Cardinal Kasper catholicism at Georgetown

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Porous and non-institutional

Porous and non-institutional

They love Cardinal Kasper in American faux-catholic academia.  He was unloading at Georgetown recently.  The go-to source for all things Francis, Jesuit AmericaMag, has the report.

Cardinal Walter Kasper offered the highlight speech of this Memorial Day weekend’s Georgetown University/Marymount University conference marking the 50th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council. He spoke Saturday morning at Washington’s National Cathedral, the event’s third sponsor and chief ecumenical partner. 

The President Emeritus of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity offered new hope for the unity of Christians in the 21st century. Quoting Isaiah 43, “Behold, I do something new,” the cardinal explained, traditional ecumenism is being transformed by the rise of the Evangelical and Pentecostal churches. Compared to the Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant churches, these churches are mostly non-dogmatic and less institutionalized expressions of the Gospel. 

Is it bad to have something be an institution?  Doesn’t that just mean it’s both old and effective?  Are we all Rousseauian radicals and romanticists now?  Must everything be reduced to nothing before these men are satisfied?

Yes.  It must.

These younger, growing churches are more emotional in their worship styles and more voluntarist in their organization. Their members don’t so much belong to a church, as members of the older churches do, but choose their churches. In that respect they represent a contemporary social development in which religious identities are more transitory and church boundaries more porous. 

All churches must face that porosity as a sign of the times, Kasper suggested; and the older churches must examine themselves as to what they can learn from the younger Evangelical and Pentecostal ones. The growing importance of Evangelicals and Pentecostals, he suggested, will re-shape and renew 21st century ecumenism.

This is Christian leadership?  The emotions of the times drive the Church.  The Church doesn’t drive the times…unless something really bad happens.  Then it’s the Church’s fault.  Right, Diarmuid?

Can the doctrine. Shelve the rubrics. Make everything voluntary. Be porous.

The rise of the Evangelicals and Pentecostals, the cardinal said, constitutes a fourth stage in the history of the churches. The first was the divergence of the Oriental  churches from the Mediterranean churches (Greek and Latin) after the Councils of Nicea and Chalcedon. These ancient churches of the Middle East, which lay beyond the bounds of the Roman Empire, never accepted the doctrines of the great councils, and so are sometimes called Non-Chalcedonian.

The second phase was the break of the Orthodox East from the Latin West in the Great Schism in 1054. The third was the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century, which split Western Christianity into Protestant and Catholic branches.

Look to the history of schism and heresy for guidance.  There’s a magisterium Cardinal Kasper can obey.

Obama: Don’t Buy That Cynical “The Poor You Will Always Have With You” BS!

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Going for walks, discussing policy, or sometimes just values

Going for walks, discussing policy, or sometimes just values

Obama’s grasp of Biblical quotes is about what you might expect from a man who’s spent most Sundays golfing for twenty years.

Obama scorned Christians at the Catholic-Evangelical Leadership Summit on Tuesday, twisting the words of Jesus Christ into an insult against the Savior of the believers he was addressing.

“It’s important for us to guard against cynicism and not buy the idea that the poor will always be with us and there’s nothing we can do,” Obama said. Lest leftists and liberal Christians say his comment was “taken out of context,” but here are his full remarks:

“One of the things I’m always concerned about is cynicism,” Obama said. “My chief of staff, Denis McDonough, we take walks around the South Lawn, usually when the weather is good. And a lot of it is policy talk, sometimes it’s just talk about values. And one of our favorite sayings is our job is to guard against cynicism, particularly in this town. And I think it’s important for us to guard against cynicism and not buy the idea that the poor will always be with us and there’s nothing we can do, because there’s a lot we can do. The question is, do we have the political will, the communal will to do something about it.”

Does Obama take walks around the south lawn with his chief of staff when the weather is bad, in order to discuss policy or sometimes just values?  Can’t they even bother to pay an adult writer for these cheesy lies?  Aren’t the American people even worth a half-hearted appearance of sincerity?

Obama’s quotes Matthew 26:11 in a manner that’s utterly contrary to the verse’s meaning.

6 Now when Jesus was in Bethany, in the house of Simon the leper,

7 There came unto him a woman having an alabaster box of very precious ointment, and poured it on his head, as he sat at meat.

8 But when his disciples saw it, they had indignation, saying, To what purpose is this waste?

9 For this ointment might have been sold for much, and given to the poor.

10 When Jesus understood it, he said unto them, Why trouble ye the woman? for she hath wrought a good work upon me.

11 For ye have the poor always with you; but me ye have not always.

12 For in that she hath poured this ointment on my body, she did it for my burial.

13 Verily I say unto you, Wheresoever this gospel shall be preached in the whole world, there shall also this, that this woman hath done, be told for a memorial of her.

Far from heaving a resigned sigh, Jesus is reminding the disciples that poverty, like death or the pain of childbirth, are constants in this fallen world that can be attended to but never wiped out. The Complete Commentaries of minister Matthew Henry affirms this:

“Observe his reason; You have the poor always with you,” Henry writes. “Note, 1. There are some opportunities of doing and getting good which are constant, and which we must give constant attendance to the improvement of. Bibles we have always with us, sabbaths always with us, and so the poor, we have always with us. Note, Those who have a heart to do good, never need complain for want of opportunity. The poor never ceased even out of the land of Israel, Deu. 15:11.” [For the poor shall never cease out of the land: therefore I command thee, saying, Thou shalt open thine hand wide unto thy brother, to thy poor, and to thy needy, in thy land.]

Twisting the words of the Gospel to push unjust, disastrous government programs robbing Peter to pay Paul? For shame.

Well put.  Someone tell Pope Francis and his Yoda.