Posted on 12/03/2013 12:41:03 AM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
Golly, what a shock.
I’ve been saying the same thing about the Catholic Church all along. If they had gotten their little carve-out, they’d be backers of the bill.
The Catholic Church is all about the “social justice” mentality. The recent missive from the Pope backs this up.
And the failure of the Church to do anything about “Catholics” who back abortion shows me that their so-called opposition to abortion is all talk and no walk.
There are bishops and there are bishops. For some reason, Dolan is constantly trying to suck up to the government. He obviously thinks that dictatorial socialized medicine is popular and that the Church would be perceived as a stick in the mud, retrograde, anti-Obama force if he opposed it. He’s been a real disappointment in New York., which needed somebody strong and unashamed, but got a boot licker.
Nobody objects to providing health care for the poor, and the Church was doing it long before governments got involved. However, having a complete government takeover of health care is not synonymous with providing health care to the poor, but with having government take over every aspect of the individual’s life and make moral and ethical decisions for everyone, Catholic or not. Dolan is an extremely shallow thinker and is, for unknown reasons, terrified of offending Obama.
Didn’t the JFK welfare scheme get attaboys from a lot of Catholic clergy too?
Maybe this is a bit sardonic of me, a Crazy Evangelical, to say... but please, Roman Catholic Church, if you really must egg on a government to do philanthropy, something that isn’t in the biblical mission, be sure at least that it really DOES believe in God? Because otherwise yes that government will become its own idol.
The idea of a government as a positive redemptive channel is something that churches have a hard time getting rid of. Governments do law well. But being an inevitable mix of believers and unbelievers, they can’t do gospel well.
There is no other person or persons that can set you straight with the Lord other than yourself.
Those that find need of churches, I respect and understand, whatever it takes to bring you closer to the lord, but it is not my way.
Uh, no, sorry. Protestant churches, on the whole, don’t view government as a redemptive channel. This was part and parcel of the Reformation - splitting government from churches.
The Catholic Church likes to think that they’re in a position to elect or appoint governments. That was their position for a thousand years in Europe, and they were perfectly happy to go to war to defend it.
I’m glad you have been granted the stuff to carry out a solo faith walk. There is always a part of one’s walk that is so deep that nobody else can really see it, though we try in vain to describe it. However when being away from an earnest worship congregation is not forced on you (like it was for John on Patmos) it is unwise to forsake that, or putting it positively, wise to avail yourself of it. The others become as mirrors unto you, flawed though they be, and you likewise. There is a power in communal praise that surpasses that of solo praise.
Protestant followings have been a mixed bag here. But in general the more independent the congregation, the less likely it sees government as a panacea.
I used to be Catholic, then later I “test drove” a few other faiths. I’ve come to the conclusion that faith is and should be an individual thing. Seems to me it’s more important to do right in life than to spend an hour or so once a week in an ornate building. These days it seems that organized religions are responsible for the problems in this world — not the solution.
I don't know about that, but I am reasonably sure that the LBJ "Great Society" was likely widely lauded.
A couple of examples of why they are dead wrong:
48. These general observations also apply to the role of the State in the economic sector. Economic activity, especially the activity of a market economy, cannot be conducted in an institutional, juridical or political vacuum. On the contrary, it presupposes sure guarantees of individual freedom and private property, as well as a stable currency and efficient public services. Hence the principle task of the State is to guarantee this security, so that those who work and produce can enjoy the fruits of their labours and thus feel encouraged to work efficiently and honestly. The absence of stability, together with the corruption of public officials and the spread of improper sources of growing rich and of easy profits deriving from illegal or purely speculative activities, constitutes one of the chief obstacles to development and to the economic order.
Another task of the State is that of overseeing and directing the exercise of human rights in the economic sector. However, primary responsibility in this area belongs not to the State but to individuals and to the various groups and associations which make up society. The State could not directly ensure the right to work for all its citizens unless it controlled every aspect of economic life and restricted the free initiative of individuals. This does not mean, however, that the State has no competence in this domain, as was claimed by those who argued against any rules in the economic sphere. Rather, the State has a duty to sustain business activities by creating conditions which will ensure job opportunities, by stimulating those activities where they are lacking or by supporting them in moments of crisis.
The State has the further right to intervene when particular monopolies create delays or obstacles to development. In addition to the tasks of harmonizing and guiding development, in exceptional circumstances the State can also exercise a substitute function, when social sectors or business systems are too weak or are just getting under way, and are not equal to the task at hand. Such supplementary interventions, which are justified by urgent reasons touching the common good, must be as brief as possible, so as to avoid removing permanently from society and business systems the functions which are properly theirs, and so as to avoid enlarging excessively the sphere of State intervention to the detriment of both economic and civil freedom.
In recent years the range of such intervention has vastly expanded, to the point of creating a new type of State, the so-called "Welfare State". This has happened in some countries in order to respond better to many needs and demands, by remedying forms of poverty and deprivation unworthy of the human person. However, excesses and abuses, especially in recent years, have provoked very harsh criticisms of the Welfare State, dubbed the "Social Assistance State". Malfunctions and defects in the Social Assistance State are the result of an inadequate understanding of the tasks proper to the State. Here again the principle of subsidiarity must be respected: a community of a higher order should not interfere in the internal life of a community of a lower order, depriving the latter of its functions, but rather should support it in case of need and help to coordinate its activity with the activities of the rest of society, always with a view to the common good.100
By intervening directly and depriving society of its responsibility, the Social Assistance State leads to a loss of human energies and an inordinate increase of public agencies, which are dominated more by bureaucratic ways of thinking than by concern for serving their clients, and which are accompanied by an enormous increase in spending. In fact, it would appear that needs are best understood and satisfied by people who are closest to them and who act as neighbours to those in need. It should be added that certain kinds of demands often call for a response which is not simply material but which is capable of perceiving the deeper human need. One thinks of the condition of refugees, immigrants, the elderly, the sick, and all those in circumstances which call for assistance, such as drug abusers: all these people can be helped effectively only by those who offer them genuine fraternal support, in addition to the necessary care.
John Paul II, Centesimus Annus
I have NEVER HEARD a US bishop preach on the above (I have read writings from a small minority who have talked about the above type of concept...but they are in the minority).
Or, more recently:
…The State which would provide everything, absorbing everything into itself, would ultimately become a mere bureaucracy incapable of guaranteeing the very thing which the suffering person—every person—needs: namely, loving personal concern. We do not need a State which regulates and controls everything, but a State which, in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity, generously acknowledges and supports initiatives arising from the different social forces and combines spontaneity with closeness to those in need…
Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est, 28
And there are other examples, but those are two recent examples.
Even an old radical like Dorothy Day (foundress of the "Catholic Worker")had it more right than the current crop of US Bishops:
We believe that social security legislation, now balled as a great victory for the poor and for the worker, is a great defeat for Christianity. It is an acceptance of the Idea of force and compulsion. It is an acceptance of Cain's statement, on the part of the employer. "Am I my brother's keeper?" Since the employer can never be trusted to give a family wage, nor take care of the worker as he takes care of his machine when it is idle, the state must enter in and compel help on his part. Of course, economists say that business cannot afford to act on Christian principles. It Is impractical, uneconomic. But it is generally coming to be accepted that such a degree of centralization as ours is impractical, and that there must be decentralization. In other words, business has made a mess of things, and the state has had to enter in to rescue the worker from starvation.
Of course, Pope Pius XI said that, when such a crisis came about, in unemployment, fire, flood, earthquake, etc., the state had to enter in and help.
But we in our generation have more and more come to consider the state as bountiful Uncle Sam. "Uncle Sam will take care of it all. The race question, the labor question, the unemployment question." We will all be registered and tabulated and employed or put on a dole, and shunted from clinic to birth control clinic. "What right have people who have no work to have a baby?" How many poor Catholic mothers heard that during those grim years before the war!
"More About Holy Poverty. Which Is Voluntary Poverty.", The Catholic Worker, Feb 1945
There is such a HUGE disconnect between the last 30 years or so worth of US bishops and the Holy See as to boggle the mind. Like I said, I can fully sympathize with the OP's decision, though I would never take that decision myself.
If the preacher isn’t preaching that it should be personal, then you are wise to find another preacher who does. Here’s a big ole clue: God is omnipresent, so you can’t keep Him locked in that church building.
I agree that they don’t all go in for this stuff. And it’s bad when they do. It’s either having unrealistic expectations of Caesar, or even worse, bowing down to Caesar.
Anyhow, wisdom is needed for discernment, you can’t just go for any old thing that got cranked out of the organization somewhere.
This is exactly why Dear Leader and his regime hate the Tea Party Movement as well because it a a genuine grass roots movement! I agree with you that the Church needs to concentrate on grass roots faith again. The hierarchy has grown much too full of themselves and they're all too comfortable cozying up with government officials and the rich and powerful. Dolan is NY governor Cuomo's bishop and looks the other way when Cuomo receives the Eucharist, when the man should be denied it because he's committed mortal sin by actively promoting the infanticide of abortion! Dolan knows this, but cozies up to the guy anyways! In Dolan's blog on the diocesan website, I addressed this very issue to Dolan and didn't get an answer from the Cardinal and my post was removed.
If Cuomo is abusing communion that way, taking it while not making a bona fide effort to recognize Christ (and it’s a mighty poor simulacrum of Christ that supposedly wants these abortions) then he reaps a curse. Maybe it has to happen to these Democrats so they will fall out of the picture by God’s own hand.
Perhaps. Cuomo is an ambitious, evil man and he could redeem himself by confessing his mortal sins and sincerely vow to sin no more, but he's done the exact opposite and promotes abortion while Dolan doesn't have the cajones to stand up to him and publicly excommunicate him. You can't be a Catholic and support abortion, but if you're powerful enough, the bishops will look the other way.
I really don’t need a preacher to tell me that. And if God is omnipresent, why am I spending time worshiping Him in a structure?
Well if we believe the bible warning, we know this is going to blow back on Cuomo... and while God is longsuffering, He does not put up with this kind of blasphemy forever.
Dolan is a cardinal fool. He is not The Catholic Church. Dumping the Church because of the idiocy of a particular or even many clergy is a sign that there is no religious commitment but rather a social and self interested one.
Preachers remind us of stuff... they are inspired by God too. They have a biblical role. I listen to a preacher on Sundays and sometimes Wednesdays and usually get blessed, because he sincerely gives himself to the Lord.
That is a really good description!
For myself, I feel the closest to the Lord when I'm by myself, talking to him and praying to him.
Probably the purist focus and concentration I ever attain.
I was a Catholic that had problems with the church and basically turned agnostic as a young *know it all*.
I was young and very stupid to say the least, problems with the church should not have equated to problems with the Lord.
The Lord brought me back to him, nobody else but the Lord.
Have never forgotten that fact and it kind of set my course.
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