Posted on 07/10/2009 5:04:53 AM PDT by Frumanchu
ANAHEIM, Calif. (ABP) -- The presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church called the evangelical notion that individuals can be right with God a "great Western heresy" that is behind many problems facing the church and the wider society.
Describing a United States church in crisis, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori told delegates to the group's triennial meeting July 8 in Anaheim, Calif., that the overarching connection to problems facing Episcopalians has to do with "the great Western heresy -- that we can be saved as individuals, that any of us alone can be in right relationship with God."
"It's caricatured in some quarters by insisting that salvation depends on reciting a specific verbal formula about Jesus," Jefferts Schori, the first woman to be elected as a primate in the worldwide Anglican Communion three years ago, said. "That individualist focus is a form of idolatry, for it puts me and my words in the place that only God can occupy, at the center of existence, as the ground of being."
Jefferts Schori said countering individualistic faith was one reason the theme chosen for the meeting was "Ubuntu," an African word that describes humaneness, caring, sharing and being in harmony with all of creation.
"Ubuntu doesn't have any 'I's in it," she said. "The 'I' only emerges as we connect -- and that is really what the word means: I am because we are, and I can only become a whole person in relationship with others. There is no 'I' without 'you,' and in our context, you and I are known only as we reflect the image of the One who created us."
Jefferts Schori said "heretical and individualistic understanding" contributes to problems like neglect for the environment and the current worldwide economic recession.
"The sins of a few have wreaked havoc with the lives of many, as greed and dishonesty have destroyed livelihoods, educational possibilities, care for the aged, and multiple forms of creativity," she said. "And that's just the aftermath of Ponzi schemes for which a handful will go to jail."
She said in order to be faithful, "we need to be continually rediscovering that my needs are not the only significant ones."
"Ubuntu implies that selfishness and self-centeredness cannot long survive," she said. "We are our siblings' knowers and their keepers, and we cannot be known without them."
"We have no meaning, no true existence in isolation," she said. "We shall indeed die as we forget or ignore that reality."
About 200 Episcopal bishops and 850 clergy and lay deputies were expected to convene for the 10-day meeting. Business items are set to include debates over human sexuality, politics and poverty.
One resolution being considered calls for "generous discretion" to be extended to clergy in exercising pastoral ministry in six states -- Connecticut, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont -- where the civil marriage of same-gender couples has been legalized as well as other states that may follow suit in the next three years.
The 2.1-million-member denomination has argued vociferously about homosexuality since 2003, when the group approved the election of its first openly gay bishop, Gene Robinson of New Hampshire. Many more conservative Episcopalians and a handful of congregations have begun breaking away from the church in the years since.
Southern Baptist mega-church pastor Rick Warren, author of The Purpose Driven Life, took sides in his sister denomination's debate recently by showing up in Texas to encourage about 800 Episcopalians attending the first annual meeting of a conservative breakaway group calling itself the Anglican Church in North America.
Warren, who spoke out last fall against legal gay marriage in California, said in January that any nearby Anglican congregation that loses its property after breaking with the U.S. Episcopal Church was welcome to meet on the campus of his Saddleback Church.
-30-
Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.
Stunning application of logic. Completely irrefutable.
Can you give a specific example Quix?
Yep, I can only agree.
“The sins of a few have wreaked havoc with the lives of many”
Just two, to be exact. We just copied what they did.
Good grief, Dr. E., I am simply astonished that you read Caritas in Veritate as being, in any sense, a "political document." Moreover, Pope Benedict didn't advocate any of the above things you impute to him. I diligently looked for evidence in the text that could support your allegations. I found: exactly nothing. Perhaps it's "there," but I simply missed it. If so, kindly do point it out to me?
Bottom line: "Love in Truth" is NOT primarily about "helping the poor" in some socialistic sense. What it IS about: the aching need for spiritual regeneration of persons and peoples worldwide. The very Creation itself is "groaning" under the weight of its absence.
My two cents' worth, FWIW.
Jeepers, spirited — who's the "caricaturist" here? Methinks it is Schiori. No Christian would ever say that the mere mindless recitation of any specific verbal formula can save. Jeepers, is this woman so ignorant she doesn't even know her own tradition? And yet "somebody" put her "in charge of it" anyway?
According to Schori, it is heresy to believe that an individual’s prayer can achieve a saving relationship with God. “That individualist focus is a form of idolatry, for it puts me and my words in the place that only God can occupy.”
What a bunch of specious, sophistical claptrap! God makes individuals. On purpose. So as to have a direct relationship with them. If anyone is putting the focus on the individual, it is God Himself. Are we now to regard every attempt to give effect to divine–human relations and communications (as in prayer, meditation, contemplation, spiritual living, "following Christ") as a "form of idolatry" — just because this mindless, de-spirited creep declares them to be so? If the Anglican community really believes this — that is, if Schiori genuinely speaks for them — then jeepers, we had better steer well clear of their churches if we want to become or remain faithful Christians.
Schiori's "prescriptions" envision the phenomenal, real-world manifestation of programmatic anti-Christianity, right down to the ground.
On the other hand, just because she's a nutcase herself, does that give her the right to insist that the rest of us be nutcases, too?
Sorry to use such uncouth (not to mention uncharitable) language. But really — enuf is enuf. Somebody has to speak out against this "stuff" — this poisonous pabulum — sooner, later, and hopefully often....
Wonderful article at the link, dear spirited irish! Thank you oh so very much!
It is grievous, but there's nothing "good" about it. The pope's encyclical reads like a press release from the U.N. via Karl Marx.
Furthermore, just about everything ends up as politics, one way or another. Certainly this document is riddled with so many political aspects that any moral directives are overshadowed.
Moreover, Pope Benedict didn't advocate any of the above things you impute to him.
With thanks to Alex Murphy for his fine reading skills, here are some of the encyclical's quotes, found in Alex' THREAD POSTED HERE (refer to comments 1,9,26; the following is comment #9)...
67. In the face of the unrelenting growth of global interdependence, there is a strongly felt need, even in the midst of a global recession, for a reform of the United Nations Organization, and likewise of economic institutions and international finance, so that the concept of the family of nations can acquire real teeth. One also senses the urgent need to find innovative ways of implementing the principle of the responsibility to protect[146] and of giving poorer nations an effective voice in shared decision-making. This seems necessary in order to arrive at a political, juridical and economic order which can increase and give direction to international cooperation for the development of all peoples in solidarity (sounds pretty political to me). To manage the global economy; to revive economies hit by the crisis; to avoid any deterioration of the present crisis and the greater imbalances that would result; to bring about integral and timely disarmament, food security and peace; to guarantee the protection of the environment and to regulate migration: for all this, there is urgent need of a true world political authority, as my predecessor Blessed John XXIII indicated some years ago. Such an authority would need to be regulated by law, to observe consistently the principles of subsidiarity and solidarity, to seek to establish the common good[147], and to make a commitment to securing authentic integral human development inspired by the values of charity in truth. Furthermore, such an authority would need to be universally recognized and to be vested with the effective power to ensure security for all, regard for justice, and respect for rights[148]. Obviously it would have to have the authority to ensure compliance with its decisions from all parties, and also with the coordinated measures adopted in various international forums. Without this, despite the great progress accomplished in various sectors, international law would risk being conditioned by the balance of power among the strongest nations. The integral development of peoples and international cooperation require the establishment of a greater degree of international ordering, marked by subsidiarity, for the management of globalization[149]. They also require the construction of a social order that at last conforms to the moral order, to the interconnection between moral and social spheres, and to the link between politics and the economic and civil spheres, as envisaged by the Charter of the United Nations.
Or Alex' post #3 here on another thread...
In fact, this document sounds more political every time I read it. I can understand liberals cheering the pope's call for one world government and its enforcement "with teeth." But how conservatives, even conservative Roman Catholics, can call this tripe anything but a blue print for the demise of our republic, is beyond me.
Got it. But who introduced such "political" considerations into the piece in the first place — Pope Benedict, or you?
Some observations:
(1) He is saying that the UN as presently constituted absolutely "s*cks." It is a sewer of corruption and violates its own Charter of Human Rights on a systematic, constant basis.
(2) The "with real teeth" terms is probably a most unfortunate translation into English from an original either in German or Italian. We do not know what language Caritas in Veritate was originally composed. But it is well known that Pope Benedict is fluent in German, Italian, and Latin. What is curious is the English translation bears an American idiomatic expression that does not show up in the Italian, German, or Latin texts.
At this point, I just want to say: Somebody please shoot the translator. (And if he's a Jesuit, maybe you ought to consider hanging him first, just to be sure. Just kidding.) In any case, concepts as a rule do not have "teeth." So even the American idiom seems out of place.
(3) Pope Benedict knows that there is a political dimension to human existence wherever human beings live. But he is very clear in saying that the political dimension has absolutely no authority or rational pretense to being either fundamental in human affairs, or "omnicompetent" in dealing with acutely real human problems. Indeed, a main bearing of the piece is to show the limits of not only politics, but of all earthly governments and other purely secular organizations which have lost sense of what constitutes the common public good — which under God's Law boils down to "loving in truth."
(4) Somehow you didn't highlight this:
The integral development of peoples and international cooperation require the establishment of a greater degree of international ordering, marked by subsidiarity, for the management of globalization. They also require the construction of a social order that at last conforms to the moral order, to the interconnection between moral and social spheres, and to the link between politics and the economic and civil spheres....To me, this was the central point of the entire passage. The Pope speaks of "solidarity" — but it is a solidarity functionally expressed by means of subsidiarity. Subsidiarity is a doctrine holding that, in all of human affairs, decisions ought to be delegated to the "least" level of individual competence capable of handling the specific details, in the measure of his individual capabilities and experience, of what is finally a common enterprise. This is the very idea that gives legitimate "voice" to the expressions of the "common man" — whom Pope Benedict goes on to explain is the single most valuable "capital resource" on the face of the planet. We cannot speak of rational, sustained "global development" at all without reference to the individual human person.
By the way, the Pope is not "endorsing" globalization. He simply acknowledges it as a fait accompli, as already an established fact of reality. The genie is already out of the bottle. Now we have to figure out what to do about it.
If you insist on reading Caritas in Veritate as a "political document," you are missing the author's intent in writing altogether.
Or so it seems to me. JMHO FWIW
The presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church called the evangelical notion that individuals can be right with God a "great Western heresy" that is behind many problems facing the church and the wider society
The Old Testament's main theme is that one (one individual spiritual soul, or spiritual Israel, but not a national secular soul, African, or otherwise,) has to become right with God, and paradoxically, no man has any righteousness within himself, righteousness can come only from God. A righteous man is one that is one with God.
The theme of the New Testament is that it is Christ's saving righteousness that covers believers.
This pyschobabble contradicts biblical teaching and wants all men to be equal in evil, not right with the Lord.
Psalm 37:37
Mark the perfect man, and behold the upright: for the end of that man is peace.
37:38 But the transgressors shall be destroyed together: the end of the wicked shall be cut off.
37:39 But the salvation of the righteous is of the LORD: he is their strength in the time of trouble.
37:40 And the LORD shall help them, and deliver them: he shall deliver them from the wicked, and save them, because they trust in him.
DERA BB,
It may be a week or 2 or . . .
before I can get to responding to your posts here on this thread.
Add, possibly, to that, my desire to read the whole doc and comment on the whole doc . . . in context with itself.
I will note that key words and phrases appear to clearly support SOME FORM OF GLOBAL GOVERNMENT—AT LEAST IN TERMS OF ECONOMICS AND ECONOMIC DISTRIBUTIONS ETC.
And imho, there’s absolutely no way that such can occur apart from THE SATANIC global government that’s been covertly in power for at least 100 years.
Further, that the Pope must have known that
or
should have known that.
Put another way—there will be no global government in any sense of the word in any sphere of life before Armageddon
apart from, different from the satanic global government that has ruled for so many decades covertly, already.
The Pope MUST have known that
or he’s clueless or his staff or incompetent or they are all in denial and grossly uninformed to head such a large global organization.
It APPEARS that just as you are FR’s paragon expert par excellance on Maytreia . . .
I have the . . . distinction of having studied globalism the longest of those I know about on FR. . . . since 1965.
And I find this doc extremely alarming.
Please see my post on the Papal . . . thread.
It will be a while before I can respond with examples as you ask. Sorry.
Basically, he’s saying that there must be a global economic governmental authority.
There’s no way such a global authority can be other than part and parcel of the satanic global government already well in power covertly for many decades—over 100 years.
The Pope MUST have known that or he and his staff are grossly uninformed and grossly incompetent.
Said governmental authority will be tyrannical and a bastardized form of Communism married to a bastardized form of capitalism.
Yet the Pope talks about how all such must be governed by morality, in love . . . essentially “for the children” yada yada yada.
There’s no way the satanic global oligarchy will do anything apart from or inconsistent with their satanic goals from hell.
The Pope can publish encyclicals hourly and it won’t change that fact.
The Pope MUST know that. Yet he straddles the fence in several places in this doc—speaking essentially—out of both sides of his fingers.
It’s really an art form to get things exactly backwards.
Yes, it’s all good. As the death-row murderer said to Truman Capote back in the seventies, referring to the Manson murders and every other form of evil. Now people say it as if it means “Have a nice day.”
The Communist Manifesto has some innocuous sentences in it, too, that could be highlighted to "prove" it's a harmless document. The problem comes when other sentences do reveal a specific, ill-advised agenda.
And to blame the pope's injudicious comments on a poor translation seems weak. Isn't this the Vatican's translation?
Pope Benedict knows that there is a political dimension to human existence wherever human beings live.
But you wrote you were "simply astonished that (I) read Caritas in Veritate as being, in any sense, a 'political document.'"
Now you're saying the pope recognizes a political dimension "wherever human beings live." I would agree with that.
But he is very clear in saying that the political dimension has absolutely no authority or rational pretense to being either fundamental in human affairs, or "omnicompetent" in dealing with acutely real human problems.
We must be reading different documents. He is very clearly offering a political solution to the world's problems by subjugating productive countries to the rule of a global authority where less productive countries have an equal say in the global economy. That is global socialism. Period.
By the way, the Pope is not "endorsing" globalization. He simply acknowledges it as a fait accompli, as already an established fact of reality.
No, globalism on the order of the pope's scenario is not a fait accompli. God forbid it ever comes to that.
If you insist on reading Caritas in Veritate as a "political document," you are missing the author's intent in writing altogether.
You and I have the same ability to know "the author's intent in writing altogether." We're both speculating and drawing conclusions. I guess we'll just have to disagree over those conclusions.
VERY WELL and accurately put, imho.
Thanks.
Let's just go ahead and highlight this:
.
.
Integral to what? Ahhhhh development of peoples AND international cooperation.
.
peoples and international cooperation cooperating over what in what ways to what ends?
.
REQUIRE? Required by whom? By what? Based on what? For what Goals? Toward what ends?
It's a great sounding intro. What CAN it POSSIBLY mean in the REAL CONTEXT OF CURRENT GEOPOLITICS and of geopolitics of the last 100+ years? IF it is to be considered more than an intellectual burp, what CAN it POSSIBLY mean?
1. It's warm and fuzzy SOUNDING about the topic of 'developing people AND international cooperation' together. How grand.
AND, in the context of REAL GEOPOLLITICS . . . what a farce.
There is NOTHING of ANY SIGNIFICANCE that has gone on in the REAL international world of GEOPOLITICS of the last 100 years which has NOT been managed and/or manipulated, arranged, caused, executed, more or less wholesale by the globalist cabal of international elite families and controllers driven and led by the king of hell. THAT'S JUST A FACT--as the dozens of their quotes ref'd in my tagline emphasize.
That is NOT to say that God has been sleeping. Certainly even the king of hell is subject to God's allowing satan to get away with whatever he temporarily has gotten away with. However, God's Script is more or less clear in Scripture. God's script is to allow satan to arrange, implement, engineer, establish a satanic global government in the era in which Israel is brought again to the Holy Land as happened in 1948.
So, in practical REAL terms, the sentence fragment would have been more honestly and realistically worded to have said:
The integral development of peoples and international cooperation BY ORDER OF SATAN AND HELL require . . .
REQUIRE . . . the establishment of a greater degree of international ordering,
.
Oh, yes, INDEEDY! Satan insists on THAT! It MUST BE in order for satan to require all people groups to bow and worship before him. I'm sure he's thrilled that the good Pope agrees with his hellish agenda, on that score.
In fact, satan is ahead of the Pope . . . the global ID chip implant; global cameras monitoring everything and everyone; global chip implants in all farm animals and pets; chips in all products being scanned at building entries and exits; all spheres of daily life being controlled by international organizations, standards, REQUIREMENTS all subjected to international monitoring and controlling agencies of . . . drum roll . . . the global government headed by satan himself.
imho, ANYONE who even remotely thinks or remotely imagines, fantasizes that there are other options either doesn't believe
--SCRIPTURE
--THE REALITIES published abroad about geopolitical facts daily
--THE CURRENT INESCAPABLE TRENDS
--THE TRUE INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION ACTIVITIES AT THE HIGHEST LEVELS LED BY THE KING OF HELL.
marked by subsidiarity,
.
What a wonderful, sweet, human, grass-roots word.
OBVIOUSLY it automatically means that Satan and all his geopolitical machine and gestapo will automatically and in all respects submit to the local parish priest directed by the Vatican. /sar
. . . perhaps in terms of media propaganda until the gestapo can appear and slice the good priest's head off . . . So much for subsidiarity at that point!
for the management of globalization.
.
Ahhhhhh . . . for the management of globalization. THE GOAL, THEN??? IS THE MANAGEMENT OF GLOBALIZATION.
When did satan hire the Pope as a consultant to his global machine? When did satan delude the Pope or anyone else that satan would be listening to the Pope about the "management of globalization?"
They also require the construction of a social order
.
Ahhhhh, yes, the CONSTRUCTION of a SOCIAL ORDER.
Evidently the good Pope believes that satan has left that goal out of his global machine's manipulations and goals?
Evidently the good Pope thinks that satan has been asleep at the switch regarding satan's construction of the most tyrannical, ruthless, deadly, destructive and cruel social order construction EVER TO HAVE BEEN AND THAT EVER WILL BE--as Scripture warns?
Or does the good Pope delude himself that satan will suddenly abandon satan's own cruel evil CONSTRUCTION OF HELL'S SOCIAL ORDER ON EARTH in behalf of the good Pope's version?
that at last conforms to the moral order,
.
AHHHHH . . . how sweet. Here we have the announcement that the king of hell has submitted all his evil globalist machine to being sanitized, overhauled, and righteousness saturated by good Pope's magical encyclical appeal, announcement. I suspect all the demons in hell had a good laugh on that one!
to the interconnection between moral and social spheres,
.
Ahhhhhhhhhh, yes, "interconnection." That's such a wonderful MSM globalist propaganda term. Lovely. Oh, and how grand--INTERCONNECTING MORAL AND SOCIAL SPHERES! How Heavenly!
So, just how does the good Pope envision the MORALITY OF HELL permeating the global social spheres? Because pre-Armageddon, that's the ONLY geopolitically managed imprinting on the social spheres that any 'successful' political, governmental body will be allowed to implement, manage, oversee . . .
and to the link between politics and the economic and civil spheres....
.
Ahhhhh . . . LINKING . . . yet another warm and fuzzy globalist code-word for international !!!!CONTROL!!!! of the most ruthless sort.
Sounds like the good Pope has signed on to hell's management of politics, economics and civil spheres just as the globalists have been intensifying in tyrannical ways for at least 100 years. There will certainly be NO OTHER management of such by any ruling body OTHER THAN the globalists from hell PRE-ARMAGEDDON.
Again, either the Pope is shockingly ignorant of such realities . . . in denial of such realities . . . playing some sort of gamey charade about such realities . . . and/or complicit in trying to smooth-talk millions of RC's into compliant submission to such schemes and realities from hell.
I can't logically conclude anything else.
........
They also require the construction of a social order ....
May YHvH richly bless you and yours. Thank you both for your laser guided analysis.
shalom b'SHEM Yah'shua HaMashiach
There’s jockeying going on for “the one” to emerge as the one world religious leader and the jockeys have their eyes set on the mansion already built and sitting empty in Jerusalem. And oh the power! that’s what it’s all about. “Maitreya” could be anyone at the moment. The gods of the nations are demons.
“They also require the construction of a social order that at last conforms to the moral order, to the interconnection between moral and social spheres, and to the link between politics and the economic and civil spheres....”
Maybe someone needs to read about the Fall of Man, and then contemplate what that entails for society.
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