Posted on 08/05/2015 6:41:38 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Recently Bishop Eusebio Elizondo, chairman of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops Committee on Migration, applauded a federal district court that found the Obama administration excessively strict in its enforcement of immigration law. It's not easy getting to the left of Obama on illegal immigration, but the Conference of Catholic Bishops is up to the task.
The bishops believe, no doubt, that they have prudential and humanitarian reasons for encouraging illegal immigration. Nevertheless, the prudence and humanity of the bishops would be easier to credit if they would admit to their conflict of interest.
Without Catholic immigration, which is in large part illegal, the Catholic Church in the United States would wither away, just as the mainline Protestant churches are withering away. Immigration conceals the destruction political correctness is doing to the Catholic Church in this country. The destruction of the mainline Protestant churches is obvious because few people enter the United States and join them.
According to "America's Changing Religious Landscape" of the Pew Research Center, the percentage of Americans identifying as Catholic fell from 23.9% in 2007 to 20.8% in 2014. The 3.1% decrease among Catholics is almost as great as the 3.4% decrease among mainline Protestants.
Of all adult Americans, 12.9% were raised Catholic and apostatized!
Both the mainline and historically black Protestant traditions have lost more members than they have gained through religious switching, but within Christianity the greatest net losses, by far, have been experienced by Catholics. Nearly one-third of American adults (31.7%) say they were raised Catholic. Among that group, fully 41% no longer identify with Catholicism. This means that 12.9% of American adults are former Catholics, while just 2% of U.S. adults have converted to Catholicism from another religious tradition.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
If the DemocRATS and the PP butchers would stop murdering and butchering AMERICAN babies we wouldn’t need no stinkin’ immigration. ONE MILLION GREEN CARDS ARE GIVEN OUT EACH YEAR. This makes those people eligible for all of the Social Security benefits they want. I can see why the commie ‘RATS are saying they are going to have to cut Social Security for AMERICAN seniors.
Outstanding article and completely true. Failure to hold to standards destroys ANY religious organization. I have repeatedly posted on this forum that the catholic church in the U.S. only wants immigration to fill their churches. Historically in almost EVERY country where catholicism was once dominant totalitarianism follows. It has happened almost EVERY time.
When will they recognize it is racist to impose slave wages on LEGAL Immigrants and minorities, by flooding the labor market with the cheap labor of ILLEGAL Immigrants.
The prudence of the bishops would be easier to credit if they had any. The bishops simply think that God has blessed America and we should share those blessings with others, by handing out free stuff. They don't seem to realize that the rule of law is one of the greatest blessings we have received and built -- a blessing that leads to many other ones.
So . . . A legacy of Catholicism causes totalitarianism. Let's try to test that theory. For starters, in which countries was Catholicism not once dominant? Starting in the Anglosphere: The US. Australia. South Africa. Rhodesia. That's about it. (Canada was Catholic under the French.) Currently a mixed bag, freedom-wise. I can't spot a trend there, for or against freedom.
On the never-Catholic side, there's China. Korea. Japan. Indonesia. Malaysia. India. Iran. Parts of Africa, but not other parts. Ummmm. Saudi Arabia? Do those last bunch sound like bastions of individual freedom to you? There's been scarcely a priest or consecrated host darkening their royal palaces, yet they have often managed to go totalitarian on their own. So a Catholic history couldn't exactly be called a necessary condition for totalitarianism for most of the world's population, could it?
Let's try the other direction: Is a legacy of Catholic dominance a sufficient condition for going all gulag on the people? You could as easily call a period of Catholic dominance a necessary condition for relative liberty. What are the non-totalitarian countries today? Well, all of Europe, such as England, Ireland, Scotland, France, Germany, Spain, Holland, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, Greece, Italy. And most of South America. . . All with a significant period of Catholic dominance—all of whose move into order, the arts, the intellectual life, and the cessation of cannibalism and human sacrifice, for that matter, was in fact driven by the Catholic Church.
We could go on, but do we need to? Totalitarianism seems to be a risk of human governance across the board, as everyone from the Classical-era Greeks to the Fathers of the Church to the American Founders pointed out enough times that you maybe should have paid attention.
It could be argued that our current order, which is falling apart, is the legacy of a Pax Catolica—which we will miss when it's gone. Hey, you know what you only get in a country with a history of Catholic dominance? Protestants! So count your blessings.
Meanwhile, the Moslems and Chinese atheists who promise to supersede the Pax Catolica of the West seem to have a pretty clean record of non-Catholicism. Is that a reason for optimism that totalitarianism won't follow? I didn't think so.
The Great Commission says to “Go ye therefore and teach all nations”. Nothing about luring them from some nations to another particular nation.
Where are they on the PP videos?
(....crickets)
With godless, idolatrous religions, totalitarianism is to be expected. The topic of discussion is the transition from catholicism to totalitarianism. Germany, France, Italy, Yugoslavia under Tito, Vietnam, Russia, Cuba, Venezuela, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Chile, Mexico, Spain, etc. and no other reference was made to other religions and the problems caused by them, yet. I have no further comment.
That was the problem with your post. It's like blaming capitalism for the weather. The weather is going to change, and totalitarianism is going to happen periodically. To make your point, you have to prove why Catholicism is to be singled out as a cause.
Lesser point: Most of Germany has been Protestant since the 16th century. When, in a time-line, would Protestantism logically start getting the credit for Hitler?
You have a post-hoc, ergo propter-hoc argument, but it's not even a good one. The totalitarianism for which you yearn to blame the Church isn't even reliably associated with it. You exclude German Protestants and pagans from your totalitarian sample, but don't explain why.
Amazing and distressing is the level of losses to all faiths. It seems as if God is being driven out of our culture from the schools to open persecution. There is no room for God in the newly claimed domain of the modern of state.
Government schools teach only Government theories that they call secular, while becoming increasingly intolerant of student’s Religious believes. What was once a prohibition against Federal establishment of a relation over all the states has turned into a ‘separation of church and all Government’ and now is increasingly a separation of church and men.
I have no doubt that ultimately this change is driven by 5 federal employees in black robes who have issued theses edicts redefining our laws to persecute any public display and practice of faith.
We must figure out how to stop this. A free country will not persist in the blessings of that liberty without a faith and favor in God.
In the end we are really talking about a generational war and the demographics of the catholic and main line protestant population are falling apart because our children are not being raised in a couture that embraces faith rather than rejects faith.
Churches that turn to the left and try to embrace the culture may make it easier for members to walk the fence but like appeasing an enemy who’s ultimate design is your destruction it is simply making your flock unable to defend their faith.
Thus ultimately what will be left of the christian faith will be only those who adhere to the faith in defiance of the State and hostile pop couture. That is those who are committed to placing God first above all earthly demands, in other words the so called ‘hard line’ churches.
Of course they and their members will be eventually condemned by the left for failing to conform to their believe in the supremacy of State over men rather than God over men and State alike. If we endure that period of persecution when there will be fewest of us We will eventually rebound out of respect for our convictions and demonstrations of our values superior to that of a man driven only by natural temptations we call evil.
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