THIS IS ABOUT SATAN VS GOD
ALL Christian groups have either become complicit in such forces or are in the process of becoming compromised
or are at risk for becoming so compromised.
None of us have any reason to be the least bit smug about such forces and matters.
It's merely the case that the Vatican examples given in Pope Paul VI th's encyclical is a pretty early and glaring set of cues.
END TIMES PING LIST PING FOR “A” LEVEL LIST.
Sounds like a plan.
Great job Quix! Bravo!
Marxism ! No Lovingkindness of Yah'shua. Wow !
shalom b'SHEM Yah'shua HaMashiach
Well, Quix, just posting something a bit off-topic here... :-)
You were saying — “ I’ll add the 2nd half later or tomorrow, Lord willing and the Creek Indians don’t rise up.”
—
Ummm..., I’m right next door to the Creek Indian Nation..., and I haven’t seen any signs of uprising... LOL... I think you’re safe...
Are you in Oklahoma now?
From a Roman Catholic perspective:
There are many social justice encyclicals. They build on one another. Looking at this one in isolation is useful, but not as useful as putting it in the context of all of the social justice encyclicals. To that end, I recommend you look at Centessimus Annus which was the most recent social justice encyclical (circa 1990 Pope JPII). This document embraces capitalism and condemns socialism more than any other previous encyclical. It is a good read.
Benedict will have another encyclical on social justice out in the next few months. This will then become the critical one to review.
It's late, so I won't be able to do your post justice, but here are a couple of things from the beginning. I hope to be able to delve into it after a few hours of shut-eye.
You quoted this passage:
. . . But since the Church does dwell among men, she has the duty "of scrutinizing the signs of the times and of interpreting them in the light of the Gospel." (14) Sharing the noblest aspirations of men and suffering when she sees these aspirations not satisfied, she wishes to help them attain their full realization. So she offers man her distinctive contribution: a global perspective on man and human realities.
And then you had the following comment: A couple of things stand out to me in this paragraph. “. . . signs of the times.” That’s a rather Pentecostal phrase! LOL. I wonder what his thinking was as he chose that phrase. Or does it mean something different in Latin than it does to Pentecostals in English?
First of all, Catholics, too believe in the End Times. We probably don't have the same interpretation as Pentacostals, but, as I've said before, we know that the persecution is coming...
Secondly, you notice the (14) in the quote? That corresponds to footnote 14. As a hint, whenever you read Catholic doctrinal documents, it is imperative that you know what was contained in the footnote.
In this case, it corresponded to a Pastoral Constitution issued by the Second Vatican Council, known as Gaudium et Spes. You can't read this document if you are not familiar with the quote where it was taken:
Inspired by no earthly ambition, the Church seeks but a solitary goal: to carry forward the work of Christ under the lead of the befriending Spirit. And Christ entered this world to give witness to the truth, to rescue and not to sit in judgment, to serve and not to be served.(2)
INTRODUCTORY STATEMENT THE SITUATION OF MEN IN THE MODERN WORLD
4. To carry out such a task, the Church has always had the duty of scrutinizing the signs of the times and of interpreting them in the light of the Gospel. Thus, in language intelligible to each generation, she can respond to the perennial questions which men ask about this present life and the life to come, and about the relationship of the one to the other. We must therefore recognize and understand the world in which we live, its explanations, its longings, and its often dramatic characteristics. Some of the main features of the modern world can be sketched as follows.
Today, the human race is involved in a new stage of history. Profound and rapid changes are spreading by degrees around the whole world. Triggered by the intelligence and creative energies of man, these changes recoil upon him, upon his decisions and desires, both individual and collective, and upon his manner of thinking and acting with respect to things and to people. Hence we can already speak of a true cultural and social transformation, one which has repercussions on man's religious life as well.
As happens in any crisis of growth, this transformation has brought serious difficulties in its wake. Thus while man extends his power in every direction, he does not always succeed in subjecting it to his own welfare. Striving to probe more profoundly into the deeper recesses of his own mind, he frequently appears more unsure of himself. Gradually and more precisely he lays bare the laws of society, only to be paralyzed by uncertainty about the direction to give it.
Never has the human race enjoyed such an abundance of wealth, resources and economic power, and yet a huge proportion of the worlds citizens are still tormented by hunger and poverty, while countless numbers suffer from total illiteracy. Never before has man had so keen an understanding of freedom, yet at the same time new forms of social and psychological slavery make their appearance. Although the world of today has a very vivid awareness of its unity and of how one man depends on another in needful solidarity, it is most grievously turn into opposing camps by conflicting forces. For political, social, economic, racial and ideological disputes still continue bitterly, and with them the peril of a war which would reduce everything to ashes. True, there is a growing exchange of ideas, but the very words by which key concepts are expressed take on quite different meanings in diverse ideological systems. Finally, man painstakingly searches for a better world, without a corresponding spiritual advancement.
Influenced by such a variety of complexities, many of our contemporaries are kept from accurately identifying permanent values and adjusting them properly to fresh discoveries. As a result, buffeted between hope and anxiety and pressing one another with questions about the present course of events, they are burdened down with uneasiness. This same course of events leads men to look for answers; indeed, it forces them to do so
And, yes, it should be patently obvious that the expression "signs of the times" refers to Matthew 16:3 (And in the morning, 'It will be stormy today, for the sky is red and threatening.' You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times.)
Now the remainder of the verbiage in the paragraph of Populorum Progressio that you cited should probably be read in light of the above quote.
You then go to talk about Humanism. One thing that we Americans do instinctively these days in insert (in parentheses) the word "secular" in front of that. That's not how the word is ever used in a Vatican document, unless it explicitly says "atheistic" or "secular" humanism.
The actual definition of "humanism" is, The historical revival of Classical culture, notably during the Renaissance circa 16th century; An ethical system that centers on humans and their values, needs, interests, abilities, dignity and freedom; especially used for a secular one, as an alterative to religious values; Humanitariasm.
So the big thing you should be thinking when you read "humanism" in a Vatican document is the dignity of human life.
Let me give you a couple of quotes from the Catechism that sort of highlight this:
I'll try to tackle this some more in the morning, but wanted to give you some feedback initially.
And let me stress that I am truly impressed that you actually took the time to go to this document.
Quix,
I hope you’ll understand that I write this as a Catholic trying to acknowledge shortcomings of an historically important person, not to disparage him.
If ever there was a time when a pope needed more than holiness, but incredible intellectual talents, it was the time immediately following Vatican II. For whatever His purposes were, we got Pope Paul VI, instead. He was not a heretic, but seemed oblivious to the theat of all stripes of heretics. Like popes before him, he wrote in a style to establish truths for 1000 years. Unfortunately, the world was changing very rapidly, and his present-day audience needed guidance they did not receive.
>> In English, to Pentecostals it equals “END TIMES” and the Biblical signs thereof. I’d think, HOPE, that the Vatican translators would KNOW that. If they didn’t and it slipped through, then their scholarship is not very impressive. <<
Pope Paul VI is writing to a Catholic audience, who will read such phases with a Catholic understanding.
>> Hmmm... A new humanism. <<
Humanism, in the Catholic tradition, does not mean what secualr humanists use it to mean, meaning humans as opposed to God. We use it to refer to humanity as opposed to materialism.
>> [about private property ]
The weight of papal encyclicals in opposition to socialism is staggering, arguing precisely your points. However, this encylical was historically problemmatic. Offered to provide a little context and balance to other encyclicals which focused on the inalienable right to the rewards of one’s own labor, this did get seen as a shift towards socialism. What Paul VI did not foresee was that, in the context of the reforms following of Vatican II, the media would present this not as providing marginal qualification for the Church’s support of private ownership, but as a reversal of it. His following statements were ignored.
>> Population growth
This is another classic case of Paul being tone deaf to the fact that his audience is already confused by the post-Vatican reforms and drastic social upheaval. He worte that birth control was immoral, and the world exploded with rage at him, complaining that the Catholic Church was dooming the entire world to poverty and environmental devestation. Many Protestant authors insisted the real intent was to out-breed the rest of Christiandom. Here, Paul VI is only trying to correct the notion that Catholics are morally bound to be perpetually bearing kids. Abstinence can be virtuous. And so long as one is open to God giving them a child, family planning techniques which reduced birth rates are also permitted.
With respect to "humanism":
I think this is a case where popular usage has drowned out a more precise technical usage. The popular usage I mean includes "secular humanism" or even "atheistic humanism."
Largely because of cruddy edumication, people aren't aware of the use of "humanism" to describe a kind of thinking that could be said to have begun to blossom around the 12th or 13th centuries and in response to some very inhumane sorts of thinking.
I do not mean by what follows to be defining humanism or even to be hitting its high points.
But suppose you have a bunch of people who think that humans are intrinsically evil and the such things are eating and sexual intercourse can never be less than so dreadfully evil that to be "perfect" one should abstain from both.
Or suppose you have a religion threatening Catholic Christendom from the east, the south, and the west. And suppose it teaches that the righteousness of God is so unrelated to our perception of righteousness, that our minds are so desperately far from any perception of the True and the Just, that God could command that one give oneself up to disobedience of him and to the consequent damnation, and that one would have a duty to obey that command, because God willed it. And suppose that both these groups taught that the idea of the Incarnation of God in human flesh was not only blasphemous but preposterous.
One response to those lines of thought would be to assert that, as part of Creation, man was good ab initio, and the by the Incarnation and the work of Christ generally man and all of creation had a hope of a future righteousness, goodness, and even holiness in which they (or some of them) participated on a very small and derivative scale right now.
And the response might also affirm that there was a real, valid, informative, and useful connection between the mental functioning of humans and the Truth of God, so that even the gentiles have SOME clue about what truly is beautiful, just, and good.
All these contentions work toward asserting a fundamental as well as eschatological dignity to mankind. Therefore, they are called "humanistic," although they hang on not only the law and the prophets, but also on the revelation of God in Christ, and in His Most Holy Word.
-- Man has a dignity (which he has mostly squandered) because God made him to have it. --
Now I will "work a problem" on the basis of Christian humanism:
Some years ago I drove into Charlottesville. A few minutes after I entered the bustling metropolis, the car in front of me swerved, and then continued on its way. This caused a little adrenaline dump and I was very alert, which is good, because a split second later I looked to my right and saw a toddler in nothing but pampers walking in the middle of a side street.
The question is what should I do? What does that toddler "deserve" and why?
What would you think of me if I said I was busy and went about my business. Or maybe I stopped at a pay phone (I didn't have a cell phone in those days.) Or maybe I called 911 from my cell -- as I could have done if this had happened less than a decade ago.
And if the toddler had been run down, well hey, I called 911, didn't I? Wasn't that above and beyond? It wasn't MY kid, after all ...
I would say that, unlike a squirrel or chipmunk, the right thing for me to do was to pull over and get that kid out of the street. And it was right because that kid, being made in the image of God, was due a kind of reverence, a kind of honor, a kind of care that was of a higher level and more demanding of me than what a chipmunk's "due" would be.
But if you answer that I am a sinful SOB and worse if I don't pick up that kid and get him off the street, then we have ethical problems and political problems that make my head spin.
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Please ping me to note-worthy Pro-Life or Catholic threads, or other threads of interest.
Obama Says A Baby Is A Punishment
Obama: “If they make a mistake, I don’t want them punished with a baby.”
The general principle is: It's not the light's fault that the devil disguises himself as an angel of light. Further, the devil's doing so does not mean we should embrace darkness.
Most of my comments are like what I wrote about humanism. It's not humanism's fault that atheists and secularists try to wrench a system of thought out of its base of Divinely bestowed human dignity. THEY try to build dignity on its self, as though they were trying to use an attic as a foundation. We, by contrast, think that without God's initial act and his redemption man is a corrupt horror. As "lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds," so fallen man and his corrupted dignity are dreadful and vile.
That's to set the tone and style of my disagreement. And here's a bit of pedantry. I think one can plausibly contend that by the time of our Lord's ministry, it was widely thought in Jewish circles that money given to the poor was, kinda sorta like, money lent to God. Jesus says to the rich young man, sell all you have, give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven, and come and follow me.
But back to vocabulary and context. Populorum Progressio is not written in a vacuum. From Rerum Novarum to Centessimus Annus popes are clear and firm in their repudiation of socialism. One of the reasons the so-called "Liberation Theology" can be clearly seen by an obedient Catholic to be wrong is precisely that it accentuates those texts which might suggest socialism while eliminating those which repudiate it.
In other news:
Of course, the phrase "the signs of the times" is used by our Lord, and while it vibrates with eschatological overtones, it is not, to us feelthy papists, restricted to "end times" in its meaning and use.
We had "global" before the baddies started using and abusing it. It's implicit in "catholic".
During WWII there was a soldier in our army whose name was Adolf Hitler. When asked if he'd thought of changing his name, he said, "Let him change his name!" That's the way I want to respond. That media and academic cultures largely ignore, except to disparage, Catholic discourse is no reason for us to change our vocabulary every five minutes. Those who want to imagine us as tangled in nefarious and intricate schemes of wold domination would only take our changing lingo as a sign of deviousness.
So. Everyone with more than enough has a duty to consider his neighbor. And certainly one aspect of the parable of the good Samaritan is that we are to MAKE neighbors by showing mercy. This appears to be Divine Law.
To some extent governments instituted by men have a proper role in penalizing excessive stinginess and in encouraging the showing of mercy. (In living memory there was no limit on the amount of charitable giving one could deduct from income before computing tax! Now there is a limit because the government is busily imitating Nebuchadnezzar.)
Further, it is not only Divine Law but raw political observation that if I have a fruitful orchard, be its walls never so high, and all around me is famine, I cannot as a Christian claim absolute title to the fruit; AND, no doubt, I would not be able to enforce such title if I had it.
A benefit of a classical edumication is one tends to take a longer view. To me, the 18th century is "recent" even "modern". And with that view, it was all too recent that some scoundrel capitalists thought nothing of paying laborers less than what would keep them alive, because there was a surplus of laborers. That memory leads to talk about the need for some mechanisms of oversight. All government is the wrath of God on human sinfulness. "Minimum Wage" laws and abusive trade unions are the wrath of God on miserly capitalists. They are no more virtuous than the Assyrians and the Babylonians, but they are what God raises up to punish the sinfulness of his people.
Once you have governments, you will have abuses. I don't think Paul VI or any other pope was or is so naive as to think otherwise.
So the pope communicated with UNESCO. So what? While we probably won't convert 'em by talking to 'em, we certainly won't convert them if we don't talk to them. If UNESCO has some money which is supposedly to be used for education, I'd expect someone from the Vatican to be making suggestions about where and how to spend it. We didn't endorse the pagan Clovis of the Franks, we converted him. And that involved being cordial.
So, in general, I think you are attributing to us More confidence in secular government, whether national or international, than we have. I don't think Paul VI, who took so much abuse for Humanae Vitae, can by any stretch of the imagination be seen to be skating on the edge of his own orthodoxy in the words on population. And it is true that while general "overpopulation" is not the problem the doomsayers think it to be, there are a LOT of families a round the world which would do well to use reason before they have sexual intercourse. We do not agree with the "quiverful" teaching. There is a role for family planning, but as Paul clearly says in the passage you quote, marriage and procreation are inalienable rights. (more follows.)
Hi Quix,
Please remember that this was from ‘67 in the meantime a lot of the terms used have come to mean something else and have been co-opted by all sorts of weird and wonderful groups. For a better reading one would need to understand how the terms were commonly used and viewed in the day. I was only 7 at the time so not much hope of me doing that!
Cheers
Mel
Ping.