells us when we help the least of His brothers, we do it for Him, because he loves them so much.  He appreciates our love to them and expects it, but they are not actually Him.  If they are in states of grace Jesus lives within them, but nevertheless Jesus is Jesus and people are people, even in states of grace.

Why must the Pope twist and minimize the Blessed Sacrament, who is God Himself, by turning it all into one big worldly poverty program?  Can’t he just defend the faith and teach it?  Isn’t that worth doing on it’s own?

If you’re like many people you spend most of your time helping others.  But is that our faith?  Isn’t it so much more?

 

 

It’s Good They Hold USCCB Meetings in Hotels

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Not so much about Jesus or souls

Not so much about Jesus or souls

St. Louis Public Radio has a report on the recent U.S. Bishops’ Meeting entitled, “Earthly and heavenly concerns dominate meeting of U.S. Catholic bishops in St. Louis.”

My only question is, What’s so heavenly about it?

The formal 2015 spring General Assembly of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops begins its hard work in committees, much like Congress does. On Monday at the Hyatt Regency downtown, some three dozen committees and sub-committees began candid discussions after hearing the views and research of experts and theologians. No sessions are open to the public; the Wednesday day-long and Thursday morning sessions will be open to news reporters.

Why candid discussions? Why not just hedge and obfuscate?  Gleaning through the report I found the following agenda topics:

  • Plans for Pope Francis’ visit to his city in September for the long-planned World Meeting of Families
  • The Synod on the Family
  • How botanical research gardens can work with development agencies
  • Partnerships that would educate people in the Third World about heating alternatives to the traditional, disastrous cutting and burning of their forests
  • Awakening nations to the devastating toll poverty-powered immigration has on children and family life
  • Plans to make the infamous “Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship” voter guide much more liberal and FrancisChurch-like
  • Sex abuse reporting
  • New translation of the Liturgy of the Hours
  • Chinese lanterns

Only two of these bulleted items touch upon prayer, faith or sacraments.  These are the two that are in the most peril.  Wait ’till we see what happens to that voter guide!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Church Up To No Good at the UN

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Firmly placed inside a den of thieves

Firmly placed within a den of thieves

That Vatican envoy to the UN, Archbishop Silvano Tomasi has repeated a mantra which has become so common in the Church today that you never read a whiff of criticism about it, despite the fact that it’s a hysterical Marxist rant.

The Google translation reveals:

Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Vatican’s permanent representative to the UN in Geneva, insisted during the annual International Labour Conference to better protect workers. At the same time he praised SMEs. “In 2014 was 1% of the world 48% of the wealth in the world,” said Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, who believes that it has become practically impossible to unemployment worldwide still below the level before the financial crisis of 2008 back penetrate. According to Tomasi we can no longer put our trust in the laws of the market to solve problems. “Combating global poverty requires a special effort and forces of governments, workers, labor organizations, civil society and all the private partners.” That should contribute according to Archbishop Tomasi to better protection of workers against unemployment and illness. Tomasi still urged for support to SMEs because they “are crucial to the economic recovery.”

What is the ‘law of the market’ anyway?  Isn’t it just one man paying his own dollar to someone offering a dollar’s worth of something in return?  If that’s a ‘law’ then whose law is it?

Among that group of wonderful contributors to this new non-market solution I’ve noticed only one actually pays anything.  Those are the ‘private partners.’  These are the business leaders who hope to be first in line to back-stab their competitors in the hopes they’ll receive some sort of government reward or relief.  Every other party to the good archbishop’s poverty saving effort is a payee, as is the Church, unfortunately.

A pair of new prescription glasses costs hundreds of dollars after you pay the monthly insurance premiums.  Why?  They’re not iPhones.  It’s because the process is so tied up with medical, insurance, and workplace regulatory schemes that we have no choice but to pay that.

Prescription glasses are actually worth about thirty dollars, and there are plenty of people who would be happy and willing to provide them at that price, but they aren’t permitted.  There are just so many do-gooders that target you evil market people and  your dollars for love of the poor, that we must pay, pay, and pay.

I’ve read plenty of Jesus’ parables about kings, and farmers, and tax collectors; about fishermen, and shepherds.  I’ve never read anything against property or in praise of scams.

What did Archbishop Tomasi do for lunch today?