Distant Memories Evoked of Christian Foreign Policy

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Which one is our friend?

Which one is America’s friend?

In a Breitbart report presidential candidate and Hillary scourge, Carly Fiorina, takes us down memory lane to a time when the Middle East was not a living Hell, when Islam wasn’t conquering the West, and ancient Christian enclaves were protected.  After reminding voters that Hillary’s record is mainly one of hype and failure, she makes a few helpful suggestions.

“I would do very specific things. First, instead of having a Camp David conference to talk our Arab allies into a bad deal with Iran, I would have had a Camp David conference to talk with our Arab allies about how we can support them to fight ISIS. Let me give you very specific examples. The Kurds have been asking us to arm them for three years, we still have not. The Jordanians have been asking us to provide them with bombs and materiel. We know King Abdullah of Jordan, I’ve known him for many years. He took the appropriate leadership steps when a Jordanian pilot was burned alive. He was here in this country asking us for bombs and materiel, we haven’t provided him with any of them. He’s now looking to China for that. The Egyptian president, a very brave and pious Muslim, who has said there is a cancer in the heart of Islam, has asked us to share intelligence. We are not. The Turks have asked us to help them topple Bashar al-Assad, we are not. There are a whole set of things that we’ve been asked to do by our allies who know this is their fight, and we’re not doing any of them.”

Assad is the enemy of ISIS and ISIS is the enemy of Christ, so it’s hard to see why we should bolster an Islamist tyrant like Turkey’s Erdogan by attacking Syria.  Still it’s hopeful to hear someone willing to support protectors of Christians and other historic American allies here and there for a change.

 

Leftist Euro Bishops Hold Their Own Synod. First Agenda Item: Love

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cantina

State-Funded Catholics

At the Register Edward Pentin has the somewhat frightening report of a progressive ‘shadow synod’ being driven from Germany.

A one-day study meeting — open only to a select group of individuals — took place at the Pontifical Gregorian University on Monday with the aim of urging “pastoral innovations” at the upcoming Synod of Bishops on the Family in October.

Around 50 participants, including bishops, theologians and media representatives, took part in the gathering, at the invitation of the presidents of the bishops’ conferences of Germany, Switzerland and France — Cardinal Reinhard Marx, Bishop Markus Büchel and Archbishop Georges Pontier.

One of the key topics discussed at the closed-door meeting was how the Church could better welcome those in stable same-sex unions, and reportedly “no one” opposed such unions being recognized as valid by the Church.

Participants also spoke of the need to “develop” the Church’s teaching on human sexuality and called not for a theology of the body, as famously taught by St. John Paul II, but the development of a “theology of love.”

It’s amazing how little these types of clerics actually know about love, isn’t it?  Is love sex? Is love gay sex?

I guess when you spend most of your adult life pleasing false superiors, then later on simply shuttling from one catered event to another, handled by servants and office help; your judgment can get skewed.  In Germany if you rise to cardinal, in effect you become a permanent bureaucrat at the top of a state-funded empire with few hard  demands upon your leadership or expenses.  You also have tremendous leverage.

One Swiss priest discussed the “importance of the human sex drive,” while another participant, talking about holy Communion for remarried divorcees, asked: “How can we deny it, as though it were a punishment for the people who have failed and found a new partner with whom to start a new life?”

Marco Ansaldo, a reporter for the Italian daily newspaper La Repubblica, who was present at the meeting, said the words seemed “revolutionary, uttered by clergymen.”

French Biblicist and Ratzinger Prize-winner Anne-Marie Pelletier praised the dialogue that took place between theologians and bishops as a “real sign of the times.” According to La Stampa, another Italian daily newspaper, Pelletier said the Church needs to enter into “a dynamic of mutual listening,” in which the magisterium continues to guide consciences, but she believes it can only effectively do so if it “echoes the words of the baptized.”

The meeting took the “risk of the new, in fidelity with Christ,” she claimed. The article also quoted a participant as saying the synod would be a “failure” if it simply continued to affirm what the Church has always taught.

Pentin’s revealing piece full of greasy slogans and Leftist organs continues, but it’s safe to say this isn’t the kind of thing Mass-going faithful Catholics subsidize.  Dirty churchmen such as these can only be funded with dirty money.  Why must we all now be plagued with their abuse?

 

 

Mahony-nomics

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Wise Christian Counsel for the Church of the Poor and for the Poor

Wise Christian Counsel for the Church of the Poor and for the Poor

Retired L.A. Cardinal Mahony is notorious for his dissidence, waffling, and abusive mismanagement.  With shepherds like these, why is it so surprising to find they’re also raving liberals?

From the Cardinal’s blog:

The Los Angeles City Council has voted to increase the minimum wage in the City to $15 per hour by the year 2020. Thirty years ago when I first became Archbishop of Los Angeles, I would never have thought it necessary to take such an enormous leap in low-end worker salaries.

Not any more.

There are many reasons for the hike, but two of them are really important:

1. In past years, minimum wage jobs were also relatively short-term jobs. They were meant for young people working part-time or others just entering the job market. No one expected such jobs to be long-term and permanent work. These jobs were to get a foothold in the work field, and then to move on to better middle class jobs.

Translation: In the Reagan 80’s the country was full of promise and opportunity.  In liberal Obamaland, McDonald’s is the only place to get a job, so pile on more statist oppression!

2. The number of next level, middle class, jobs across southern California have all but disappeared. Recall after the Second World War how our area became a great leader in aerospace and defense companies. Hundreds of thousands of people were employed in these good paying, middle class jobs over the years. But gradually, because of many factors, those companies and those jobs began to disappear.

The result? People desperate to provide for their families are increasingly stuck in low-paying jobs, most paying at or below minimum wage. This is particularly true for our immigrant brothers and sisters. There are no “better jobs” to move on to.

And it’s not just the wages. Minimum wage jobs almost never offer benefits such as health care, retirement plans, or other amenities from previous generations. Many companies limit the hours for such employees in order to avoid having to pay for medical insurance. Shifting schedules makes it difficult for such workers to get to other low-wage jobs, or to take some classes.

Another worrying result is the rapid expansion of low-income families, and increasing wealth of high-income families, and the narrowing group in the middle.

The real issue is not just about minimum wage jobs. Rather, our goal must be to look for ways to narrow this growing gap between people at the top and those at the bottom.

Well Cardinal that will work then, if by lowering the gap you mean creating more and more poor.  The rich will keep getting richer but the middle class will certainly grow worse, and all those entry level McDonald’s employees won’t get high wages or benefits.  When the McDouble costs seven bucks in L.A. they’ll all just get fired.

Thank you, my shepherd!

The gap is not only economic. In so many places across the country, it is also a racial divide. Studies show that the minority communities of our country consistently remain on the lower rung of the economic ladder. Both divides need our focused attention, and I hope that the 2016 Presidential candidates will engage our country in this discussion–and that they be required to lay out concrete plans to ease the divide and to provide greater economic opportunity for everyone.

Just a few areas might help move us in the right direction. Home ownership has always been a past measure of success for our families. We need to make home ownership more readily available to all of our people–through new qualification parameters, lower down payments, and other means that do not jeopardize either the families or the economy.

Free houses, risky mortgages, high debt and unrealistic payments, social engineering, bubbles, bailouts, and bankruptcies: the wages of fraud and state compulsion, and precursor to the Obama-era economy.  What does any of this have to do with the Faith?

Most lower paying jobs offer no pension plan opportunities. Even if companies offered a very simple plan these families could begin acquiring some equity for the future.

Why is it these ‘lovers of the poor’ only know how to reach into someone else’s pockets and tell them what to do with their money, their business, and the people who they employ?  That’s not charity. It’s tyranny.

If you don’t like the way McDonald’s employees live, teach them to have lots of children, get together with their friends and family, buy a farm or business, work and take care of each other like Christians.  Give them churches so they can have the graces and the communities they need.  What a crazy paleolithic pre-Vatican II idea.

Social Security could raise the cap on payroll taxes so that the more affluent can contribute their fair share into the plan which will benefit them.

Tax the rich!….and raise everyone else’s while you’re at it.

The City of Los Angeles plan will go a long way to help our poorer families. But all of the incorporated cities in Los Angeles County need to match this new increase in the minimum wage for it to have its full effect. If a company in Los Angeles City just moves a few miles to a small city with a lower minimum wage, then everyone loses.

The widening gap between those at the higher end of our economy and those at the lower end of our economy must return to its former, historic narrow range.

Cardinal Mahony, men like you have no idea how to make things that like happen.