Posted on 08/16/2012 7:12:26 AM PDT by Brian Kopp DPM
Wow! Bp Morlino is doing as well, if not better, than Dardinal Dolan did in Milwaukee when he was Apb. He (singlehandedly with the Grace of God) turned a Seminary that was almost closed under FORMER Bp Weakland into a priest machine turning out half a dozen to a dozen new priests per year.
“almost 90 faculty members at the Jesuit institution publicly denounced his interpretation of Church doctrine.”
I’m sorry, but Jesuits are not the greatest authority on Church doctrine. I say this as someone who has been on over 30 Jesuit retreats. The Spiritual Exercises are wonderful, but the theology is sometimes not completely in accord with Church teaching.
Thanks for posting, and prayers for the Bishop!
Around the last point, much of today's debate about how to "help" the poor is centered. From the beginning, the oppressed who came to America understood that their path out of poverty lay in their freedom to pursue happiness (dreams, aspirations, and work), unhampered by a set of imperfect people in government trying to order their lives.
The American "People's" Declaration of Independence and Constitution provided a framework for individual freedom, opportunity, and personal achievement, under a system of laws to protect themselves from coercive power and theft of their earnings by elected representatives in government. Under that idea, actions which would be illegal and punishable for individuals to do to each other, would be prohibited for their government to do to them.
Now, by using commonly friendly words like "shared prosperity" to describe a government policy of force and coercion, the Obama Administration is pursuing another ideology in order to get votes, a tactic which is despicable on its face. Then, again, isn't that descriptive of how all totalitarian regimes initially present themselves in order to gain power?
In the course of his research for "Solzhenitsyn: A Soul in Exile" (Harper Collins), Joseph Pearch traveled to Moscow to interview the writer. The excerpt below is from that interview:
Solzhenitsyn: "In different places over the years I have had to prove that socialism, which to many western thinkers is a sort of kingdom of justice, was in fact full of coercion, of bureaucratic greed and corruption and avarice, and consistent within itself that socialism cannot be implemented without the aid of coercion. Communist propaganda would sometimes include statements such as "we include almost all the commandments of the Gospel in our ideology". The difference is that the Gospel asks all this to be achieved through love, through self-limitation, but socialism only uses coercion." Solzhenitsyn
Even the current President, at the National Prayer Breakfast this year, attempted to tie his policy of forced "sharing" to Jesus's appeal for voluntary charity.
Coercive "taking" power, when wielded against the citizenry by either the government alone (taxing), or in combination with another power (unions), is destructive of freedom and prosperity.
While Europe struggled with oppressive government intervention, the genius Founders of America recognized enduring truths about human nature, the human tendency to abuse power, and the possibilities of liberty for individuals. Richard Frothingham's 1872 "History of the Rise of the Republic of the United States," Page 14, contained the following footnote item on the condition of citizens of France:
"Footnote 1. M. de Champagny (Dublin Review, April, 1868) says of France, 'We were and are unable to go from Paris to Neuilly; or dine more than twenty together; or have in our portmanteau three copies of the same tract; or lend a book to a friend: or put a patch of mortar on our own house, if it stands in the street; or kill a partridge; or plant a tree near the road-side; or take coal out of our own land: or teach three or four children to read, . .. without permission from the civil government.'"
Clearly the government of France at that 1868 date laid an oppressive regulatory and tax burden on citizens, robbing them of their Creator-endowed liberty and enjoyment thereof. Frothingham observed that such coercive power constituted "a noble form robbed of its lifegiving spirit."
Thomas Jefferson warned Americans:
"To preserve [the] independence [of the people,] we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debts as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds, as the people of England are, our people, like them, must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses, and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live, as they now do, on oatmeal and potatoes, have no time to think, no means of calling the mismanagers to account, but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers." --Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, 1816. ME 15:39
Frothingham's theme, throughout his tracing of the ideas which gave "rise" to the American Republic was that it is what he called "the Christian idea of man." His 1872 history is recommended reading for all who wish to pursue a written history which preceded the so-called "progressives'" revisionist versions of the American founding.
Isn’t it amazing that lefties, who are SO big on claiming separation of church and state, are SO interested in Ryan’s beliefs and church teaching.
Alinsky said, “Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.”
Of course, the implication is that they don’t have to live up to any standard.
Pelosi: makes up her own beliefs and claims to be a Catholic.
But people like her demand Ryan follow church teaching, IF AND ONLY IF they agree with it. (They certainly DON’T want Ryan to follow church teaching on abortion.) In addition, they lie about some of the teachings and want Ryan to follow the lies!
Someone should rent a billboard near Georgetown University with this quote on it.
Isn’t promoting polytheism against the first and second commandments, and therefore intrinsically evil? If so, how can any good Catholic support a Mormon for President, who as a missionary promoted a false Christ and a false Gospel, and as a temple Mormon, unrepentantly regards himself as an embryonic god?
“Nor may a conscience well-formed by reason or the Catholic faith ever choose to vote for someone who clearly, consistently, persistently promotes that which is intrinsically evil.”
"Thus, it is not up to me or any bishop or priest to approve of Congressman Ryan’s specific budget prescription to address the best means we spoke of. Where intrinsic evils are not involved, specific policy choices and political strategies are the province of Catholic lay mission. But, as I’ve said,
Does the “Catholic” demographic prefer the Biden or the Ryan version of Catholicism?
Recently attended Mass at a different parish than the one I belong to and heard this: “Let us pray for the souls of the greedy who do not want to share” (in reference to Obamacare, a socialist’s dream).
We’re supposed to vote on principle, which trumps party or ideology, but unfortunately not only are many Catholics (including some priests and bishops, apparently) unfamiliar with or indifferent to the principle of subsidiarity, but they are also unaware of the intrinsic evil of socialism (an ideology clearly in direct contradiction to the principal of subsidiarity).
As a result, the Democrat party has successfully advanced socialism within the Catholic demographic by becoming synonymous in the minds of many with temporal charity (“championship of the poor”), and has successfully employed a divide and conquer strategy within the Church by demonizing conservative Catholics (as well as conservative Christians of all traditions and denominations) as oppressors of the poor.
And then there are other Catholics who refuse to vote for either viable candidate when one is clearly a far greater threat than the other in regard to sanctity of life, marriage, and freedom of conscience, etc. They are ignoring another principle, that of damage limitation.
The Alinskyite tactics appear to be working, at least to some degree. We’ll find out how well soon enough.
So far there is no coverage of this major statement in the MSM. Can someone send this to Drudge?
You have to read the actor here, not as the "State," but as "Society" --- meaning, elements of the human community, especially those societies directly founded by God: namely, the Family and the Church.
The trouble is when these "rights" are interpreted in a statist wasy. The right of a hungry, homeless, sick person to food, housing, medical care --- is first obligatory on himself, then on his family, then on his parish, etc. etc. In emergencies, the first person who comes along (e.g. the Samaritan finding a man by the side of the road.) In times of disaster, the city; possibly the county, etc.
Carry on.
Ping!
"Schism and heresy are evil too, so I guess I can't vote for Protestants."
I put "-" quotes around that so I can say I didn't say that, I was quoting somebody else.
Nothing in my faith forbids me to vote for someone of a different faith.
Look, at election time I'm not voting for husband, a catechist, or a canonized saint. I'm voting for a public servant. What I'm looking at, when I choose between two candidates, is two sets of policies. I will vote for the better of the two whether the candidate is a Catholic, a Protestant, an Orthodox, a Baptist, a Mormon, a Jew, a Sikh, or even none of the above.
His policies concern me.
His religion doesn't concern me.
Unless he wants to change my religion.
Then we've got problems.
Sorry, but I’m actually with your bishop on this one. And me a Baptist. This is surprising.
But then schism is a definitional thing, perhaps evil from your perspective (or perhaps Rome is the original schismatic?), but certainly not a universal, intrinsic evil, like willful murder or brazen idolatry in defiance of God’s most basic laws. And we are your “separated brethren,” after all. I am stunned we would be unable to agree that someone who has aspirations to be a god has stepped into intrinsic evil that should foreclose our support of him. Who knew?
So then do you think your bishop is wrong? If Pelosi was a conservative in every other respect, but still pushed abortion, and she were running as the R against Obama, would you vote for her? Intrinsic evil and all? I mean, she’s not going to be canonized anytime soon, but that shouldn’t matter. You said so. Right?
Peace,
SR
I maybe haven't had sufficient chocolate to fire up my neurons today, but either I'm not following you, or you are misconstruing Bishop Morlino's remarks.
Morlino didn't say one word about Romney's Mormonism.
He did speak about not voting for intrinsic evils, but nobody has asked me to vote for Mormon polytheism or for any other religion as a matter of public policy. Naturally, if Romney were proposing Mormonism as the Established Religion of the United States, I'd vote against him --- just as I'd vote against you, SR, if you were proposing that the Baptist Church should be the Established Religion. But since nobody is in fact proposing this, that point is not relevant.
In a society in which there is not religious unanimity, I always recommend Natural Law as a way of talking about public issues. It doesn't rely directly on supernatural revelation, and so one doesn't have to waste time arguing about the Koran, the Book of Mormon, or even the proper interpretation of the Epistle to the Romans.
Rather, using Natural Law, one can use arguments based on evidence and reasonable inferences from evidence, in order to find the policies which best contribute to human flourishing. This works. The Declaration of Independence and the Federalist Papers are full of Natural Law.
Bishop Morlino did not address the Mormon faith or the Baptist faith or the Hindu faith. Nor would he --- when talking about politics --- unless they had an impact on public policy.
So I don't think you can claim him as your ally in your argument against non-Christians running for political office..
Ah, so this means, in our hypothetical, that if the newly minted conservative Republican, Nancy Pelosi, whose only fault is that she promotes abortion, suddenly decided to be prolife as a matter of public policy, but freely aborted her own children and promoted abortion in her own family, that you would be OK with that expression of intrinsic evil. She would then be better than Obama and you could vote for her. As long as her practice of intrinsic evil is only personal. Right?
I wouldn't vote for Pelosi.
On this planet or any other.
It is excellent as most Catholic Theology has proven to be. It is the Marxist “Twist” they put on words like “social justice” that many followers get flummoxed and confused.
The Pope has clearly written that Marxist ideology is intrinsically EVIL and he doesn’t equivocate on it at all. Some of the so-called “nuns” and “priests” have infiltrated to take down Catholic Church from within===they need to be exposed by the parish people. Bishop Morlino is a great Bishop.
Thanks for your input here, respected FRiend. I'm still uninformed on many issues from the R.C. point of view. Love the exchange here on FR; so different from the vein-bulging and tears around the dinner table in my "mixed" family of origin.
Paul Ryan is not supporting Mitt Romney as PRIEST. He’s supporting him as President of the US. Since when does our President have to be the same religion as we are? I haven’t seen a Catholic in the White House since JFK, and we all know how that worked out. Take your specious arguments and bury them where the sun doesn’t shine.
ROFLOL! When my sons were attending Jesuit High School in Houston, some of the other mothers and I asked permission for the boys to sell their raffle tickets for the school's annual fund raiser after Mass at our parish. The priests at our parish operated a rival high school, although it was a bit further away than Jesuit. One of our pastoral associates asked me and another mother with a wink, "Why don't you people send your sons to a CATHOLIC High School?"
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