The New York Times published an essay by Pope Francis about the COVID crisis. He seems to disagree with the Supreme Court decision opposing limits on the number of people who may congregate in houses of worship because such limits restrict “freedom of religion.”
Pope Francis wrote (in part):
With some exceptions, governments have made great efforts to put the well-being of their people first, acting decisively to protect health and to save lives. The exceptions have been some governments that shrugged off the painful evidence of mounting deaths, with inevitable, grievous consequences. But most governments acted responsibly, imposing strict measures to contain the outbreak.
Yet some groups protested, refusing to keep their distance, marching against travel restrictions — as if measures that governments must impose for the good of their people constitute some kind of political assault on autonomy or personal freedom! Looking to the common good is much more than the sum of what is good for individuals. It means having a regard for all citizens and seeking to respond effectively to the needs of the least fortunate.
It is all too easy for some to take an idea — in this case, for example, personal freedom — and turn it into an ideology, creating a prism through which they judge everything.
The coronavirus crisis may seem special because it affects most of humankind. But it is special only in how visible it is. There are a thousand other crises that are just as dire, but are just far enough from some of us that we can act as if they don’t exist. Think, for example, of the wars scattered across different parts of the world; of the production and trade in weapons; of the hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing poverty, hunger and lack of opportunity; of climate change. These tragedies may seem distant from us, as part of the daily news that, sadly, fails to move us to change our agendas and priorities. But like the Covid-19 crisis, they affect the whole of humanity.
Look at us now: We put on face masks to protect ourselves and others from a virus we can’t see. But what about all those other unseen viruses we need to protect ourselves from? How will we deal with the hidden pandemics of this world, the pandemics of hunger and violence and climate change?
If we are to come out of this crisis less selfish than when we went in, we have to let ourselves be touched by others’ pain. There’s a line in Friedrich Hölderlin’s “Hyperion” that speaks to me, about how the danger that threatens in a crisis is never total; there’s always a way out: “Where the danger is, also grows the saving power.” That’s the genius in the human story: There’s always a way to escape destruction. Where humankind has to act is precisely there, in the threat itself; that’s where the door opens.
This is a moment to dream big, to rethink our priorities — what we value, what we want, what we seek — and to commit to act in our daily life on what we have dreamed of.
God asks us to dare to create something new. We cannot return to the false securities of the political and economic systems we had before the crisis. We need economies that give to all access to the fruits of creation, to the basic needs of life: to land, lodging and labor. We need a politics that can integrate and dialogue with the poor, the excluded and the vulnerable, that gives people a say in the decisions that affect their lives. We need to slow down, take stock and design better ways of living together on this earth.
How can one not love and respect Pope Francis? I wonder if any public figure has ever quoted Hölderlin before? As I read him over and over again, I am reminded of Gandhi. Which reminds me, for some reason the Met has offered Philip Glass’s opera Satyagraha for free this month, not sure when it will end. But if you have time, give it shot. One act a day (my family is starting to worry about my sanity) has become a regular event this month. If you have a smart tv, you can download the app and got to the “Browse & Preview” part to watch. Consider giving it a shot: https://www.metopera.org/season/on-demand/opera/?upc=810004201507
How can one not love and respect Pope Francis?
I certainly do. He is a great, great man.
And thanks for the heads up about the Glass opera!
I hope Biden is listening to Pope Francis about a new direction going forward, a sharing economy.
Republican embrace of religion is selectively instrumental, not faith-based. it bears no relationship to any generally accepted view of humanitarianism. The operative word in their simultaneous embrace of authoritarianism and don’t tell me what to do is, “Me.” It comes down to claiming the right for the privileged to impose their will on everyone else.
Joel Osteen-like self-serving, feel-good-about-myself-and-my-specialness pablum. That’ the ticket. We don’t need no stinkin’ ethics, morality. Claude Robichaux expressed it in A Confederacy of Dunces:
“What you think about somebody wants peace, Claude?”
“That sounds like a communiss to me.”
Mrs. Reilly’s worst fears were realized.
When Hurricane Harvey tore through Houston resulting in the worst flooding ever and displacing thousands of people, Osteen had to be shamed into opening his mega-church to shelter displaced families. That is not how Christian charity is supposed to work.
Have you seen the ads for these?: https://www.joelosteen.com/MonthlyOffer/the-inspiration-cube
There’s a classic SNL skit to made of this. He’s on right before CBS Sunday Morning here. I love to watch the final five minutes just to make my wife crazy. Anyone, I mean anyone, could write these “sermons.” They are so predictably vacuous.
I’ve never seen his sermons. I did see an interview with Osteen and his wife convincing me to avoid his sermons. They both appeared to be empty vessels to me.
RT, you should give one a shot. Vapid comedy gold. And you really have to question if anyone who thinks they are substantive is worth making the effort to “talk to.”
“they” being the sermons. I really have to work on my writing.
Competition is about “ME”. Democracy is about “WE”. No longer do we have a society that values “we”…..and that saddens my heart.
And when people tell me that they are Christians I ask them if they are Classic Jesus or Republican Jesus. CINO……Christian in name only.
Arthur Camins Me thinks you are right.
By contrasting Pope Francis’ letter to our current right-wing so-called “religious” power-seekers, including Catholics (of which I am one), not to mention to contrast with the life of Jesus himself, . . . by making those contrasts, we can see the “sheep’s clothing” that the tag of religion has become.
They are all just like Trump . . . standing in front of a church, waving a Bible that he has understood nothing about. CBK
CBK,
And has never read. Trump is worse than Elmer Gantry. Trump uses religion for personal gain but he has none.
He has none? But surely Trump worships Mammon and Trump.
“I hear victory, victory, victory, victory, victory, victory, victory, victory right now in the corners of heaven,” White said in the video as she closed her eyes in prayer and gesticulated passionately.
At one point, White appears to speak in tongues in a video that has been viewed more than 20 million times, before proclaiming: “Angels are being dispatched right now. Angels are being dispatched from Africa right now … They’re coming here.”
That’s from Paula White, Trump’s spiritual advisor. She once had a fling with Benny Hinn, another televangelist charlatan. What is it with these religious gangsters and Trump? Oh yeah, they’re all gangsters of one sort or another and they worship wealth and luxury. Jim Bakker, Kenneth Copeland (the ha, ha, ha, ha, guy), Osteen, ad nauseam, live a very posh life style off of the backs of ordinary folks who can ill afford to send money to these faux religious phonies. Bakker and Copeland are big Trump sycophants, I don’t know about Osteen.
Osteen is the source of the word osteentacious
The guy lives in a 10 million dollar mansion paid for by his parishioners.
Some people disobey the cross out of human frailty; but far more simply and intentionally hide behind it.
Putting religion above public health is despicable.
Robert Rendo Religious people don’t HAVE to put public health above religious practices. If they weren’t so mind-swamped by their fear of losing their political “rights,” they would stay away from such gatherings out of intelligent and reasonable concern, and find other ways to practice their faith, at least for this awful time we are in . . .
It’s not an “either/or” situation. It’s a matter of reasonable judgment and care for others, which expressions of, and not opposed to “religious practices.” CBK
I agree with you, CBK. The Court is not putting “religion above public health.” It is putting the interests of certain adherents who use specious, political and (im)moral arguments and acts to use religion as an excuse and cudgel to cover their own hypocrisies. You know, as Linda and I argue fairly consistently.
GregB About Linda, if you still don’t know the difference, I cannot help you. CBK
Greg I think SCOTUS is after something bigger. Partly because they chose to take up a case that was already moot: that’s a rare [unprecedented?] move, so they’re drawing our attention to it, as tho to signal how they will vote in future. Also because their decision echoed a principle from another recent decision: religious groups must not to be singled out for exclusion from rights granted to any other public groups. Religious practice is on its way to no longer being something separated and protected from the public commons. It is becoming a public transaction whose adherents have the same rights as those seeking equal access to health, education, libraries, parks, transportation, jobs, you name it. Thus the religious rights of store-owners are pitted against the commercial rights of their customers. Tiny scholarships for religious schools are given the same weight as property-tax funding of public schools. The convictions of religious hospital admins weighed against the health rights of their patients, and those of justices of the peace against the civil rights of folks applying to marry.
This is what dumping the separation of religion and state brings us, a constant court battle, which will only grow more complex as we consider the rights of our many non-Christians. I doubt this is what champions of “religious freedom” (incl their current SCOTUS reps) had in mind. They’re a last bastion fighting the encroachment of secularism, tail wagging dog. They operate from nostalgic memory of a nearly-all-Christian nation where you could pray and preach Christ in a public school & no one noticed: they’re still fighting mid-20thC court decisions. For another canine metaphor, they’ve been chasing that car for decades: what happens when they catch it? IMHO they’re heading straight for losing the tax exemption on churches & their affiliated schools et al activities.
“Some people disobey the cross out of human frailty”
And many of us reject the whole “disobey the cross” nonsense out of human sanity. Unless my sarcasmometer is broken, I find that concept to be as ludicrous and risible as listening to the current Pope talk about anything political in America. He’s one and the same as Osteen, Falwell, Robertson, et. al., in peddling mythology and using fear of a wrathful sky-daddy god to extort money out of the gullible, except he hoards over far vaster amounts of wealth around the world than the other three and their ilk combined.
Duane “Sky-daddy” = childish toys. CBK
Yes, it’s sad that so many adults haven’t outgrown those kids toys.
But then again it is difficult for those adults to do so considering that they’ve been told that the holiest of holeys is THE most important, and all powerful thing that needs to be obeyed and worshipped. When growing up and one has such falsehoods pounded into one’s brains it can be almost psychologically impossible to reject such nonsense. And so we have many faith believers who believe what QAnon is peddling, what the xtian regressive reactionary fundies sell, and/or the many lies of the tRump. Makes sense to me to not question when all of one’s life has been to not question those mythical faith-beliefs.
Duane That’s part of it, I am sure; and I have people in my family . . . . the best I can get from them is that they are so very sorry for me that I “believed” my professors at that evil college I went to (rather than the spiritual vomit they call religion). <–the point is that it’s not about belief but about searching and understanding for ourselves. But there is no talking to them, even about that.
I suppose you sense there is a “however” to follow that paragraph. And so there is, because, that said, I certainly don’t share your view of all things religious. CBK
Duane I agree that “disobey the cross” is an opaque turn of phrase even to this spiritually-minded person. But how does your comment relate to Francis’ message? He didn’t say anything about American politics. Nothing in there remotely similar to Esteen et al sermonizing. It’s as humanistic a speech as you’d get from a Dalai Lama or a Ghandi.
Duane, “when growing up and one has such falsehoods pounded into one’s brains,” the alums include as many atheists as Bible-thumpers. The problem I’ve observed is with the “pounded into one’s brains” part. I have met many people so alienated by rigid religious upbringing that they either abandon all spirituality or spend a lifetime seeking gurus of one sort or another to tell them how to live.
The Pope is taking the scientific and humanistic tack in this case, but still toes the line on other policies that are very harmful to over a billion people.
The most obvious is the vehement opposition to any sort of artificial birth control.
Of course, the Pope does not have a family to support (at least not that we know of) so he does not know how much suffering his ignorant continuation of the official Catholic opposition to birth control causes.
The whole concept of a Pope is just another instantiation of the idea of “The Chosen Ones” which permeates so many religions. It’s really just an absurd notion.
Every bit as absurd as a King and Queen.
Of course, many Christians refer to Jesus Christ as King.
Gorsuch’s comments comparing the situation in churches vs. wine stores and bike shops is utter lunacy. I have a good friend, raised in a religious household and whose father was a minister. He was clear-God is everywhere. You don’t need a box with a cross on top (or any other building) for purposes of worship.
Excellent comment. Gorsuch’s “reasoning” can be distilled as: religious practice=widgets.
It makes about as much sense as equating shopping for a choice school to buying pizza. I can even remember Obama indulging in this false equivalency.
“There were no temples or shrines among us save those of nature. Being a natural man, the Indian was intensely poetical. He would deem it sacrilege to build a house for Him who may be met face to face in the mysterious, shadowy aisles of the primeval forest, or on the sunlit bosom of virgin prairies, upon dizzy spires and pinnacles of naked rock, and yonder in the jeweled vault of the night sky!”
–Ohíye S’a, aka Charles Eastman, of the Santee Dakota nation, The Soul of the Indian (1913)
This decision for injunctive relief can cause considerable harm. It is extremely likely, based on past experience, that many innocent people will die as a result of it, something that the majority did not and could not address and come to the decision that it did.
I am not a Catholic, but the Pope’s message gives me hope for good faith and good will.
Of course some on the far right are likely to see his New York Times article as nothing more than a call to adopt socialism as a principle for saving us from each other and the virus.
Trumpsters and Fox news might well pick this editorial up and fly with it as dangerous and fake news from the elitist NYTimes. I wonder how the Supreme Court will judge its first case involving QAnon framed as a religion.
The Second Crucification
They’d crucify again
They’d lock him in a jail
Cuz Jesus was a friend
Of homeless and the ill
And Jesus spoke of gift
Of riches to the poor
Of cataclysmic shift
In economic chore
We need economies that give to all access to the fruits of creation, to the basic needs of life: to land, lodging and labor. We need a politics that can integrate and dialogue with the poor, the excluded and the vulnerable, that gives people a say in the decisions that affect their lives. –Pope Francis
Amen
Economies that work for the people?
Good luck with that.
In most places people work for the “economy” — which is shorthand for “people like the Waltons and Bezos”. Not the other way around.
I blame the Koch brothers and like-minded billionaires (Betsy the Brutal DeVos) for influencing and brainwashing that element among Catholics and other Christian religions that elevate self over the collective.
https://prospect.org/culture/koch-brothers-latest-target-pope-francis/
Yeah….and now they “claim” to be sorry. Sorry….but I’m not buying it!
https://www.axios.com/charles-koch-partisan-political-spending-762c6f50-079e-474c-9a7e-97cc320d878c.html
Lloyd, another factor for the “brainwashing” of some (not all, and not a majority of Catholics) is the concentration of extremely conservative Bishops installed by John Paul ll. As a reaction to quash social justice principles embedded in Vatican ll and as a vehement anti-communist, JPll built The US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) into a powerful voice inside US culture wars.
Francis has been replacing JPlls bishops but the right wing still has a majority. So far they have continued giving aid to the wingnuts.
However, it is less common to see the priests on Sunday going to the extremes that evangelical preachers go to. The Catholic Church is a bigger tent; they have people like jean & bill & my aunts in the pews.
And Catholics push back. They are not quite as sheeplike.
This has no meaning for anyone here. That’s what happens whrn I don’t edit my texts: “they have people like jean & bill & my aunts in the pews.”Jean & Bill are my sister, brother in law & my aunts represent the average Catholic. “
jcgrim My experience isn’t the end-all, but in it, I have experienced many of the old guard who just couldn’t find a place in their thinking for Vatican II, except to plot against it.
AND, at many conferences I have attended over the years, I know of many of the old guard who not only embraced Vatican II, but who are involved with creative movements that flowed from that time and from their own philosophical developments, and from a deeper understanding of humanity, history, and their place in it, than the old and hard doctrines can hold between their retrogressive walls.
Thank you for providing a bit of that history of qualitative change. CBK
Jcgrim & CBK: thanks for that roundup. Saw the same thing in my family: we became a motley crew that spanned a spectrum from routine old-fashioned Catholic practice to post-JohnXXIII radical left fringe. We were mixed Prot-Cath. My Irish-Catholic grandfather brought Catholicism into a Prot family when my widowed grandmother w/ young child (my mom) married him. Our offspring family became mostly Catholic despite dad being of Prot tradition (tho mostly non-practicing); it was our choice. I credit that choice to grandpa: despite being a prejudiced rwnutjob socially/ politically, he viewed religious practice as a private matter. He strongly supported grandma in her Prot practice—even drove her there when she was too old, but meanwhile quietly attended mass on his own. He valued independent thinking.
Fringe Catholic groups like People of Praise & Opus Dei have been around for quite a while but didn’t wield as much influence as they do today. Ratzinger encouraged these sorts of fringe religious groups, as long as they were right-winger enough for him and enough orthodoxy. Same for JPII. I’m guessing Pope Frank has a long row to hoe with challenging these little cultish groups.
That is very interesting, thanks for that background. My family drifted away from the church in the early 2000’s once kids were thinking on their own as teens: we stuck to it like glue when they were young, but by then they understood our spiritualism—as well as their own—well enough to follow their own muses [one son attended a Catholic college & was quite comfortable pursuing that path].
So our child-raising sojourn was under JPII. We did not register his conservative turn in our NJ bubble: the church we joined in early ‘90’s was liberal, indistinguishable from the one I’d been raised in in JXXIII days 40 yrs prior. I sensed a change in 2000 when a long-haired priest simpatico to us left, replaced by a Notre-Dame fullback type– actually pretty good—but simultaneously our msgr, liberal founder of that young church retired & was replaced by a low-qual robotic type out of the Newark Diocese, which pushed us on our way. So I can see there was a move toward conservatism, but it didn’t hit our local church until 20-some yrs after the fact.
I have continued to have some truck w/ local parishes as a member of a singing group: I find the priests to be inclusive & not precisely conservative (tho I’m sure the Archdiocese is)—my conclusion is that parish priests look to connect to their flocks, & ours hereabouts are mostly of liberal bent. We miss that wide local variation when we speak of the political leanings of the USCCB or the Popes.
As a Catholic I find this totally creepy. Paging Linda.
As near as I can figure it, Koch family is Dutch [likely Lutheran] and Episcopal [English]. Their investment in Catholic U’s et al orgs would be an acknowledgment of 60% white Catholic Rep vote, & an effort to build a libertarian coalition among rw-leaning Catholics. Their ideological leanings are in direct opposition to traditional Catholic politics (rep by Pope Francis) as noted in the article.
I’m not sure I would blame the Koch/ DeVos/ et al billionaires for swaying some non-collective element of Catholics away from old-timey Catholic values. Catholicism is not a monolith & there are ‘self over collective’ people everywhere. They’re just looking to capitalize on a potential market here (& probably many other places as well).
Haven’t seen a lot of Donnie lately? Must be because he is in time out.
Biden can only enter the White House as President if he can prove that his ridiculous “80,000,000 votes” were not fraudulently or illegally obtained. When you see what happened in Detroit, Atlanta, Philadelphia & Milwaukee, massive voter fraud, he’s got a big unsolvable problem!
—The Don, Cheeto “Littlefingers” Trumpbalone, aka, “Big Squally” Bambino (@realDonaldTrump) November 27, 2020
“Massive fraud,” he said from behind his Playskool desk.
He got it backwards, of course. It’s not Biden’s job to prove his votes were legal. It’s the job of the Trump campaign to prove there was fraud. So far, they have been laughed out of every court. In the most recent decision—Friday in Pennsylvania—a three-person Federal Court of Appeals (all three are Republicans) voted unanimously that their claims of fraud had no evidence.
This is the same guy who thinks that when we impose tariffs on imports from a country, that country pays the tariffs, the one who thought that Denmark might be interested in selling Greenland to us and that the military would have no problem attacking Moms in yellow shirts protesting racial injustice.
REPORTER: Mr. President, if the electors. . . .
PRESIDENT: I won! I won! Fraud! Fraud! Massive fraud!
REPORTER: Mr. President, if the electors. . . .
PRESIDENT: Don’t talk to me that way! I am the President of the United States! Don’t ever talk to the President like that! Next person. [points[ You.
ME: Mr. President, would you say that you have long been a boring, stupid, semi-literate, inarticulate, dangerous, confused, bullying, vindictive, predatory, narcissistic, fascist, traitorous, racist, heedless, sexist, criminal, orange loser, or have grown into these characteristics while in office?
It would be worth losing a job at, say, CNN, to be able to ask this question in front of the cameras.
How very strange to live in a world where both a profoundly good man like Pope Francis and a profoundly evil one like, say, a Richard Butler or a Bill Barr call themselves by this same term, “Christians.” The perversion of the teachings of the guy who said this has been dramatic:
And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. Matt. 25:40 (KJV)
Wildlife Minute, with Your Host, Bob Shepherd
Did you know?
Male hippos can grow to almost 10,000 lbs.
They are extremely territorial and aggressive and kill 500 people a year.
Their sweat is bright red, like blood.
Like other animals, hippos produce flatulence, but they do this both via the usual portal and through their mouths.
Their tusks can grow to two feet in length.
They almost always vote Republican.
I respectfully disagree, I’ve heard (the only way to get accurate informations, or at least, that’s what I also heard) hippos are known to have socialistic tendencies:
https://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/perfect-partners-hippos-get-clean/14200/
GregB and Bob I don’t know which is the better metaphor . . . red sweat or flatulence of the mouth. CBK
What kind of running dog capitalist propaganda is this!!!??? The servile barbells are little more than property to their oppressive, bougie hippo overlords. Put them in a school and teach them the Internationale, and see what happens!
Did some more research, seems the oxpecker birds (what a name!) are the real Republicans. They make cuts into the hippos (and rhinos and water buffalo) to attract parasites and then eat them. We should replace the elephant symbol with an oxpecker! (A distant relative of the mawdicker, no doubt.)
Some more wisdom from Francis (just remembered this one):
https://apnews.com/article/virus-outbreak-pope-francis-archive-capitalism-bcde0053314e65612add0709fada5519
There is a civil war happening in the Church aided & abetted by an unholy alliance of wealthy Republicans, fringe Catholics & Evangelicals. Pope Frank can certainly explode heads in this right wing-o-sphere. He’s stepped on their cruel & inhuman neglect of climate change, income inequality, anti-LGBTQ bigotry, and racist immigration policies. Now, he wants to replace the prosperity gospel with socialism, horrors!
I was told by a reliable source that Pope Frank lost the papacy in the College of Cardinals to Ratzinger by one vote in 2005. Imagine if we’d had him since 2005…
jcgrim In think that many who actually experienced socialism, such as it was in its grotesque history in the 20th century, are rightly responding to its distorted and extreme expression . . . but wrongly expecting all-things-socialistic to end up that way. It’s generated from a limited and (to put it mildly) provincial viewpoint of self and history.
An argument from extreme positions “on both sides” ensues (YES socialism, NO socialism), which drowns out thoughtful discourse, stokes violence in both arenas, and where we can never can get anywhere but gone.
The point is that there is a median ground that is NOT mere muddy “compromise,” but a nuanced, higher view of politics, policies, and humane living. I see signs of it, but certainly not in the Catholic or evangelical hard-right. They are the festering problem that needs to get out of the way. CBK
CBK, The thing screwing up the American political dialog on this is that there’s no distinction made among socialism as practiced in USSR or China or Cuba [communist version] or Venezuela [under a repressive dictatorship] or England [socialized medicine!] or various Euro-Nordic countries which actually practice capitalism tempered by a socialist democracy—or [horrors] the prospect of US returning to a more equitable distribution of wealth via a reformed tax system that requires major input from wealthy corps & indivs—plus universal healthcare.
bethree5 Yes . . . I think many who experienced it first-hand, or only see the violence and the dictators that emerge from distortions of “socialism” use that term as if it were necessarily a horrible political structure. Denmark is an interesting situation.
But similarly, just as capitalism need not, but in fact has run off the rails, so principles of socialism can be implemented well or badly. Demonizing either on principle is a lopsided affair and unhelpful, to say the least. CBK
“God asks us to dare to create something new. We cannot return to the false securities of the political and economic systems we had before the crisis.”
And it is said that Blake was mentally ill. But I guess within the realm of Catholic theology/mythology the Pope is supposed to be that sky-daddy’s right hand man, interpreting what that god means so that the peons can know. Ha ha ha ha ha! Of course what the Pope seems to mean is that what he would like to see happen is an Roman Catholic theocracy that he would lead because “we cannot return to the false securities of the political and economic systems. . . ” Like a pie in the sky RC (no, not Royal Crown Cola) mythological world wide Vatican City that the Pope hints at being instituted.
That’s a stretch.
How is it a stretch?
This is a stretch: “[what] the Pope… would like to see happen is a Roman Catholic theocracy that he would lead… a mythological world wide Vatican City.” Sounds paranoid. RC’s are 15% of world pop- about the same as Hindus. Muslims are a quarter, and Protestants nearly 40%.
Duane Besides what bethree5 says about religions, there has been an ecumenical movement within and between the Catholic and other religions for a very long time. They don’t go around hitting people in the heads with it, but it happens to be the case. CBK
I certainly don’t mean it as paranoid. Just stating what all the top religious leaders in all faiths want. . . that their religion be the top dog/god.
Duane, that’s not true. There are many religions that do not seek converts. Christianity and Islam are religions of conversion. Judaism doesn’t seek converts, makes it difficult to become a Jew. It definitely doesn’t want to be #1.
The Jewish people don’t consider themselves “god’s chosen people”? Is that not a prerequisite for claiming the mantle of leadership? Why would anyone want to join a group who weren’t the “chosen ones”.
Perhaps I’ve not interpreted that phraseology correctly.
Duane Your view is of TRIBAL-based religions only and their leaders. But all but a few religious orders in history have been moving to a different, more historical way to view themselves, and to view their doctrines . . . and that movement has accelerated since the scientific revolution, in different ways and to different kinds of cultural music, so to speak. The point is that it’s not statically tribal but rather is transforming. Long story, with scads of books about it. . . . Don’t freeze your mind? CBK
“God asks us to dare to create something new.”
God never asked me for my opinion on this or anything else.
If She had, I would have given her an earful.
And because She is omniscient, She knew how I would respond, which is undoubtedly why She did not ask.
God’s Tweet
“The plague is just a tweet
To follow something new
I find it really neat
I hope that you do too”
This weekend I saw a prominent lawn sign planted in an affluent neighborhood in Northern Kentucky. The sign read, “You can’t be a good Catholic and a true socialist”. The sign suggests that the homeowner has no fear of religious persecution. It also suggests arrogance/entitlement to use his/her faith to cower others.
On 2-22-2019, the Texas Catholic Conference of Bishops posted their “Brief: Education Choice…Statistics indicate that education choice improves academic outcomes…Laws that force parents to pay twice for their child’s education; once through taxes…and again for tuition…are unjust and discourage accountability.” As evidence, 4 citations are listed, a Patrick Wolfe 2010 D.C. study, a Jay P. Greene 1999 Milwaukee study and, a Matthew Chingos 2012 N.Y. study. Blog readers can decide for themselves how much the matter of truth matters to Texas bishops.
Linda Whaaat? Should homeowners in Northern Kentucky fear religious persecution from posting a sign in their yard? And I don’t know that readers of yard signs will be “cowered” by them? Are you? Also, . . .
Hay, . . . this is America? The “prominent lawn sign” you quote is also an expression of freedom speech, though I don’t know KY’s local or state regulations about such things.
Your own note also speaks to the many conflicting variations of suggestions we can bring to lawn signs and bumper stickers. “Cower”? Naawwww. My own thought upon reading it was that it would be more truthful if it said: “You CAN be a good Catholic and a true socialist.” My view is that Jesus was a socialist long before the term emerged in the lexicon of political language. (On that: See our other discussion about the difference between the principles of socialism and actual historical instances of it.) CBK
From your note: “This weekend I saw a prominent lawn sign planted in an affluent neighborhood in Northern Kentucky. The sign read, ‘You can’t be a good Catholic and a true socialist’. The sign suggests that the homeowner has no fear of religious persecution. It also suggests arrogance/entitlement to use his/her faith to cower others.”
Did Pope Francis submit amicus briefs in the two cases that led up to the SCOTUS decision exempting religious organizations from public health mandates related to Covid?
If he had, governors would have appreciated the assist in the two legal cases, one brought by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn and the other by Hasidic Jews.
Four Jewish organizations signed the Americans United (an advocacy group for separation of church and state) briefs that were submitted to the courts.