Posted on 09/23/2015 6:35:02 AM PDT by Salvation
You could, possibly submit polite request to frequent religion forum posters here, such as the one who originated this thread, to not bring the material here to FreeRepublic, but instead have those items discussed elsewhere, if it belongs to only some select group.
Don't bring it to the discussion forum of FR, if discussion of the issues are troubling when not all agree with one's own preferred views. And don't whine and tell us here on FR that Roman "Catholic" issues are nobody's "business" except for Roman Catholics, not when there is the backdrop of that one church in particular claiming that they (and they only) are the 'one true church' and that all must submit to the bishop of Rome, etc.
As it is, this present bishop of the Church of Rome has been blending politics with religion, and presently, it appears the Vatican in wider sense has allowed whatever trappings of moral authority they may have to be enlisted in Statist environmentalism, which environmentalism in general (not just the Vatican-approved sort) is being leveraged by Statists to further their control over the lives of entire nations, the UN Agenda 21 crowd being among prime examples of what the mentality of 'control' is.
That makes it everyone "business", whether we like it or not.
Yet on the other hand, where else on the web can there be found a single forum which allows forum moderation which has produced the extent of openness to either side of this type intra-religious discussions of Christianity as is found here on FR?
That this forum is figuratively speaking, both as as good as it at times can be, and also not better than it presently is, is due to the participants, and what they chose to say, or not to say.
In this comment, #58 it was noted that many [Roman] Catholics don't like the way Bergoglio has often been choosing to present what is ostensibly supposed to be fully "Christian" message.
Where else would one be able to learn that many held those sentiments in regards to the recent focus of the Latin Church, the topmost leaders of which having seemed to have cultivated within their highest ranks those who appear to borrow from UN Agenda 21.
Here ya' go --without looking up who said the following-- can you see what is being promoted? Read the below excerpt and contemplate what it means. What if people took this seriously, as in this portion were to be among their marching orders of the day;
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,...
Whoever said that, in that was leaning strongly towards "world political authority" to be supreme over national authority. Who would end up disarmed? Everyone? equally?
Dream on!
And in the meantime...should there be a world political authority to be over the United States to "guarantee" protection of the environment and to "regulate migration"?
So far, here of late, to the extent that has been occurring through browbeating and emotionalism of the Western democracies into taking in by the tens of thousands, the hundreds of thousands, and even millions (when the view is extended back far enough to encompass the past few decades), the later arrivals show no real indications of desire to assimilate into the cultures which they have been veritably invading, en masse, but instead are more looking towards transforming those cultures into having the same values of the nations which they once called home, but which they left.
I have yet to see a satisfactory answer to that simple question. Maybe this time....
I can't speak for defconw, but if I were to say something like, "Leave us alone," I'd add, "Unless you're prepared to sit down and do some heavy digging and careful parsing."
"Parsing" wasn't always something people like Clinton did to obscure meanings and weasel around.
These days, for the past almost 150 years, Catholic social teaching has been appropriated by people on every hand, most of whom did NOT do the lifting and parsing.
Take unions. I think it's evident, and Rerum Novarum agrees (I think) that people have a right to form associations, and therefore employees, laborers, people in skilled trades, etc. have that right. And why, on the face of it, shouldn't these associations approach employers to negotiate matters of employment?
But that does not give carte blanche to unions to have closed shops, to compel membership, or to be unjust.
For me the best example of this sort of balancing of tensions is how we treat the needy. And perhaps the first idea to convey is that the metaphor of a social family is more suited to Catholic thought than that of an array of political relationships.
Solidarity: In a family, if baby cries, everybody who can pitches in (or HAS pitched in by going to work or whatever.) And in a family, we care for baby so that one day baby will grow to be able to care for others.
Subsidiarity: In a family when everything is ticking over smoothly, mother, father, and maybe older sibs take care of baby. But if one parent gets the galloping whoopses and the other has to plow the fields, then maybe an in-law or an uncle or aunt might kick in, nurse the sick parent and/or help with the plowing.
But as soon as the whoopses leave and the field is harrowed, these more "remote" family members withdraw to their previous roles and mother and father return to their normal duties.
Similarly, we all have a duty to one another and especially to the needy. But the duty falls on what I think of as concentric circles: immediate family, extended family, neighborhood, community, county, state, nation, everybody. If extended family can't do it, then we try neighborhood, and so on. But each layer up helps to get the circle beneath it back to a satisfactory position and then withdraws.
Our experience, though, is that when we go to the state, they NEVER leave, and if we go to the feds, the next thing you know they're teaching baby about anal sex! AND they're telling the taxpayers that we have to pay more and more to service the dependent class that the "helpers" have created and enabled.
So the welfare system as we have it is NOT really what Catholic Social teaching is about. But it's what SOME Catholics and most non-Catholics think of when they hear "Catholic Social Justice" and all the rest. If you want an accurate picture, you have to know a little about the documents that articulate the context.
“I have yet to see a satisfactory answer to that simple question. Maybe this time...”
Satisfaction is ethereal, and one can be predisposed to deny it. I find real satisfaction in God’s Word! I went through Romans five times last week and it all made SENSE, beautiful and powerful sense. The Spirit witnesses to our spirit!
Wisdom says “All who hate me love death” (Prov. 8:36). Those that love death can find men with dead words, but they will always have to leave Scripture to find them, as:
“All the words of my mouth are righteous; there is nothing twisted or crooked in them”— Prov. 8:8
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